I have mentioned in a previous post how the lazyman rule affects our lives in more ways than we can imagine. In particular, it affects our behavior and development as a society. In the previous two posts I have described a few ideas on how to cope with the consequences of that rule in the areas of economics and other sub-areas of societal management. In this post, my plan is to provide the reader with a few more ideas on the area of politics.
Public Monitoring
Monitoring the performance of government is of the utmost importance if we ought to have a corruption-free government. The System for Accountability Management (SAM) is one way to achieve that, whereby every single public work is monitored in digital form and available for review by the public.
SAM also keeps track of the political career of public servants. Therefore, it can be used as a tool for investigating and deciding on which candidate to vote or avoid voting in upcoming elections.
Last, every political decision, be it the creation and update of laws or the spending of public money is also going to be managed electronically. This will allow citizens to monitor every single aspect of political decisions, and also take part in it, as further discussed next.
More Power to the People
Another important change that needs to be made in the political process is having the people intervene in any sphere of power whenever they deem necessary. Let me give a few examples to clarify that idea.
Let us say a community is represented by certain politician for designing and implementing laws. In the political system of a Just Society, if the people feels the politician is poorly representing their will, they can change the political process very efficiently so it reflects their desires. There are a few measures they can take to mend the situation.
Firstly, they can participate in any vote the political representative participates. If a certain percentage of the citizens the politician represents (25%, 33%, or 51% of the population?) casts a vote and agrees on a certain decision (51% or more of every vote?), then they can override the politicians vote. Remember, all these results go on-line and if a politicians vote keeps mismatching the citizens decision, this is recorded in their political profile as well. Therefore, it is in the interest of the politician to be in-line with the citizens desires and demands.
Another option is to allow citizens to request the replacement of the politician in case they are deeply dissatisfied with him or her. This is already possible in some political models nowadays, but the process is generally slow. With the digitization of the political process, it is expected that changes in representatives are made more efficiently. Note that such change must be taken very seriously and would have to be triggered by a majority vote by the entire population. And because it requires the involvement of all the population associated with the politician, the process may endure more than desired.
Community Politics
In large population agglomerations, it is often difficult to understand who is in charge of representing the people of a certain community in specific issues. Communities themselves must have a better way to represent themselves in the spheres of power so they are capable of demanding their rights and desires from the public decision makers.
In the political system of a Just society, the decisions should be made bottom-up, that is, from the people to the politicians. The community leaders would gather the citizens desires about a certain topic, and pass that on to the mayor or legislative representative for that community. The representative would bring to fruition laws that better reflect the citizen's will, and as long as they don't go against the core societal tenets. Similarly, a mayor (or governor or president) would allocate resources in a way that best satisfies all the communities associated with its town or state.
I know that I am over-simplifying the political process. The political ladder has many more steps than the ones just mentioned. The point I would like to make is that the community leaders should have more influence on the decision-making process. Again, how much every politician and community leader can satisfy the community demands is reflected on his political profile and therefore highlights his or her skills as a competent or incompetent politician.
Minute Changes, Long-Term Progress
Honestly, I believe all these changes are doable nowadays, even without a complete overwrite of the current political system. They really try to cope with two main deficiencies in our political system: transparency and communication between citizens and their representatives.
If we use the existing technology, we can improve upon the solutions to these problems. We just need to overcome the lobbying and greed from the military-industrial complex and our current and already corrupted politicians in power. But that shouldn't be too hard though, should it? :) Well, when working together people can accomplish grand feats and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. All we need is the will to do so.
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