"Referendum democracy" - how it can work

I believe that the best society can be achieved with “referendum democracy” – a rule in the Constitution, that a law can be accepted only with an online referendum (except maybe situations of war).  At first glance, it may seem that such a system will not work, since an ordinary citizen is a layman in matters of governing the country. But this will not be such a big problem, since the referendums will be initiated by the authorities, i.e. experts, and they only need to convince the population of their position (by raising the level of education of the population for this).

However, for this system to work well, one more step is needed: a law on compulsory post-school education. For example, each citizen will have to spend half an hour a day studying materials that help understand how to govern country, and in case of non-compliance, pay an increased tax. Possibly the following principle should be implemented: each citizen can choose what information he will study, but he must justify why, as he believes this information will help him vote more correctly, and this explanation should sound reasonable (this idea develops 20 article of the United Nations Convention against Corruption). Another approach is electing via the internet the people, who will decide, which books and other materials should be suggested for such education.

And then a new problem arises: since the resources of the brain are limited, it is difficult for a person to be versatile, and if he spends a lot of time studying the issues of running a country, he will earn less in his main job. Accordingly, a society in which the state forces everyone to study the issues of governing the country will be more reasonable and less likely to make erroneous decisions, but at the same time, it may militarily and economically lose competition to societies in which such norms do not exist. Therefore, such a society must export its way of life, perhaps even by military means. This is similar to the idea of ​​exporting democracy by military means, which I fully support (“so that the barbarians do not conquer Rome, we must make Rome everywhere”).

I believe that in a perfect democracy, the nation will not only make errors, but also study with its errors. Besides that, for minimizing the profanation, two more measures can be uses:

1) When an online referendum is initiated, a group of randomly chosen citizens should be selected, and some money will be offered for them for studying materials, important for this referendum. This group will vote, and the results of its vote will be a good information for other citizens. It should be noted that a sufficiently big sum of money should be offered for the members of this group, so that the majority of selected people will agree to participate (otherwise this group will not be an representative sample of the population);

2) For referendums initiated by the people (not by the government), two save equal referendums must be performed instead of one, with an interval of a year; only if both referendums accept the initiative, it will become a law.

Next: most referendums will not have a legal force, because, for example, if people vote "Stop a war with this country", this will be not a law but an "Order" to the president, and there will be no ways to punish the president in case of refusal, until the next elections. However, if the president does not fulfill this "order", he can be judged by the society in future, after leaving the power. And possibly the most important thing in my suggestion is to start accepting the referendums relating all branches of power, including the judicial branch.

This will be an optimal choice for implementing the freedom of speech. I don't fully understand the "theory of the freedom of speech", in particular I have realized that some calls can be forbiden, like the banning to deny the Holocaust in Germany.

I belive that a common principle must be the power of the majurity. If the majority of the population votes on a refendum to ban a mass media - let it be so. On the contrary, if the majurity votes to fine some people who slander this mass media - let it be so.

Contents

   I live in Russia and do not know much about the western countries and their customs, so, I excuse for any awkwardness in my blog and for bad English.

The aim of my blog is to promote the ideas of internet democracy. I believe that these ideas could really make the world better, if they are implemented.
Most impotant posts:

Why people do not change their views

About Brexit

"The Medvedev effect" (about propaganda in Russia)

Consumer society and youtube

About democracy

An easy way to rid  the world of misantropy

Social lifts in big politics

Friendship vs sectarianism

The market economy and reputation

Bitcoins and Freedom

Internet democracy

Self-curing society

Criticism of the book "Cloud democracy"

Personal responsibility of power

My blog in Russian:

https://grandrienko.com



Comments to old posts are appreciated.

Previously this blog contained an article about Russia and Ukraine, but I decided to delete it, because it has become dangerous to live in Russia and write about politics.

