Comment by zelphirkalt
7 hours ago
This is of course a process, that does not lend itself to be democratic, because it is way longer than most people's attention span. People don't manage to remember things that happened in politics 4 years ago in their own country. Now they are required to follow up on dozens of shitty proposals, all probably illegal in their own country, and those don't even happen in their own country? That divides the number of people, who even start looking into this stuff by a factor of 1000 or so.
what do you mean, a slow bureaucracy is a democratic bureaucracy. the last thing you want is a highly efficient bureaucracy enacting change quickly.
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There is nothing democratic about the process. It's all unelected politicians ruling for you
I was making a joke (and referencing a book); that being said, you're wrong, no unelected politicians are ruling for me or any other european citizen.
2 replies →
Which ones are unelected - the democratically elected heads of the member state governments? Or the democratically elected members of the EU parliament?
Or the commissioners that are appointed by the democratically elected heads of the member state governments?
Is there a website that tracks these? That would be a nice divulgation process.
There is the Parliament's legislative train website [1]. However, it only tracks actual legislative steps, not the intra-Council negotiations, so the proposal's page appears to be have been largely inactive since 2024 [2].
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/
[2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-a-new...
People’s attention span has decreased to a matter of days now, if not hours. Have you seen how quickly front page news in the US is forgotten?
The democratic process needs a revamp but it shouldn’t be driven by the general populations attention span.
I wouldn't be so sure of that assertion regarding attention span. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance granted, it's about opinion rather than capability but the same bias would explain such a reflexive judgment, and such a judgment will have negative consequences if it is false. (Consensus can be shaped, as can the perception of consensus be.)
People on average are really not that stupid and are absolutely capable of looking back a few years for context.
Tell me more about that, while here in Germany people again and again vote against their own interest (AfD, CDU, SPD, and all the other corrupt and inept politicians and parties) and the mainstream parties have not managed to improve our situation for some 4-5 election cycles. Tell me more about that, while looking at the US. I am quite sure many other countries can be added to this list.
We clearly live in different worlds.
Maybe that says more about your biases than it does about the intelligence of 8 billion people though.
>> that does not lend itself to be democratic, because it is way longer than most people's attention span
The attention span of the general public _shouldn't_ matter. That's why we elect politicians.
That could still be democratic in principle if it weren’t for lobbyists
If legislative processes are so drawn out and complex that no more than a handful of ordinary citizens could keep track of them, the advantage that paid lobbyists have over the public is enormous
That's where Unions and NGOs come in. Their job is to be lobbyists for the people, against corporate power.
Is the process democratic if citizen's opinions are irrelevant?
No matter who's in charge, no matter the election results, no matter the protests - the same style of legislation is pushed.
and once something's in it is almost impossible to remove.
That describes pretty much every democratic government in the world, from the USA to New Zealand
> The attention span of the general public _shouldn't_ matter. That's why we elect politicians.
It would work if we could elect politicians who were both competent and trustworthy.
Of course that would require successfully electing people who are competent about a broad range of issues, able to see through well funded and clever lobbying, unblinded by ideology, and able to resist pressure.