A brief history of fixing humanity. 🤝 🌍
For whom does democracy really work ... ?
First published as a Tweet thread/rant in ~September 2020
Republished here because, well, I deleted twitter but still want to refer to it.
Stay tuned for a post about Gaza, Ukraine, Greenland… and what lies beneath.
Humanity is not having a good century so far.
Endless wars, global pandemics, rich dying of disinformation, poor dying of famine & flood, rising populism, declining freedoms and occasional economic collapse & austerity.
There is a simple solution..
..but first a little “why”.
In the UK & US we like to think that we live in a practical democracy; that it’s “a place where the people really decide regularly how to be governed”.
This myth is based on the facade that depicts a real, meaningful choice at the ballot box.
Here’s why it’s no real choice:
Putting aside your red-team / blue-team politics for a moment; let’s look at the construct of our “political elite”..
Predominantly white, privately educated, wealthy men.
So why the demographic skew?
Well, for one thing, politics here and in the US wasn’t built to a truly democratic design.
Democracy is an illusion.
In both cases it has evolved from a monarchic/religious power base which still holds most of the wealth and power today, especially here in the UK.
But I vote don’t I?
Yes; but consider the myriad of things you care about… your job, health, tax, commute, kids’ education, digital privacy, local forest…
… not to mention foreign policy, aid, views on immigration, deforestation, space travel.
5 years is a lot of trust on a binary choice.
Would you sign a fixed 5 year contract on your first day in a job?
Would you agree a fixed 5 years of cohabitation before a first date?
NO.
Our system of democracy isn’t designed to provide democratic choice – it is designed to consolidate & retain power by providing the illusion of choice at regular intervals.
But in the end our leadership knows that no-one wants that much choice anyway so all good? Yes?
NO. Why?
Because the system – and our society – has been corrupted by a new power base that has even out grown the old power structures of monarchy, religion & state.
This is the century of the corporation.
In both the UK & the US, public policy is bought & paid for by a few dozen corporations.
Through donations, revolving door employment, lobbying, research funding, foreign policy manipulation, bribery and judicial bullying corporations are now firmly in control.
Don’t believe me?
Consider for a moment what it takes to reach the cabinet, the Lords, the senate or the presidency..
Put aside the financial aspects of campaigning and consider the deals made, the friends collected, the favours called in – the sheer work to reach the top.
Our politics are corrupted by our corporations cos that’s where the money and power is.
It’s not fanciful to assert that this will never change while we treat leadership as a right, while we associate leadership with power, while we keep voting for the status quo.
So what then?
Leadership is a duty not a right.
A true leader confers power on others – they do not accumulate power for themselves.
The right model for democracy is “jury service” not “X-Factor”
In short …
If you want to fix society, education, poverty or the environment then you MUST accept that choosing once every 5 years between two rich, white men who’s only qualification is the giving & receiving of private favours will not achieve your goals.
So what then?
A simple, collaborative, truly democratic, open approach to policy & politics based on consensus, duty and the will of the people.
I’ll try and explain …
Consider a party where everyone has a voice, where there is no “leadership” and yet where no decision languishes unmade nor gets made in haste or because of dogma.
If you don’t think that could work then why do you accept the idea of jury trials for high crimes & misdemeanour?
My vision is simple.
It works like this…
All policies, large or small, are discussed in the open on a wiki (just like Wikipedia).
Things that are complex (“Health”) are broken down into smaller, more manageable policies (“orthopaedic post-op care”) each with their own page.
Every policy has an adjudicating panel, picked at random, rotated regularly, from the whole pool of volunteers.
No candidacies, no campaigning, no corruption, no background dealing. Just names in a hat and a jury selected.
Over time, policy is formed, refined, agreed, updated, considered, tested, discussed, critiqued, adjusted and reformed.
Everything in public.
Everything written down.
Everything transparent.
Everything open to contribution.
Everything built to improve society.
All the while the influence of corporate lobbying on policy design is mitigated because…
… if you take away the need for the accumulation of power & favour from those who make decisions, those with money & influence no-longer have anything of value to offer.
Then what!?
Election – that’s what.
Candidates picked by the same rules, at random from a pool of volunteers and under contract to do two very important things…
First: to act as the spokesperson for a panel of peers, not as the only seat of power in their constituency. This ensures the same adjudication process exists at all levels of power.
Second: to resign their seat for by-election at a pre-determined, randomly selected time within the 5 year term. This will create an asynchronous, continuous rotation of MPs as well as panel members.
My assertion is that:
1️⃣ This system will provide vastly more transparency & accountability to public policy.
2️⃣ This will deliver a fundamentally more accurate demographic representation of the population to government because it removes the need to “campaign” in public, to amass power & favours or to invest a whole career into reaching the top…
… more accurate in terms of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, education, profession, family geography, life stage, age, experience, attitude & disposition.
3️⃣ Most of all – this will break the unrealistic relationship between “the policies we need” in order to fix the environment, social equality, education, health and well-being of our planet, our society and our relationship with our neighbours… and “the accumulation of power”.
… we need to govern ourselves according to what SOCIETY needs, as a whole and as a people – the things that make the world a safer, cleaner, more fulfilling place for everyone.
… we CANNOT continue being governed by a small clique of corporations and their “political elite” puppets who facilitate the endless farming of our privacy, or naïvety, our time and our attention.
There lies the end of humanity, the rise of fascism… or both!
First published as a Tweet thread/rant in ~September 2020
Republished here because, well, I deleted twitter but still want to refer to it.
Subscribe for my upcoming post about Gaza, Ukraine, Greenland… and what lies beneath.