A new concept called “Personalized Democracy” is proposed to usher in a new paradigm for social coordination. This document presents a brief summary of the serious undiscussed flaws of democracy which are sufficient to make it unworkable in the modern world.


A brief overview of Personalized Democracy is presented by other documents in this section of the website. A full description of Personalized Democracy can be found in a recently published book Collapse 2020 V2: Birth of Personalized Democracy (1).

Background – the Myths

One of the greatest social values cherished in western society is the belief that most of us live in a democracy. To most individuals, that means “we the people” make the decisions. We decide who are the leaders. We also tell those leaders what we want our society to be and how to go about achieving those goals! But, is this really true? Do “we”, the citizens, actually make the decisions? According to Bertrand Russell from his 1916 book Principles of Social Reconstruction, the answer to this question was actually NO! If we examine that question precisely, even up to the present day, we find many of our beliefs about democracy are actually myths. This is especially so when we view “Democracy” in light of modern society. Quoting from Bertrand Russell’s book:

“Apart from war, the modern great State is harmful from its vastness and the resulting sense of individual helplessness … Even in a democracy, all questions except a very few are decided by a small number of officials and eminent men; and even the few questions which are left to the popular vote are decided by a diffused mass-psychology, not by individual initiative.”

According to Russell, our democratic beliefs and practices are just a charade. They are just variations of the authoritarianism of the past in disguise. If we ask people about his claim, we get conflicting answers, sometimes even from the same person. From a theoretical standpoint, they believe we live in a democracy. But from experience, they agree with Russell and completely admit we don’t. If we ask further why people don’t take action to do something about it, most people could also tell us exactly why they don’t take action:

  1. They believe the “powers that be” have so much power, people don’t have the ability to control them.
  2. Even if we people were given the power, the world has become so complex, the average person wouldn’t really know what to do with it.

So, right from square one, guiding the institution of Democracy has serious problems. In one sentence, with great emotion, people will say, “we live in a democracy”. But in the next sentence, they will say, “people have no control”. In the following sentence they will say, “we need to make changes”. But in the next sentence, they will say, “we can’t agree how to make the changes.”


The serious problem this raises is that these deep-seated cultural issues are oxymorons, so powerful, they have the ability to destroy modern civilization! The obvious question is then, “How can freedom, one of the greatest dreams most people in the world have, that was something democracy was supposed to give us, be stopped from slipping through our hands? What went wrong?”
There are two basic viewpoints that can be used to frame an answer:

• There are flaws in the basic model of democracy itself
• There are faults in how society implements democracy

Flaws in the basic model of democracy


Democracy in modern society is derived from Athenian Democracy and the Roman Republic. Around 500BC in Athens Greece, the population no longer believed that the unitary decision making and control by a king fairly represented the wishes of the people. Their sentiment was broad enough that they were able to convince the then current ruler, Cleisthenes, to restructure decision making as a joint effort with the populace. They called the new system of coordination “Democracy”, which translates to “strength of the people”. It is important to clarify, however, that at that time, the term “people” did not mean “all” people. It only meant the leaders of land holding families and soldiers.

For the next 800 years, the practice of democracy came and went. It was lost when groups of wealthy land owners learned they could “buy” votes and control elections. When this corruption got out of hand, revolts would return the power broadly to all the land owners. Democracy totally stopped when Greece was conquered by Persia. It returned again when Persian Greece was conquered by Rome. As the population of Rome expanded, however, it was no longer possible to gather all the land owners for direct voting. This is when the “representative” version we call a “Republic” was introduced. Democracy again came to a stop with the collapse of the Roman Republic around 360AD. It didn’t reappear again as a national governing form until 1786 with the U.S. Constitution.

Most modern people are not aware of this “up and down” history. They generally believe these governing forms vested power in individual people as a whole, as the term “democracy” implies when translated from Greek. The descriptions of democracy presented in the U.S. during its Civil War supported that myth. As stated by Abraham Lincoln, democracy was “a government… BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.” Upon simple examination, it is very clear that modern democracy actually suffers the same problem that destroyed it in both Athens and Rome. It is actually a selection of representatives and leaders by major businesses, strong institutions and wealthy donors, for the enrichment of those same businesses, institutions and wealthy donors.

Problems with the basic Athenian model

Superficially, implementing a basic democracy “appears” simple:

  1. The views of the people in a population are collected
  2. The views that represent a “majority” of the members are adopted.
  3. The views that fail to achieve majority support are dropped.

What most people fail to take into account, however, is the social environment that existed in both Greece and Rome that allowed it to reasonably work. In ancient Athens, most children grew up in an agricultural community. Just by living, they could touch most of the elements of their life. Transportation was horse and wagon. Farmers could observe all the details of both the equipment needed and crop management. They could understand how each of these elements worked. Food came from the earth outside their door. They understood every step it went through to prepare it to eat. They made their own clothes, which were very similar from person to person, from resources they either grew or harvested from animals. The human brain, in that world, could learn everything it needed for a full life by direct experience.

