Overview

A new concept called “Personalized Democracy” is proposed to usher in a new paradigm for social coordination. This document presents a brief introduction of the major provisions of a new form of democracy that could emerge by applying the principles of Personalized Democracy. A brief summary of some benefits that could be achieved are shown in a separate document: Personalized Democracy – Benefits. A full description of Personalized Democracy can be found in a recently published book Collapse 2020 V2: Birth of Personalized Democracy (1).

This new form of democracy is proposed to usher in a new paradigm for social coordination. It is a new paradigm because it introduces processes that inherently eliminate many major problems society is currently facing. The mere suggestion of such an accomplishment, of course, will be initially viewed by many to be impossible. Just a short summary of the basic concepts provided below, however, will be sufficient to show that there have been unappreciated options available that can make major improvements.

The principles of Personalized Democracy were developed by the application of advanced system analysis methods to observable patterns of social breakdown in modern society. Because of the enormous social changes introduced by modern technology and practices, nothing less than major changes can work. Personalized Democracy requires such changes.
The solutions do not resemble any current organizational practices. Fortunately, the new approach shows it would be possible to achieve many of the basic goals of freedom and equity that most people have sought throughout the ages and which Athenian Democracy also promised. Also, fortunately, the solution, at least from a theoretical level, is simple to understand even for the average reader. The simplified description below shows how these major goals could be achieved.

Key Implementation Provisions of Personalized Democracy

The following elements summarize the key provisions of Personalized Democracy.

1. A new “Direct Democracy” information collection process

It captures opinions from every individual citizen in a region of any size, who agrees to contribute opinions or ideas related to the organization and implementation of social structures and practices. Novel features of this collection process inherently eliminate the biases of any intermediate humans or processes. This process ultimately produces a fully, non-biased, transparent collection of the views of all participating citizens. But, in addition, it retains secure- identity files for each person, individually. Such a process does not now exist.

2. Condensed summary of collected information

The collected results can then be condensed into multiple forms using novel approaches. One form is readable by a single individual or small group, even though it addresses hundreds of thousands or millions of opinions. Other forms can also be created as “standard” reports, or specialized forms as required. These reports would be generally available to all citizens. Such a process does not now exist.

3. Condensed presentations, in various forms

The collected information would also be made available to government personnel AND activist groups to develop social programs.

4. Direct translation of direct public input into public programs

For implementation at the “government level”, a fundamental change in government and social services is needed related to how legislation is passed, laws created, and programs implemented. The new process becomes a fully “constructive – inclusive” process, rather than a majority driven process.
The government role is no longer creating laws and program “bills” that are decided on by voting. The new role of “government” would be the development, and continual adjustment and improvement, of an “automated coordinating process” that coordinates all social functions. The ongoing “adjustments” to the process would be addressing and achieving as many of the contributed opinions and requests of the population as possible into workable social systems in proportion to the entire collected public input.

5. Program implementation on an individualized basis

The implementation of the developed “programs” actually runs continuously in real time. The implementation is also addressed on a personalized basis. That is, each citizen is helped, individually, to understand how the goals they requested have been implemented into the program. They are also “coached” by the program about what they should do to optimally achieve the requests they provided.

6. Direct interactive program monitoring

Once the program begins implementation, the same system used to collect public opinion is used to allow every citizen to monitor the system’s performance. If any issues are spotted, each citizen has a direct process to raise concerns which enable resolution.

Once this new approach is introduced, radical improvements in efficiency and quality of life for every individual will ripple through all decision-making processes from neighborhoods to world governments.

Major Social Changes That Would Also Be Needed – Some Examples

Government and Social Coordination

With Personalized Democracy, representatives are no longer needed to reflect public opinion or gather public ideas or observations. Every citizen’s input is transparently captured while protecting the individual’s identity. Personalized Democracy produces a personal-voice, direct-action system that inherently blocks any special interest influence at every level of coordination. It does this by creating an overall solution where each citizen’s request is fully addressed rather than every citizen having to conform to a single, majority rule program.

