Democratic Anarchy is the Future of Democracy
This article presents a simple implementation of equal human rights, which will finally solve social problems and make this world a wonderful place to live.
What is wrong with democracy!
Generally, it is assumed throughout the world that the democratic way of decision-making is the best possible and, therefore, the most acceptable. The problem is nobody knows precisely what this really means. It would be ideal if people mutually agree and create rules on an equal basis that would be valid in their collective. But this is impossible to achieve because every society brings a vast number of decisions about which all people cannot decide on, either due to lack of interest, knowledge, or time. We also cannot do it because all the people can hardly agree about something and can never agree about everything. The democracy we know cannot be created directly by people.
Therefore, today we accept an indirect form of democracy where people elect their representatives in governments to rule in their names. Candidates, who present the best choice to the people and win the most votes at the polls, receive the mandate to represent the people and govern on behalf of them in a given period. The peoples' representatives in government should represent the interests of their electors. Still, they cannot do it successfully enough, because they have insufficient insight into the wishes of the voters who have elected them.
An elected government has no desire to meet the needs of those people who did not vote for them at all. Besides that, representatives of the people are quite privileged, and preferably represent self-interests or the interests of the elite who help them win elections than the interests of the people. So that in practice, indirect forms of democracy cannot adequately follow the will of people and therefore, people are hardly satisfied. Also, the democratically elected leaders can cause significant harm to the people from which there is not an adequate defence. For example, democratically elected Adolf Hitler and George Bush are remembered mostly by the destructions they initiated "in the name of the people."
The will of people may be followed to a greater extent by a direct form of democracy through referendums, where people directly decide on issues pursuing their interest. The majority of people either accept or reject the proposed decision. This form of democracy also has significant disadvantages. Firstly, a majority of people might outvote a minority and thus cause inconvenience to the minority, which is unacceptable.
The principle of consensus among representatives of people on issues that people should vote about, make such a form of democracy more acceptable. But direct democracy is rarely applied, primarily because governments do not like people messing with their policy-making and also because the organization of referendums is not a simple process. Finally, each society brings a vast number of decisions about which one could not call for referendums because people do not have enough knowledge about, or are not interested in, or do not have time to participate in them.
As a result, all decisions in society are brought by privileged people who do not follow the will of the people sufficiently. The political, judicial, and executive branches of government support the needs of the elite over the people. It is unjust. People cannot reach justice through the development of democracy as we know it. The democracy we have is a fraud that cannot improve society. All the improvements in society have only happened when the elite had an interest in them. It had nothing to do with democracy because no improvements have happened where the elite did not support them.
Does this mean that the will of the people cannot be carried out? That democracy cannot be developed? Scholars of social sciences do not see a solution to the problem of democracy and cannot establish any consensus on how a developed democracy should look. The establishment of a developed form of democracy requires the discovery of a new pathway that will effectively implement the will of people. To reach it, one needs to think outside the box. I have managed to create a simple idea that will establish a fully developed democracy.
Democratic anarchy will solve the problems with democracy
The future of democracy will normally be created through the equal rights of people. The news is, developed democracy will give every person a small direct power of influence in any matter of their interest in society. Individuals will actually get an equal and independent legislative, judiciary, and executive powers in society. The power of all people joined together will completely change the world and make it a wonderful place to live.
Let's allow every person, who within the scope of his activity, can affect us in any way, do it freely upon their will. We do not even have many choices because we cannot interfere with the freedom of activities of presidents, doctors and mechanics, or any other person, nor do we have the ability, nor the time, nor the right, perhaps not even the desire to do so. However, all these people create advantages and disadvantages for other people through their actions.
We have developed the ability to sense whether or not the activities of a president, doctor, mechanic, or any other person, bring some advantages or disadvantages to us. And according to it, we should have the right to award a person who creates advantages for us and punish a person who creates disadvantages for us. Such a right would undoubtedly direct all people to perform the most significant benefits and the least damages to other people. Such an orientation of society would undoubtedly follow the will of the people in the best possible way and, therefore, would present a developed democracy.
My philosophy is based on the equal rights of people because it is the only proper orientation of society. In this regard, let each person have the same power to evaluate negatively, let's say, three individuals who hurt him or her the most in any month, and to assess positively, let's say, three individuals who create the most significant benefits to him or her each month. For example, if the prime mister, neighbour, or boss, harm a person the most in one month, he or she will negatively evaluate them. If a friend, teacher, or singer, produce the most significant benefits to a person, he or she will normally positively assess them. Equal power of individuals to award and punish individuals will present a developed form of democracy. This is the essence, and the rest is a technical matter which will be performed through an application on the internet.
