The Observed and Inferred Problems
Ever been in a school or playgroup where the other kids bully you but when someone gives you a bag of candy you are expected to "share" with everyone - even those who you dislike? I've had this bad experience many times growing up in Catholic Boarding Schools and in Politically Liberal Elite societies. That's what universal suffrage can do sometimes. Authorities try to enforce an artificial equality so that they can manage the masses with ease. It would be hard work if they had to apply a different pattern to judge each person in different circumstances. Equality is NOT Individuality. Equality is therefore NOT equal to Freedom. This is visible in the parades of Socialist or Fascist political movements.
"Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else." - Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Reflections on State and War (2006).
"This line of reasoning brings us to a challenging question: If people are as incapable, as immoral, and as ignorant as the politicians indicate, then why is the right of these same people to vote defended with such passionate insistence?" - Frédéric Bastiat
Democracy is sometimes similar to 99 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what's for dinner. There is an implied faith in the wisdom of crowds but one that is based on a snapshot of what the crowd had thought at a moment in time. It need not reflect the new reality nor need it reflect the present mental majority. It's not as if the earlier snapshot is justified. But it does at least have the sanction of the majority - not that the majority is right just because it is the majority. Also, I ask you, if you were right about recruiting the best person for a particular Wall Street job, would that make you infallible as a recruiter ? Does it empower you as a Sports Selector? I think not. Also don't we also often change our minds to adjust our existence to our ever changing realities? Yes we do. Then why would you stake a certain portion of your future to the immutable opinion of others whether it be by referendum OR by the votes of representatives who are not immune to unfairness, stupidity or just simply plain greed (- which is exploited by either overt lobbyists or covert bribers).
"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections." - Lord Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays, Section III: Sir Erskine May's Democracy in Europe p. 76
"Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority." - Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr., in "Why Hate Monarchs?" in The Free Market Vol. 19, No. 8 (August 2001)
There is also sometimes a skewing towards one point of view of the final results of a poll because of voting by people who were not eligible to vote (with the eligibility depending on various criteria and points of views) OR people who are able to vote disproportional to their size (and/or eligibility) OR because a certain section of the population has been disenfranchised. Sometimes people think that they have rights just because they happen to be there. Sometimes they think they have a right to an opinion just because they are watching. Sometimes illegal immigrants think that they have a right to be given asylum just because they became parents of a child who was born within a certain geography. That's a bit like taking the generosity of someone's hospitality while your wife is pregnant and after the birth then claiming that this now entitles you to a room in his house for perpetuity. WTF ?
As Ayn Rand says in her novelette Anthem, "My brothers must do more than be born".
"Envy is the basis of democracy." - Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, VI, 1930.
Let us now consider the case of the median citizen in every democracy. Very often under the burdens of earning a daily living he has no time to spend researching and studying all the political issues of his time and very often delegates that responsibility to someone who does and/or specialises in it. Note that it is in the interest of the latter to keep the former busy about his work and confused about the latter's work - or the latter would be out of work. Also the issue of everyone travelling to the same location and making a vote like in Ancient Athens is out of the question. We all can't possibly live in the same location just to make decisions of common interest. Even if it has to be done, it's not a rare/important event like the election of the Pope and only in a case of such import would it warrant all stakeholders to travel kilometres and kilometres to get to a common place (aka Parliament) to vote. As human populations increased and nation states increased in size, this mass gathering has proved unfeasible. So we send representatives instead. Sometimes even that becomes a hassle and so we sometimes choose to not vote. Over time our inability to always go to the polls have made them come to us in the form of voting booths and and ballots. Sometimes each province has a say (like in the American Presidential elections) and sometimes it's an Absolute Majority which decides the outcome (like in most Presidential elections). Sometimes we elect legislators like in Parliamentary Democracies (usually based on the British Model) who then are supposed to act as our "representatives". Even though both systems are not fair more than half the time, we accept them with some resignation and take comfort in the law of averages and in the realisation that out fellow man is as crippled as we are. We see this as some kind of fairness.
"When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it." - John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977), Chapter 12, p. 330.
Having a Technocracy is fine and dandy on paper but not advisable or implementable. I have seen enough AI movies (Terminator Series, iRobot, Matrix Series, Minority Report) to decide against it. Besides these systems can be hacked and the population can be controlled without their knowledge. And even if they are hacker-proof, it still goes against my notions of free will and my desire for humans to indulge in near zero manipulation of each other's minds. No system is fair, but the Swiss system does seem better than the rest.
