1
There's a lot of recent political debacles: US elections, Brexit, Orban, PiS, Nazis in Slovak parliament and so on. They all seem to have similar dynamics. (Note: What follows may not apply beyond EU and US.)
2
In all the cases a lot of people tend to be enraged by "politics as usual" which is understood as a synonym for political corruption. They flock to anyone promising a change. Eight years ago they've supported Obama with explicit slogan of "Change", last year it was Trump with "Drain The Swamp" slogan. Same applies to various reincarnations of Nazis, Commies etc.
3
At the same time confidence in the democratic political system as such declines. The system is seen as meaningless alternation of political leaders pursuing exactly the same corrupt policies.
4
Given that the political system requires each person to squeeze all their political preferences into simple yes/no vote ("Trump" vs. "Clinton", "Remain" vs. "Leave" etc.) there's not much space for expressing more complex opinions. Try to empathize with a person who says one of the following things and honestly employ all your intelligence and knowledge to choose one of the candidates to vote for: "I've voted for Obama twice but nothing have changed for me." "My job is now done by a Polish guy for half of my original wage." "Fuck 1%!" "My kids have no future in this town." "Let those corrupt bastards suffer!" "I'm flipping burgers for $8/hr." "Childcare is not really accessible for me." "Nuke the muslims!" "When am I going to get bailed out?" "Eventually, even white collar jobs will be off-shored." Make sure that all those concerns are expressed as a either "yes" or "no" vote, with no qualifications attached, and what you get is weird electoral results, such as those we are observing.
5
It looks like there's a lot of political polarization out there, but if you take a closer look everyone, except for the extremes on the both sides, is saying basically the same thing: The candidate I have voted for may be corrupt, but it's still better than the alternative. Voting for the lesser evil is the sign of the times.
6
Now that the elections have resulted in some really scary stuff, we are in firefighting mode. I've personally donated to several causes and I urge you to do the same. If you won't, you may end up as a nuclear fried chicken. That being said, I think I've heard a distinct sigh of relief from the liberals when Trump was elected: "Now there's someone to fight and so we can ignore those pesky practical problems for a little bit longer!" But let's not fool ourselves: If we spend next four years obstructing Trump, ignoring the problems that make people crave change in the first place, the next person elected will be Pol Pot.
7
And the really scary thing, scarier that Putin, Trump and Duterte combined, is that it seems that almost nobody acknowledges the problem. And for those few who do, the solution seems to be: "Let's flock to <insert-strongman-of-your-choice-here> and he'll magically solve all of our problems!"
8
And if you are thinking of proposing a solution yourself consider this: Dictatorship won't work. People mistrust politicians in principle. Reverting the left-wing party to what it was in early 20th century won't work. People mistrust political parties in principle. Establishing a new third-way party won't work. There's no reason for people to believe that a new party will be less corrupt than the old parties. And I think they have a point.
9
So, here's a proposal from myself: Let's polarize the discussion around representative vs. direct democracy axis.
10
I am not going to discuss merits of direct democracy vs. representative democracy here. However, let me say the following. While direct democracy, giving each single person a say in wide variety of topics, sounds like a liberal's dream, actual direct democracy, with most people being naturally conservative, tends to adopt relatively conservative policies. So, both sides would have to bite the bullet. At the same time, the prospect is attractive to both sides because it focuses directly on the problem of corruption. If the official's duty is to implement a policy adopted by a popular vote, there's little incentive to bribe them in the first place.
Martin Sústrik, Feb 6th, 2017
Hi Martin
I agree with most of your overall analyse but I have doubts about your proposed solution.
Many issues require in depth studies, analysis, and extended debate - something you can't expect everyone to invest into on all matters.
The complex nuances will make the vast majority of voters susceptible to "easy solutions", populism, appealing rhetorics and slogans.
Strategies involving multiple steps will be launched simultaneously just to be down voted by supporters of another strategy, leaving behind half-attempts. Each step would have to be championed even though people agreed on the overall strategy.
We would have constant fundraising and lobbyism leading to democracy-fatigue.
Smaller/frequent elections would mean less turnout which would make each vote more susceptible to both legal lobbyism and corruption.
Let's use foreign policy on the Middle East as an example. How many people do you know, have the actual knowledge about history, politics, anthropology, war, finance, strategy, relations among the countries, groups, etc., etc. in that region to have a qualified opinion? I certainly don't. Would you feel comfortable about answering a question such as: "Should we impose a sanction on X" followed by pages specifying exactly what, who, when in details only 0,01% of the population have ever heard about?
Would you want to spend weeks studying this in detail to vote qualified?
Anyone saying "X caused war, Y will fix it" does not have a clue.
I don't believe in direct democracy. Quite the opposite. I think we might need more layers - some that are closer and thus easier to hold accountable and debate with.
The first layer should be so close that you can pick someone you trust by their values to represent you, someone close enough that you can talk to them. Their votes should be transparent, and when you don't understand or is worried, you can debate with them and either be settled or move your vote.
You consider that it is political corruption that people do not like.
Let me generalize it to say that it is political decisions that are against the majority of the people that they do not like.
Now why does political corruption exist? Politicians have political power but they cannot benefit from it individually. The only thing they can do is to sell their political power for money. If the organizations that give them money are democratic, then in a limited sense, we would have some sort of democracy.
But companies are not democratic. They are not accountable to the people for what they do. People work 1/3 of their life in them. Moreover, the Capitalist economy is in crisis, something that the people cannot control.
In conclusion, it seems that the lack of democracy in both the company level, as well as the whole economy level is at fault.
2. Not direct democracy but real democracy.
There are statistical methods to check whether the opinion of the people coincides with the decision of a governing body. We need to build evolvable decision making structures and check whether those structures take decisions that are in agreement with the people's.
If they are not, we evolve them again until we have the correct structure. Each field of inquiry requires a different structure.
I noticed this blog talks about technology a lot, so let's phrase this in technology terms. How about running society in a fully distributed fashion? There's about 477 million people in North America. It's like a 477M core CPU!
We can distribute to all those CPU cores all sorts of tasks:
1. What should I eat? (get rid of farm subsidies.)
2. How should I educate my kids? (get rid of local/state/federal taxes for education.)
3. Where do I find the funds to provide housing? (get rid of HUD, Fannie Mae, tax breaks for mortgage interest.)
4. Etc.
By the time you eliminate the central command and control megalomaniac OS (taxes and regulation) there will be so many resources available we'll have much more prosperity as a whole.
Of course, some CPUs will screw up. That's what private charity is for (another massively distributed system that also does not need a central command and control system.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism
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