Maybe some fellow Slovenian can explain.

As someone without any knwoledge about the countries inner politics: The US officially announced it’s going to boost right-wing movements across Europe to influence the continent in its favor. Investing loads of money into election campaigning can influence public opinion.

Doesn’t this boil down to self-censorship in public? Better not critizise the government in public becaus you never know whos waring smart glasses…

My argument would be that people definitely would make bad decisions in the beginning. But that wouldn’t be that far off of the status quo, would it?

My hope would be that this system gives an incentive to ACTUALLY get informed about the matter you vote on since you’re actively choosing to get involved instead of voting on every topic (also the ones you have 0.0 interest in) every 4 years. Another point, which may be a bit far fetched idk, could be that you theoretically could use LLMs to summarize the various proposed solutions and their justifications. In the system I have in mind, the experts you mentioned would also submit proposed solutions.

Based on your example:

Problem formulated for the petition: “Rents are too high.”

If the petition goes through, anyone could propose solutions. For example, “rent control” (proposed by someone on the left), “foreigners out” (proposed by someone on the right), “revise building standards and invest in public housing” (an expert).

The population might follow the populists at first… However, if the problem is not solved after 10 years, you can’t blame “those at the top” for the solution not working, and hopefully there will be a rethink.

Maybe this is just a utopian fantasy of mine. But I have the feeling that our democratic systems are not up to the challenges of the digitalized 21st century and growing inequality… this is the best solution I have come up with so far.

Create an open source platform where everyone can vote on every matter. Matter to be voted on are chosen by petitions. If a petition indicates societal need for change (x supporters in y time frame) anyone can propose a solution. Then a vote is taken. The solution with the most votes is implemented. If there is a new petition on the same topic, the fun starts all over again.

Advantages from my point of view:

1. No potentially corrupt representatives

2. No deflection of one’s own bad voting decisions (aka. it’s the fault of those at the top)

3. Citizens once again have a motivation to inform themselves about issues more than just once every four years.

Will everyone always be able to vote on everything? Certainly not, as individuals’ time and resources are limited. Therefore, those who vote on a decision are likely to be affected by it themselves, or at least feel that they are. In this way, people who have informed themselves beforehand, or at least would do so, tend to vote more.

We would use the real-time communication possibilities that the internet has given us for something positive instead of slop and brain rot.

My problem with anonymous leaders is that we’d completely lose track of who’s to be made responsible. It would basically create a shortcut for elites to rule without having to hide their corruption/influence.

A group/institution would probably also face the same problem as we have today with single persons: Big money would simply buy influence in these new organizations instead of bribing single individuals.

A direct democracy would mean you have to bribe a big part of the population to cover your ideas… the worse your idea is and the more support you need to buy for it the more translates from bribery to paying a majority to accept your idea. At some point the amount of bribes extends the gains to be made by your manipulation and it becomes uneconomical… we’d basically use capitalism against bribery.

Maybe by advancing our democracies in the same way the technology to divide and rule us is advancing.

Personally, I think the internet is both a blessing and a curse: while it is currently being used to sow discord and spread lies, it will also enable us to do without representatives and the corruption that goes with them in the foreseeable future. I believe that internet- and open-source-based direct democracy is the model of government of the future.

II would put it the other way around: as long as representative systems exist, it will always be more likely that egoists and narcissists will establish themselves in leadership positions, even if they only make up a small part of the population. Today, this is encouraged by the fact that we reward these character traits, which are actually harmful to the community, with fame, money and prestige.

Personally, I think the internet is both a blessing and a curse: while it is currently being used to sow discord and spread lies, it will also enable us to do without representatives and the corruption that goes with them in the foreseeable future. I believe that internet- and open-source-based direct democracy is the model of government of the future.

I get your point. But the question that comes to my mind: Is your experience with the world a reason to devalue his excitement for his ,old boring" quarry? Does one always need to chase the ,best and biggest" things in life to be content an ought to feel imperfect if he/she didn’t experience them? I’m fairly sure you didn’t mean it this way but to me it sounds like you belittle others due to the fact that you believe to know better… and that, frankly said, is also something not to be celebrated.

I don’t mean to attack you but I’m curious weather you thought about these aspects?

To make nitrogen fertilizer you need energy, the source is irrelevant. Phosphorus is mined, again energy source irrelevant.

That being said we have harvest more the enough crops to feed even 10 billion people, we just decide to feed 40 % of our harvest to animals and additionally waste resources for biomass energy and fuel. On top the majority of nations has declinibg birth rates, especially those wasting the most ressources.

Doom by starvation is a global choice not necessity.

Germay, as many others, deregulated capitalism sonce 1980s. That’s the reason for its societal problems.

Any other system with representatives you come up with reaults in the same outcome: Egoists take leading roles and rig the system in their favor in the long run.

Internet based direct democracy. Only a minority is evil, get rid of representatives to block their door to abusing power over others once and for all.

Go on and try… see if India or China are still weak enough to be dominated by the US.

(I oppose imperialism… that this idea comes up when former colonies becoming powerful is THE MAIN PROBLEM of the US is somehow fascinating, though under a ‘Everything used to be better.’ aspect understandable despite being nuts)

I’m pretty sure thats pretty exactly what the partiot act is all about, innit?

Also I don’t quite get how Orban can hope to fill his pockets with as much free money as currently should Hungary fall to Russia.

Look into the post history of OP

It’s rather the other way round: AfD is even more neo liberal and has soaked up the financial contributions of rich donors formerly going to FDP. Other than FDP the AfD (unfortunately) actually has a chance to fuck up their ideologically blinded voter base with more more neo liberal policies as they’re much closer to reaching a position of power than the former.

That’s a part of the problem… also this ‘protective’ approach labels prostiutes per se as victims and denys them autonomy.

Here are two intersting reads about ‘the nordic model’ :

https://www.academia.edu/50493737/The_Nordic_Model_in_Europe_Prostitution_Trafficking_and_Neo_Abolitionism

https://scholar.google.de/scholar?as_ylo=2025&q=nordic+model+of+prostitution&hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5#d=gs_qabs&t=1770060948847&u=%23p%3Db8BF5LYTIuwJ

Over all it seems like ‘the nordic model’ doesn’t make prostiution disappear but reduces its general visibility… rather to the worse for men and women working (or being forced to worked) in this profession.

Imho: This was forceable… declaring things illegal doesn’t make them disappear, being it postitution (for which the efffort was made many times in history) or e.g. alcohol.

To this end, many dissidents have been and continue to be persecuted and imprisoned, even in socialist states.

The whole issue is not black and white.

Actually this makes things even more interesting imho as it allows or even demands a sophisticated museum and exhibition concept.

Some aspects that come to my mind:

1. Is the safety of Sigapore exclusively liked to strict drug regulation or aren’t there many other confunding factors which might have an even bigger influence?
2. Given we see this approach as successful and therefore legitime (assuming that in 1 the policy is the main/only driving factor): Would this be applicable to other countries? Singapore is a verry wealthy city state… comparing it to a country like Britain with more area, less population desity and also lower ecomonic performance per area seems missleading. Prosecution becomes more difficult and costly the bigger the area gets I guess.

All-in-all if the approach is sucessful for Singapore: Excellent! Accunsing other countries with different prerequisites of failing on this basis seems to be nonsense as comparing countries and societies in a single aspect while ignoring the gaszillion other factors at play itself is a pointless approach besides populism.