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Chapter 9
The Demos Issues

Here the demos issues will be discussed in general terms. The specific issues that should be included in the demos will be discussed later.

The issues that the demos votes on would be few, simple, and those most fundamental or relevant to the formation of a social contract which sets some parameters within which our nation must function. Of crucial importance is that only a limited number of issues would be voted on. No matter how convenient the voting process might be, few people would want or be able to intelligently vote on a large number of issues. The number of issues that has been included in this work is a dozen. Perhaps a couple more issues could be included. Of highest importance is that they are the right issues, the most central or fundamental issues dealing with the relationship among ourselves. The demos would handle only society’s most central or fundamental issues. The other branches of government would handle the myriad details required by our complex society within the parameters set by the demos.

Given the complexity of modern societies how could only a dozen issues ever be enough? This is because when the correct central issues are chosen the whole system, the whole problem of our relationship, becomes simplified and efficient.

There are some analogies we can look at. Consider the incredible complexity of life with its hundreds of thousands or millions of life forms all complexly interrelated into vast ecosystems. Yet it is based upon a genetic code at the center of which lies only four chemical substances. Everything genetic was a difficult, unclear muddle for us until correct understanding was achieved. Then much that was complex and difficult became easier to understand.

In its early days chemistry was more alchemy than science. Much was done by trial and error, and there were way more failures than successes. Over time certain patterns became evident, and in time the Periodic Table of Elements was created. Chemistry was transformed. We now live in a world filled with exotic human-made materials and devices made possible by our new understanding of the beauty and simplicity lying at the heart of chemistry.

Consider the modern computer and its huge variety of software programs. All of this complexity has simplicity at its heart. An electric charge which is present or not at a given point in a circuit is taken to mean either 1 or 0. The 1s and 0s considered together in various groups are built into higher numeric, alphabetical, and logical systems such as 1, 2, 3,… and A, B, C,… Out of this elemental stuff commands and functions are constructed and programs of mind-boggling complexity are created.

With its evolving complexity of galaxies, stars, and planets, all obeying a few physical laws, the universe serves as another example of a complex system with simplicity at its heart.

As with genetics, chemistry, computers, and the universe itself, a beautiful, elegant, and extremely diverse and complex society may be created which has at its heart a surprisingly simple center. We have a bit of serendipity here. To make possible a demos consisting of an electorate of people possessing varying capability, the most central questions or issues of a society must be simple enough to be understood by everyone. And, as it happens, they are! When just the right issues are included and presented clearly they are all easily understood, and, moreover, there need be only a few issues included.

Why is this so? It is so because simplicity lies at the heart of every system. The key word here is system. A system is an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a unitary whole. Even complex systems have a relatively few interconnected and interrelated parts and processes that function well together as a whole. If the things and interactions being considered are merely a loose, unrelated collection and do not form a system, then they are merely a complex chaos.

What passes for government today is not a system, or, at any rate, is a poor and unnecessarily complex one. That is why government today seems such an unfathomable mess. It is barely controlled chaos.

It is not only by chance that we are chaotic. It is by making our government complex and difficult to understand by the majority that the wealthy minority maintains its advantage. Take America’s several thousand page federal tax code. It started out with only eleven pages. It became complex over the years in response to the desire of the wealthy to evade paying taxes and to obscure the fact that they were doing so.

Obfuscation, deliberately making cloudy or unclear, is one of the principal tools used by the wealthy to maintain their advantage. The wealthy would have you believe that modern society is so complex that only they, the specialists, can understand and manage it. Nothing could be further from the truth. The most central and important issues of any social contract and resulting society are always few and simple, just like so much else in nature. All that is necessary is that the correct few issues be selected. (There would be those who did their best to slip some incorrect, i.e., less important, issues into the demos to deprive the truly important issues of their rightful place and to render the demos cloudy, unclear, and incapable of accomplishing its task.)

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Chapter 9 The Demos Issues

Chapter 9
The Demos Issues