Demiocracy, Chapter 8: Employees need Inner Voice Entities

Posted on February 3, 2024 by Roger Knights

American employees usually lack a voice. Three-quarters of them aren’t represented by a union. As for the rest, unions here typically disclaim a willingness to help management improve its likability and operations.

It is essential in the trade union view that they should not be compromised by having a share in management. —H.R.G. Greaves, Democratic Participation and Public Enterprise, 1964.

Employees often suffer from the slings and arrows of outrageous managers—Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss is a notorious example.

So employees would benefit from having a proxy entity that is able complain to a higher-level manager; and, that failing, as it often might, to the board of directors and/or shareholders; and that failing, to the media and/or the internet.

Management would benefit too, by being able to float trial balloons within IVEs, thereby fine-tuning new policies and averting blunders.

The interests of the owners (stockholders) are not necessarily aligned with those of management. A “managerial revolution” long ago wrested effective control from the owners …

… things in a private economic enterprise are quite similar: the real “sovereign,” the assembled shareholders, is just as little influential in the business management as is a “people” ruled by expert officials. —Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation, 1919.

… and management has often put its own petty interests first. The long-term viability of firms has suffered as a result.

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Demiocracy, Chapters 6 & 7: Demiocratic Representation of the Voiceless, by Means of a Novel “Bal-lottery” Technique

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Roger Knights

There are certain segments of the population (specified in the next chapter) who are often poorly treated, but who can’t complain about it to their higher-ups—or, really, to anyone—because they can’t speak out as a group, lacking representatives.

These groups, by their nature, are not in a position to allow election campaigns. They would either not be feasible, or would be too disruptive.

Nor would it be feasible for representatives to be selected completely by chance, because: 1) They would be treated dismissively, as mere nobodies, by the officials above them; and 2) They would not be as enthusiastic about, or effective at, their duties as certain others in their group—persons who would tend to be selected by a bal-lottery.

These groups should therefore employ the novel (AFAIK), election-free bal-lottery technique described in Item 2 above to select representatives.

I urge sympathizers of such underdogs to promote this means of representation. Equally, I urge “uber-dogs” to heed it, as it is in their interest to be wise in time.

Here’s a simplified example. Let’s say that some group has 1000 members, and that the agreed-upon ballot-to-lot ratio is 50:50. (For voiceless groups the ratio would be 100:0.) INTO the bal-lottery box might therefore go 10 ballots BY each member, nominating other members, and 10 lots FOR each member, automatically.

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Demiocracy, Chapter 5: History’s Hints — The Venetian Republic’s Electoral Procedures

Posted on January 25, 2024 by Roger Knights

[In Venice,] to prevent tensions between the ruling families, sortition was introduced as way of appointing a new doge, but in order to ensure only a competent person could become ruler, the procedure was combined with elections. The result was an unbelievably roundabout system that took place in ten phases over a period of five days….

The Venetian system seems absurdly cumbersome, but recently several computer scientists have shown that this leader election protocol is interesting in that it ensured the more popular candidates actually won, while nevertheless giving minorities a chance and neutralizing corrupt voting behavior. Furthermore, it helped to bring compromise candidates to the fore by amplifying small advantages…. In any case, historians agree, that the extraordinary, lasting stability of the Venetian republic, which endured more than five centuries, until ended by Napoleon, can be attributed in part to the ingenious selection of ballotte. Without sortition the republic would undoubtedly have fallen prey far sooner to disputes between ruling families. (You do quietly wonder whether today’s governments are not similarly falling prey to the bickering between parties.) —David van Reybrouck, Against Elections, 2018, p. 70-71.

My “take” is that what is worth copying from Venice are: a small electorate, a mix of sortition and election, and an indirect, multi-stage process of electing electors.

We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. … From hence arises, not an excellence in simplicity but one far superior, an excellence in composition. —Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

These made the office tend to seek the man, baffling the “presuming” ambitions of would-be “Kings of the Mountain.” That’s good, because such persons are often overbearing and blunder-prone once ensconced in office.

We can work up to these commanding heights of politics modestly, step-by-step from below, as follows in Chapters 6 & 7.

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Demiocracy, Chapter 4: The Nature and Dangers of DeMockery

Posted on January 22, 2024 by Roger Knights

The “classical” justification for democracy was that it is, or should be, rule by an informed public opinion acting, after deliberation, in the public interest.

Investigations, especially by post-war political science, discovered that the democracy we have actually got is not the classical model the Founders had in mind, but in fact mostly the rule of factions and partisans, which the Founders dreaded.

Factions include organized pressure groups and other “players.” They are only fitfully concerned—truly and wisely concerned—with the public interest.

