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Chapter 28
Why This Democracy and Not Some Other?

Many forms of democracy have been proposed over the centuries. Electronic networks such as the Internet make possible instantaneous voting by millions of people and open up a whole new world of democratic possibilities. One possibility is the creation of a mechanism and methodology for the electorate’s bringing forward and voting on any issue that it thought to be important, a sort of ongoing nationwide referendum on an unending stream of issues brought to the table. On first thought, something like this may seem like a good idea. And yet, the democracy presented in this book does not include such an idea. Now that consensus democracy has been fully described, the question can be asked, why this democracy and not some other?

Reviewing consensus democracy briefly, the electorate of the demos would participate in a true democratic process by directly deliberating and voting on twelve of our nation’s most fundamental issues. But it would be a limited democratic process, not full unopposed democracy. Although the consensus of the demos on the included issues would vary slowly over time, the issues themselves would always remain the same. All other issues would be handled by other areas of government or society. The consensus of the demos would set some parameters within which the rest of government and all of society must function. Within the limits of its assigned powers, the demos would reign supreme. But its powers would compliment and counterbalance the powers of the other branches of government, not exceed and overpower them.

If and when we moved beyond our current American plutocracy by the inclusion in our government of some measure of true democracy, our goals should not be to indiscriminately minimize plutocracy and maximize direct democracy without limit. Our goals should be to minimize dominance and to maximize justice and the freedom and happiness of everyone. This would be best accomplished not by creating an unlimited democracy but by adding to our government just the right kind and amount of direct democracy.

Why is this so? Surely, an open-ended process in which “we the people” could vote on any issue we thought sufficiently important would be a more perfect democratic process and produce greater justice, freedom, and happiness than one that limited the electorate’s voting to only twelve specific issues, wouldn’t it?

At first idealistic glance this would seem to be the case. But several factors limit both the possibility and the desirability of full, unopposed, direct democracy and an open-ended process in which a continuous stream of issues could be brought to the table.

Some of the limits placed on the direct democracy that would be practiced within the demos are demanded by necessity. Millions of people simply cannot be involved in the myriad details and decisions that must be made in a complex modern state. Of necessity, we need specialists, i.e., elected and appointed officials, to handle the details for us.

Since the demos could handle only a few issues, it is of supreme importance that the issues are chosen wisely. They must be those among our nation’s most central, important, and fundamental issues 1) which are the most badly or unjustly handled by the current branches of government and 2) which lend themselves admirably to just resolution within the demos. To our good fortune, the handful of issues which best meet these criteria are the most important and fundamental issues of all. All other issues run a distant second at best.

To make it possible for a demos consisting of an electorate of people possessing varying capability to deliberate and vote on the most central questions or issues of a society, the issues must be simple enough to be understood by everyone, and they must be easy to vote on. As it happens, when just the right issues are included and presented clearly, they are all easily understood, and, moreover, only a few issues need to be included. And because the demos issues and the process of deliberating and voting on them would always remain the same, effective participation as a member of the demos may be taught to everyone during their high school years and by personal experience over the years.

Convenience is also important. Most of us lead busy personal and work lives. As important as it is to be conscientious citizens, most of us are simply not interested in making politics a centerpiece of our lives. Most members of the demos electorate would not be willing to spend the many hours or make the large effort that would be required to adequately study, deliberate, and vote on an unending stream of issues. Voters would be much more willing to quickly and conveniently tweak votes on occasion that they already have riding on just a dozen familiar issues.

In an unrealistic, idealized scenario, which is decidedly not the case in real life, even if various individuals and groups thought themselves to be high-minded and to be honestly trying to promote the greater good as they understood it, an unending stream of referendums on issues would strongly favor the desires and actions of the most doggedly politically active among us, those for whom political ideas and actions are all-consuming. Such people are often the most radical among us. Thus, the radical is favored over the moderate view. And referendums in a situation where the entire electorate is not required to vote can be passed by a relative minority of the electorate, usually a radical minority.

There is another very important consideration affecting the clarity of issues in the demos. If any issues could be brought to the table in a continuous stream, then unscrupulous people with hidden agendas could bring to the table issues deviously written to hide their true intent.

We face this problem in the political arena today both in the area of the raising and giving of funds for political purposes and in the creation, presentation, and passage of referendums. When investigated using often difficult detective work, groups with the most innocent and idealistic names and professed intentions are usually found to have devious, self-serving intent.

