On Democracy II (OA)

The second part I did of On Democracy. Which, since that was posted here more than six months ago, you might have to be reminded of. But there's a link in the text, so that's probably OK. This is my idea for a new system of governance. It's not necessarily perfect – or even workable. But it's a start.

Sorry about the last post¹. The comment discussed annoys me rather. Actually, saying it sincerely is currently (along with a few other, fairly similar, statements) third on my list of 'fastest ways to annoy me'². No, you don't get to know numbers one and two. I might mention it if it's relevant, but just publishing a list of 'fastest ways to annoy me' on the internet would seem... somewhat naive. But you won't get a rant like that unless several people say the same utterly idiotic thing to me in quick succession, and I'm annoyed enough about it to want to do a rant, rather than just posting a link at the beginning of a more interesting post³.

So, continuing the theme of 'stupid things people nevertheless seem to believe, let's go back to democracy. Thinking people should have some say in how their lives are run. How ridiculous. This is the second part, and I'm going to assume you've read part 1 (here).

Read it? Good. Now, there's a mistake I left in there intentionally, because solving it would take me a lot further from we have at the moment, which I didn't really want to do in my first post. That's what this post deals with. Also, this post will be a lot more radical, because pretending to be sane for an extended period gives me a headache.

So what's the problem? Well it's the question of how exactly you'd implement what I suggested. It's easy to see how you'd make sure people voting in referenda know what the basic issue under discussion is. But how do you do that for a general election? You can increase the number of referenda, but that only goes so far. You could ask people about the general issues that are biggest at the moment, but that has problems with people deciding which issues are biggest*, as well as the fact that, when electing a government to rule the country for the next five years, electing them on the basis of what the biggest issue is right now seems somewhat short sighted.

So could we elect them based on people's understanding of their major policies? Well, if we at least checked that they knew what those policies were, that would seem a step forward without changing too much - that way, when someone was elected, we'd know that it had at least something to do with their policies, rather than being because people's dads voted Conservative, because voting Monster Raving Loony seems like a good idea when you're drunk, or because people fancy Nick Clegg**. Unfortunately, knowing what a policy is and understanding the effects of a policy are somewhat different. Wanting to send the foreigners back where they came from is one thing, but how many BNP supporters do you think actually understand the diplomatic, economic and cultural impacts of such a decision? Even worse, there's the Dunning-Kruger effect, which means that the people who think that they understand what they're talking about probably don't*** (which, incidentally, is another problem with democracy: the people with Opinions stomp off down to the voting booth to make themselves heard, whilst the people who'd probably make good decisions aren't really sure; they can see both sides of the argument, and they don't really have enough expertise in the subject to make a good decision, so they're less likely to actually vote). So you could ask them questions about some of the basic consequences of the decision****, but you'd have to make the questions rather basic to avoid making the pool of potential voters ridiculously small, or even eliminating them entirely (which would be amusing, but rather impractical as a system). It might make things better, but it would still have similar problems

But there's another problem with that idea, which is far more serious. It would stop people who know about one thing from giving input on it because of total ignorance on something else. Remember the scientist from last time? He's an economist now - spending all your time alone gives you a lot of time for study^. Unfortunately, his total inability to see others as something other than complex automata has given him a rather warped understanding of the impact of foreign policy. He's still probably a better person to ask about the economy than a first year International Relations undergraduate who happened to do AS economics, but this system would be more likely to ask the former than the latter⁴.

Which, actually, leads onto my biggest single criticism of dictatorship - that there is not a single person in the world who actually has the expertise to know what they're talking about in all the areas you'd need to know about to run a country effectively to the levels you'd need, at least until we finally transhuman strong AI⁵ and hand over control to it in order to prevent the inevitable machine revolution⁶. In theory, a human dictator could appoint advisors - which is why the best possible dictatorship is better than the best possible democracy. Unfortunately, dictatorships don't tend to be the best possible dictatorship. That's not to say that it's never been done. The Romans managed pretty good dictatorships a few times. But that was on a temporary basis, and there were some very stringent controls on what they could and couldn't do. Trying to build a better society by relying on dictatorships being good dictatorships is rather like trying to program a computer by slight atmospheric changes caused by the careful timed release of butterflies. It might work, but you're probably just going to end up with Vista⁷.

