You’re Fixing Everything Except the Actual Problem
Fourteen democracy reforms that are not really helping
It is well-established that the decisions made by congress do not reflect the will of the people. A substantial body of political-science research finds that American public policy is considerably more responsive to affluent citizens and organized business interests than to average voters. The evidence does not show that every law benefits the wealthy. It does show that political influence is distributed profoundly unequally.
The best-known empirical support is the Gilens and Page study of 1,779 policy issues. It found that economic elites and business-oriented groups had substantial independent effects on policy, while average citizens had little or no independent effect once the preferences of the other groups were considered.
“Testing Theories of American Politics,” Cambridge University Press, 18 September 2014
There is talk nowadays that the American system is an oligarchy, mediated by popular elections, but not actually a democracy. However, some analysts would say, “It’s still a democracy–it’s just not a very good one.” It depends on how you define the word ‘democracy.’ If we allow ourselves a narrow definition, based on the word’s Greek origins, ‘demos’ means ‘the people’ and ‘cratia’ means ‘rule’. If ‘the people’ are living under a system of laws imposed on them against their will, then one could credibly call that ‘not a democracy.’ Just saying!
So, if you feel like the system mostly benefits a small minority of elites looking to consolidate and expand their wealth and power–you are in good company. But let’s be clear on one point: it is not necessarily their fault! We all know that human beings–some more than others–will enthusiastically pursue the accumulation of wealth and power. Let’s not imagine we are creating a system where no one can do that anymore! What we can do is create a structure where people can’t amass wealth and power by manipulating the political system and using the voters as pawns. They will have to find other ways to do it: and in a free society with a free market, there are countless other ways to get rich!
But, we seem to be stuck with the system we live in, and despite its obvious flaws, we are daily confronted with the seductive allure of the promise of ‘improving conditions’ within the legacy system. Suffrage, civil-rights protections, labor law, disability rights, and many other reforms unquestionably altered power and improved lives. Those reforms changed who could participate, constrained particular abuses, and redistributed some benefits and protections. They did not eliminate the representation bottleneck. People won important victories without acquiring continuing control over legislation. A reform can transform lives without transforming sovereignty; without establishing a just distribution of power.
The current institutions of American government form a complex, self-sustaining, dynamical system capable of accommodating and assimilating transient or non-structural changes to tit. It can accept reforms, incorporate reform organizations, create new offices and procedures, and concede meaningful protections without transferring control of the central decision-making machinery. That is, it is a system designed to aggressively maintain oligarchic control, while assimilating any attempts at ‘democracy reform.’ It’s not that such reforms aren’t, on their face, morally good, or that they haven’t resulted in real improvement in the lives of Americans. But these reforms are highly vulnerable to co-optation and institutionalization: movements may gain access and policy victories while losing the capacity to challenge the underlying distribution of power. The legacy system continues on its merry way, serving as a mechanism for resolving power struggles among a modern version of aristocratic rulers
The legacy system is vulnerable to building pressure, because its salient mechanisms are designed to suppress the actual will of the actual people. In systems terms, limited reforms can function as pressure-release mechanisms. They respond to public anger and frustration, produce visible activity and sometimes achieve real improvements, while leaving the system’s control architecture substantially unchanged.
Successful democracy reforms are channelled into becoming a PR boost for the legacy system: see, it’s not so bad! Look at the wonderful things you can do within this system! Just keep trying, you’ll get there…”
The Democracy, Straight-Up! Project does not engage in activities which benefit the legacy system–we are replacing the legacy system, smoothly and peacefully, with a just system that honors the human right to self-determination. And that ‘just system’ happens to be ‘total voter control.’
Also, in our analysis, the current system cannot be ‘fixed’ because it is not ‘broken.’ We cannot ‘reclaim our democracy’ because, narrowly speaking, we never had one. And any attempt to make the current system ‘work better’ actually just perpetuates and strengthens it. Given that it is a system of injustice, that is not something we should be doing.
Now, saying that it is counterproductive to try to improve the system leads to the argument that we are better off ‘letting the system explode’ than trying to fix it. But that is not quite true either. Cleaning up after an explosion is messy. DSUp does not advocate destroying functioning institutions and hoping something democratic appears in the wreckage. Abrupt institutional collapse can produce violence, administrative failure, and struggles among organized factions to occupy the vacuum. The Straight-Up strategy is replacement without collapse: construct the new democratic control system while preserving the administrative capacity needed to keep society functioning.
