4 Comments
User's avatar
Tom Buffo's avatar

I love it. The checks & balances is the actual individual citizen votes (regardless of affluence) with the power to allocate resources to desired projects without the negative influence from the real corruption of money from politicians, political parties, and corporations.

Expand full comment
Perry Ismangil's avatar

Yet designing the utopian automated democracy still requires checks and balances - that's the hard(er) bit, here's a good analysis of the problems in US Constitution design, for example: https://megaphone.link/VMP3718657746

Expand full comment
Elle Griffin's avatar

I absolutely agree. We still need courts, for instance. I think we still need Congress too, though I would have it act as a citizens' assembly rather than elected positions.

Expand full comment
Kumar's avatar

I concur. I regard participation to be one form of check and balance, but it alone is not enough to align the interests of people with their leaders. One can observe this with how local zoning committees and HOAs give too much power to retirees, stay at home parents, and other subsets of the population over the general public. Meanwhile mass participation through elections and referendums is vulnerable to propaganda and media control. The article mentions some ways to improve participation, but other forms of checks and balances need to be reformed as well.

Expand full comment