Millions of demos voters would have no hope of staying on top of an unending, fast-paced stream of political intrigue and sleight of hand. Like our political process today, only the most intelligent, sly, cunning, and unscrupulous could win what would be a complex, never-ending political war. However, these millions could easily understand and intelligently vote their true self-interest on a fixed set of simple, clearly presented issues. A fixed set of issues would also protect the demos from being deliberately sabotaged, bogged down, or sidetracked by the introduction of a blizzard of lesser issues.

These are just some of the basic physical and political facts of life that preclude the possibility of a pure democracy, i.e., a full, unopposed, direct democracy, and make voting on an open-ended stream of issues bad ideas. And we have not yet arrived at the greatest difficulty of all with pure democracy.

Recall that the pure republican or supposedly representative form of government fails because ‘representatives’ never really represent all of us equally or fairly but represent themselves and their wealthy clients first and best. In fact, most ‘representatives’ are members of the wealthy class, which holds a permanent hegemony of power. Thus, the pure republican form is really only plutocracy, a tyranny of the wealthy few against the many in which the few take, hoard, and wield as much power and wealth as they can manage without limit.

But unopposed or insufficiently opposed direct democracy would be every bit as dangerous and damaging to a society as unopposed or insufficiently opposed plutocracy. It would result in another kind of tyranny which would grind everyone down to the level of the mediocre middle. The gifted, the creative, the inventive, the enterprising, and the merely different would be feared, hated, and crushed by the majority under simple majority rule. The simple, “you must be like me” political majority would use the state to force its religious, moral, and behavioral views down the throats of everyone.

The notion of democracy is more complex and sophisticated than merely the simple majority always getting its way. The rights and values of minorities, including the wealthy minority, must also be protected.

But many people, in fact, the majority of people, do not possess a sophisticated, pluralistic understanding of democracy. Simple majority rule is the whole of most people’s thinking. Those holding a particular religious, moral, or behavioral view tend to clump together in a group—the herd effect. Members of the majority herd on a given issue take their sheer numbers and might as proof of the correctness and normalcy of their view and reason enough to bully and crush those with other views.

Being members of the aristocratic minority, the writers of our constitution feared the common people, “the mob.” That is why they included in their constitution and government as little democracy as politically possible at the time. (And the ‘democracy’ they included is not really true, i.e., direct, democracy at all.) All minorities—racial, religious, moral, behavioral, class, etc.—have good reason to fear the simple political majority. If this majority ever held supreme political power, it would squash everyone in its path.

While the wealthy few in our current American plutocracy engage in the decidedly negative activity of taking an undue portion of the fruit of everyone else’s labor, they serve the positive function of preventing the simple political majority from ruling and suppressing everyone into a mass conformity. Those with the majority religious, moral, and behavioral views would turn America into a religious theocracy or something of that sort if they could manage it. But they (along with the vast majority of the populace) are held in a permanent state of physical, political, and economic impotence by the powerful, wealthy few who possess superior organization, knowledge, technology, and capability.

The founders feared the mob for good reason. As we set out to correct the injustice and malfunction of our current American plutocracy, we do well to share the founders’ fear (but not their greed) and proceed with great caution. A kind and amount of democracy must be crafted and added to our government that counterbalances and compliments the current powers in just the right way. To ascertain the right way, let us examine the problem.

Our government was designed in such a way as to keep a perpetual hegemony of power and wealth firmly in the hands of an elite few. There are three principal means by which this hegemony is maintained: 1) By design, there exists no political body within our government which brings the rest of the populace together as a political force that may effectively oppose the hegemony. 2) Also by design, there exists no electoral mechanism by which the non-wealthy members of the populace may select for office people who truly represent them. 3) Using the powers of government, the few create a suitable arsenal of tools to further secure and perpetuate their hegemony of power and wealth.

Although politically difficult to execute, the solution to the problem is easy enough to see. Create a countermeasure for each of the three principal means by which the hegemony of power and wealth is maintained: 1) Create a new political body—a fourth branch of government, a demos consisting of the entire electorate deliberating and voting directly on just the right few issues of central importance—that possesses sufficient political power to oppose and counterbalance the hegemony of power currently held by the wealthy. 2) Create an electoral mechanism which empowers the non-wealthy members of the populace—indeed, all members of the populace, including the wealthy—to elect to office people who truly resemble (in body, mind, interests, and pocketbook) and represent them. 3) Once a president, senators, and representatives are seated (and select staffs) who truly resemble and represent all of the people, then they will use the powers of government to in part dismantle and in part modify the arsenal of tools that the powerful, wealthy few have created to secure and perpetuate their hegemony and to create new tools that serve all of us.

