Murdoch: at the Olympics | 100 comments (100 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

The problem is... complicated.

Firstly we have entrenched interests who have been playing the game for generations. I'm not sure they'd be in reach of a complete revolution, never mind a constitutional change.

Secondly, nation states are idiotic and far too expensive for the (largely illusory) benefits they provide. But world government provides a single point of political failure. I have no idea how to square that circle.

Finally you need to have a system that rewards innovation, insight and creativity but keeps predatory sociopaths well away from power.

Problem is, power is inherently sociopathic. People who crave it are insane, almost by definition. But you still need to have some power differentials, because some people are simply better at things like planning and people management than others. And it makes no sense to employ the ones who don't know what they're doing.

There's also the more basic problem that human political awareness is fundamentally flawed. We don't have the genetic or evolutionary background to make smart social choices. Given a choice, the reassuring smooth-talking liars win every time.

So you need a system that makes democracy about proven performance rather than superficial demagoguery, and which is accessible and open enough to disqualify trite manipulation even if voters like it.

I don't think a financial solution is going to work. The problems are psychological and psycho-social. Money is too blunt an instrument to solve them.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun Aug 5th, 2012 at 09:45:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Channeling Graeber (none / 1)

ThatBritGuy:

Secondly, nation states are idiotic and far too expensive for the (largely illusory) benefits they provide. But world government provides a single point of political failure. I have no idea how to square that circle.

Political decisions should be made at the most local level possible, but no lower.

This means multiple levels of government : local (1000 people maximum in the lowest echelon), municipal, sub-regional, regional, national, european, world. Proportional representation at all levels, everything has to be negotiated, both within the governmental level and with the levels below and above.

Collective decision making by design; no government level has an individual leader, at minimum a duo. This of course won't eliminate the star system completely, but ought to seriously counter-balance it.

It's a very slow-moving system, of course, quite resistant to change, but ought to be fairly responsive to the people over the long term.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Mon Aug 6th, 2012 at 04:35:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Channeling Graeber (4.00 / 2)

I'm increasingly convinced that sortition is the answer.

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Aug 6th, 2012 at 04:55:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Channeling Graeber (4.00 / 7)

I'm not convinced by sortition because it seems to hand power to those who offer advice to the randomly selected representatives of the people.

The problem is that national level legislation is often large-span, complex, full of detail and technical wording.

In countries with a strongly technocratic civil service, this may not be so bad, just undemocratic. But in countries with a weaker civil service, legislation will be written by "helpful" lobbyists.

Some legislation could of course be simplified, but it should be noted that simplicity is often the ally of a shrunk state conservatism.

Why do I think it will be worse than now? Especially when I'd be the first to admit that it's very bad right now?

Because as bad as they are, parties remain organisations capable of drafting legislation for political objectives. And those political objectives provide a way for alternatives views to be incorporated, beyond technocracy and the lobbyists.

Of course, the worst thing about my view of the world is that progress only comes through either reclaiming parties of the left, or setting up alternatives like Syriza who only gain an opportunity at moments of great crisis.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Mon Aug 6th, 2012 at 06:32:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Channeling Graeber (4.00 / 3)

But in countries with a weaker civil service, legislation will be written by "helpful" lobbyists.

Legislation is being written by "helpful" lobbyists NOW.

There could still be parties arguing their cause, by the way. They would supply the advisors.

by Katrin on Mon Aug 6th, 2012 at 06:54:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Channeling Graeber (4.00 / 3)

Because as bad as they are, parties remain organisations capable of drafting legislation for political objectives. And those political objectives provide a way for alternatives views to be incorporated, beyond technocracy and the lobbyists.

The way I see it, parties would morph into lobbies or think tanks. Already the parts of the organization capable of drafting documents from political parspectives are increasingly outsourced to party "foundations", or directly to think tanks. Lobbies lobby not only the legislators directly but the party apparatus and the foundations.

In most European parliamentary systems the government, through the upper tiers of the civil service, drafts legislation. It's not like in the US where legislation is introduced by parlamentarians. The function of parliament is increasingly limited to demanding accountability from the civil service. So that function would remain. And the parlamentarians would seek advice from think tanks, foundations or "parties" just like current parlamentarians now seek advice from their party apparatus or the party itself writes the legislation that the parlamentarians introduce.

With party parliamentary discipline as currently practised in many parliamentary democracies, especially when party-list proportional representation is used, individual parlamentarians have little initiative and are basically there to contribute to party votes.

Finally, parlamentarians selected by sortition would be less vulnerable to corruption. Not only they don't owe any favours to external interests for their access to the parliament, but as they are not part of a party apparatus they are less likely to exchange favours after leaving the parliament.

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Aug 6th, 2012 at 07:08:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Channeling Graeber (4.00 / 7)

Finally, parlamentarians selected by sortition would be less vulnerable to corruption.

Not so sure about that. If you're a billionaire it's possibly not so hard to buy off a few hundred people who are used to an average income - even if they're on an MP pay scale. (Especially if they're civil servants.)

And you still have other issues. The problem is not just about votes in parliament, but about public influence in general. That includes media monopolies (q.v. Murdoch), universities (q.v. Chicago school) and think tanks (q.v. pretty much everyone and everything in the US.)

Put simply, you need to change or remove entire technologies of persuasion and political distortion to get a useful result.

Votes are the end of the persuasion process, not the root cause.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Aug 6th, 2012 at 07:20:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Channeling Graeber (4.00 / 2)

Migeru:

The way I see it, parties would morph into lobbies or think tanks.

The problem would be that parties would have no democratic legitimacy, and in particular, no obvious basis for public funding. i.e. the think tanks would be dominated by moneyed interests.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Mon Aug 6th, 2012 at 08:24:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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