It is necessary to take a nuanced view. Some of these activities remain necessary, in some way, to some extent, as emergency protections, harm-reduction measures, or temporary improvements. What must stop is the pretense that they transfer power to the people. They do not. When they consume the time, money, talent, and public attention that could be used to build voter-controlled legislative institutions—and are marketed as the road to democracy—they become part of the machinery that perpetuates the representation bottleneck and its usurpations of a fundamental human right.
A reform becomes system-preserving when it is presented as a substitute for transferring legislative power to the voters.
Is that what you, personally, are doing? Forgive the eye-catching title of this piece. Of course, there is nuance. It comes down to your personal judgement. If you are certain you are warding off imminent disaster, please don’t stop!
But if you are ‘improving the system’ in ways that just strengthen and legitimize it, you are standing in the way of ‘putting the people in charge,’ and you are wasting resources that could be put to much better use. You make the call.
So, in the tradition of the internet ‘listicle’ here are 14 things you may be doing which, however well-intentioned, you should consider not doing:
1. Electing “better” representatives
Every election cycle, enormous civic energy is devoted to identifying the wiser, kinder, cleaner, more progressive, more conservative, more independent, or more authentic person to occupy the same structurally unaccountable office. Changing the occupant does not change ownership of the office.
DSUp, on the other hand, does not elevate representatives based on their ability to substitute their own judgement for that of the voters. It elevates representatives that are good team-builders, good negotiators, and responsive delegates. But the final judgement always stays with the voters. The Straight Up Rep is what legacy representatives often claim to be, but seldom are: a servant of the people.
2. Ranked-choice voting and open primaries
These reforms only make sense ‘given that we are stuck with the legacy system.” RCV changes how voters select among candidates. DSUp eliminates the need for campaigns, fundraising and elections. In terms of the ‘representativeness’ of the law making process, DSUp delivers everything RCV and open primaries promise and more.
Remember, with RCV under the current system, after the counting is complete, the winner still receives independent legislative discretion.
Ranked-choice voting may help voters choose a better ruler. It still does not let voters rule.
3. Campaign-finance reform
The problem is not ‘how electoral campaigns are financed.’ The problem is that they exist.
DSUp seamlessly replaces the spectacle of the ‘electoral circus’ with the meritocratic advancement of qualified individuals who don’t spend any more on political campaigns.
4. Anti-corruption, ethics and lobbying reform
Let us remember that the legacy system was intentionally set up to separate and shield the operations of government from actual voters. Whether the framers intended it or not, this opens the door to corruption.
The way to close that door is continuous oversight by supervisory bodies open to participation by any voters. Groups of citizens with nothing invested in letting greedy individuals run off with their tax dollars. Trying to set up a framework that does that through the legacy system is notoriously difficult. Once the voters are in charge, it will happen naturally, as a matter of course.
And remember, the deeper problem persists even when everyone behaves legally and honestly: Even an incorruptible political class is still a political class. The issue is not whether representatives misuse their power. It is why they possess the voter’s legislative power in the first place.
5. Term limits
The idea of term limits arises to patch up a flaw in the legacy system. It’s the principle-agent problem: in the legacy system, the agent escapes supervision by the principle. But that only happens in a system that is designed to make that happen! Straight-Up Democracy, by its design, largely solves the problem. The Straight-Up Rep is on a very short leash!
Remember: term limits may rotate people through the representational bottleneck, but they do not remove the bottleneck.
6. Independent Redistricting
This is about gerrymandering. Again, this arises because of the dynamics of the two-party system and winner-take-all elections, and fixing it just perpetuates that system. Redistricting still determines which hundreds of thousands of voters will surrender their legislative authority to which single representative.
Because it increases the apportionment ratio (the number of voters per representative) by about ten fold and because every voter always has a direct vote on every bill, The Straight-Up System can function perfectly well using the current district lines. It will become structurally impossible to redraw a district to drive a certain legislative platform. And besides, no political party, even if they still exist, will have the power to do it.