The sum of all of the positive and negative evaluations that individuals receive from other people will be publically presented on the internet. The counting of these evaluations will tell everyone how appreciated they are in society. These evaluations will become as important to people as visits, likes, and followers are important today. Nobody would like to be on the negative side of assessment, but on the positive one as much as they can. They will achieve this goal by working hard to create the most significant advantages for the community and to diminish or abolish the performing of all forms of disadvantages. This will create a good society.
In this manner, all people will become equal authorities who have a small direct power in society. Given that all people will have equal rights and the power of evaluation, and that they can give their awards and punishments to other people independently of any written rules, such a democracy will present the form of anarchy. That is the reason why I call such an evaluating system democratic anarchy. I am confident that this is the best possible path toward developed democracy.
People will get direct power in society for the first time in the history of humankind. Such a measure will eliminate uncontrolled or insufficiently controlled individual power originating in privileged social status. I have to stress that the privileged status of individuals causes the most significant problems for society. The lack of equal human rights is the main reason society was never good. Democratic anarchy will direct each member of society to respect other people. People will become values to all people. People will be considered equal for the first time ever, and that will result in harmonious and constructive social relations.
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People will judge other people freely. In this regard, I have received many complaints in the sense that people may evaluate other people maliciously because of spite or envy. I answered that such a risk exists, but I would add that individual assessment might not cause significant harm to anyone. The damage that an individual can make is insignificant compared to the damage authorities can make because they often pull back the whole society. Take the example of Adolf Hitler and George Bush again. In the proposed system these individuals would get a large number of negative evaluations from people, which through minor regulation, may prevent them from leading people and causing the evil they are famous for.
Is it worthwhile to allow individuals to wrongly judge others if such "trials" would abolish all forms of destructiveness in society? Sure it is. Also, the new system will develop objective values and the conscience of the people where malice and envy would hardly exist. If something like that still happens, each person would be able to correct a possible wrongful assessment that they gave to people by instigating a correct evaluation even many years later when they experience enlightenment under the influence of equal human rights. And they will.
Something similar to democratic anarchy is already implemented on YouTube where people get a chance to vote for songs or videos with a "like" or "dislike." There is never more than 5% of people who evaluate songs or videos dishonestly, which means 95% of the people value others properly. This suggests that democratic anarchy will serve justice in society well, even better than YouTube because people will appreciate having direct power for the first time.
For those who are still suspicious about democratic anarchy, we may first implement it by presenting the result of the evaluations only to the evaluated people themselves, and not to anybody else. Everyone would like to know how much they are appreciated in society. As a result, they will try to improve their behaviour in society. However, the secret results of the evaluation will not stop the worst people from continuing bad behaviour. Then society may decide to stop the bad people by democratic acceptance of the full implementation of democratic anarchy.
Many people, including university professors, have given me remarks in the sense that people are not able to objectively judge other people. I have answered them that objectivity is desirable but not essential. Besides, voters do not need to be smart or educated to have the right to vote. People will judge others the way they feel, and every person will be obliged to take into account the consequences his or her actions may have on other people. This is all that is needed for creating a good society. By adopting democratic anarchy, people will respect other people, and that is what will bring considerable benefits to society. Furthermore, a system that supports the equal rights of people will develop objectivity in the community, and when that happens, people will objectively judge other people.
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Individuals will not have much power in society, but their evaluations joined together will have enormous power. A person who receives a large number of negative assessments would try even harder to avoid doing anything inconvenient to other people. Besides, the person who receives bad evaluations would never know who has evaluated him negatively so that he would try to improve his behaviour towards everyone.
As a result, bullies will not harass children at school anymore; bosses will not abuse their employees at work, neighbours will not produce obnoxious noise at night, salespeople will not cheat their customers, politicians will not lie to people, etc. They will all try to please other people in the best possible way. This is what will take privileged powers from all the people; this is what will eliminate social evil and form a good society.
We may increase the anarchic power of people significantly. After people get accustomed to the mutual evaluation, they may increase the power of each assessment by assigning the value of just one dollar to each of them. Each positive evaluation a person receives from somebody will bring them one dollar and each negative one will take away one dollar from them. These evaluations would not affect ordinary people much. If two people do not like each other, they may negatively evaluate each other for years, which would not be a big deal. Getting or losing one dollar in the developed world does not mean much.
