Thanks Oriane for posting it for me, I just wasn't sure where to put it.

Dirk, would you mind to describe why you don't like it?

Well, there will always be pros and cons in the process, and both sides should be heard and come to an agreement, that's why I suggested it that way. If both sides were involved in the creation of a law, no one can say that the con side wasn't taken into consideration.

In my view unity isn't about unified thinking, it's about different thinking people being able to work out a common way.

Well, "wise men" implies a form of elitism, and that, in my eyes is far more deviding than the question whether a random person is pro or contra a specific idea. By the way, who will decide who is wise? The wise men themselves? Then we have an aristocracy. The people? Well how should the average "unwise" people know?

I am sorry I have to disagree with your definition of wise men, the fact someone is experienced doesn't make him wise. E.g. I am an experienced car driver with over 2million km of experience, that doesn't stop me from unwise decisions like driving too fast, too aggressive, while tired or angry.

By the way, overall experience once more is such a wage term

I think that's too less diversity. By the way, I wasn't suggesting that method for the creation of the constitution, it should be the constitution's target to ensure such a form of government.

I agree on this. There are a lot of ideas and worries that are taken into account, making the constitution bloated. By the way, I think my idea would make up for a quite simple constitution, defining basic values and a process of law creation. Anything else goes into the law books, that will be created by the defined process. There won't be any governmental institutions to be defined.

I guess my English is insufficient for such an approach, but I agree, it's appealing

I am not in favor of random citizens appointed as temporary legislators. In practice, they tend to go along with the most experienced politician on the committee.

How is this system better than a conventional referendum system, where a citizen or group proposes legislation in the same way, but then simply gathers a defined number of signatures in support to calling a vote?

Well, they wouldn't be completely random, as in my model they would be asked if they are pro or contra prior to assignment. So they would have to have a clear opinion on the topic in question. For my model to work a skills and interests database of all citizens is mandatory, so citizens with no interest in the field the topic belongs to could be filtered out before, then let's say ask about double of the people needed, and pick half pro and half contra (again randomly)

SirMcTod's suggestion yesterday is not dissimilar from the way the English constitution and law has evolved from the principles set out in the Magna Carta agreed in 1215. Its worked for over 800 years now, after all! I am nervous about the "wise men" concept - who defines wise?

I'm fully for a direct democracy, and within the model I'd put forwards, the "expert panels" would comprise of the current ministries in loose form. These I feel should be fluidic in composition - regularly rotating - and selected by the people themsleves. They are only there to really provide the different facilities in which to encompass all requirements. They can springboard attention to various submissions, provide sane guidance, ensure concersation retains to productive directions etc. IMHO the only questions with this model would be how to select the experts and what defines "expert".

I find it interesting of the mention of the database - because guess what I've started doing... https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/resource-acquisition-and-management-86/topic/people-are-our-greatest-resource-440. I've only got as far to be assembling the trees that will hold the options presented to the user, 580 lines and in some places five branches deep it's nowhere near complete. And that's just educational qualifications. Once we've got them lists, we can then review them for crossover and have selection of one pull back existences of the other. From there it's just granularity of the search.

But back to the topic in hand.

What actually defines an "expert"? being "educated" doesn't entirely assure that it will be used effectively. Over time, people's behaviour can be revealing. Ultimately, the quality of their input on the topic in question is the best measure available. As for how to select them, the people with vague or specific intererest in a subject naturally migrates to the responsible ministry wherin those who frequent will soon - based on input provided - between themselves figure out which ones that are "sensible" to pool as candidates. But, with a "direct democracy" it really doesn't matter who the pilot is, because we're filing the flight plan.

I agree, choosing experts isn't a simple task, but with a database and contacting some seemingly qualified persons, the person who files the case should be able to select a board, that might work out a draft the people can agree with. In a direct democracy people don't tend to lack of interest In the political belongings as they do in systems where they have less influence, so a direct democracy does even improve the average education/knowledge, because people are interested to keep themselves informed.

