Professional Politics Is Intrinsically Corrupt, Go For Direct Democracy Instead
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this is exactly why there are professional politicians: so that they, and individuals gravitating around them, can get absolutely corrupt (I have seen the process at the closest distance; little difference with Nero’s court).
What we are submitted to is not true democracy, but OLIGARCHIC REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY (ORD): power (kratia) of the people (demos) from the rule (archeon) of the few (oligos).
In a real democracy -that is, in a direct democracy- there are no professional politicians (because when there are, they are more powerful than We The People). In a real democracy, politics belongs to We The People: We The People rule, not just a few individuals.
There are ways to ensure this, including by distributing offices by drawing lots (“SORTITION”). If anybody can suddenly become the most important decision maker, for, say, a year, and subject to prosecution after leaving office, it will be impossible for an elite of power to become encrusted into a volume of corrupt barnacles so thick that the ship of state completely disappears in it… It will also motivate even janitors and farmers to know what is going on.
It is known how to do without professional politicians, because several Greek states and the Roman Republic, long succeeded to do so when they were as democratic as possible.
It is a bit intricate, as many types of assemblies and offices have to institute various checks and balances…. Including some drawn by lots … so everybody had to get ready to become a top politician, at least for a while. Pericles, according to Thucydides, characterized the Athenians as politically literate:
We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all
Many of Democracy’s contemporaries whose work is part of historiography were highly critical of Democracy, but that is likely coming from more than a millennium of dictatorial filtering. Plato and Aristotle were intimate, in love and in business, with actual kings, tyrants and autocratic generals (such as Antipater for Aristotle; Antipater went to war against Athenian democracy, defeated it, established it as a plutocracy and was the executor of Aristotle’s testament in more ways than one…) As Democracy was followed by two millennia of dictatorship, there was a self-selective effect: a monk from the European Middle Ages would reproduce a manuscript friendly to the idea of having a local prince instead of reproducing a book calling people such as the local prince “tyrants”…. Which they were. Making the local tyrant unhappy could often be only alleviated by long tortures of the miscreant…
One valid critique from Socrates is that Democracy sometimes put ignorant individuals in power where experts were needed. This can be corrected with guilds and orders, MERITOCRATIC DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS when one reaches positions of authority through merit and experience. The Middle Ages built such a system over more than a millennia, ending with orders for doctors, lawyers, engineers, masons, etc.
Politics is too important to be left to politicians who are adept at hiding their most important decisions, because that is where the real power lies.
Here is a crucial, even fatal, example of the present lack of true democracy:
NOBODY DEBATES INTELLIGENTLY THE WORLD’S MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE:
The official nuclear strategy of France for example is completely insane and nonsensical (and the unexpressed US nuclear strategy, or that of NATO, are similar, and just as inappropriate… Differently from the French, though, they have been smart enough to not talk of what they do not understand…). I will write a specific essay on it. I am not per se opposed to nukes (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however atrocious, were better than any potential alternative, as it turned out). What I am opposed to is the specifics of the French nuclear doctrine, as both extremely ineffective and hyper dangerous (a bit like the Chernobyl reactor).
However, this, the fate of humanity, no less, is not debated anywhere except probably in the Kremlin. As it is, individuals without knowledge of even physics, sitting in their hidden recesses like cockroaches, agitating their homicidal antennas, have elaborated secret doctrine to end humanity. And they present their conclusion with gravitas, heavily applauded by the other cockroaches they paid and honored, and who pretend to know stuff as they jet around the world.
Instead the fate of the universe ought to be the object of a cogent, loud and fierce public debate (with the aim to reduce the insanity).
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ISEGORIA And PARHEISIA, Pillars Of Democracy, Can Be Expanded To Billions Of People, Thanks To The Internet:
Direct democracy will prevent, as much as possible, the emergence of informal elites (e.g., charismatic orators, wealthy influencers) to manipulate public opinion better than any alternative. Isonomia and Parheisia, already perceived in antiquity as pillars of democracy enabling really free speech by all to all, should be enforced as much as possible. That super thinkers would have more influence is to be hoped for, and no sin, just the opposite.
AI assemblies, deliberating from various biases or viewpoints, to be used as advisers will help further.
If one of the woke AI we have today had been able to advise the Athenians, they would not have genocidized the city-island-state of Milo, and they would not have attacked and invaded Syracuse. Nor would they have left their entire fleet on a beach (that’s how they lost the last battle; Alcibiades had told them not to, and why, but he was no AI and they ignored him… once again and for the last time…
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With the Internet, it should be easier to institute a MUCH MORE DEMOCRATIC system than in antiquity, though… By TWEAKING the existing democracies (the referendum system already exists on a large scale in California; Brexit was a referendum, true, and a disastrous one, but it was applied in a country not used to taking decisions by itself, without any remedy, and when PM Cameron decided it, he thought he would win… Thus it originated as an authoritative trick, not a genuine consultation.)