We do not have to deal directly with item three. If items one and two are accomplished, then item three follows. That is, if we created a demos with sufficient power to oppose the hegemony and an electoral mechanism that brought truly representative representatives to office, then the now fairly balanced powers of government would be used to serve all of us. We should place into the demos enough power to be sufficient to its task of counterbalancing and complimenting the powers of the current branches of government but, to avoid the tyranny that a democracy can become, no more power than necessary.

With these things in mind, we now continue our examination of the consensus democracy presented in this book.

Consensus democracy is very different than the majority-rule democracy of old in which the majority wins and everyone else loses. Voting is not periodic but ongoing. Every member of the demos electorate has a vote continuously riding on each issue included in the demos which he or she may change at any time. Every vote always counts. Nobody wins entirely, and nobody loses entirely. Consensus democracy automatically gives weight to and thus protects minority views because it gives weight to and protects all views. In a manner similar to the homeostatic functions in living organisms, e.g. body temperature and the rate of heartbeat, the current consensus always hangs in a just balance between the views, avoiding the extremes and hovering about a moderate norm, the golden mean.

It is a requirement of consensus-style issues that they be mathematical or numeric in nature. Although the members of the demos electorate would not encounter mathematical calculations, under the hood the demos computers would be constantly doing cyclical mathematical calculations on the voting results. This mathematical requirement for consensus-style issues is fortuitous in two ways.

First, although power may be and is exerted in many ways—physical, political, economic, social, psychological, etc.—the overall intent and result is primarily economic warfare that the few wage against the rest of the populace. Too much economic power is held by too few people who then use that power to economically exploit the rest of the populace. Therefore, the principal solution to the problem must be economic. And economic issues lend themselves excellently to the judicious shifting of power and to the mathematical treatment required of demos issues. The simple graphic and numeric presentation of issues also serves well the requirements that demos issues be easily understood and clearly presented.

Second, the graphically and numerically presented demos issues contain no references to and do not favor any particular gender, race, religion, behavior, favored views, etc. As the issues were democratically deliberated, the abstract nature of the issues would make ideas and the ability to peacefully persuade more important than individual personalities or groups. The soundness of one’s arguments becomes more important than the color of one’s skin, etc.

Briefly stated, the issues that would be included in the demos are these: federal tax rate, tax burden division, corporate tax scale, income tax scale, inheritance tax scale, tax revenue allocation, amount of national debt or savings, the length of the Standard Workweek, minimum wage, and the election of the president, senators, and representatives.

Nine demos issues in the list deal entirely with abstract economic matters. As per item one discussed earlier, these issues are designed to place into the hands of the demos electorate sufficient economic power to oppose and counterbalance the hegemony of power currently held by the wealthy. Five issues deal with taxation. One issue deals with tax revenue allocation. Three issues deal with other money matters. The sole power to tax at the federal level would be removed from the other branches of government and placed entirely into the hands of the demos electorate, along with the initial allocation of collected tax revenues and the determination of the size of the national debt, the amount of the minimum wage, and the length of the Standard Workweek.

As for item two discussed earlier—create an electoral mechanism which empowers non-wealthy (and, indeed, all) members of the populace to elect to office people who truly resemble and represent them—the last three issues that would be included in the demos—the election of the president, senators, and representatives—are this mechanism. At first glance one might offer the correction that these last three issues are not economic in nature. But it is by their capacity to buy elections within our current electoral process and place primarily wealthy and wealth-serving people into government that the wealthy few possess their immense amount of undue power.

The demos-style method of electing the president, senators, and representatives increases our measure of true, i.e., direct, democracy 1) by placing the electoral process directly into the hands of the entire electorate, eliminating the electoral insanity that we have today in which people are elected to office by only a small portion of the electorate and 2) by allowing each member of the demos electorate to vote directly for any person he or she deems fit who constitutionally qualifies for office, as opposed to selecting a name from a short list of candidates financed and, therefore, preselected by the wealthy as is done today.

