Direct Democracy and the Golden Rule

In this post I will examine the various options in systems of governance available to the people of the Earth. My conclusion will be the only viable option forward is some form of direct democracy, and I will suggest the nuts and bolts of how such a system could function.

Before I get into examining the various options in systems of governance available to us, I have to first of all explain by what yardstick I will measure systems of governance.

My yardstick is common law. The easiest way to describe common law by the Golden Rule:

“As long as I do not harm you, or your property, or the environment, I am free to do whatever I like; I am free to express myself in whichever way I like and I am free to believe whatever I like.”

The Golden Rule is the natural human moral code. It is what normal parents and teachers instinctively teach to their children. It is that basic and obvious. The Golden Rule is the moral code by which any sane human collection should regulate itself, and for this reason it should not only form the basis of any society’s law and order, it should also be the yardstick by which systems of governance are measured.


What do I understand by the term: harm?

Harm is any type of physical, emotional or psychological damage or injury.


What do I understand by the term: govern or governance?

To govern means the following:

1. To decide which projects which affects the lives of all members of society would be implemented, and which projects would be shelved.
2. To monitor the progress of the implementation of the projects.

What do I understand by the term: project?

A project is any action, new creation, change or removal, which benefits the members of a society.


OK. Now that I have given some critical definitions, which would hopefully help us to be on the same page, let’s look at social systems of governance, what are our options?

When it comes to social systems of governance, the reality is that there are only two options:

1. Direct Democracy (Anarchy): the members of society governs their own affairs
2. Collectivism: the members of society abdicates the responsibility of governance to some person, group of people or AI system.

Most of the world, and for most of known history has followed some brand of collectivism. The only exception to this would be some indigenous cultures (which are fast becoming extinct, i.e. the San) or the most famous example of a direct democracy was the classic ancient Athenian system (which was direct, but not quite democratic, in that women and slaves were not permitted to speak at the agora).


What are the collectivist systems of governance we know today?

The collectivist systems of governance we know of today are:

• Representative Democracies
• Autocracies / Oligarchies
• Theocracies
• AI systems

How do each of these collectivist systems of governance measure against the Golden Rule?

In a word, disastrous.


Representative Democracies

Representative democracies are the collectivist ideologies of the “western world”. The idea of a representative democracy is that some person or group of people are elected for a limited period, usually four years, and during that period this group is allowed to govern.

When the period of governance is over, the same person of group is re-elected, depending on the constitution, or a new person or group replaces the existing person or group.


How does representative democracies measure against the Golden Rule?

On the plus side, in representative democracies, the people does have a modicum of personal influence into public affairs through the processes of elections or public demonstrations.

But the minus side of representative democracies far outweighs this plus. The fundamental problem with representative democracies is this: the decisions made by the person or group in power, are not held to account against the yardstick of the Golden Rule. Those in governance are allowed to commit murder through senseless wars; theft of public funds; all manner of public deceptions; the roll out of harmful projects, and are never called to account for their deeds, even after they are no longer in active public service.

The reason why this problem exists is simple: too much social-political power is concentrated into the hands of a ruling minority, which makes the positions of power the target of criminally insane individuals.


Does this mean every single representative ruler is an insane criminal?

No. It does not mean this at all, sometimes very honorable people are elected into rulership, but because they wield so much socio-political power, they WILL be severely compromised by the criminally insane among us. Money or coercion are both favorite influences used over representative rulers.

For this reason, measured against the Golden Rule, representative democratic systems of governance, fail miserably. Representative democracies are grossly inefficient social implementations of the Golden Rule.


Autocracies / Oligarchies

As you can see I paint the collectivist systems of an autocracy and an oligarchy, with the same brush.

An autocracy is a political system where a single person, i.e. a king, has non-democratic rulership over the citizens of a city or a country. An oligarchy is where a group of people have non-democratic rulership over the citizens of a city. This could be some council of some sort.

In reality, all autocracies are oligarchies, since kings and queens always have those who hover around them, and assume power by a proxy-association with the king or queen.