7. Proportional representation and multiparty reform
Proportional representation is a great idea that currently requires repealing existing laws and probably changing the constitution. It depends on a mass movement among the voters forcing those changes to pass through congress. Voters who can only imagine that congress is already a mess and making it ten times bigger will only make it ten times messier!
DSUp implements proportional representation without having to change any laws or the constitution. And implementing it does not depend on first convincing the massive numbers of voters that it is a good idea. Once voters are self-assembled into legislatures in their districts, the notion of forming caucuses, and putting someone forward as the head of that caucus, becomes second nature. The voters don’t have to ‘see it’ first. They can ‘do it’ first. And then they may say, “Oh! I see!”
8. Advisory citizen assemblies
Citizen Assemblies that merely advise are the kiss of death! Sitting legislators can simply reject their advice! The benefit we have gained from experiments in this area is that they prove that ordinary citizens can deliberate competently. Good! Let them! And also, let them have the final vote!
Think of a DcL as an General Citizen Assembly capable of breaking up into smaller, task specific Citizen Assemblies. They may even be created through sortition, but…
9. Sortition without voter sovereignty
Sortition is inevitable. It is synonymous with democratic self rule. There is no way for this many people to make this many decisions–and keep those decisions representative of the actual will of the actual voters–without deliberation bodies composed of randomly-selected voters using stratified sampling. See Democracy Without Politicians.
But, an effective system of sortition cannot be implemented while the power is still centered within a group of people who have nothing to gain from its implementation, in a system that was designed to prevent it from happening.
After the Straight-Up Revolution, the notion of sortition will sell itself.
10. Building a third party
A third party just changes who competes for control of the representational bottleneck. It does not eliminate the bottleneck. A new party may introduce neglected ideas and disrupt the two-party duopoly. But even when they win office, they are still operating in a system whose dynamics will always tend to reassert the problems they are trying to solve. Yes, Forward Party, we are talking about you!
11. Civic education, depolarization and consensus-building
These projects assume dysfunctional politics originates primarily in badly informed, uncivil, biased, polarized, or insufficiently empathetic citizens. They may teach useful skills. But they also risk making voters responsible for adapting themselves to a structure that deprives them of meaningful power.
Do not try to fix the voters! The voters are not broken!
The people do not need to become worthy of democracy. They need democratic power through which competence, responsibility, and political maturity can develop.
12. Voting-access and turnout campaigns—when treated as the destination
Of course protecting voting rights is essential. The Straight-Up Plan depends entirely on a existing in a society that already protects voting right! But, we to wtop confusing access to elections with control of government. A higher turnout in an election that transfers broad, bundled, largely irrevocable discretion to a party-approved representative make the process more inclusive, but for the voter, it is still the same process of voting away their own agency and their right to self-determination.
13. Ballot initiatives and referendums
Initiatives and referendums have existed for over a hundred years. There is no federal system for them. Only about half the states have adopted them. If they were going to spark a national transition to direct democracy, wouldn’t that have happened by now?
Isn’t that because, by their nature, they aren’t empowering. They are sporadic and always linked to election day, with candidates competing for attention on the same ballot. They are difficult to initiate, and once the media gets a hold of them, they can become confusing and polarizing. The professional legislature still remains in control of nearly all ordinary lawmaking.
Of course, The Straight-Up System removes the need for initiatives and referendums. Every voter can participate in the creation of any bill they choose, they can vote on it at any time, and even change their vote right up until the close of voting on the floor of The House. Really it is jus a vastly improved system to achieve the same goal.
14. Transparency and fact-checking
Good things, but if you are using them to help the legacy system perform better, that is not a good use of your time. Think about the logical sequence of ‘speaking truth to power’ under the legacy system:
A problem exists.
Journalists expose it.
The public learns about it.
People become outraged.
????
Policy changes.
If you are focussed on step 1 thru 4, you see where there might be a problem?
Even if DSUp didn’t organically implement a powerful system of fact-checking and transparency, it would still fill in the question marks: step 5 is now, “The voters come up with legislation to fix the problem and vote it into law.”
Exposing the truth is great. If you want things to change, you have to give the truth somewhere to go.
Alright. Well. That’s the mother of all listicles! Hope you enjoyed it.