Loomio
Mon 13 Jul 2020 9:23AM

New direct url https://www.loomio.org/future-democracy

PT Paul Thistlethwaite Public Seen by 184

This discussion forum has expanded to include and welcome Trust the People members. The new direct url is https://www.loomio.org/future-democracy

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AS

Poll Created Mon 13 Jul 2020 3:13PM

Democratic Anarchy is the Future of Democracy Closed Thu 16 Jul 2020 3:02PM

This article presents a new form of democracy 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 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 authorities who do not follow the will of 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 existing democracy. When the elite support improvements for society, they happen, and no improvements may occur if the elite do not support them. The democracy we have is a fraud. 

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 not be based on voting for people anymore, but rather on evaluations of the people. Voting for representatives has not worked well for the people, while the evaluation of people will work perfectly. It will change the foundation of social relationships. Individuals will get an equal and independent legislative, judiciary, and executive powers of assessing other people. The powers of assessment of all the 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 a president, 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. Also, people may use all the evaluations for positive or negative assessments, or in any combination. 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 the community 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.


***


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 made them famous.

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 rightly. 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. This would be like people listening to an anonymous gossip about themselves, but still, everyone will be interested to hear it. As a result, most of the people 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 the community may decide to stop the bad people by democratic acceptance of the full implementation of democratic anarchy. And even then, if people receive more positive than negative evaluations, they may keep the result as a secret to other people. Still, if the total assessment is negative, it will be visible to everyone, forcing negatively evaluated people to improve their behaviour.

Many people, including university professors, have given me remarks in the sense that people are not able to judge other people objectively. 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.

After these explanations, no one with good intentions towards the bright future of humankind should refuse democratic anarchy. However, thanks to the influences of authorities throughout history, people still hesitate even to perform a discussion about democratic anarchy.   


***

Individuals will not have much power in society, but their evaluations joined together will have enormous potential. 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 strength 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 lies 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. They may receive punishments for a long time and would not dare to be immoral again.


***


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 create the best mathematical solution to all individuals and 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 because people will act better than the law can regulate it. Also, when 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, including the police. I believe most of the state regulation will become obsolete in a distant future, which means it 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.


***

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.

One of the most critical decisions in society will be determining the length of work. Today, this concept is not even taken into consideration. Shorter work hours will increase the demand for workers in the market, and this will increase workers' salaries. The regulation of shorter work hours will create a fair market of work. The fair market of work is the best choice for bringing justice to the economy. I wrote more about it in the article Full Employment is a Turning Point for Capitalism.

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 total sum of all the peoples' expressions about the taxation will determine the total amount of money allocated for collective consumption. Please do not get me wrong; people will not pay the taxes as much as they want. They will form the total amount of money for taxes, which then will be collected proportionally to the heights of their salaries. 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 safety, education, health, infrastructure, environment, and other collective consumption.

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.


***  

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. The reason lies in the fact that the editors are indoctrinated with the knowledge they acquired through the system of education like anybody else and can hardly see the truth. If they see it, they ignore it while pretending to represent the interests of the deprived. They 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. 

   

Results

Results Option % of points Voters
Agree 25.0% 2 DB P
Abstain 25.0% 2 AC KC
Disagree 50.0% 4 HB JR RM SB
Block 0.0% 0  
Undecided 0% 330 JD AT CZ DW BB IK LF PM AP JA L JM VS AC VM SC PW AG MP BH

8 of 338 people have participated (2%)

SB

Simon Bale
Disagree
Mon 13 Jul 2020 3:42PM

I am very interested in ideas for social organisation, and your writing here clearly shows a great deal of concern. But you lost me at, "the evaluation of people will work perfectly." Any idea for government and sovereignty that invokes a notion of perfection is giving away the unrealism. Nothing, ever, in human society can be perfect and to use it as an argument for anything shows a huge gap in awareness. You are describing a utilitarian calculus that is a hotch-potch of so much sci-fi.

DB

Dean Bowles
Agree
Tue 14 Jul 2020 10:07AM

The old system has become staid and we need to reengage people into having a voice about the future. By this enabling of the voice of the people to be heard the malaise within ignored social groups could become a thing of the colonial past. The old system has had it's day and it has produced a concentration of power and wealth unprecedented in our written social history. We need a new way of empowering the public to reengage in the political life of our country.

AC

Alex Cooper
Abstain
Wed 15 Jul 2020 8:17PM

Sorry, Loomio says "too long" when submit reasons ... ironic my point was proposal was too long
One side of A4 paper and 3-6 demands max - maybe you'll get people behind you then?
But what do I know - this failed - https://charter2019.uk/ watch vid? https://free.vote/slash-tag/Revolutionary-Songs/one-day

P

Paul
Agree
Wed 15 Jul 2020 8:18PM

A great concept!

JR

Jim Rough
Disagree
Wed 15 Jul 2020 10:05PM

I was excited when starting to read this. The set-up was terrific. How to get real democracy? ... He even said, "I have managed to create a simple process that will establish a fully developed democracy." Super! (Actually, I feel I have done the same thing —www.WiseDemocracy.org ... So now I'm really interested.) But then there is no democracy in this proposal. There is no collective thinking and deciding process! He's adding a web-based process of judging people. It's a ranking.

RM

Rosslyn McNally
Disagree
Thu 16 Jul 2020 6:32AM

This does not sound like democracy to me. Starts off sounding promising but read further and sounds ugly and about the power of judging people. Not a new beautiful world that we deserve and can better design.

KC

kathie conn
Abstain
Thu 16 Jul 2020 7:02AM

Interesting. Referenda are not a good decision making process, binary, people not always well informed on key issues. This seems like an individualised ranking system. Decision making will be best served using the collective intelligence of a group of randomly selected people from all walks of life, stratified to be a broad representation of society who investigate the issues, question, deliberate, consider pros, cons and trade-offs and together make recommendations for the common good.