Setting aside Capitalism vs. Communism (or maybe I just think I am), this structure vs. that. Why is it that there aren’t really huge lists of alternatives? Where are the people who are imagining new government structures?
Like electing citizens to office at random, like we do with jury duty (forget the word for it). Or totally different arrangements of legislatures. Or even a pure democracy in a modern sense. That one is especially probably a terrible idea, and they’re not even that unique, but who is brainstorming this stuff? Is it mostly just sci-fi authors? Where is it talked about that isn’t already bending toward a team in the already-existing scheme of things? Even the most radical sorts are referencing back to books/ideas that are a century old. There are ultimately like four ideas and we just kind of gave up? That’s all of them?
Why have we seen so few different approaches tried? Or seemingly even imagined? I feel like even in fiction, it’ll be 2,000 years in the future and the whole thing is structured like a glorified city council ruling entire star systems. I feel like it’s difficult even for our minds to imagine anything truly inventive, in that sense. Is that baked into the concept? Is it because we’re just dumb monkeys that only understand “big strong monkey better?” HAS this stuff been written about extensively and I’m just unaware (probably, yes)?
Lots of people, they just don’t get a lot of people reading about them. Most of the really serious ones are pretty wonky documents that most people wouldn’t want to sort through.
One idea I’ve personally had for years was taking away the voting rights of Representatives and Senators and making them glorified figureheads who write laws. Once they write a law (with Version Control being applied so we know who wrote what sentence) it’s instantly posted online in Wiki format where citizens (with proof of citizenship) can contribute in editing and work-shopping the new laws, and then when the new laws are ready, they are put up to a direct vote by the citizens. This would remove the representatives ability to be influenced in how they write the laws since citizens would have more direct control via editing the law and voting on it. I’m not as thoughtful as the more wonky people who have written a lot more serious stuff like this.
Outside an existing system, I think there’s lots of interesting writing on decentralized societies where diffuse power structures can lead to less consolidation of power by individuals seeking individual control. Anarchy lite, I guess you could call it?
An idea I’ve been toying with is that laws should be written like software with lots of test cases. It makes no sense to create laws with ambiguous terms that only become concrete when it goes through court. We should know what the law actually is before it gets passed.
Conditioned black and white thinking. At least here in America.
Vendor lock-in.
Multiple good hypotheses here. I’d like to add my own. The governments can be viewed as a modern iterations of religious cults, and there is no bigger taboo in a religious organization than questioning the basic dogma.
Try to question democracy in a democratic republic and you immediately get the weird looks, and irrational dismissal. 9 times out of 10 this self preservation instinct is good and beneficial to everyone involved, because giving a benefit of doubt to closeted authoritarians would be a mistake. That one time somebody really wants to have an honest discussion, it simply sucks.
Captialism’s survival depends on eliminating all competing ideologies.
Honestly, I think the issue here is more your lack of education/awareness than anything else.
Like electing citizens to office at random
Ancient Athens had a system to do exactly this for a period of time.
Or even a pure democracy in a modern sense
Check out the Democratic Confederalist system currently in practice in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (commonly called Rojava). It’s not strictly pure democracy, but that’s a core principle, and it’s MUCH more participatory than virtually any other governmental system on the planet.
The big issue here is that education is always political, even if you don’t think it is. I’m guessing, based on your writing here, that you were educated in a western liberal democracy. The curriculum you were taught in school, especially with regards to governmental systems, civics, and history, is heavily influenced by the ideology of your country: liberal western representative democracy. I had the same education in school growing up. The curriculum is only interested in presenting alternative forms of government as a way to show how great the one you were living under is. “Monarchy was bad for these reasons, so we replaced it with liberal representative democracy.” “Fascism is bad for these reasons (while ignoring all the ways it’s very similar to our current system), so be happy you have a liberal democracy.” “State communism was authoritarian and bad, so be happy you have what you do.” Etc.
They never talk about the shortcomings of their own system, or the benefits of others, because they aren’t trying to educate a bunch of radicals who might one day overthrow the system.
There are a lot of people thinking of alternative forms of government. For my own personal ideological biases, I’d recommend reading stuff by people like Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Murray Bookchin (1921-2006), David Graeber (1961-2020), or Abdullah Öcalan (1948-).
Not the OP but just wanted to say thanks for typing that out. I think it perfectly answers the question, gives several examples/explanations, and provides further research resources. It’s always genuinely great to come across posts like this.
Lots of different forms of local government exist, including “random” or round-robin. Just maybe natural selection has selected only certain kinds for state governments.
There already are some differences in government structures between countries.
Why are many of them similar? I think it’s a combination of these:
- countries that became newly independent or rewrote their constitution looked at other countries for inspiration
- Many (older) countries followed a somewhat similar path from being absolute monarchies to aristocracies (with nobles represented in a parliament which then became increasingly more powerful than the monarch) to the parliament becoming elected by all of the people to, in some countries, the monarchy being abolished and replaced by a president (essentially an elected monarch).
I think you may enjoy reading this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/17/slightly-skew-systems-of-government/
The word you are missing is “sortition”
A similar concept is “a random ballot or random dictatorship”, which might meet at least one more favorable criterion.
THANK YOU.
I think whether we like it or not economic systems have forced their way into our political systems.
And anyone with any existing power is strongly incentivized to kill any “new ideas” in the womb. As they would most likely represent a departure from the current system that they benefit from.
Any dramatic restructuring is going to be a very “significant” event. We may currently be on the precipice of one such event in the United States, this remains to be seen. The existing power structures have been significantly destabilized and pre-existing norms and rules are being outright ignored.
