PER 2015
variety of means, one of which would be bribing through giving out benefits. Since the monied interests have more resources to hire signature-gatherers and to run advertising campaigns based on extensive marketing surveys and expert PR advice, there's a real question about how democratic existing initiative processes are. As I have mentioned previously, human beings are selfish, and political parties can take advantage of this inevitability of human nature. Thus whichever political campaign one finds more beneficial would gather more votes. Furthermore, such processes offer no more deliberation than the media debates that characterize most political campaigns. Under direct democracy where the view of the public is the sole parameter of decision making, the lack of division of labour would lead to inefficiency of the society. In order to achieve efficiency, there should be some sort of leadership to execute will of the people. In the UK, making a new law requires 3 readings with consultation of expert under the rationale of governing according to the wills of the people. However if we devolve the power to the public and hold a referendum on each and every issue, some problems that desperately needed to be solved would persist instead of being solved immediately. Therefore, a certain degree of sovereignty and power should be confined to the government only for the sake of the society. If people think the law is not fair, they could vote people who think the same into the parliament. We should also think carefully about the ambiguity: what people want might not be what is benign to the society. The ignorance and stupidity of human nature is further exacerbated by such confusion which people treat what they want as commensurate with what is beneficial to the society. For instance, if people motion for a cut in income tax or even an abandonment of such tax, the government would soon run into budget deficit. The point I would like to stress on is: the public’s view should not be the dominant parameter, a balanced view between individual welfare and welfare of the society as a whole should be. Voltaire once wrote, ‘’In the long run the people can be trusted to judge what is best for them’’ When people pursue instant gratification instead of long term prosperity of the society until it comes to a point where people start to regret and realize the importance of thinking ahead of time, it is too late. More importantly, some political issues are so complex that they require a specific field of expertise. For example, whether the government should cut defence spending, what policies the government could adopt to tackle recession. For these enigmatic, mind boggling political issues which require a holistic approach, even Parliament has to consult experts of different fields and the brightest minds across the UK before voting on a particular motion. Under direct democracy, electorates would be very susceptible to making the wrong decisions emanating from greed and self-indulgence. For example, when the country is dealing with diplomatic issues or fiscal or monetary policies, people would be led astray by their lack of knowledge, and would make decisions based on superficial evaluation. This illustrates that evaluating policies with competing and conflicting outcomes of votes should only be dealt with by experts. There is another impracticality stemming from direct democracy, that is, some of the issues are considered national security and should not be disclosed. For example, if the people vote publicly on whether or not should UK send troops to battle ISIS, there will be a time lag between a referendum and the processing of votes, thus the entire plan would be futile as the military tactics are voted on publicly and would be known by ISIS. Some may argue that the government could have certain degree of sovereignty when it comes to processing secretive information. However, another impracticality arises: where should we draw the line? Using a referendum would be useless as there is a stern possibility that people claim that they have the rights to know everything about their countries. Thus the practicality of direct democracy in making national decisions is low. Some people might think that the qualification of the representatives could not be justified because they are elected by unqualified people. However, this argument commits the fallacy of equivocation: advocates of this argument have been confused by the differences between “knowing someone who
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