The power of evaluations will extremely efficiently affect authorities responsible for making decisions in society. The higher the position an authority has in society, the greater the responsibility they would bare to society. For example, The President of the US might get 100,000,000 bad evaluations from the American people for bad policies, lies, and criminal aggression on countries. That would cost him 100,000,000 dollars in only one month. On the other hand, I doubt that his supporters would certainly evaluate him positively because they might easily have higher positive evaluation priorities and would spend their positive evaluations elsewhere. Non-privileged presidents would no longer dare perform bad policies anymore. And if it happens somehow, they would run away from their positions very fast. Only the most skilful and brave individuals would dare lead countries. They will not be authorities anymore, but our servants.
So what if influential people who own mass media unfairly accuse someone of evil in society and thus prompt people to give bad evaluations to the wrong person? Such things are easily possible in today's society. However, there is a proverb that says: "Lies have short legs." One day the lie will be revealed, and then I would not like to be in the skin of these individuals who lied because the people will punish them for sure.
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The point of democracy is to make rules which will make people live well. So far that was only possible through law. In the future, democratic anarchy will replace the democracy we have today because democratic anarchy will mathematically create the best solution to all individuals and to society as a whole. People themselves being equal to others will make their lives better than the authorities were able to do for them.
Democratic anarchy will replace the vast regulation imposed by authorities, which has failed to create a good society. As people get the power to enforce justice on their own they will seek justice in courts less. Once democratic anarchy is established the need for laws will be significantly reduced and courts will start losing their purpose, together with the state oppression apparatus. I believe in the future they will become obsolete and will go down in history.
And finally, democratic anarchy cannot be corrupted. It will eliminate immorality in society. Through equal rights of evaluation, people will learn what is moral and will obey the principles of morality they spontaneously establish.
Democratic anarchy will finally create a good society, and therefore it presents the greatest invention of all time.
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Under pressure from democratic anarchy, governments will inevitably follow the needs of the people. The authorities would not dare to make the most important decisions for society alone because they can easily make mistakes that might bring about the wrath of the people and a large number of negative evaluations. If the authorities are not sure what the needs of the people are, then their responsibility, clearly defined by the fear of peoples' evaluations, will direct them to discover love towards peoples' participation in strategic decision-making processes through referendums. In this regard, they will develop a simple, fast, and efficient method for direct decision-making of the people, most likely over the Internet.
The people will directly create the macroeconomic policy of the society because it is the foundation that directs the economy, and that means the entire community. How? Quite simply, one needs to enable people to decide how much money from their gross income they want to pay for taxes. The average values of all the peoples' expressions will determine what percentage of salaries each worker will put aside for taxation. Furthermore, in the same way, each person can decide on how tax money is spent. Each person will determine how much tax money they would set aside for: the state defence, safety, education, health, environment, housing, recreation, infrastructure, etc.
Theoretically, people can decide on a collective consumption within the consumer groups as much as they want. All these groups of shared consumption will have a far more significant overall impact if they are democratically allocated. Following the living experience, people will learn how much money should be collected for taxes and what is the best way to spend it. Thus, this spending will no longer be alienated from society; it will follow the needs of people in the most efficient way. The people will become active members of society, and so, they will accept their community a lot more. Given that the new system offers stable and good relations among nations, people will no longer allocate money for the needs of armies and armies will cease to exist. In the democracy I have proposed, war will no longer be possible.
The people must directly make strategic decisions in society because that is the only way the policy of society certainly follows the interests of people. Professionals could make all other decisions, and they will be directly responsible to the people for those decisions. Once people get the direct power to participate in the decision-making process and when they can judge those who make decisions on their behalf, it will present the most developed form of democracy. There's no better political way. Such a democracy will realize all the dreamers' dreams in the history of humankind. Once such democracy is accepted, people will become so satisfied with it that they will not allow anyone to seize it from them.
This article presents a basic idea about the future of democracy. I've defined it in much more detail in the book Humanism available free of charge at my web site.
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The main lesson of this article is not just about how easily we can solve social problems and make a good society, but also why it is difficult to do so. This article was offered to left-wing journals in the western world, and not one wanted to publish it, even though they pretend to represent the interests of the deprived. They all must be either controlled or financially supported by the elite and do not publish new ideas that may take power from the elite. No wonder humankind cannot improve.
