Only just seen this conversation but last year ( was teaching a programming
class) we did a bit of a segway and were talking about disrupting different
industries and the connotations for society.
So I set the challenge and said ok "come up with a way to fix politics".
To cut a long story short we came up with the following.
Insights-
-The media become an even more powerful instrument in a direct democracy so
it's important to ensure that people engage in the process of being "fully
informed"before making a decision.
-People will engage in decision making if the feel they are going to make
an impact.
-Within 4.5 Million minds are better ideas than within 120mp's their
advisors/ think tanks/consultants
-People are not stupid, if the entirety of data/arguments are presented in
the right way , most people will make the right decision
-People will have time for decision making if they feel ownership.
Method
Step 1 was to build a site to enable people to see the entirety of
knowledge, opinions and data held on a particular topic (no doubt a
relationship to a parliamentary bill)
Something akin to a visual wikipedia, they could add their own arguments,
opinions, data, or dive deeper and question existing data, they could link
data with arguments, propose ideas for solutions, all users would be
anonymous but citations for data would be required. Obviously the site
would be open. Opinions and data can be separated with tags.
It was recognised that moderation would be difficult and time consuming,
there was some discussion as to whether to promote expert opinions and how
to reveal a user belonged to a special interest group
Step 2 was to allow people to propose how the referendum should be worded (
* the proposition) and discussion around this.
Step 3 People vote on the preferred wording of the proposition.
Step 4 was to push out the winning proposition to all citizens, who would
vote on the proposition via webbrowser or app ( Authentication was never
solved but discussions took place around approaching trademe/
realme/harmoney and piggybacking on their services) Citizens could see how
people were voting based on age / sex / and location ( down to electorate
level)
Citizens without access to a browser could use a public library or phone
in( extra Authentication).
Step 5 MP's then vote in parliament according to the manner in which their
constituents voted, ie do exactly what the database tells them to do
One of the best ideas to come out of this was that to enforce step 5 you
simply set up a political party that does exactly that, no policies.
Anyway, was an interesting afternoon