In that world, because of the horse-based transportation technology, neither the exchange of goods nor information traveled very far. That also meant, if some serious problems occurred elsewhere, the effect on local individual locations was typically very small.


Also, the issue of religious beliefs was equally simple. Most nations had one national religion. It dictated a single national culture. People of other religions and cultures could visit in small numbers. They were required, however, to live in geographically segregated areas, practice their religions in those areas, but also show respect for the hosting national religion. Failure to do so could actually be punished by death! This was quite common for large groups in Rome in its later days.


Ironically for most of world society, these conditions prevailed into the 19th century! This included the time period of the creation of the U.S. Government and Constitution. That means, the “views of the people” for most issues that needed to be addressed were relatively simple. The views also addressed similar daily problems and concerns.


Today, we can’t come close to drawing the same conclusion. The fraction of people involved in agriculture has become very small. People’s life experiences have been diverted into thousands of occupations. The “everyday equipment” they interact with is very complex. Anyone who has used a computer or smart phone knows they are clueless about most of the internal workings of almost every item we touch. This complexity is mimicked throughout many diverse life cultures. To learn such cultures, we had to invent complex educational systems that most people are forced to attend.


Even most of the food we eat has been processed in ways we know little about. The clothes we wear no longer simply identify the local geography where we live and whether we are laborers or royalty. Each person can select a wide variety of adornments that blur both heritage and social status. To keep a semblance of “peace”, the modern world has adopted the false pretense that all individuals can have, and are entitled to, “personal freedom”.


One of the greatest changes and challenges, however, is how this false promise is related to religion and culture. Due to the ubiquitous availability of modern transportation, individuals and small groups can now relocate to almost any place on earth. When they move, they are no longer segregated by religion or culture. Instead, they are dispersed into a mixed sea of other cultures and religions that have formed from similar prior immigrations.


What happens when we try to apply the 3 simple implementation steps for democracy listed above to this new environment? The outcome becomes catastrophic! And that’s what we are experiencing throughout current world society. If we then asses the 3 simple implementation steps for a democracy listed above, we observe the following:

  1. We can now easily collect the views of every person. In fact, with modern communications, that can be done infinity better and faster than in ancient times.
  2. and 3. The tragedy that quickly emerges is that finding any “majority” agreement among the huge variety of views now available is essentially impossible! The number of variations that social viewpoints need to address are so numerous, similarities and consensus is near impossible.

When it comes to the issue of religion, however, finding agreement is in fact logically impossible. It is what is referred to as the “multiple religions problem”. (2) This problem is logically impossible because many religions include in their founding cannons a prescription for violence against any person holding religious beliefs different from their own. Ironically, the ancient world didn’t have the same problem. It was generally acknowledged that there were different religions, and “gods”, in different nations. All that was required of “visitors”, however, was they contained their ideas to isolated spaces.


In addition to this modern problem of religious mixing, we then have to add the myth people have been promised about “individual freedom”. As society became complex, its machinery and social systems required very precise protocols for “coordination”. This is a problem because “coordination” is the opposite of “personal freedom”. Most people in advanced countries actually carry coordinated timekeeping instruments. They do this so that they can interact on very specific schedules. The schedules, of course, and ‘not’ of their own making. When they travel in personal vehicles, they must follow narrow paths and obey colored lighting systems, again, not of their own making. Yet, the concept of “individual freedom” continues to be presented to people as being some absolute right. No system has yet been envisioned that can logically balance both living in a complex and interconnected society, which we have now, and having unlimited individual freedom simultaneously.


The problem, then, with the basic principles of “Athenian” or “Roman democracy” is its complete incompatibility with modern social systems! That’s why the Personalized Democracy discoveries are so important.

There is another factor that plays a major role in the disconnect between Athenian democracy and the modern world: the concept of “majority rule”.

Majority rule has been placed on a pedestal as democracy’s crown jewel. Unfortunately, it turns out to be just a placating charade that hides one of democracy’s underlying authoritarian flaws: what we call the “tyranny of the majority”. While the concept of Majority rule establishes the 51% principle to make decisions, it also sets the stage for a 51% majority to create and deny the goals and hopes of a 49% “minority. This is very far from what the Athenians expected on any issue.


Then bring into play, the adoption of a 2-party system. This also sets a stage for a 50/50 division of the population. Then bring in the “spoils system”, which allows the winning party to make sweeping changes of personnel in the government. Many academic studies have explored the dynamics of these factors. All that is needed to gain control of the government is crossing that 50/50 line with a few percent majority. When a society has lost it moral compass and a narrow culture to keep it in line, it will turn to internal conflict. Those on the losing side, realizing it only has to convince a small percentage of the population to join it in the next election to take control, will turn to ever more desperate, radical, and even illegal approaches. As soon as a switch in party occurs, the new “losing” party adopts the same desperate approach. The society, however, is then subject to the long-term thinking and focus it needs to face major obstacles like climate change and natural resource depletions.


In summary, the traditional model of “Democracy” cannot work in a complex modern society.

