Re: On The Inherent Evil of Electronic Democracy

[szabo@netcom.com (Nick Szabo)]

Some aspects of Electronic Democracy (like Communism, Catholicism,
etc. a religion, and thus the capital letters):

*  We have quite a lot of it now.  The mass media (CNN, newspapers,
call-in radio, etc.) is "the fourth branch of government".  We
can send billions of pieces of junk e-mail, faxes, or voice
messages to the White House and Congresscritters if we like,
and they can send junk mail back.

* As long as we have it, it's a good idea to at least try
to provide information to the voter, so I support this bill.
Cypherpunks might find some of this information useful.
However, I am under no illusions that a significant fraction 
of voters will bother to access or read the information to any 
significant degree.

* A basic problem with E.D. is that nobody has an
incentive to vote correctly.  People's political opinions
can be as stupid and wrong as can be and it won't have any
negative impact on their own lives, or at least none that 
is disproportionate or easily recognized to be a result decisions
based on that opinion.  Other people might have great opinions, which 
if implemented would solve world hunger, clean up the environment, 
grow the economy, etc. etc.  but there is no special benefit to these 
people for having done their altruistic homework and arrived at effective 
solutions to these problems.

This is not only reflected in the fact that less than half the people 
vote in many elections, but also in the fact that only a miniscule 
fraction of those who do vote know what the hell they are voting on.  
Including me, BTW: this isn't an elitist issue of "the masses are asses", 
but the fact that most of the important problems and decisions require 
in-depth knowledge based on years of experience, not the flipping
of levers based on a few minutes per week of video clips.  

Contrast to the much more effective tools we have to make 
social decisions in a free market: what to make, what to use, 
what to buy, what to sell, how to be of service to other people
what services to choose, etc.  Good decisionmaking processes have 
negative feedback loops so that good opinions or decisions tend to 
clearly and quickly reward the decisionaker, and vice versa, and 
tend to benefit or harm the decisionmaker disproportionately to
innocent bystanders (people making decisions about other aspects
of society).

The market's feedback is by no means perfect!  That is why I
am hyped about systems to make the feedback more effective,
like the recently discussed auditing protocol, and the
cypherpunks movement which I hope will free some people and
markets from abusive, coercive control by those who (a)
do not have our best interests at heart, and (b) have no
incentive to do the homework needed to make good decisions.

Regardless of how cypherpunks feel about this issue, E.D. is one
of the most powerful memes making its way thru current society, and 
we have to deal with it.

Nick Szabo					szabo@netcom.com