C.A.Scott Mon 20 Apr 2020 10:07PM
The truth is that at present we have about 50% pf the voting public who are completely illiterate where politics are concerned. Most still believe the lies and fakery spouted for 20 years about the EU and how it works as a movement for
Peace, Add to that a total lack of appreciation of economics of how UK Plc has to work with other nations and you have an hell of an educational problem.
If a sentence has more than 3 words They are lost on the meaning.
They state “We Won” OK We both live here, So what did “we” win? As yet just verbal abuse, Not one factual response and this is from people as directors of companies, fact checked some and they are legit.
The pandemic is Brexit chaos come early, But with too many deaths before things are sewn up.
As each day passes Brexit gets closer to being shot down, if that is so, then the Peoples Assemblies will tak on traction and perhaps the People can get the illusive democracy,
Al
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Aleksandar Sarovic Tue 21 Apr 2020 1:16AM
You are talking about the present politics in GB, and I am trying to find a replacement that will completely change the policy in GB and make the people live wonderfully. People will not need to be particularly smart to ensure a suitable policy in the GB. They will just need to notice if they feel well in GB or not. If not, they will negatively evaluate the responsible leaders for it, and that will punish them enough to improve the policy or they will resign. The point is, the leaders will have to follow the interests of people, and they will do it when democratic anarchy is implemented. Please read the article.
C.A.Scott Tue 21 Apr 2020 5:32AM
To be fair you are looking for something which is very good.
What is absolutely clear is that you have the present materials and if you cannot improve their grasp of what you propose then you will be a long time writing this.
You have to take what is here and then move forwards by changing the laws and Rules which govern the Political systems and processes
Therefore as I was saying, you have to convince the people of what you think they should have. And that would need to be done one step at a time.
I would point out that the present Govt are a bunch of MPs who Broke the Law to win the 2016 Referendum. You tell people there are No Benefits for them, the Govts own impact statements confirm, they still believe crap about the EU.
People believe LIES that falls better with what they think is the truth, they simply do not fact check
One of these stupid people is my brother and 2nd is Wife.
Coronavirus is a Hoax - Coronavirus is Flu - Christ will protect us – We have AR 15s and Ak47 s we will show our strength
Hahaha Deluded does not come into, You will need a “Truth serum in the Water”
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Aleksandar Sarovic Tue 21 Apr 2020 11:22AM
People believe that knowledge is equally distributed around the world, and one only needs to pick it up through education and become smart. This is false because we live in the conspiracy of the elite from ever, and they have always produced false knowledge for us to be able to rule over us. As a result, the more educated people are, the more deceived they are. The elite has created everything we think. We think the way they made us think. They even teach us how to fight them in the way we cannot free ourselves from them.
I have noticed that we have been deceived by the elite and found that equal human rights are the solution to escape from the deception they created. Perfect, the solution is here; why would not we create a good society tomorrow? It is not possible because people need to forget, challenge, or ignore all the knowledge authorities have taught them to be able to accept the right direction based on equal human rights. This is very hard to achieve.
I have defined my philosophy in three words - equal human rights, but that means nothing to people. The article above presents the basic idea well, but if one skips one sentence might easily lose the point. Nobody here has read it completely so that nobody understands what I am talking about. But there is worse than that. When people discover the scope of the deception they accepted from authorities, they become disappointed in themselves and easily lose the wish to fight anymore. I have witnessed a lot of people who stopped believing in themselves after facing the truth and this is the main reason we have difficulties to improve the world we live in.
Joanna Tue 21 Apr 2020 3:19PM
People are not conscious, they don't believe in anything, they don't trust in multinationals, they don't trust in politicians, they don't trust in institutions, they don't trust in anything. Because of this, they decide to don't get involved.
And this is the big issue because if they don't trust in anything and if they don't get involved, we never can create a sociocracy and less self-governance.
Before moving on to a sociocracy and to being able to govern ourselves we should first go through participatory democracy, which is not happening because of what I wrote in the first paragraph.
What might we do to make society trust itself and in all these circles? 👆
Aleksandar Sarovic Tue 21 Apr 2020 4:19PM
People do not believe in anything because most of the things they have been taught in their lives were created by authorities to support their power in society. Most of the things they have been learned are false, and when they find it out, they are disappointed. I'll give you a basic example. People believe that education is essential for the development of humankind. I think this is a big deception. Once students finish primary school, they already think the way authorities want them to think, and all of the alienation and impotence in society come from it.
