Liquid democracy is a group-decision-making method that works as a sort of "direct democracy for people who know they're not experts on a subject, but know of people that they trust who who know more about a subject than themselves". Questions are settled by asking everyone... but many people's answer will be "whatever X says".

It works by enabling people to solicit recommendations on how to vote from people they trust. So, people who know nothing about foreign policy but really like the slogan "Greece first" can get vote recommendations on that subject from people who agree with the basic thrust of those values but who actually know pundits or experts on a given subject who also agree with the attitude - but with serious expertise brought to bear on a given topic (for example "Greek foreign policy towards Syria with a 'Greece First' perspective"). The specific experts may know about areas of Greece-Syria relations that are apolitical but require enormous knowledge (say, estimates of military capability) and get vote recommendations on these sub-domains from experts who don't share their values... while knowing just as surely that questions about which factions in Syria to support is more of a values thing that they'll handle themselves.

In fact, one of the original influences on Liquid Democracy was the desire to replace the chain of command in a military situation with something more efficient and flexible. The idea was that if hierarchy in such a vital situation could be outcompeted on a power versus power basis by something less hierarchical, then hierarchical social decision making system in general would have less credibility.

Contents 1 Coherent Opinions 1.1 United Diversity 1.2 A Kuro5hin Essay 1.3 A Wiki With Substantial Content On LD 1.4 Beyond Politics 1.5 People's Power Alliance

Coherent OpinionsEdit

United DiversityEdit

United Diversity has a wiki that contains an article by the original articulator of the idea titled Liquid Democracy In Context or An Infrastructuralist Manifesto. It's rather long but it's key points are bolded and those bolded points are repeated here to give "the gist":

• While LD would work great in contexts like shareholder meetings, city councils, and online forums, it was initially designed for one very specific purpose: To render obsolete traditional military hierarchy.

• Our civil infrastructure currently depends on our society's institutional underpinnings, which have failed, and will continue to fail, to adapt to radical change. To stave off societal collapse, then, we have but one path available to us: We must systematically render our most vulnerable (and perhaps cherished) institutions unnecessary, and our less vulnerable institutions more adaptable. Only then can have we any hope for the future.

• Perhaps instead of revolution through violence, or art, or music, or culture, maybe we could live to see a revolution through institutional design...?

• Liquid Democracy is a fast, decentralized, collaborative question-answering system, which works by enabling chained answer recommendation. It occupies the middle ground somewhere between direct and representative democracy, and is designed to ensure that the things we all hold in common stay properly maintained (by small, stealthy, distributed teams of anarchist kung-fu badasses, if need be), even in the face of radical technological change.

A Kuro5hin EssayEdit

A member of K5 named Kragg wrote an article for the Kuro5hin community Liquid Democracy: When, not If wherein he explains the basic idea and argues in favor of it. The article recieved 244 comments and a moderating system raised the articulate ones (that agreed to the POV of Kuro5hin) into prominence.

There was a poll asking "Liquid democracy?" and after 117 votes the results were:

• 38% Yea!
• 35% Nay!
• 26% I don't know, but I know a man who does.

A Wiki With Substantial Content On LDEdit

The Twisted Matrix Wiki has the following pages describing an attempt to implement liquid democracy more effictively:

• LiquidDemocracy - Originally the central hub of the LD content, but now somewhat out of date.

• LiquidDemocracyCommons - A consideration of the "policy space" from a tragedy of the commons perspective.

• LiquidDemocracyVotingSystem - Lots of text on the subject of voting and how it should work.

• LiquidDemocracyEarlyComments - A wiki-based discussion of LD and whether and how it would work.

Beyond PoliticsEdit

Beyond Politics is an org. Have a wiki. Have some issues:

• go here and pick the good ones.

People's Power AllianceEdit

The People's Power Alliance seeks to implement this reform through ballot initiative in Colorado.

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