As discussed in an earlier chapter, the dilemma in our current electoral system for both liberal and conservative voters who are not wealthy is that they must vote wealthy and wealth-serving candidates into office just to get a few bones thrown to them. Once in office, the wealthy and wealth-serving then proceed to take trillions of dollars from the middle class and the working poor while giving trinkets in return.

In the demos-style electoral system, wealth-serving candidates and non-wealthy voters are no longer joined at the hip. Non-wealthy voters may directly elect officeholders who truly represent their own interests. While they may remain at odds over some moral issues, non-wealthy liberals and conservatives are enabled to reach out to each other over other moral issues, particularly issues involving economic fairness.

One might question whether the three demos issues involving the election of the president, senators, and representatives possess the qualities of abstractness and objectivity that are here claimed for demos issues. While it is true that voters and candidates for and people elected to office possess qualities like gender, race, particular political, economic, and moral views, prejudices, etc., the mechanism presented in this work for the election of the president, senators, and representatives is entirely abstract and fair. It gives equal voice and vote to every member of the electorate. Although they may not always choose wisely, it gives members of the electorate the potential to elect people to office who truly resemble and represent them, something utterly lacking in our current electoral process. And it opens the way to a more representative variety of faces and views in officeholders than has ever existed before.

Also of major importance, although the demos electorate would actually vote on only twelve specific issues, they may bring any relevant ideas into the deliberations and debate of those issues. While the deliberations on the nine economic issues would focus on the issues themselves, when discussing the pros and cons of particular candidates for office who express various political, economic, and social positions and proposals, the electorate would discuss a host of significant issues and views. All such deliberations would be accessible to everyone including people holding official capacities in the other branches of government. In this way the members of the demos may express opinions and exert influence well beyond the strict limits of their voting.

Quite aside from the placing of too much power into the hands of the wealthy few or the simple majority is the intrusion and domination in our lives of big government. Plutocracy creates a host of political, economic, and social ills. The attempt to mitigate them without correcting their underlying cause, the plutocracy itself, produces a huge, intrusive, dysfunctional government. But unrestricted direct democracy would make politics the centerpiece of our lives and create a monolithic state every bit as meddlesome and dysfunctional as our current mess. By its judicious distribution and balance of power, consensus government would greatly reduce our many political, economic, and social problems permitting a significant reduction in the overall size and intrusiveness of government, thus increasing the power and freedom of every individual. Also, since the electorate directly controls the amount it taxes itself in support of government, it directly controls over the overall size of government.

The consensus democracy presented in this book empowers the American people in two fundamental ways: It gives them direct control over nine of our government’s most important economic powers, powers which the wealthy few currently use to wage economic war against the rest of the populace. And it empowers them to elect to office representatives who truly represent them and who will create fair laws, rules, and practices within government and for the rest of society. These judiciously selected powers redress the unjust distribution of powers in the government created by the aristocratic founders when they wrote the constitution and created our current form of government.

Consensus democracy does not make the mistake of overreacting to current imbalance and injustice by including too much power. Nor does it make the mistake of including an unlimited number of complex, subjective issues that are best handled by other areas of government and in other parts of society. It sets right what is really wrong with the American government, its current distribution of power, and then wisely does no more. In doing this, it makes possible the correction or mitigation of most of our nation’s other political, economic, and social ills.

Briefly summarized, the partial redesign of the American government presented in this book is as follows:

• The powers of our government are redistributed by adding a new fourth branch with limited powers, a demos, which is set in a judicious balance with the current branches of government, the powers of which as a result of the change are rendered more limited.
• The demos consists of the entire American electorate practicing a new form of democracy called consensus democracy which, unlike the “winner take all” results of majority-rule democracy, achieves an ever-current moderate consensus of the entire electorate, a just “golden mean,” on twelve of the most central issues concerning our society.
• Nine demos issues involve the setting of the size and distribution of our tax burden in a greatly simplified tax system, the length of the Standard Workweek, the size of the minimum wage, the size of the national debt, and the overall distribution of collected tax revenues. The demos consensus on these issues set parameters within which our nation must function.
• Three issues involve a new demos electoral system in which candidates need not be servants to “Big Money” and members of the electorate may reach out to each other over time and distance to elect truly representative officeholders who resemble them in body, mind, pocketbook, and interests.
• In senate and house, two changes are made to democratize their procedures.

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