When it comes to creating “legislation” in the form of programs and laws, again, representatives are no longer needed. The creation of bills, and the voting process related to them are also no longer needed. The Direct Democracy approach has already gathered the opinions of ALL citizens on a person-by-person basis. Detailed analyses of all the inputs can be automatically prepared, that include and address the voice of every citizen.

As the process moves to action, there is no need for “voting” that selects one group of citizen opinions and reject another. A social program and process is created that incorporates every citizen’s input into the final action within limits of social harmony and world sustainability. Furthermore, because the process is “blind” to individual identity at this point, bias, corruption and social discrimination are inherently blocked!

Unexpectedly, political “conflicts” are entirely eliminated. Since each person’s wishes are essentially respected, there is no reason to feel they have been “voted” against. Because program creation is “constructive” of ALL opinions directly, good ideas formerly associated with bills that would be voted “no”, are no longer lost. Bad ideas that would formerly ride in on bills voted “yes”, are no longer included. The concept of “amendments”, and the corruption they support, would no longer have any meaning.

Joint group activism, however, will still exist and be supported. Instead of being focused on strife between “parties”, it would be focused toward newly emerging problems that are not being addressed by the existing system models that create the programs.

As mentioned above, with the ability to discretely handle input from all people individually, as programs are implemented, each individual will get individual guidance explaining how to best use the program to achieve the goals they originally provided. Once the programs are underway, each person would also have a direct link to report how well or poorly the programs are being implemented FOR THEM PERSONALLY.

Quality of Life

Because Personalized Democracy was designed around equity and Quality of Life, it will immediately eliminate poverty, starvation, homelessness, and discrimination. No civilization in human history has been able to do this.

With the requirement and ability to address each person as an individual, it opens doors to much wider diversity in all parts of life. Because the mechanisms of social structure would no longer be able to discriminate against individuals by where they live, their heritage, their race or skin color, their sex, etc. these problems would also essentially disappear. People would have much more freedom to be “different” from the “crowd”.

Trade and commerce

A major change in culture would be to move to a socially focused “positive incentive” model. This model is in stark contrast to the currently used individually focused “financial competition” model. This new “positive incentive” model would carry over directly to the entire commercial system.

The driver for western society’s current financial system is actually based on a primitive “predatory bacterial” model. Consumers are told, “Buyer Beware”. This model is a barbaric carry-over from Stone Age thinking. Personalized Democracy completely changes the commercial landscape by implementing a new model referred to a “cooperative competition” or “CoCo”.

A simple example is the Olympic Games for events that have scientifically measurable goals: time, distance, accuracy, etc. Winning or losing is no longer viewed as an “interpersonal” contest. In such events, strong competition is welcome because it produces better performance for all. It would also imply that, for such an event, there could be many winners, i.e. all those who break earlier records.

As applied to commerce, a new incentive structure would be created where all businesses and all organizations must act for the benefit of society, not the other way around. The new commercial motto would be “The Individual comes first”. Every commercial interaction with individuals or other businesses would be redesigned and incentivized for its ability to achieve high simplicity and efficiency. The use of unwanted and misleading advertising will disappear. The use of annoying and mostly useless “sales contracts” would disappear.

One of the biggest changes in commerce, however, would be the rejection of “endless growth”. Because sustainability requires world society to achieve a 1.0 human footprint or lower, it also means world population must be much smaller. It also means, whatever population is determined to be stable given the existing technologies, population will no longer be allowed to grow.

From a business standpoint, that also means “zero growth”. The impact of this realization is profound! It means that, essentially, there will be few new: factories, stores, houses, roads, schools, cities etc. The focus will be mostly maintenance, improvements and creative replacement.

Economically, it means no inflation or deflation!

Employment

The zero growth and “positive incentive” social model also implies a radical change in how society views business competition and employment. The “predatory bacterial” model will be replaced with a “Cooperative Competition” model.

