Don’t give away your vote for 4 years

Peter Monien
Nov 5 · 2 min read

Politics doesn’t represent the majority of the People. Even if an overwhelming majority is clearly in favor of a certain policy it doesn’t mean that this will translate to legislative action in parliament.

An American study has shown that “when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups.”[1] A German study revealed similar results.

Some reasons for this disparity are:

  • The political system is outdated and hands over power to politicians for 4 years on a very vague basis.
  • The power structure within the system is heavily biased towards influential groups with money. These groups have a decisive influence on politicians and legislation.
  • The internal structures of political parties are mostly far from democratic.

It is time to Upgrade Democracy!

What can be done to gain a real say in politics and achieve a more effective democracy?
How can this be achieved within the current political systems?

In my view, we need a new parliamentary champion.

The Proxy Party in a Nutshell

We need a different breed of political party: A proxy party:

  • A Proxy Party acts like a normal party but only serves the function of facilitating the opinion formation of its members and the 1:1 transfer of the results into parliament.
  • A Proxy Party speaks to grassroots democracy, focusing on transparently safeguarding democratic and information processes
  • A Proxy Party grants its party members the right to take on a decision themselves. The members can start an internal vote and transfer the decision-making power from the elected representatives and the party leadership and into their own hands. This only requires 5% of party members, including all delegated votes

A new Chance for Democracy

A great democracy has got to be progressive
or it will soon too cease to be great or a democracy.”

Theodore Roosevelt

What could a party achieve that is truly focused on representing its members as a true grassroots democracy — one that is efficient and transparent?

If you are fascinated by this idea you will be interested in reading my book “Upgrading Democracy: Claiming a Say to achieve True Democracy” that will come out by December 3rd. The reduced pre-order price is $2.99/€2.99.

Originally published on https://upgradingdemocracy.com/

Peter Monien

Written by

15+y B2B sales/BizDev. #founder: TEAM 4M, cooperative 4freelance. Sweetbridge Ambassador. Here = my own thoughts. #blockchain #ai #ubi #abetterfuture #freemedia

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