Consulting with We The People could be done lightly, as in Switzerland: any “votation” of We The People has to go through the conventional Oligarchic Democratic Process (ODP), with all its checks and balances, to become law… Working through ODP avoids the notorious hysteria of Athenian democracy… By the way, Rome had the opposite problem: so many checks and balances that reforms, even when voted, could not be effected, thanks to the Optimates in the Senate… Julius Caesar had understood this perfectly and rammed necessary reforms… But he should have remembered that this was an unforgivable crime…
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Let’s go back to the question of Mob Rule, the old objection made against democracy as early as Plato. The Melian Dialogue shows its ruthlessness:”the strong do what they can, the weak do what they must”. It finished in complete idiocy. Athenian democracy executed generals not just after a failed battle. After a crucial and belated victory on the Persian financed) Spartan fleet, Athenian democracy executed the nine victorious admirals. The atrocious defeat of Athenian civilization with about half of the population killed promptly followed a s aresult… How to prevent hysteria or tyranny of the majority? Let me repeat: I propose an EVOLUTION, NOT A REVOLUTION: use a combination of Direct Democracy, debate, helped by AI assemblies (AI will be there, make it official and transparent…) Use them to IMPROVE the present Representative Oligarchic Democracy… By progressively forcing us to consult with intelligence.
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Athens had three political bodies where citizens gathered in numbers running into the hundreds or thousands. These are the assembly (in some cases with a quorum of 6,000), the council of 500 (boule), and the courts (a minimum of 200 people, on some occasions up to 6,000).
A citizen could sit twice, non consecutively, in the Boule, for a year in his lifetime.
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The traditional objection to augmenting Direct Democracy is to point out that Athens had at most 80,000 voters. Yes. But it was not easy: major laws required 6000 votes, and farmers had to travel more than a day to come and vote (hungry Athens was surrounded by the crucial arable land of Attica, full of voting Athenian farmers). After a while, it was found necessary to pay voters to travel, come and reach a quorum. With modern communications, people can just talk to their phone.
On top of this, the Roman Republic had several million voters, and could have survived, had the Optimates not been so stubborn and stupid, generation after generation, or had they not assassinated Caesar (long story). As it was, after the utterly chaotic civil war which followed Caesar’s assassination, a military dictatorship was established and Augustus made himself Tribune for life.
The Roman Republic was three centuries old when it started to fall to a plutocratic exponentiation (very long story). It could have been avoided with much more sagacity after the defeat of Carthage and its Hellenistic Allies in the Second Punic war (surviving in good intelligence and trade with a subordinated Carthage would have been part of it).
As it was, it was one war after another. Distant wars made the generals and the traders accommodating them, immensely wealthy; tax avoidance schemes, globalization, etc. followed… In the chaos, the ROMAN ABSOLUTE WEALTH LIMIT became less than a memory (I have computed it to be around 22 millions in 2022 $). When Tiberius Gracchus tried to reestablish it, the Optimates engaged in a process which broke the Republic in the 100 years which led to Caesar’s assassination.
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Both Athenian and Roman Direct Democracies were mostly defeated and ruined by plutocrats (even in the Peloponnesian War, the main shock to Athens, the Persian plutocratic superpower played the crucial role, by paying for everything, using Sparta as a telerobotic terminator)
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Rome’s Direct Democracy had similar limitations for its various institutions (Consul for one year, and could not be re-elected for a decade). However in emergencies, Rome could elect a dictator with the powers of an absolute king. Cincinatus was elected to the highest offices several times, including dictator twenty years apart, because Rome was being invaded by foreign armies… But still he was a farmer…. The first time, having defeated the enemy in a spectacular battle thanks to a massive mobilization and innovative methods which involved all of Rome making hundreds of thousands of stakes in a couple of days. Cincinatus returned to his plow within two weeks…
Democracy was not invented just because it is the natural state of human beings as created by millions of years of evolution. The interest civilization has in democracy is that democracy makes civilization more intelligent. This is why greater democracy tends to win wars.
Want democracy?
Want more intelligence in saving civilization from destruction?
Proscribe professional politicians!
Patrice Ayme
Note: The thoroughly corrupt present US political system seems very far from Direct Democracy. Systems in other oligarchic representative democracies are not as bad, but it is still the same general problem. Timid steps have been taken, such as term limits. The US went overboard with an amendment preventing more than two presidential terms. France forbids two consecutive terms, and that is wiser: the only reason California governor Newson, a Getty creature, has a chance to run for president is that Obama can’t be a candidate again… It is likely that Obama would become a much better president if he was reelected. California’s governor Brown was better in his second 8 year passage.
In any case the California mandatory referendums (1856 CE) and initiative system (1911 CE) has worked very well, and intensely, for more than a century, and is compatible with ORD … And the first start to do for other nation-states would be to imitate it if they want to augment the Democratic Index.
That little light is a giant harvester working the fields. Enough fields to feed the two million people who call the area home, surrounded by mountains centered around Western Europe’s largest lake. The Swiss and the French have been careful to maintain self-sufficiency in food production… Which would be necessary if world trade collapsed as it did when the Roman state disnitegrated. By the way, Caesar defended Geneva successfally against the Helvetiae…
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