Participatory democracy does not happen because the elite does not like it. And then if it happens somehow, it has some internal shortcomings that prevent good results from coming. For example, people are brainwashed by the system of education and cannot recognize their real needs and then neither they can make decisions that might satisfy their needs. Second, two people can hardly agree about everything, and all the people can hardly agree about anything. Participatory democracy is much better than the democracy we have right now, but it is still not good enough for reaching a bright future of humankind.
The real escape lies in equal human rights, but taken into account that people had never had a chance to hear about them, they cannot accept them. I have presented equal human rights in short here. In my opinion, they are the only real opposition to authorities and the only path to the bright future of humankind. I do not expect people to fall in love with equal human rights here, but discussion about them may open the eyes. This will give freedom to people to discover what they really need and force people to respect other peoples' needs. This is the right path to the bright future of humankind for sure.
Simon Heath Mon 27 Dec 2021 4:27AM
Hi Aleksander, I hope you still get updates via email as I'd like to resurrect this thread having recently discovered the Trust the People Loomio after following a link from XR.
What you are describing is something like the invention of lightbulbs , that several, actually hundreds of people are having simultaneously, in that there must be a better way. I started with a whiteboard and had a go at designing a system of democracy that consults with the people at every stage. I've been bouncing ideas around with several different groups now, and will be putting together a series of vLogs with 1 particular goal:
To get a group of people to debate and come up with a basic minimum design for a deliberative digital democracy system that is designed to replace political parties and move to a distributed decentralised form of self government.
Part of my research on "Surely someone must have done this already" has shown me there's been lots of writing - for the last 50 years, and in the last 15 since the internet lots of "surely we can do this digitally". There's been a few attempts but nothing that stuck.
So first is to understand what a platform needs to deliver, second get a prototype built (not from scratch, but from the bits of pieces of existing open source code) and third - have a strategy on how to actually make it fly, ie get the public to use it! It doesn't take a lot of people, and indeed just chatting with Jay and Jake on this forum on the "Proportional Representation" thread there's been some good ideas coming. https://www.loomio.org/d/e3Cq9pI5/establishing-an-a-political-party-that-advocates-solely-for-proportional-representation
Alex Cooper Tue 28 Dec 2021 11:49AM
Hi @Simon Heath I think the key here is, as you say, having "a strategy on how to actually make it fly, ie get the public to use it!"
I've put together online platforms from scratch (as have many others, including Loomio) for consensus decision making.
People will engage if they believe there is a genuine chance that this will result in reform, but there is only a chance if there are enough people engaged. It's the old chicken and egg question - which comes first when you need both?
So the system must evolve from something else with which people can engage and the deliberative decision making can be built on top of that. That's an idea I'm working on, but as an individual working in my part time as a hobby, this could take years - chances of success are very slim!
Simon Heath Tue 28 Dec 2021 12:23PM
I think its the fragmentation that's holding things back. I'm wondering if its possible to get all the disparate groups working on a common goal?
There's a basic strategy to get it going... start local, get independent candidates using the flat pack approach. Get public confidence, get parliamentary seats. Get enough seats change the system.
But, i have 1 question, will people engage or do they prefer to make sarcastic comments & complaints on elected representatives social media and then dissapear?
I did wonder, would paying people to engage work? Not in real money, but say they participate in generatimg ideas and reviewing others, they are rewarded with extra voting tokens, towards the projects they want to see happen. Voting token could be anything though. A local crypto to cash in, some tickets to events etc. Basically a reward for taking part. Worked on me... once won a Dyson vacuum for responding to the local plan proposals. :)
Ps what is it you.are working on? My own goal is to try and put together a collection of tools on a platform to fully manage a distributed democracy. Something like a linux distribution but instead of graphics and programming tools, the focus would be getting ideas refining them, organising meetings, managimg media, voting, debating, integration with social platforms, keeping people up to date.
I've been through the list of organisation working to improve democracy in the UK (131 of them) and no one seems to be building the thing. Lots of parts, but not the whole. Rather than trying to do it myself i want to get others to create sn ecosystem like Xero accounting where the core ledgers are exposed via APIs and thrid party plugins do everything from pretty invoicing, payment processing,online bookings, and data analytics.
I'm still working through what is needed but have a few vLogs to do explaining the approach.
Alex Cooper · Mon 20 Apr 2020 9:12PM
... notification are in your profile - click on the link to yourself, then the "hamburger" menu, drop down to reveal notification settings ...
I like the idea of the gamification of human behaviour ... I'm pretty sure there's a future in that somewhere