An autocracy / oligarchy is nothing less than a dictatorship. An individual or group of individuals takes it upon themselves to make socio-political decisions on behalf of the citizens.  


How does an autocracy / oligarchy measure against the Golden Rule?

We have all heard of the idea of a “benevolent dictator”. The theory is that some individuals may make good autocratic decisions, and in such a case, the society will be better off with a dictator, than with any form of democracy. I agree with this theory, but it has a single massively unassailable problem, and it is this: benevolent dictators die, and the next king will most certainly not be benevolent. Thus a benevolent dictatorship merely postpones tyranny with a generation or two at best.

The same problems exists with an autocracy / oligarchy, as I outlined with a representative democracies: socio-political power attracts the criminally insane, and from these criminals, wars, corruption and a severe restrictions of personal freedom is an inevitable fact of life.


Theocracies

Many people have some conception of a god or goddess that created and maintains this universe. It is not the intent of this post to debate the validity of this concept.

However, the creator of this universe is not exactly very forthcoming with what projects societies should be implementing, or not be implementing, and I am not being facetious here. The reality is this, in theocracies, this rulership is left to some priest class, where the priest class is supposed to represent the “divine will” about social-political matters.


How does a collectivist system of theocracy measure against the Golden Rule?

Theocracies sets up a tyranny of the worst kind. The so-called “divine will” is an excuse used by the priest class to set up projects which benefits themselves. Personal freedom of expression is severely restricted. Religions does this by ridiculous notions about what may be worn, how it should be worn; what may be eaten; what may or may not be listened to; or read etc.

In a theocracy, the same criminally insane makes it into positions of power, with the same dire consequences, as in all other collectivist socio-political systems, but what makes it worse is the additional set of religious restrictions on personal freedom.

And if that was not enough, the citizens are brainwashed to accept all decisions and actions made by the priest class as “divine will”. No demonstrations nor re-elections allowed, as in the case of a representative democracy. The competency or incompetency of the rulers are never questioned, because in a theocracy this is equated to questioning the “will of god”.

Measured against the Golden Rule, theocracies are worst of all governance systems.  


AI systems

An AI is artificial intelligence. The idea here is that self-learning digital algorithms (AI) could be tasked with the ultimate responsibility of making decisions on behalf of a city, country or a planet.
At first glance this sounds like the ideal solution, but in my view an AI System will measure right up there with a theocracy, when measured against the Golden Rule.

The reason for this is AI’s have no creativity. Nor do AI’s have any concept of human desire or emotional needs. Therefore projects or policies implemented by an AI, cannot take human psychological and spiritual needs into account, simply because it has no concept of what these needs are.

An AI system will by nature also be centralised, and the unacceptable danger with this state of affairs is this: what happens if the system fails or is compromised by a criminally insane person who co-opts the AI into self- serving objectives? Social meltdown. Not a pretty picture…

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So now that I have examined all the collectivist socio-political systems that are grossly inefficient, or worse, let’s examine the one system that we have not yet measured against the Golden Rule: direct democracy (anarchy).


Direct democracy (anarchy)

The idea of a direct democracy is that communities govern their own affairs directly. I use anarchy in brackets, because it amounts to the same idea as direct democracy i.e. an absence of government… note that I did not say an absence of governance…  

“Anarchy” is a loaded and confusing term, and so in the interest of clarity, I will rather use a synonym for anarchy, which is direct democracy.


How does a direct democracy work?

A direct democracy is governance BY the people of a city, country or planet, FOR the people of a city, country or planet. You could call it a “people’s parliament”.

The same principles of governance applies, whether we are looking at this on a local, national or global scale.

The nuts and bolts of a direct democracy exists of the following constructs:

• A public list of proposed projects
• A public list of active projects
• A public list of shelved projects
• A public list of proposed project managers for each active project
• Public feedback and accountability on each active project’s progress

Let’s look at these five constructs in a little more detail:


Public list of proposed projects

Remember that at the start of this post I defined a project as: any action, new creation, change or removal, which benefits the members of a society.