The Suggested Solution
Why not have an "Online Democracy" ? While Direct Democracy will solve some of the above problems - at least partially. It can at the least act as an intermediary power structure between now and the eventual online democracy. Here given below are the basic premises of the system I propose. I hope these will in some ways minimize the disadvantages of minarchy as well. I had this idea even before Facebook arrived on the world scene. However it was the success of Facebook that made me think that the time for this idea has finally arrived and that this is now viable in the not too distant future.
- All votes may be legally bought by lobbyists or sold by voters on the open market.
- All sold votes and amounts transacted must be openly disclosed to the public - "Who sold how many votes to whom on what date on what bill supporting which party or position".
- All buyers must be Passport holders AND Tax Card holders.
- All non-sold votes will remain confidential and private.
- The amount of money involved must be held in an escrow account and transferred to the seller/voter only after voting has been done on the concerned bill for which it was bought.
- If the sold vote was not executed the seller does not receive any money.
- Till the last second, the seller can exercise his vote thus changing the preference of the buyer to his own and thus nullify the "sold" status of his votes and invalidate any payment due to him by the buyer and held in the escrow account.
- All Military, Police, other Law and Order Personnel and Judiciary will NOT pay any Income Tax. This is because their monopolistic services will be needed by society TILL we attain a purely Anarcho-Capitalist society. Then how will they vote on Political and/or Security Affairs? Must their opinions also not be considered ? This can be done by equating their individual (basic?) salaries to the Tax based votes they are allocated, thus giving important officials more votes individually but lesser government employees more influence collectively.
- Due to non-salary expenditure (after assuming balanced budgets), the combined vote of Government Employees will be less than that of Tax Payers.
- Non-exercised votes for the passage of a particular bill will lapse.
- There are 2 kinds of votes.
- Those based on purely political issues.
- Those based on economical affairs.
- How does a political entity decide whether an issue is purely political or economical/expenditure based ? Though not perfect, one solution is to qualify it by putting it to a meta-vote. Which category a Bill belongs to will be decided by a combined and equal vote of the Tax Payers and General Voters (which includes Govt Employees, Tax Payers and those who have not paid any Taxes).
- Tax Payers votes will total 50% spread out in proportion of the taxes they have paid in the last fiscal year or the total tax they have paid during their lifetime. They may also inherit the votes bequeathed to them by inheritance - just like property.
- General Voters votes will total 50% spread out equally to all voters.
- Each Entity can choose only kind of category (purely political or economical/expenditure based) to which all its votes will go. A Tax Payer will therefore have more votes as he will be able to cast his votes BOTH as a Tax Paying Voter AND as a General Voter towards the category he thinks a bill belongs to. But he cannot split his choices here and allocate them based on his feelings for this vote.
- A Tax Paying Entity will have the right to vote. It can be an individual or a company or any other profit seeking and tax paying organisation.
- On each economics affairs issue, Tax Paying Entities will have votes in proportion to the taxes they have paid in the last financial year or the total tax they have paid during their lifetime. These votes are to be used on economical affairs only.
- Thus those who pay more taxes will have a greater say in the running of the economy.
- People can be given the option of selecting multiple candidates or supporting different options by "allocating" their preferences which then translate into votes.
- Sometimes fuzzy logic and weighted averages can be used to arrive at a fairer results.
- Each Individual will have 1 vote each on purely political and non-monetary issues.
- On political issues non-Individuals will have as many votes as they have tax-card holding employees (even if the amount paid by the employees is zero). These entities get this delegated vote only if they are the highest source of compensation for that particular employee in the previous year.
- Publicly listed companies will vote in proportion to shareholder votes on the issue.
- Proprietorship firms will vote as per the whims of the owner/s.
- Proposing Legislation for the consideration of others.
- Every Citizen can propose one piece of legislation per year for the consideration of the others.
- Tax Paying Organisations can propose as many as Legislative bills as mentioned in 4.3
- Whether the proposed Bill should be debated and for how long will be decided by the same method used in article 3.0.0.
- People can vote a piece of legislation up or down as important or not. The most important ones will bubble up to the top and be put to the vote. This algorithm is 'natural selection by popularity contest'. Votes are counted using the same algorithms mentioned above.
- Politicians are nearly obsolete and exist only as Opinion Makers unlike their earlier role of Rabble Rousers and Parliamentarians. They exist merely as figureheads (President/PM/Defense Minister) and as supervisors of the Bureaucracy and to deal with crisis situations like a War.
- The Govt Bureaucracy which is needed for the few remaining Government functions is also similarly supervised by the population using Online Rating Systems.
- Salaries of both Politicians and Government Employees are determined based on these Online Rating Systems.
- All voting which is online will remain open for a period of 1week during which anyone can log in and see how the tide is turning. People can also change their vote twice before the end of voting.
Picture added later from Facebook on 26 Dec 2013