Some political scientists have called this system “pluralism” or “polyarchy” (the rule of many); others have called it “interest group liberalism.” Both have concluded that elections are a mostly ceremonial affair and that it is unrealistic to expect (width-first) democracy to function in any very different way. They have also mostly concluded that polyarchy’s scramble isn’t so bad, especially compared to totalitarianism.

They hope that they may persuade you, that since it is impossible to do any good, you may as well have your share in the profits of doing ill. —Edmund Burke, The Philosophy of Edmund Burke, p. 148.

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Demiocracy, Chapter 3: What’s the Solution? Why

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Roger Knights

By narrowing each electorate’s topical and electoral scope, and by simultaneously and necessarily multiplying the number of electorates, we enable every issue and every candidate to be thoroughly and continuously evaluated by everyday citizens. In other words, we replace P-dominated DeMockery with demos-dominated democracy.

In addition, by restricting each legislator’s topical domain, we enable ordinary citizens, who are not typically fluent in multiple political domains (unlike members of the current “political class”), to become viable political candidates, also vastly expanding the role of the demos.

Democracy should be rule by an informed public opinion acting, after deliberation, in the public interest. But, in a mass-electorate DeMockery, the average voter will NOT be adequately informed, and will engage in little deliberation—resulting in misgovernment.

The problem with letting everybody vote too is that people are really easily manipulated and they’re really undereducated. They don’t have any incentive to pay attention to the real issues, what’s at stake and what are the consequences of each vote. They just vote with whatever feels good. And they’re busy, and they’re tired … and they don’t have the time, and they don’t have the incentive to be enlightened. They don’t have the incentive to have an objective, enlightened approach to how you handle the future of our society. —“Joe Rogan’s harsh truth about American voters” —Podcast, viewed November 6, 2023.

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Demiocracy, Chapter 2: What’s the Solution? How

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Roger Knights

My prescription is to “de-mass-ify” democracy by downsizing and dividing the electorate into multiple, issue-specific “Demi” (small) electorates, each responsible for a single electee. At a stroke the power of the Pernicious P’s would be cut by some 80%.

The representatives must be raised to a certain number in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and … must be limited to a certain number in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. —The Federalist #10.

Such Demi-electorates would continuously oversee and supervise their single officeholder throughout his/her term, not just during an election campaign.

These Proxy Electorates (PEs) would meet for hours every few months, primarily over a private intranet. Each PE would hear a report from its officeholder (who would have a correspondingly limited, issue-specific scope), pose questions, hear criticisms, discuss matters among themselves, and optionally make recommendations, authorize research, and launch investigations. During intervals individual electors could add comments, do research, chat, message, query the webmaster, etc.

In other words, these PEs would not be solely electors—they would be, at the least, actively involved overseers, and at most semi-legislatures, with their electee being only a functionary, depending on their charter and their mood.

Proxy Electors would be chosen as follows. Each member of the “full” (or “base,” or “mass”) electorate would be given 10 (say) “ballots” with which he/she could nominate similar everyday citizens to be his/her Proxies; no more than three ballots could be cast for any one person, including for him/herself.

All nominations would go into a virtual “bal-lottery box,” along, optionally, with some percentage of randomly selected names—say from 20% to 50%. From the box the names of pending Proxy Electors would be drawn and put into a reserve pool.

This technique is a combination, respectively, of selection (by nomination) and sortition (the technical term for random selection in politics).

There would be four (say) tiers, or levels, of Proxy Electorates: Local, County, State, and National. Bal-lotteries would be used to promote Electors from one tier to the next-higher tier, while remaining as much as possible within a similar issue-specialty (or “topical domain”) —e.g., education, law enforcement, transportation, commerce, etc. These successive bal-lotteries would tend to sift out the invincibly ignorant, improving the quality of the remaining Proxy Electors, especially at the upper levels, where noxious numbskulls would be the most damaging.

A dozen or so single-topic legislators would make up a “Demi” (i.e., small), single-topic legislature. Twelve to thirty Demi legislatures would in turn make up a full, Omni-topic legislature, whose approval would be needed before bills passed by its Demi components became law. Its members would be elected by either Demi-legislators, or Proxy Electorates, or some combination of both.

Proxy Electors would in addition freely nominate their favorite fellow electors for promotion to the electorate at the next level up (town, county, state, nation), using the random selection method already described, which I’ve dubbed a “bal-lottery.”

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Demiocracy, Chapter 1b: The (Mass-Electoral) System Is the Problem

Posted on January 12, 2024 by Roger Knights

It’s been famously said that the general will cannot be represented—only a factionalizing “will of all.” And it’s been found, after man tore free, that Rousseau’s warning was correct.

Rousseau’s fears about representative institutions are everywhere confirmed within the politics of power: Leaders, players or actors become isolated from an audience. —Robert J. Pranger, The Eclipse of Citizenship, 1968, p. 27.