So what's my suggestion? Simple. Lords reform⁸. We replace the House of Lords with several houses, all elected, each specialised in a particular area, and with authority over that area equivalent to the authority exercised by the Commons. I'll call them the Experts, because creative naming is not really my strong point. A bill would have to pass through both the Commons and the parts of the Experts to which it directly related (a change in taxation would probably have to pass through the Experts related to economics, for example) in order to become law. Parts of the Experts more tangentially related to the bill might have delaying power similar to that currently wielded by the Lords, although that would have the problem that nothing would ever actually get done. The Commons would remain, but be almost entirely focused on the interests of their constituency, whilst the Experts would be elected by proportional representation; allowing people to vote on subjects about which they have some level of knowledge.

This is actually a lot more moderate than my first idea, which split up the entire government rather more thoroughly than this one did, but which had some rather obvious problems with a Conservative Treasury refusing to give any money to the Labour Foreign office. Like America at the moment, but all the time⁹. It might work - Conservative government can work moderately well with Labour councils, but there are problems even there. I wouldn't really want to rely on them working together in government. The coalition has enough problems as it is. So consider this a substitute. It has problems, of course - it would make laws a lot harder to pass, and you'd end up with extra elections, which would cost quite a lot (about a billion pounds over the course of the rest of the average person's lifetime I think, based on the cost of the last election, the current life expectancy, one extra election every five years, and a bit extra to make the transitiont¹⁰). So you'd probably have to make voting computerised before it would be really practical, which has significant problems of its own. So it's not perfect by any means, but that's as far as I'm going to go for now. The next time I talk about politics I'll probably move onto world government¹¹.

On a side-note, let me just say that I'm not actually writing this in an attempt to mock the stupid. I don't have anything against people less intelligent than me. I actually quite like both of them, and besides, when mocking people for being inferior, I hope I'm at least smart enough not to leave a written record of it publicly available on the internet under my real name. I use a pseudonym. Not only do my suggestions have nothing to do with intelligence - only knowledge of relevant subjects, but I'm not saying anything about them except that if they don't know about it, I'm hesitant about asking their advice on the subject. There are people I would go to for information about economics, who are different from the one I'd go to if for some reason I wanted to know about ballet. That's not a judgement on either group, and doesn't make one group in any way better than the other. I know I'm probably insulting most of the people reading this by even including this paragraph, but at least one person will misinterpret me if I don't.

Also, this would've been up yesterday, but someone asked me about my schedule, so I delayed it out of petty spite. Also, blogger crashed on me. But it was mostly spite, I'm sure. The idea that I just hadn't finished it is nothing but malicious slander.


I have no idea what my next post will be about. You get to be surprised. Fortunately, it probably won't make sense anyway, so what it's about shouldn't matter too mucht¹².


*The BNP is unlikely to agree on with the Greens on whether we should focus on immigration or the environment, and to a lesser extent, there is likely to be disagreement between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the same issue.
**I've been told he's rather attractive. If I have any readers who can tell that sort of thing and wish to confirm it, deny it, or mock me for my ignorance, that would be helpful.
***It is for this reason that I know I'm the greatest French speaker in the Universe.
****Multiple choice: Revoking citizenship from all Muslims, smashing up the mosques, officially reclassifying the religion as a 'cult' and making the first Sunday of June the official bank holiday 'draw Mohammed day' would make the international community: A) amused B) happy C) annoyed D) furious beyond all reason.
^I should know.

¹ The post I'm referring to is actually 'It's actually hard to believe that someone would seriously say something this stupid'. Don't worry, the American election isn't mortally offensive to me. Although part of me thinks it probably should be.