With such a structure, unemployment will disappear. All labor will be coordinated as a single structure. Businesses will draw labor from this “pool” through incentives posted for available positions. The employee’s records will primarily reside with the central pool. As labor demand comes and goes, employees would be free to easily move from any job to any other, as easily as moving “across the hall” in the current structure. Employment and education will essentially merge. If a job surplus appears where there are no reasonable alternatives, those affected will simply move back into appropriate educational settings. Their existing lifestyle at the time of displacement will be maintained.

The justifications for institutions like Law, Accounting, and Education to be “competitive businesses’ will be gone. They will become public services for society and employ only a small fraction of today’s levels.

Education

As noted above, employment and education will essentially merge. The corruption of education to be a feeder for the “predatory bacterial” model of commerce would stop. Education would become a major focus for a new society. Life-long continuing education would be viewed as the “backbone” the defines an individual’s life.

A Social Contract, which describes the benefits and responsibilities of all citizens, would be actively taught to all citizens. Education would no longer be viewed as compartmentalized onto itself. Every organization in society would become part of the educational process. Children from the earliest ages would be able explore appropriate “work” activities on an “apprentice” learning basis as part of their training.

Every occupation currently considered a “professional service”, like lawyers and accountants, which do not directly improve the physical wellbeing of clients – e.g. doctors – would be minimized. The functions they now play would be replaced by: computers, drastically changed laws, and special education for every individual to understand “uniform commercial codes”. An example of a change in law would be the complete elimination of “point of service” contracts for consumer commerce.

Life-long education would be emphasized by including education as the primary focus of a local facility in every community referred to as a “community center”. Such a center would provide all the instruction and equipment for every form of education from primary “curriculum” to basket weaving and vocal training. The facilities and equipment would also be available for personal use and by clubs that support social interaction.

Medicine

The entire model for medical care would be revised to be a “health supporting” model, not a “disease curing” model. Every citizen would be trained during middle and high school to at least EMT or nursing skill levels. There are already programs like this in Europe that demonstrate how this could be done. Every home would have automated telemedicine equipment and computer diagnosis support. Healthcare would be greatly improved at much lower social cost.

One additional observation raises a very sad indictment of current world society. Not a single improvement suggested above requires any new scientific “discoveries”! Full emergency room level telemedicine equipped ambulances were demonstrated in Boston in 1992. Remote telemedicine surgery consultation between Boston, Moscow, and Paris was demonstrated in 1994. The ability of military surgeons at Walter Reed hospital to remotely operate on a soldier anywhere in the world using robotic manipulators, was demonstrated in 1988. It is time to leave the corruption and Stone Age thinking behind that is holding society back.

Public safety

Personalized Democracy and Cooperative Competition are entirely based on motivating through “Positive Incentive” methods. With poverty and discrimination greatly reduced, and extensive career support built into every social structure, the underlying causes of crime would be drastically eliminated as well. The idea of “punitive” approaches like fines and prisons will no longer make sense. They will be greatly reduced and finally eliminated. Problems like “drug addiction”, for example, would be handled entirely as a medical- systemic issue.

Law and Social Justice

All laws would be rewritten to minimize the need for legal proceedings by establishing new types of structures so most interpersonal actions are self-resolving. An example of this in the U.S. was the creation of “title insurance” in the real estate sales market, so lawyers were not needed. With such new approaches, along with “the Individual comes first” requirement for businesses, all those “point of service” contracts, written in legal language, that consumers are “expected” to read and sign, but never do, would be gone! Most legal issues would be managed using greatly simplified “Uniform Commercial Codes”. They would be taught to every individual at the primary and secondary school level.

The substantial changes in commerce, along with those eliminating crime, will almost completely eliminate the need for an extensive and continually broken judicial system. The system of Law schools would also be changed. They would have the new task and be incentivized to develop laws that were self-resolving during normal social processes.

References

1. Collapse 2020 V2: Birth of Personalized Democracy Bruce Nappi 2020 https://a3society.org/books/