Democracy Is the Solution to Vetocracy
&gt; Bottom line up front: I think the solution is to let small groups of people most directly affected by a new development vote on the development. I think this would make it possible to buy them off, and win the support or compliance of the most motivated opponents of the things we need to build.<p>This shifts the problem from one place to another. Who do you decide gets to vote?<p>&gt; I realise that this is a very vague categorisation. Who is to decide what “significant” losing out means here? Bear with me, but ultimately that is what I’m going to suggest is the big, interesting research question for anyone who wants to solve vetocracy.<p>Oh. So the solution is: I don&#x27;t have a solution so I&#x27;m going to move the problem from one place to another and state that it is an interesting question for <i>someone else to solve</i>.<p>This goes on and on for a ridiculously long article stating how awesome this would be, if we could only accurately identify those affected by change. Sure. Just given a sufficiently smart compiler. Given an omnipotent genie. We can all solve all of the problems when we bury them in some impossible wish.<p>All we need are the <i>right</i> people to vote. None of the <i>wrong</i> people. And then we can bribe the right people to vote the right way. Then democracy will work. &#x2F;sarcasm<p>If your solution to vetocracy is to limit democracy then you aren&#x27;t using democracy. Democracy becomes subordinate to the mechanism you are using to define the limit. At that point, the mechanism that determines that limit becomes your solution. So hand-waving it away as &quot;an interesting research problem&quot; means that you haven&#x27;t solved anything at all. You could just as well get rid of democracy and keep only the mechanism of limit and the bribes.