What this site tells you
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Razor wire as a museum exhibit –
a big part of where Democracy Two is taking us. The story of the picture is here |
In two words,
what this site is about is:
Amplifying Democracy
Bit of a platitude, that? Right, but lodge it anyway, please. You’ll soon come to places where you say “What!?” It helps if you keep in mind that everything here is solely about amplifying democracy.
Know also that when the jigsaw slots into place, you won’t believe it ever looked mysterious.
the problem that this site addresses is:
Democracy means that the people rule. In most countries now it’s a semi-official religion that the people already rule, we’re so lucky. But not a lot of us feel lucky. Our ‘rule’ seems hollow and our governance disappointing. We suspect that ‘the people’ may not be up to the job.
And in 100 words,the answer that this site offers is:
The people don’t rule. Democracy stopped half-way. What we have is a prototype, better than the minority dominations that went before, but in many countries only marginally better. Next step is an adjustment to put power very fully in the hands of people, like you and me. This step:
- requires nothing unnatural or complicated from either of us, or from anyone,
- leads to certain inexorable results, headed by social stability, and
- will begin to be implemented within years, not decades, of the principle of enriched democracy getting onto the map.
As you see, I am trying to give you a smooth path in. I’ve learned the hard way (having punted the theme over 26 years) that not all I’m saying is easy. There are lots of propositions in here that within a minute or two minutes you dismiss as rubbish. In 40 minutes or an hour, though, they look different. I’m alerting you to that factor, and giving you these ascending introductions so that you have a framework in mind.
Here is the 500 word summary:
The nub of D2, Democracy Version TwoIn 1910 not one country on the planet was a democracy within today’s meaning of the term – which is that all citizens can vote, male or female, propertied or not. Today, 199 out of 203 countries claim to be democracies. Democracy has won, we’re told: the people rule.
Well do they/we? D2’s case says: no way. The very best we can say is that rule is now by a clique that the majority ratifies. That’s progress, but it’s not great progress.
Can we do better? Yes we can! (to borrow a phrase.) If 100% democracy is each of us making the rules for our own life, subject to other people’s assent, no country is more than a third of the way there. D2 advances things to about halfway.
How do we do that? By one big basic simple move: putting power in the hands of people who don’t go to the rallies, don’t shout the slogans, don’t wear the T-shirts, are chary of the polls, and can’t spell ideolagy.
Look at context. All of history has been a (lurching) march away from the rule of the few towards the rule of all. Lately, the world has emerged from the rugby-ball conception of power – my side must possess it and your side must not – and has at least theoretically embraced the idea that power works best when it is spread around. The basics are in place for the next rung.
That rung takes us out of the traditional check-and-balance formula – restrict the powers of leaders – and introduces the principle of increasing the powers of voters.
The target we seek is that I am optimally free to achieve anything I like from my society, and you are optimally free to debar me from achieving that which you do not want me to achieve.
The simple way to implement this aim is: let any community exercise the powers that its voters mandate it to exercise.
Envisage tens of thousands of power-wielding bodies all over the country – villages, regions, suburbs, cities, parliament. Your first thought is probably of cost, chaos, conflict, confusion. To get past that, let your mind dwell on tens of thousands of majorities – the majority of your neighbours, the majority of your boss’s neighbours, the majority of the tea-lady’s neighbours. Picture all these majorities regularly and repeatedly calling leaders to account, and try to see a leader winning an election by costing voters money or plunging them into war. What you will find it easier to envisage, is a stronger and sounder society than you had thought possible.
Those majorities are what do it, becoming a built-in balance reaching further and surer than any constitutional clause. When people vote in a variety of contexts for aims that matter to them, from group pride to ideological passion to drainpipe maintenance to reducing taxes, society’s foundation will be solid. Some hot issues will evaporate. All others will be resolved by compromise. Leaders whose ambitions unsettle the lives of voters will speedily become former leaders.
Right, dear reader, I hope I’ve given you enough introduction. If you want my 1000-word Manifesto, it’s here waiting for you. Or if you're thinking -- and you'd be in excellent company -- that I can't possibly mean this stuff, I am ignoring human nature and ignoring reality and so on, take a look here for a bold confession of the 10 Big Mistakes that everybody sees before I finish my sentence.
Otherwise ... this whole site is one large unabashed message, telling you that D2 is good for you. I hope you'll explore around. I know that for a while you'll be bit put off -- "what the bleep is this guy saying?" I'm advising you to lodge that basic theme-song: Democracy is only half-way achieved; the other half is the real advance. Look through this site with that thought in mind, in a little while I believe you'll start to see a very alluring vista ahead.
Denis Beckett
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written by Ian C-G , June 05, 2010
written by Oliver M Harris , July 05, 2010
That the majority of the tea-lady’s chinas, and their chinas’ chinas (to borrow a catchy one) will ‘regularly call leaders to account’ is holy smoke, which belongs in a heaven, where the lovers are Italian or at least southern. You have to be Rompol (romantic politician)to believe that. In practice:
i) They/we rummage blindly in the rag-bag of reported political ‘facts’ swayed this way and that by the charisma and promises of corrupt pollies.
ii) We are divided several times into two types: (not only those who divide the world into two types and those who do not but)
a) Those who live in the world of ideas, and those to whom things matter more (the bourgeois) the latter are notoriously apathetic about politics. To obviate involvement and the fear of being put out they choose cliques and are swung en masse. We are all cognitive misers a/c to the shrink Scott Peck, and take short-cuts when poss.
b) Those who can swing texts from continent to continent and those who are on the wrong side of the digital divide another D2. The gap may be growing, even some IT professionals battle to keep up with the acronym splurge.
People are not wrong, but to ‘amplify power’ you need to excite them by open-ended education to the point where they can stand.
Still nice idea, and strength to all arms involved.
Oliver M Harris
written by Garrick , March 25, 2011
All it would take would be a back end application that can record mobile phone users' verified details and issue them with a pin number they can use to "vote" in various polls regarding what is happening in their immediate physical environment regarding service delivery etc. And a network of startup people to go and stand in some malls around the bigger metropols, doing free signups for the people out there who want to be "heard", maybe one or all of the mobile networks would get on board in this revolutionary process, and make it free. Are you reading CellC, Vodacom and MTN... a little reinvestment opportunity for having one of the most expensive call rates in the world.
Once it rolls it will be massive and then once there is significant exposure and sign up, governments can be approached and they will have to listen.
Where can I sign up?
Thanks for the article, Denis.
written by Amanda Watson , April 02, 2011
Question is, politicians follow party policy, not residents/voters/taxpayers wishes, so how to break that cycle?
written by Frances Kendall , June 01, 2011
