Democracy is understood as government ‘for, of, by’ the people, but can also be viewed as governance by majority consensus. Modern democracies are ‘DINOs (Democracies in Name Only)’ that give a false sense of consensus and are often run by a minority of tyrants. In John Brennan’s book ‘Against Democracy’, he describes political ignorance as a major problem and proposes only the knowledgeable should vote, but the author instead suggests that the system should protect against the need for global knowledge and ‘harness the wisdom of the crowds.’ Rather than focus on what government power is used for, the process of delegating the power is more important and that power should all come from consent.
The problem of government is a ‘consensus building problem’ so the society should create a process that protects people’s ability to reach consensus. Corrupt powers will divide, censor and use propaganda to prevent people from working together, but the key is the consensus process.
The Declaration of Independence declares the reason why the founders were justified in dissolving the existing government and establishing a new one. The principle of independence is ‘the foundation of freedom and democracy,’ the opposite of which leads to dependence and slavery. Furthermore, independence is a precondition of consent and ‘consent is a precondition to legitimate democratic government’. Independence requires self-reliance and responsibility.
Judging how good a democratic process should not depend on a ‘predicted outcome’ or the ‘ends’. ‘This “end justifies the means” philosophy is the seed of genocide and totalitarian utopianism. The means must justify themselves and be consistent with truth and integrity of the community consensus. The means must produce self-correcting results.’ Hence a critical foundation to the democratic process is to allow people to secede and be independent despite any disruption it causes.
Most people rely on the perception of public opinion instead of using independent judgment. Hence the media can make a minority be perceived as the majority and manipulate public opinion. ‘One approach is to implement private, incorruptible, continuous polling of the population’ to gauge what people truly think and get independent honest opinions.
‘Even if you believe in the “rule of law”, you must first reach consensus on what the rules are and then continue to reach consensus on when the rules have been violated.’ ‘In some sense, the entirety of the “law” should be the process by which rules are made and disputes resolved.’ ‘Remember, for the purpose of this section the entirety of the “law” is the democratic process, and not the “rules passed by those put in power”. Hence theoretically a democratic process can correct any written law.
‘The concept of direct democracy is that the people should not have to rely upon representatives.’ and that all laws are voted by the people. However direct democracy ‘will be dominated by special interests’, can be controlled by the media, would require advanced technology to maintain, would be ineffective to operate the executive and judicial branches, and ultimately won’t build consensus.
Hence true democracy has the following properties.
- Composed of independent people
- Independence defined as ability for minority to secede
- Resistant to covert control by minorities (the 0.01%)
- Survive a systematically misinformed population
- Aggregate wisdom from local knowledge
- Not require individuals to possess global knowledge
- Empower the individual rather than disempower
- Protect the majority from a minority
- Protect the minority from the majority
- Failure transparent to all
- Process to recover from failure obvious to all
- Empower people to reach a new consensus
- Not overly biased toward the status quo
