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Musings Report 2019-34 8-24-19 The Tyranny of the Majority and New Voting Systems
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Welcome to This Month's "Your Topics and Questions"
I've introduced a new feature for patrons and subscribers: every month, I'll try to respond to your questions and suggested topics. Please submit questions and topics through patreon.com or email chsm1th@comcast.net.
The Tyranny of the Majority and New Voting Systems
Patron Shanan L. recently posed two questions on the weaknesses in democracy and voting reforms.
"What are your thoughts on the move from "the Republic for which it stands" towards what is effectively a direct Democracy (where a majority with bad ideas get to use Government force)? What are you thoughts on new voting systems such as rank-choice as a more effective means to limit the negative impacts of our bifurcating two party system?"
Excellent questions, thank you, Shanan.
I think your succinct phrase "where a majority with bad ideas get to use Government force" describes the weakness in democracy feared by the Founding Fathers: the Tyranny of the Majority.
History suggests this can result from direct democracy (the Athenian model) or representative democracy (the Roman Republic model); either type of democracy is vulnerable to a bad idea being approved by the majority (slavery, Prohibition, declaring an offensive war, etc.)
Present-day democracy relies on three institutions to lower the risk of a bad idea becoming the law of land enforced by the central state, which as we know retains a monopoly on authorized force: a two-house legislature, in which one house might stalemate a bad idea that's won over the other house; an executive with the power to veto bad ideas and force the legislature to at least revisit the bad idea, and a judiciary with the power to declare the bad idea illegal.
None of these worked in the case of Prohibition, or the Chinese Exclusion Act; a presidential veto of the Exclusion Act was overridden by Congress and the Supreme Court ruled a number of times that the Act was legal.
So much for checks and balances. Ideas as crazy as .002% (the Chinese population in 1884) of the nation's work force being a threat inflame some emotional or economic appeal, and reason, morality and common sense are all jettisoned.
The only structural solution to the Tyranny of the Majority is radical decentralization of political and economic power, so bad ideas may take hold in one region or state but they would be limited to that locale rather than be forced down the throats of the entire nation. In cases of national interests such as immigration, national defense, etc., it isn't practical to expect a federal government to let states have the power to buck national policy.
The only other defense against bad ideas (or just impractical, unrealistic ideas such as Prohibition) is a decentralized free press and a public appetite (or tolerance) for public debate. Unfortunately, we're losing both of these safeguards: our media is largely owned by 6 corporations and heavily influenced by the super-wealthy and unelected government authorities.
As for ranked-choice voting: this idea is already in practice in many states, and it seems to be working just fine. The basic idea is that rather than be limited to voting for one candidate in a party slate, voters rank their preferences regardless of party affiliation. The voters' preferences are tallied so that the field is winnowed down and the top few candidates enter a run-off that selects the top two candidates for the final election.
One common criticism of ranked-choice voting is that it weakens party affiliations, which makes it difficult for legislators to pass controversial laws. In the past, party discipline enforced a near-unanimous vote along party lines.
It seems to me that being able to vote for candidates regardless of party and selecting a second and third choice is a good idea. But the real problem in our democracy is pay-to-play: politicians must raise such immense sums of money to fund campaigns that they're essentially fund-raising all the time, and there's no way to escape the influence of Big Money (corporations and the super-wealthy, who often use think tanks and other fronts to influence policy).
Although this might seem like a stretch, I think pay-to-play is not just a political problem; it originates in the way we create and distribute money at the top of the wealth-power pyramid: central and private banks create money by loaning it into existence (by issuing bonds, mortgages, student loans, etc.). As long as the power to create money out of thin air is limited to a relative handful of people and institutions, then this power will be applied to the political realm.
The only solution, as I outlined in the CLIME system, is to decentralize the creation of money via community-based cryptocurrencies.
Is this practical? We know that the power to create money out of thin air is the most jealously guarded right of the government and banks. They will never allow competitors to take some of this power.
But this centralized, debt-based fiat-currency system is highly prone to abuse and collapse, and the world may get a chance to launch new decentralized cryptocurrencies once debauched state currencies lose their value and legitimacy.
I first proposed this back in November 2013, when the idea qualified as tin-foil-hat for most people: Could Bitcoin (or equivalent) Become a Global Reserve Currency?
Interestingly, the bank of England's Mark Carney recently suggested that non-state issued currencies were the future:
In Unprecedented, Shocking Proposal, BOE's Mark Carney Urges Replacing Dollar With Libra-Like Reserve Currency:
"In the longer term, we need to change the game," Carney said. "When change comes, it shouldn’t be to swap one currency hegemon for another."
In other words, replacing the US dollar with the Chinese yuan wouldn't change anything that needs to be changed.
If the creation of money is decentralized, so is the distribution of that money, and the vast concentrations of wealth and credit that fuel pay-to-play simply wouldn't exist. That would solve our core political and economic problems.
Highlights of the Blog This Past Week
Is the U.S. Becoming a Third World Nation? 8/23/19
Our Wile E. Coyote Federal Reserve 8/21/19
A Wobbling Stock Market 8/19/19
From Left Field
Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech--long read but worth the effort...
The SF Bay Area is booming — and bracing for a slowdown (via Adam T.)
12 Reasons Why Negative Rates Will Devastate The World--the best summary I've found to date...
To Conquer World, China Needs to Get Smarter: A poorly educated workforce is a major impediment to its hopes of challenging the U.S. in technology. Only 30% of the work force in China has a high school education; that surprised me...
Bees Are Dropping Dead Across Brazil, And The Reason Is Absolutely Devastating -- overuse of industrial pesticides...
Toxic Nostalgia Breeds Derangement: A writer who charted the collapse of reality in Russia now sees it worldwide.
Bruce Schneier: "Click Here to Kill Everybody" | Talks at Google (52 min)
This Is What It Takes to Be in the 1% Around the World
From Brazil to India, a breakdown of the richest of the rich
Trump 2020: Be Very Afraid -- Matt T. weighs in....
How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition: Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone--even the rich--miserable.
"Elites naturally resist policies that threaten to undermine their advantages. But it is simply not possible to get rich off your own human capital without exploiting yourself and impoverishing your inner life, and meritocrats who hope to have their cake and eat it too deceive themselves."
Hitler and/or Chomsky on Capitalist Democracy-- weird but compelling....
Generation With No Future Erupts in Hong Kong Protests -- suppression won't fix anything....
"As Brooks Adams puts it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or bribe the powerless majority.” Gore Vidal
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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