I am by no means a political activist. But as my frustration continues to mount with current events, I couldn't help but come to this realization.
Democracy, by its very definition, allows the populace to partake in the making of decisions that affect their lives. But the Founding Fathers were a clever bunch. They realized two things:
1. A Direct Democracy, wherein each citizen partakes directly in the legislative process, was impossible
2. The general populace was largely unqualified to partake directly anyway
As a result, the US has a Representative Democracy. But it has become painfully clear that this form of democracy no longer functions. It no longer represents the people. It fails in two ways:
1. It is now owned by corporations
2. It consists of representatives who squabble over partisan issues
The first is the biggest problem. It has become all too easy for a corporation to purchase favorable votes. Immediately we see the conflict of interest: how can a representative represent the people when a corporation is paying him to vote in its favor?
And if, for whatever reason, the corporate influence is not strong enough, the second issue becomes the motivation. This can clearly be seen in the current debt ceiling debacle.
Now, it turns out, both tenets of the Founding Fathers are wrong. A Direct Democracy is now possible. And realizing this (and making appropriate changes) would fix both of the failures of Congress. Today:
1. It is not only possible, but feasible, to have every single member of the state partake directly in the legislative process
2. The general populace has sufficient education and information available to partake directly
How can each citizen partake directly? Technology. Picture this: Congress is eliminated. In its place stands an online system. The system allows any citizen to vote on any law he is interested in. Any citizen can submit a new bill to be considered by the populace. If you care enough about a bill, you advertise it. The system is sophisticated enough to organize all laws and bills so as to show context, conflicts, changes, and history.
For now, we can leave the Executive and Judicial Branches in tact. But the populace would itself be the Legislative Branch. This automatically solves the two major failures of Congress:
1. No corporation would be able (or willing) to buy every citizen's vote
2. There is no longer a need for political parties, thus eliminating partisan bickering
The bottom line is: Congress has shown its inability to do its job. But with current technology, it is obsolete anyway. It can be removed.
Will this ever happen? Not without a revolution.
Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. - Aung San Suu Kyi
Would it be a perfect system? Definitely not. No human government will truly satisfy our needs. Only God's government can do that. But this system would at least leave me less frustrated with the daily news... I think.
Edit Dec 23, 2013: Scott Adams agrees:
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/eliminating_government_in_a_hundred_years/
Hey Xerxes, that is what I told you last sat.! You have a very connected line of though and nice conclusions to the point you make.
ReplyDeleteLet things go online is a little bit tough, though, just for one reason. More people prefer passively consuming content than actively creating and participating on decisions.
If one has the power to advertise, he'll probably invest money on it, and it all goes back to business. Perhaps companies would just move from Congress to Internet. (or not).
Congratulations for your blog!
I have believed that congress is obsolete for a long time. With modern communications we don't need anyone to pretend to represent us, anymore, while they instead herd us toward a corporate-controlled fascist prison state. But we need to think this through or we'll mess it up worse than this mess we're already in.
ReplyDeleteIn order to successfully govern themselves a people has to be educated and informed, and we have been deliberately diseducated on a number of issues important to our future, e.g., climate change, the way our monetary system works to enslave us, our rights and duties as citizens of a democracy; and we get our information from corporate media that only reports in its own interests. We need to profoundly change both institutions, educate ourselves so that we can govern ourselves in something other than ignorance, and somehow make the news media into the Fourth Estate it always should have been.
Make it too easy to pass laws, and we'll spend all day online, defending our rights and our wallets against everyone who wants to impose their agenda on others. We need a national citizens' initiative and referenda system, but requiring a hell of a lot of signatures on petitions to get a new law on the ballot. We need to carefully consider what powers to leave with the executive branch: the president may need the power to declare war without notice, but he should absolutely have to justify that action to the voting public within 60 days, with penalties including execution for war crimes if he (George) cannot.
We also need to make tampering with an election a capital crime, with public execution as a deterrent, and no statute of limitations--I still want to see Traficant and Jeb Bush executed for suborning the 1990 Presidential vote in Florida. Computerized voting is too susceptible to fraud, otherwise. We may also need to hire some of the brightest and best "geeks" to watch over elections for us, with oversight to keep THEM honest.
And the Supreme Court is not above corruption, either; it is appointed by presidents to promote their political agendas, and approved by a senate that is itself corrupt. And it is ultimately made up of lawyers, who themselves occupy a particular niche somewhere in the middle-upper economic strata of society, and so very likely come with a built-in bias. It was ultimately the Supreme Court that handed the stolen election to Bush in 1990. So the people need an override on the Supreme Court, too.
What we're talking about here is a change to the Constitution, the framework of our government. The people have the right to do that at need. The Bill of Rights is something else, a palisade behind which we protect the individual and collective human rights of the people against the overreach of their government. We need to guard against being stampeded into giving up essential rights too easily. I'd like to expand the language of the First and Second Amendments so there can be no doubt as to their meaning, and then lock down the BoR behind a near-consensus requirement for change, say a 90% majority of all eligible voters.
I hope you're not one of those twits who think we can do this without bloodshed AFTER disarming ourselves. I paid attention to the revolutions of the 20th century, and I saw that where the people began disarmed, the dictatorships never gave up power without long, bloody repression while the people slowly armed themselves. The few peaceful (Bloodless, Velvet, Glorious) revolutions in history seemed to occur in countries where the people are well enough armed that when they lose confidence in their government, that government steps down without protest. Think the government of the United States will allow us to alter it, if we allow it to disarm us, first?