Flaws in the implementation of democracy


Patterns of social breakdown in modern society expose multiple problems due to how we implement Athenian Democracy. Some major factors causing the problems include the:

• party platform control of elected representatives
• corruption of elected representatives
• electoral college and bicameral structures
• lying by government, academia, and industry

These patterns explain even the most confusing issues in the current world like political polarization, the loss of truth in the media, and government gridlock. Even under ideal conditions, with minimal corruption, how modern society implements Athenian democracy can no longer achieve the freedoms people expect.

Representatives

Because of the large populations that democracy is intended to coordinate, the direct involvement of individuals has long been pushed aside in favor of using representatives. Most people have no problem supporting this because they don’t see any alternatives to it. They are also led to believe it can work because they believe the public is capable of judging and electing “reasonable” people.
The implementation of representative systems fails however, because:

  1. Representatives are expected to vote their “personal conscience”, not a true representation of the views of the citizens they represent.
  2. Representatives are organized using a majority vote spoils system. They are expected to vote along party lines, not in proportion to citizen interests.

Personal conscience voting is justified based on the reality of social complexity. What if voters disqualified individuals to represent them if the representative, in pre-election speeches, said anything the voter didn’t like. The number of issues that need to be addressed would surely raise issues each voter does not agree with. The result would disqualify everyone from being elected. So, the fall back is not to use a disqualification approach, but rather to select the candidate who’s “character” is most suitable to each voter. The result is, while each person is told their views will be “represented”, this isn’t so.


The second problem “personal conscience” voting opens up is corruption. Both during the election process, and once in power, a representative can choose issues to support that bring them payoffs from wealthy donors or companies. This flaw would seem to be something society would try to stop. The way corruption is discussed in the media seems to support this view. The reason it is not done is that the public is a complicit in the corruption. People in society who are considered “opinion leaders” usually hold positions in companies, academia, and institutions that can benefit by manipulating their representatives. So the practice goes on.


Each representative is typically associated with a political party. Because of the “spoils” system, for the representative to get positions of power in the government, they need to support the party platform. This will not favor citizens who are “disadvantaged”.

Electoral College in the U.S. and Bicameral structures

Bicameral structures are intentionally set up to give some select group of people much more power than the one-person one-vote goal of “democracy”. In most implementations, the government is divided into 2 legislative “houses”. One house represents each citizen on an individual one-person one-vote basis. The second typically represents large groups of citizens based on geographical considerations. In this second form, a relatively small group of citizens in a small province, for example, would be given equal representation to a very large province. Again, this defeats the basic one-person one-vote principle of democracy.

Lying by Government, Academia and industry

Governments in all countries and ages have lied to their citizens about the detailed functioning of the governing structures that have actually been implemented. The basis for this is simple. Once in power, greed and maintaining power come forward. A shortcoming in integrity quickly leads to doing something that could lead to accountability. Lies are created to hide the missteps.


Academia and industry are also prone to these flaws. In fact, the entire structure of capitalism has been bent toward such deceit . It draws people from these sectors into it. When they have gone along with the deceit, they are also subject to their own accountability.


In summary, the way democracies are implemented runs roughshod over the basic goals of democracy by creating structures designed to benefit those elected to leadership positions in the implementations, at the expense of the average and especially disadvantaged person.

Direct Democracy

Direct Democracy, broadly, is the concept of letting individual members of an “electorate” directly make decisions of policy without using representatives as intermediaries. In modern times, examples of direct democracy have existed as part of parliamentary governing forms since the mid 19th century. The “statute referendum” in Switzerland in 1847 is an example.

Direct participation has generally come in two forms: participatory and deliberative. In the participatory form, individuals participate, through voting, to select particular decisions or policies. In the deliberative form, individual participation is also included in the deliberations that produce the final policy choices that are then subject to selection by voting.


It is believed that including such direct involvement of citizens finally achieves the original goal of Athenian Democracy, which is placing the “power” of government “directly” in the hands of the “people”. The emergence of the internet is seen as a miracle technology for direct democracy because of its ability to transfer citizen opinions so easily.


Unfortunately, direct democracy, including the new improvements provided by modern communications, suffers from most of the limitations described above because it is still being used to implement democracy in the Athenian and Roman representative models.


For example, while the inputs from many citizens can now be easily gathered, the sheer number of messages makes it impossible for any single individual or small group to read them all. The complexity of modern technology and the business world still exceed the knowledge and capabilities of any human to comprehend or manage. Many additional structures are needed to be able to implement these better communications before the flaws of democracy can be rectified.

Personalized Democracy was actually developed to effectively support many current implementations of Direct Democracy in a way that also overcomes the inherent limitations of Athenian and Roman Democracy. A brief introduction to Personalized Democracy is provided by other documents in this section of the website. A full presentation of Personalized Democracy is provided in the book Collapse 2020 V2 (1) shown in the reference list below.

References

  1. Collapse 2020 V2: Birth of Personalized Democracy Bruce Nappi 2020 https://a3society.org/books/
  2. Multiple religions problem https://a3society.org/social-issues/language-use/multiple-religions-problem-l/