Who said anything about sides or partisanship? In fact I took a purely centrist approach by saying there is a pragmatic middle ground.
I don't know how anyone can look at what is happening in social media and say direct democracy would be a positive thing. Curation is important and trusting expertise is important and in a direct democracy model driven by technology and consensus there is a diminishing of trust in expertise. We've seen a lie from a grifter is more trusted than the truth from an expert and there is no recourse. The lie and the truth sit at the same level, and what becomes the belief is driven by popularity.
I thought like you until about five years ago (in fact, I used to be a contributor to a direct democracy codebase), however the mess were in currently can be laid firmly at the feet of technology. We've seen that algorithms are immoral and will, unchecked, manipulate people to get the most engagement and outrage, just like capitalism unchecked is an all consuming beast.
Anarchism, objectavism, communism, etc, are all extremes and my view is extremes don't work. The model where government reigns in the worst parts of capitalism and fills in the gap where capitalism cannot meet the outcomes for society, has been a very successful model and has brought billions of people out of poverty and has been the model which could very well have prosided over the peak of human civilisation.
There's definitely advantages and efficiencies to leveraging technology, the use of a decentralised ledger like a blockchain for open and transparent elections or the real time auditability of government finances, for instance. But it shouldn't come at the expense of expertise and that's what direct democracy does.
I don't know how anyone can look at what is happening in social media and say direct democracy would be a positive thing. Curation is important and trusting expertise is important and in a direct democracy model driven by technology and consensus there is a diminishing of trust in expertise. We've seen a lie from a grifter is more trusted than the truth from an expert and there is no recourse. The lie and the truth sit at the same level, and what becomes the belief is driven by popularity.
I thought like you until about five years ago (in fact, I used to be a contributor to a direct democracy codebase), however the mess were in currently can be laid firmly at the feet of technology. We've seen that algorithms are immoral and will, unchecked, manipulate people to get the most engagement and outrage, just like capitalism unchecked is an all consuming beast.
Anarchism, objectavism, communism, etc, are all extremes and my view is extremes don't work. The model where government reigns in the worst parts of capitalism and fills in the gap where capitalism cannot meet the outcomes for society, has been a very successful model and has brought billions of people out of poverty and has been the model which could very well have prosided over the peak of human civilisation.
There's definitely advantages and efficiencies to leveraging technology, the use of a decentralised ledger like a blockchain for open and transparent elections or the real time auditability of government finances, for instance. But it shouldn't come at the expense of expertise and that's what direct democracy does.