Power will shift, it remains to be seen how much and to where.
In any case, we may have the opportunity for you to see some new interesting governmental concepts, or perhaps a return to some classics, or a mix of the two (a little overtly capitalist fuedalism perhaps?).
We sure do live in interesting times.
Personally, I don’t actually want to see Yarvin’s Technocrat “Freedom” states where the disabled are turned into biofuel.
Yeah… The spectrum of options arrayed before us appear to be heavily weighted towards enforcing arbitrary hierarchies which is… Not ideal.
I think this might be the best time to start having these conversations: when things are getting bad for almost everyone, and there is so much governmental upheaval that changing the economic system becomes a lot less disruptive than it would be during good times. It’s only going to become more and more clear that capitalism is failing.
My favorite economic system so far is a land value tax with UBI. I still don’t know exactly how businesses would operate, but this system would eliminate the parasitic generational wealth siphoned from hoarding property and housing. It would also allow for people to not work if they’re unable to.
I’m sure it’s probably just delusional hopium that we could ever get through the threat of fascism and come out of it with a better system than what we had, but that’s about all I got left right now. The rest is just doom.
We can imagine all kinds of things.
Imagination does fuck all in a the face of legislative process and beaurocratic entity which forcefully redistributes wealth for military and public wellbeing.
No matter what system you imagine its going to end up as a big circle of old men pushing pens around and reading at a podium.
Another way to say the same thing: it’s confirmation bias.
Other forms have been imagined and in many cases tried but representative democracy (even when it’s really just an illusion) is the only way to organise large populations of people.
Because political systems are not purely ideological. They are derived from a material (economic) basis and must satisfy existing relations to production or change them. In our case the two primary relations to production are those who own the means of production and those who produce. Under the economic base of capitalist production there are multitudes of political superstructures but you will be most familiar with the liberal democracy. This form of political structure provides some extra freedoms and luxury to its domestic working class but is only able to do so while maintaining the infinitely expanding profits demanded by capitalist production by exploiting a foreign working class for cheap labor. When the cyclical crises of capitalism eventually places an insurmountable strain on the liberal democratic political superstructure which can no longer hide or balance the class contradictions at its base you get one of two things. Communism or fascism. In the case of fascism it is essentially the owning class going all in, exploiting a foreign working class stops being enough so their imperialism turns inward on their own working class. Since they cannot increase oppression on every worker without inciting revolution they pit one section of the working class against another often along ethnic lines but who is pit against who is arbitrary. An out-group is intentionally created and alienated so that the owning class can maintain economic power. In the case of communism/socialism it is basically the workers taking full control of the economy and political superstructure because the capitalist class failed to maintain it. There is also anarchism but I am not well read enough to speak on it too much.
In short, western liberal democracies have essentially only two classes and the economic contradictions that the state exists to mitigate originate from a conflict of interest between these classes. If we are to be frank there is only the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariet, and classless society.
I hope this isn’t too much of a ramble lol, my partner was watching tiktok so I was a tad distracted.
No, this was a really great, thoughtful answer, thank you.
US rulership is rigged to serve Oligarchist/zionist/warmongering mandate. US colonies rigged to serve CIA/Oligarchist alliance. The first obstacle to democracy is do you need the current rulership structure’s permission for it?
The only alternative to that permission is secession or those “Freedom cities” that are unfortunately backed by technofascists and “radical zionists”. Secession requires permission to not be genocided. One way to obtain that permission is by paying for “protection tribute” from powerful neighbours, and former slave master. Paying tax without receiving any services in return whatsoever. This can also be done by giving your “protection master” bonds for free, or if they buy bonds, a very high interest rate. Or simply give them a percentage of tax revenue. If they break their protection promise, you are allowed to cancel the bond. You can buy protection from multiple parties including nuclear weapon strikes against your other protectors “aggression”.
Freedom cities while somehow marketed as fascist tax havens are opportunities for better democracy too. Crypto currency systems have very good democracy elements to them. Can have UBI/freedom dividends supported by a tax system that is based on half “density based property taxes” (Georgianism), and half local sales taxes, and global income taxes. This is a non slavery based prosperity system, that eliminates crime and homelessness. Verifying residency is only requirement, and regular payments for groceries and rent through crypto can be proof enough. Those who live in less than average square footage, spend less than average, and earn less than average have a net tax refund/subsidy. Those who earn more enjoy a peaceful city with massive amenities. Hedonist freedoms would generally attract more residents than they repel, IMO.
Direct democracy, with revocable delegation rights, is easy under several crypto systems. Delegating your stake to a validator gives them the right to vote on any proposal/issue in your place. But if you vote on that issue, then it overrides your share of the delegate’s vote. Residency verification can make voting 1 resident=1vote instead of usual crypto 1 coin=1vote. This allows you to trust someone overall to represent you, while still representing yourself whenever you want. You can also change delegates at any time. I get how your “randomly selected leaders” also avoids oligarchist beholdment, but after they are elected/appointed, they will make new friends very quickly, who will explain how their self enrichment can also make America great again with their media help.
If the US government/President authorizes fascist freedom cities, what could be the rationale against turning your existing city into a pure democracy freedom city? Or at least applying for one of the 10 “spots” with a real democracy governance proposal that is still a tax haven from US empire costs, and carry implicit protection costs (for freeish) by being offered.
Because anything that doesn’t solve 100% of our problems gets the same response “Can’t be used” or “But it doesn’t solve this specific problem”. Even though current systems do not solve 100% of our problems.
Then like software made with spaghetti code, they keep adding systems reliant on that spaghetti code that makes it really difficult to unfuck it all.