An easy way to rid the world of misanthropy

 Being a nerd, I have learned a lot of modern literature about the social contract theory (theory of games, cooperation, egoism/altruism, etc). This conception is revealed, in particular, by modern biologists, who write that the ancient people lived, in fact, in an ideal democracy, because they lived in small groups. 10,000 years ago humanity moved from living in small groups to living in states based on a social contract. The authorities in these states began to establish laws against the selfish behavior of members of the states; but the tragedy of humanity was that since the representatives of power are also selfish individuals, they have begun to oppress those who do not have power, and then more and more immerse humanity in their paradigm, in particular, modify moral codes for themselves.

And I came to the conclusion that misanthropy in society arises as a by-product of the fact that the social contract is not abided by effectively enough. It may be difficult for me to formulate this exactly, but I am sure that in principle this is true. Suppose you condemn people for driving selfishly on the roads. But they also suffer from it, so they will vote for laws prohibiting such driving. Those, in an ideal democracy, your attitude towards others will be determined not by how they behave, but by what they vote for. If in the future ways of forming morality in a person are developed (for example, methods of upbringing), in a democracy, people will vote for this to become widespread.

Near-perfect democracy is not so unattainable: for this it is enough to write in the constitution the rule that any law can be adopted only through a referendum (with the possible exception of martial law). At first glance, it may seem that such a system will not work, since an ordinary citizen is a layman in matters of governing the country. But this will not be such a big problem, since the referendums will be initiated by the authorities, i.e. experts, and they only need to convince the population of their position (by raising the level of education of the population for this).

However, for this system to work well, one more step is needed: a law on compulsory post-school education. For example, each citizen will have to spend half an hour a day studying materials that help understand the government of the country, and in case of non-compliance, pay an increased tax. I believe that the principle must be implemented: each citizen can choose what information he will study, but he must justify why, as he believes this information will help him vote more correctly, and this explanation should sound reasonable (this idea develops 20 article of the United Nations Convention against Corruption).

And then a new problem arises: since the resources of the brain are limited, it is difficult for a person to be versatile, and if he spends a lot of time studying the issues of running a country, he will earn less in his main job. Accordingly, a society in which the state forces everyone to study the issues of governing the country will be more reasonable and less likely to make erroneous decisions, but at the same time, it may militarily and economically lose competition to societies in which such norms do not exist. Therefore, such a society must export its way of life, perhaps even by military means. This is similar to the idea of ​​exporting democracy by military means, which I fully support (“so that the barbarians do not conquer Rome, we must make Rome everywhere”).

Consumer society and youtube

  Currently in the whole word (except probably North Korea) the consumer society is dominating. This is shown, for example, by the fact, that most people are anxious very much about their revenue and prosperity. As far as I know, there was not such anxiety in 19^th century. The realities of our century, for example, are that during the wars people often suffer from economical sanctions more, than from the military operations themselves.

  Some people are trying to find out why such a situation has appeared. I have heard such interpretation from some people in Russia: “previously they wanted us to become communist builders, and now they want us to become consumers”. 
  I think that in reality the reason for emergence of the consumer society is unexpectedly banal: such mass media, as TV channels and radio stations, are obliged to put a lot of advertisement in their content, because they do not have other sources of revenue. And the excess of advertisement forms the consumer society itself.
  The first mass media were newspapers, which earned on direct sales. When radio and television appeared, these mass media appeared to have no such possibility of earnings – you can not directly pay for viewing a TV program. Because of that, TV and radio had to earn by the advertisements only. This problem in principle could be solved organizationally, in governments instituted a TV tax, calculated the ratings of TV channels and paid the channels a part of this tax, proportional to the channel’s rating. But this task proved too difficult for the politicians.

  A good amateur video concerning the subject: "history of stuff":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

  In this video it is said, that the consumer society appeared mainly  in 1950th. This was the time when television became popular, so this video confirms the idea of the connection between the consumer society and TV ads.

  It is great that recently the paid subscription has appeared at youtube. I suppose, when the humanity transfers from TV to paid youtube, the "power of advertisment" will end. However I see that youtube bloggers place ads in their video, so I hope a next step will be made - direct payments to the authors of the videos on youtube (or transfering from youtube to Vimeo).