I would like to support this idea of laws being created by a panel of subject matter experts supporting direct democracy. In the Internet-age we can have simple, direct democracy (essentially every decision is a referendum) BUT the main drawback is the general man in the street, while they may have an "armchair expert" opinion (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Armchair%20Expert), their opinion normally comes from the newspapers they read or news items they watched. In the UK, for example, we saw after the Brexit vote, the public can not only be swayed but clearly ~50% of people were not qualified to vote due to misinformation (I'm not taking sides, it was a ~50:50 split). There were lots of experts, everyone had/has a strong opinion. I believe the following points are not controversial and can be agreed regardless of the shape of the final solution:

1. The details of laws can be established by a panel of SMEs elected using a democratic process.
2. An 'expert' on one panel (eg. 'medical ethics') does not have to be expert in any other field, for any other law (whereas in a traditional parliament, everything is debated by the same set of MPs).
3. Many different things might qualify someone as an 'expert', examples: membership of a professional society, qualifications in a relevant field, years on the job, or simply being a primary stakeholder in the end result. The individual only needs to give a convincing display of 'expertise' to qualify.
4. There should be a well-defined process for selecting 'experts'. For example, (this might be a bit contentious) I think that an 'expert' should be able to articulate why he/she should have a say, be nominated and seconded by someone else (similar to Robert’s Rules for nominations, except you can't nominate yourself). The purpose of this would be to stop complete 'loose cannons' from abusing the process. Perhaps others could suggest a better way of separating real experts from self-publicists and the like.

I envisage the experts can create the law, broken down by points possibly with an explanation of why it needs to be included (for the masses) and examples of how it is intended to be applied and then your direct democracy part comes in and it is either adopted (or not) by Asgardia. What do you think about that?

If we use the expert panel method in some form your suggestions are practical and I would support.

We can look at where this is already in practice to various degrees with an element of direct democracy as suggested

repost to connect.to this thread... liquid democracy, liquid feedback , E-democracy and delegative democracy.

"I will add some other examples

Liquid democracy currently being used by Parts of Germany and Denmark "Liquid Democracy: True Democracy for the 21st Century

Liquid Democracy, a subset of Delegative Democracy, is a powerful voting model for collective decision making in large communities. Liquid Democracy combines the advantages of Direct Democracy and Representative Democracy and creates a truly democratic voting system that empowers voters to either vote on issues directly, or to delegate ones voting power to a trusted party.

Through delegation, people with domain-specific knowledge are able to better influence the outcome of decisions, which in turn leads to an overall better governance of the state. Because of this, Liquid Democracy naturally evolves into a Meritocracy, where decisions are mainly made by those who have the kind of knowledge and experience required to make well-informed decisions on issues."

https://medium.com/organizer-sandbox/liquid-democracy-true-democracy-for-the-21st-century-7c66f5e53b6f#.33ocfqjb7

http://www.shareable.net/blog/liquid-democracy-the-app-that-turns-everyone-into-a-politician

"LiquidFeedback (abbreviated lqfb) is free software for political opinion formation and decision making, combining aspects of representative and direct democracy. Its most important feature is the implementation of a delegated voting system ("liquid democracy") which is to establish a new form of political representation and participation that takes into account the knowledge disparity of its participants."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiquidFeedback

E-Democracy "E-democracy .... It is a form of government in which all adult citizens are presumed to be eligible to participate equally in the proposal, development, and creation of laws.[1] E-democracy encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy

Delegative Democracy where Liquid Democracy is a sub set

"The prototypical delegative democracy has been summarized by Bryan Ford in his paper, Delegative Democracy, as containing the following principles:[3]

Choice of Role: Each member can choose to take either a passive role as an individual or an active role as a delegate, differentiating this from representative forms in which only specified representatives are allowed. Delegates have further choices as to how active they are and in what areas. Low Barrier to Participation: The difficulty and cost of becoming a delegate is small, and in particular does not require political campaigning or winning a competitive election. Delegated Authority: Delegates exercise power in organizational processes on behalf of themselves and those individuals who select them as their delegate. Different delegates, therefore, can exercise varying levels of decision power. Privacy of the Individual: To avoid social pressures or coercion, all votes made by individuals are private, both from other individuals and from delegates. Accountability of the delegates: To ensure the accountability of delegates to their voters and to the community at large, all formal deliberative decisions made by delegates are completely public (or in some forms viewable only to their constituents). Specialization by Re-Delegation: Delegates can not only act directly on behalf of individuals as generalists, but through re-delegation they can also act on behalf of each other as specialists.

Variations on this general model also exist, and this outline is only mentioned here for orientation within a general model."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy

With all examples above using blockchain as the voting method."