However, the general will can be incarnated in the State—“virtually” incarnated—by inserting a small, or “demitasse,” sample from the whole population. “Demiocracy” is the name I’ve adopted for this Demi-incarnated democracy.

It is rational to use a sample when using the whole would be impossible, awkward, or undesirable. We use a sample as juries for those reasons. Likewise, we use samples in focus groups, in surveys of TV viewership, and in opinion polling.

Demiocracy’s behavior will be revolutionary, though probably not (fortunately) as revolutionary as Rousseau hoped.

To make a revolution is a measure which, prima fronte, requires an apology. —Edmund Burke.

Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas. —Alfred North Whitehead.

The state begins by being absolutely a work of the imagination. Imagination is the liberating power possessed by man. —Ortega y Gasset.

All great truths begin as blasphemies. —George Bernard Shaw.

A man with a new idea is a Crank, until the idea succeeds. —Mark Twain.

A really new idea affronts current agreement. —White’s Observation.

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Demiocracy: A Demos-Dominant Democracy, Chapter 1a: The Founders’ Foundation—Neighborly Nomination

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Roger Knights

If a parliament … is the method, then certainly let us set about discerning the kind of suffrages, and rest no moment till we have got them. —Carlyle, A Carlyle Reader, p. 432.

The fact is, however, that no practical substitute for the present type of representative government, with its dependence on the system of permanent party organizations, has yet been devised…. —James Hogan, Election and Representation, 1945, p. 55.

The recruitment of the deserving by their “familiars” was the basis of the Founders’ political system. Therefore, LET US VOTE the way they intended: not for party politicians, but FOR FELLOW CITIZENS IN OUR “NEIGHBORHOODS”—physical, social, collegial, and familial—who deserve it—hopefully because they exhibit “the requisite wisdom and virtue.”

Let us no longer vote for a slate of presidential electors, whom we don’t know, but rather for people whom we DO. Some of these nominees would become, by random selection, our presidential electors—in other words, our designated political Proxies.

We would thereby select our choices, not settle for a pre-selected name on a menu—hopefully (because we don’t really know his character) the “Least Evil” one of the bunch. Our free selections, on the other hand, would be of better-known quantities, constituting our personal “Best Men” (and Women).

Our Proxy Electors (PEs) would constitute a new and very different Electoral College — a “Popular” one.

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America Should Be Ripe for Sortition

Posted on January 5, 2024 by Roger Knights

Here are a few instances where DeMockery has badly failed us, and where Demiocracy [to be explained later] would have done a better job—and had greater legitimacy with the public, because of its Everyman composition. The priorities of common folk are not as much warped by the Pernicious P’s. (Their relative resistance to Propaganda, for instance, was portrayed by the cynicism of the “proles” in the saloon-set scenes in 1984.)

To me, as to the alienated Greeks I posted about yesterday, these outrages are not just incidental accidents, but revelations of the essential objectionable character of the political class that is nurtured and sustained by DeMockery.

There’s no such thing as a cheap politician. — Ferdinand Lundberg, Scoundrels All, 1968.

  1. The Great Depression, Part 1. I’ve read that some officials wanted the Federal Reserve to be more hawkish in 1927, because a house of cards was a-building due to its loose credit policy. But moderating the roaring Twenties then would have impinged on the wealth of Wall Streeters and dimmed the GOP’s presidential prospects in 1928, so pressure was applied to keep the party going. Even if this speculation isn’t 100% correct, it is the SORT of thing that is likely occur under DeMockery. For instance:

    Also to blame is former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly pressured and even threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to continue to keep the interest rates low to aid his re-election campaign. When Mr. Trump was first elected, the 2007-09 recession and its aftereffects had more or less ended. But he wanted low interest rates to artificially boost the economy at great expense. He met with the Fed chairman to remind him of his expectations. —Letter to the WSJ, April 10, 2023, by A. Salinity.

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Is Greece Ripe for Sortition?

Posted on January 2, 2024 by Roger Knights

In the First World, Greece seems like the ripest country for sortition, mainly because of widespread exasperation with the entire political system in the wake of its March 2023 railway disaster.

The BBC reported on March 12, 2023:

This tragedy has shaken Greece. So many of the lives lost were young and it has unleashed a national outpouring of grief and outrage mostly directed against the country’s ruling classes. Not for the first time, Greeks feel betrayed by their politicians.

According to early polling, 87% say there are other causes beyond human error, and guilt needs to be assigned. Every day new revelations about the sordid state of Greece’s train network cause more horror, anger and distrust of the political class.

A class that neglected the rail system, privatised operations, spent millions on security systems only to let them rot and wasted vital EU funding.

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