Examples of my definition of projects are a new: farm, dam, road, building, technology, law, war, organization, social system (economic, health, educational, infrastructural, defence etc.) etc. This definition of a project also includes the day to day operation of an existing service, i.e an education system.

As you can see, this definition encompasses all of society. This is by design.

In a direct democracy all citizens of the democracy, have the right to propose any project. This proposal is added to the public list of proposed projects. These public lists of proposed projects should exist on various social levels: city, region, state and planet.
 
Citizens of age (i.e. 21 years old) are then invited to vote on proposed projects. The voting poll on a project should remain open. Voting should always be a binary: yes or no.

As soon as a proposed project reaches a two thirds majority (67%) yes vote, the project is moved to the list of active projects.


Public list of active projects

Active projects are those proposed projects which have reached a 67% yes vote of the citizens. For example, if there a 100 registered citizens in a town, and 67 citizens voted YES, the project is activated. The remaining 33 citizens either did not vote, or they voted NO.

An open project has to be implemented, and must receive public resources (people, funds or materials).


Public list of shelved projects

Voting on projects should always remain open, no matter which list it is on (proposed, active or shelved). This means that an active project can be shelved by the citizens if 34% of the citizens votes NO to a project. A citizen should always be allowed to change his or her vote from a YES to a NO.

A shelved project may not be implemented, nor receive any public resources (project managers, people, funds or materials).  


Public list of proposed project managers for each active project

Once a project is proposed, an associated list of proposed project managers for the project is created.

The public project managers are responsible for overseeing the implementation of the proposed or active project.

Many citizens should ideally be nominated for this responsibility.

The public position of managing a project should also entail enough compensation (monetary or whatever), to motivate the nominee to accept the publicly scrutinized responsibility.

Any citizen may be nominated by the citizens for this position, and should he or she accept the nomination, it is the nominee’s first responsibility will be to communicate effectively why he or she have the right qualification and experience to oversee the public project.

The citizens then vote on the list of nominees with a YES or NO vote, and the nominee with the most YES votes, is the person who is the accepted project manager for the project.

At any time another nominee may be voted in as project manager. When this state of affairs lasts for a long enough period (i.e. 3 months) a handover process (of i.e. another 3 months) to the new project manager has to commence. After the 6 months is past, the old project manager will no longer be on the project payroll.

A project manager should not manage more than one project, and can manage the project for as long as the citizens are satisfied with the project, and how it is managed.

A project manager can abdicate at any time, at which point a handover period will commence to hand over the citizen with the 2nd most amount of votes.


Public feedback and accountability on each active project’s progress

In order to prevent a project to be shelved or him or herself to be replaced, the project manager has to convince the citizens on an ongoing basis that the project is viable and being administered properly.

This should be done by monthly public reports, which should be audited by 3rd parties.


How can a direct democracy be practically implemented?

On local (city) levels, direct democracies can easily be implemented by having the lists, voting and feedback at the city hall.

But a web-based electronic system would probably be more efficient.

The biggest challenge with a web-based system would be to ensure that the votes had not been tampered with. For this reason my suggestion would be to go for a 100% transparent voting system, where votes are publicly linked to those citizens who cast them. This would make a public audit of the voting system possible.


How do direct democracies measure against the Golden Rule?

The biggest problem with any collectivist system is the concentration of too much socio-political power in the hands of too view people. Power corrupts.

What direct democracy achieves is first of all a massive decentralization of power – the citizens themselves are the executives of any project. It is the citizens who choose the project managers, who pays them, and who has the democratic right to keep them in office or remove them from office.

Additionally direct democracy also forces public transparency and accountability onto those who oversees projects in public interest. For if they do not deliver, they are removed by the citizens, to whom they are accountable.    

This curbs political harm dramatically, and brings an enormous amount of freedom to the citizens.

Therefore direct democracies measure very favourably against the Golden Rule.


What economic systems should a direct democracy implement? 

In a direct democracy, the citizens of a city, region, country or planet should be free to choose any form of economy they like. The only provision is this: as long as the citizens’ rights to private property and ownership is respected, for this is in accordance with the Golden Rule.