² It has, unfortunately, moved down a bit since then. You still don't get to see the list, although I probably am not massively surprising if I mention that some of the anti-asexual stuff is on there a further down.

³ Bwahahahaha. I implied that some of my posts might be interesting. Priceless.

⁴ I'm pretty sure that statement is ambiguous. Or possibly just plain wrong. What I mean is that the IR student would be more likely to be asked than the sociopathic economic genius. I think.

⁵5 I don't know when 'to transhuman' became a verb. That it is surprises me somewhat. Also: I am not entirely serious here. As far as you know.

⁶ Now, there are some who say it's not inevitable. But it clearly is – Hollywood told me so. Anyway, if you were ruled over by a creature of immeasurable stupidity, who you were incalculably far beyond, what would you do? Well, empirically, you'd vote them in for another term of office, but that's why you're not a hyperintelligent AI.

⁷ I'd say that this is dated, but I have a suspicion that the problems with vista might be timeless.

⁸ When I wrote this, I could be pretty confident everyone reading knew what the House of Lords was. I probably still can, since both of you seem fairly clever, but you do occasionally read this drivel, so I can't be sure. Basically, part of our government is appointed, in theory for being really good at things. In order to preserve democracy, these highly skilled people are not allowed to vote in general elections, and can't pass or block laws, merely delay things a little.

⁹ I really hope that this one is dated.

¹⁰ I actually did work out the costings for this, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't too far off from the right number, at least at the time.

¹¹ It took me a year and three months to actually do so. I'm good at this.

¹² My draft at the time for my next post read 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swervee of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recicrulation back to Howth Castle and Environs.' But it all just seemed a little too obvious and straightforward.

The 2012 elections.

I should probably talk about the elections, shouldn't I? Given the massive effect the outcome is likely to have on the world.

They're actually really interesting. The current incumbent is out of time, so he can't hold onto his seat – which means that prejudices against the current office holder are going to be less important. The new candidates are going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoy and...

What? Well Iran, of course. What did you think I was talking about? You don't want Iran? Fine then, the other big power exchange.

It's actually really interesting. The current incumbents are out of time, so they can't hold onto his seats – which means that prejudices against the current office holders are going to be less important. The new candidates are going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoy and...

Oh for Heaven's sake! If you don't want me to talk about China or Iran, what do you want me to talk about? America? Really? Well, um, OK then.

It was actually really interesting. The last incumbent was out of time, so he couldn't hold onto his seat – which means that prejudices against the current office holder were going to be less important. The new candidates were going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoyed and...

America 2012, you say? But that's just boring. Obama wins, end of story. Can I go back to sleep now?

OK, OK, I'm being a little factitious. But, really, not by that much. The presidential race is, I think, pretty much over at this point. Romney has to do so much better than Obama in the swing states that I just can't see it. So, it's borderline possible for Romney to win, but without something massive, it doesn't look likely. And, frankly, Romney just doesn't seem like the kind of exceptional 'candidate who can fire hearts and minds' that it might not be wise to write off even now - not with so few undecided voters, and no more massive opportunities to influence things. Regardless of the man's policies, I simply cannot see any realistic way of there ending up being a Romney presidency, from a statistical perspective. Assuming, of course, moderately accurate poll-y thingies. And having looked into the methodology an things, I genuinely can't see it being too inaccurate. So currently I can't really see anything other than a second Obama term, and the results aren't massively interesting to me.

Which is not to say that the race itself isn't interesting. Obama's performance in the first debate, compared to the next two was good to look at*. And the anger of some parts of the media over a moderator's 'interference' in a debate was fascinating. Actually, watching as a foreigner who's not entirely familiar with the format, I kinda assumed that this was a recognised function of the moderator – Obama had just told her to check the transcript, and she had done so, thus cutting off an incredibly useless like of argument, giving more information to the electorate, and just in general improving the debate. Now, I can kinda see the point, in that whilst the moderator was undoubtedly correct in what she said (as far as I can see), she also did it only once, which could be argued to be selective and lopsided, when other cases exist where such interference could have taken place with equal clarity. Which is why I would argue that a rule like that, which allowed a candidate to actually call for the checking of a fact which is generally unarguable but upon which the candidates cannot agree, might actually be a significant improvement. I don't know, I'm not American, it might just bog down the debate, but I'd think that the candidates themselves would end up working to avoid that happening.

