“Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. no one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time....”
[Winston] Churchill by Himself, 574
This statement is correct in the same way that so many generalisations are correct. Various forms of government have been tried from time to time. Very few forms of democracy have been attempted.
Democracy is a spectrum.
The most intensely visible wave is First Past the Post (FPP), in which candidates stand, eligible voters vote, or don’t, and plurality wins. It is common for the majority of voters to vote for someone other than the winner.
Alternatives to FPP exist, but none are widely practised. Proportional Representation (PR) lets electors vote for parties, rather than candidates.
Single Transferable Vote (STV) asks voters to indicate their preference, by ranking their candidates in order of preference; 1, 2, 3... If your first choice has too few votes to be elected, your vote is transferred to your second choice, and so on. Ultimately, the election becomes a two-horse race and all the voters can have the satisfaction of having voted for the winner, even if the winner was your last choice.
What all these forms of democracy have in common are candidates, parties, and voters.
I’ll argue that all these things suck. I’m going to challenge and dismiss the democratic utility of each in the course of this manifesto. I’ll argue that this diabolical triumvirate - candidates, parties and voters - are not pillars of democracy, but mounds of sand upon which any democratic edifice is doomed to subside. I’ll argue that candidates, parties and voters are concepts that are intentionally designed to blunt the ability of the people to rule themselves. I’ll argue that candidates, parties and voters are antidemocratic.
This manifesto is a love letter to democracy.
It’s positively charged with optimism about the ability and the will of our collective conscience to most effectively serve the common good and to enable human flourishing. This manifesto is pro-democracy. It is anti-authoritarian, anti-communist, anti-corporatocratic, and anti-fascist. It is anti-oligarchic, anti-oligopolist, anti-kleptocratic and anti-aristocratic. It is anti-anarchic, anti-feudal, anti-plutocratic and anti-imperial. It doesn’t know what ergatocracy is and can’t be bothered to google. It is anti-ecclesial, anti-imperial, anti-kleptocratic and geniocracy-curious. It’s anti-plutocratic and surprisingly anti-technocratic. It’s anti-military dictatorship. It’s anti-tribal, anti-kakistocratic, anti-logocratic and anti-meritocracy (despite being geniocracy-curious). It may come off a bit anti-social, but it’s quite the opposite. It’s anti-bureaucratic. It believes technology has a simple but significant role in facilitating all this. It has a healthy respect for monarchy as the default political orientation of humankind, but it prefers the symbolic pomp of the British Royal Family to an active, decision-making crown.
It’s anti-mob. Mob rule is the bugbear that justifies all sorts of [pejorative]-ocratic appropriation of the means of government. It believes the architecture of democracy (to date) is designed to simultaneously glorify and thwart the will of the people.
There is a better way.
It was practised in microcosm, in Athens, the birthplace of democracy, during democracy’s formative years. I doubt it was the first born form.
“It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election. -- Aristotle, Politics, Book IV”
I call it Lottocracy.
This form of democracy, when known, seems most commonly known as sortition. I prefer Lottocracy because it feels easier to understand. All eligible citizens are enrolled in a pool. Representatives are selected from the pool at random. If selected, you are obliged to serve as a representative for a term of office. It's your civic duty. You will be provided with everything you need to do your duty to the best of your abilities. For instance, you will be appropriately accommodated, compensated, and advised.
Welcome to our first major sticking points.
Advised by whom? Wouldn't those advisors be the real decision makers?
My fellow citizens are morons. I value the ability to separate the representative wheat from the chaff.
We'll leave it, for now on that cliffhanger.
Rest assured that I have some interesting and contrary proposals for both those things. Tell me if you want more now, or if you prefer to wait for the printed manifesto so you can carry it on your person at all times, and refer to it constantly.
In the meantime, may my US subscribers endure the coming vote on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
And may the rest of us resist the urge to be thoroughly entertained by an event that has no real consequences for the evolution of US policy, domestic or foreign.
And with that provocative statement, I bid you adieu.
Lottocracy Now!