Will 100% Transparency of the Individual Solve The Trust Issue We Have with Democratic Systems?
Yesterday I wrote about 100% de-centralised governments without any central or semi-central enforcement in place by means of blockchains and direct voting and asked you if you believe this is possible, and how we shall deal with individuals who harm the community in such a way community members cannot live in peace, harmony and without fear. For those who missed that post: De-Centralised Governments: Will This Work?
I personally do not believe in a system where all power is given to each individual (in terms of voting for any topic, in terms of being 100% responsible for themselves without systems in place to help those who need help, in terms of no systems in place to protect society from those who harm them, in terms of becoming judge and executioner).
Today I like to explore the possibility of one way to make democratic systems better.
Democratic systems: Best of all the bad systems?
Many people say: a Democratic system is the best of all bad systems as we know them. I’m not sure if I agree to that, but maybe democracy as we know it can be made better.
Democracy is implemented in various forms around the world. For instance, in the USA the people vote for the president in a system where the president has (some) veto rights over parliament and senate and a system with essentially 2 parties. In The Netherlands we have a system in which we vote for the parliament members and anybody can setup a political party; In our last elections we could vote for more than 30 parties, ended up with more than 15 parties in parliament, and will likely have 4 to 5 parties who will have to work together to form the new government this year. In Switzerland almost all important government decisions are voted for by the public since they write out a referendum for all those topics. All these implementation are democratic in one way or the other, but quite different in its implementation.
Will 100% Transparency make a Democratic system better?
The issue with any system is the fact that individuals are part of such system and not all those individuals can be trusted. Recently I started to play with the idea, in more details than I ever did before, how to make sure the individuals who are part of government and government tasks (politicians, police, judges, military and so on) execute there work in such a way as we shall expect from them, with ALWAYS the best interest of the society in mind. The current situation is that even when individuals (eg a politician) has the best interest of the society in mind, we may not trust such person on that topic.
How to increase that trust to a level we get back trust in our democratic systems?
Inspired by the book ‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers, I ask myself (and now you as well) if making everything each individual part of government does, transparent to the people, will create the trust that we require.
The method of making everything transparent in 'The Circle’ is for each individual to always wear a camera and microphone with live streaming feeds to everybody that wants to tune in. The camera is to be worn at the chest of the individual, face forward and must be always-on. The only times it is not required to be on, is when being at the restroom, with the rule restroom-time shall not be more than a few minutes, and when at home in the bedroom at nighttime. Surely, these rules are not cut in stone, since individuals may work during the night, and sleep during the day, so Eggers rules should be more tailored to activities, but that aside.
The idea behind the always-on of video and microphone is that the individual will not do anything that the community at large will not condone. Everything is streamed live, as well as recorded in the cloud forever. The idea is that whenever someone misuses his power, the community provides the pressure to undo the misuse. The idea is that whenever someone is continuous misusing its power, this individual can be removed from his/her position, ie taken away its power.
Questions to YOU
- Do you think such 100% transparency of each individual will make current implemented democratic systems better?
- Do you think with such 100% transparency a democratic system will be the best system we know today?
- Do you think such 100% transparency can be demanded from a human point of view?
I welcome your feedback including alternatives you have in mind to increase transparency of individuals part of our governments. I’m looking forward to fruitful discussions on this matter.
---
Related articles
Somewhat related articles
- How to be Creative? Fishing and Catching instead of Inventing!
- How Society Kills Creativity and the Importance To Change (in a Pixar style Animation)
- Are We Getting Close to the Possibility for Eternal Biological Life? Maybe YES!
---
---
follow me @edje
in political world, it is hard to implement transparency democratic
Did you read my post? I made a suggestion how to introduce absolute transparency!