By now we’ve all seen the ‘files’, if you’re like me you’ve used various AI to cross-reference them with other things like financial crashes, who else might be a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th degree connections, where do they work, etc etc etc and at the end of it you see the web of parasitic elites running our society.
How do we just go back to ‘normal’??
II would put it the other way around: as long as representative systems exist, it will always be more likely that egoists and narcissists will establish themselves in leadership positions, even if they only make up a small part of the population. Today, this is encouraged by the fact that we reward these character traits, which are actually harmful to the community, with fame, money and prestige.
Personally, I think the internet is both a blessing and a curse: while it is currently being used to sow discord and spread lies, it will also enable us to do without representatives and the corruption that goes with them in the foreseeable future. I believe that internet- and open-source-based direct democracy is the model of government of the future.
Solution anonymous leaders? Or leaders as groups/institutions rather than individuals.
My problem with anonymous leaders is that we’d completely lose track of who’s to be made responsible. It would basically create a shortcut for elites to rule without having to hide their corruption/influence.
A group/institution would probably also face the same problem as we have today with single persons: Big money would simply buy influence in these new organizations instead of bribing single individuals.
A direct democracy would mean you have to bribe a big part of the population to cover your ideas… the worse your idea is and the more support you need to buy for it the more translates from bribery to paying a majority to accept your idea. At some point the amount of bribes extends the gains to be made by your manipulation and it becomes uneconomical… we’d basically use capitalism against bribery.
What to do then?
Create an open source platform where everyone can vote on every matter. Matter to be voted on are chosen by petitions. If a petition indicates societal need for change (x supporters in y time frame) anyone can propose a solution. Then a vote is taken. The solution with the most votes is implemented. If there is a new petition on the same topic, the fun starts all over again.
Advantages from my point of view:
No potentially corrupt representatives
No deflection of one’s own bad voting decisions (aka. it’s the fault of those at the top)
Citizens once again have a motivation to inform themselves about issues more than just once every four years.
Will everyone always be able to vote on everything? Certainly not, as individuals’ time and resources are limited. Therefore, those who vote on a decision are likely to be affected by it themselves, or at least feel that they are. In this way, people who have informed themselves beforehand, or at least would do so, tend to vote more.
We would use the real-time communication possibilities that the internet has given us for something positive instead of slop and brain rot.
I like this, but how do you avoid people making bad decisions because they think it will benefit society but then it makes things worse? Like the kind of questions experts are better suited to know. For example rent control is repeatedly proven to be a bad policy, but people tend to think its good cause logic shows that “prices high, lets make them less directly”. Experts would maybe look at the underlying causes of prevention of construction, height restrictions, land speculation, and expansions of credit supply as a cause of housing unaffordability.
My argument would be that people definitely would make bad decisions in the beginning. But that wouldn’t be that far off of the status quo, would it?
My hope would be that this system gives an incentive to ACTUALLY get informed about the matter you vote on since you’re actively choosing to get involved instead of voting on every topic (also the ones you have 0.0 interest in) every 4 years. Another point, which may be a bit far fetched idk, could be that you theoretically could use LLMs to summarize the various proposed solutions and their justifications. In the system I have in mind, the experts you mentioned would also submit proposed solutions.
Based on your example:
Problem formulated for the petition: “Rents are too high.”
If the petition goes through, anyone could propose solutions. For example, “rent control” (proposed by someone on the left), “foreigners out” (proposed by someone on the right), “revise building standards and invest in public housing” (an expert).
The population might follow the populists at first… However, if the problem is not solved after 10 years, you can’t blame “those at the top” for the solution not working, and hopefully there will be a rethink.
Maybe this is just a utopian fantasy of mine. But I have the feeling that our democratic systems are not up to the challenges of the digitalized 21st century and growing inequality… this is the best solution I have come up with so far.