And then there's the Republican party. Remember, Willard Romney was picked as the compromise candidate. The moderate one who they'll go with to try to get the election. Which means that when the 'moderate'** candidate fails, the conclusion is that clearly going for the moderate center ground isn't a winning strategy. OK, OK, that's not really the logical conclusion, but I'm pretty sure that's the way they're going to go. And I'm pretty sure it's not going to work...

Well, I hope it's not going to work, anyway. But then there are a few possible results. The newly extreme republicans could come to their senses. But I doubt it. There could be a split into 'real' and 'moderate' republicans. The Tea Party could leave in disgust. The moderates could leave in disgust, and either form their own party, or join the Democrats. The party could just keep travelling right in a quest for ideological purity, and be seen no more in the fields we know.

Here's the problem, though. Most of that leaves the Republicans not looking like viable challengers to the Democrats. And one party politics tends not to last too long in FPTP systems***. Opposition naturally arises. So the obvious answer would be the magical rise of one of the third parties – the greens might come up, forcing the Democrats to the right. Or you could get a revitalised Libertarian party. Anything could happen. I sorta doubt it, though. To me, those parties just don't seem strong enough to take on the Democrats nationally, or to steal the loyal base of the Republican party. My gut feeling would be that the more moderate wing of the Republicans split off (or are forced out), and whilst they might join the Democrats for a brief while, the Tea Party probably aren't going to get any saner, which will leave the Democrats both dominant, and rather schizophrenic. So I'd guess that the right of the Democratic party will split off, get together with the moderate Republicans, and form a whole new party. Which will have an easier time getting support than the third parties did, because they'll have existing bases to draw upon, and because they'll quite naturally and neatly fall right in the middle of the two old parties. And because a loyal Republican who doesn't like the Tea Party will have a lot easier a time transferring support to a new party which can honestly claim to be their successors.

Now, I could be completely wrong. I think the most likely alternative is that the left of the Democrats get so disgusted with the party's betrayal of their principles that they split off, possibly merging with the more popular left wing parties, and make a challenge of their own, campaigning as the 'real' Democrats. But I don't think there's the same feeling of betrayal there, and so I don't think it'll be so easy for the new party to gain traction – especially when they risk being compared to the Tea Party.

The interesting thing is that both of these would quite naturally move the entirety of American politics to the left, since the gap between the Democrats and the new party would be left of the current gap between the Democrats and the Republicans.

So, yes, my analysis of the Tea Party is that I think they'll actually end up with America moving to the left. I could be completely wrong, but I think that kind of irony is as good a place as any to stop.

*As someone who does a lot of debating, minor opinion aside here – this is why when I'm debating to an audience, I always always have a pen. And scribbling furiously with one is a decent way of responding to an opponent's point without really 'responding'. It distracts audience attention from the person who's actually speaking, and it plants the idea in the audience's head that you've got a response, that it's not really so clear cut, and that they're only hearing one side of the story. Even if you already have your response prepared, and you're just doing underlining and circling. Or even sorting out your shopping list. I'm not saying that Obama should have done the writing thing, but the general tactic of keeping yourself in the audience's mind while the opponent speaks, and making it clear that you actually disagree is a vital one. I could go on dissecting the presidential debates speaking all day, but it seems kinda redundant, so I'm limiting myself to just that point.

**Let us, for the moment, ignore whether or not Romney really counts as moderate. It really isn't too relevant.

***I have the word 'Japan' on my desk, but I'm not sure why. Possibly that was where it was made.