The World Revolution Can Use a Crowd-Sourced Global Policy Cloud
Asking citizens of the world about what they would like to see to avoid climate collapse, and extend wellbeing to all.
A few months ago I published an article titled A Crowd-Sourced Global Policy Cloud for a World Revolution. Governments must listen to the citizens of the world, not to the capital-owning class, about what they demand to avoid climate collapse, and expand wellbeing to everyone.
My proposal is to create a website that would collect policy demands from citizens all around the world. The most popular demands will be highlighted on the website, in real time, as people type in their contributions. When large number of humans type in their suggestions, governments, unions, think tanks, activist organizations, labor unions, professional associations, human rights groups, communities, municipalities and all organizations involved in the management of society, can see, in real time, what people want to be done.
The policy cloud seeks to inspire citizen organizations from around the world to demand change in a coordinated way, while maintaining independence from each other. The policy cloud is a multilingual and democratic platform that showcases a vast collection of popular demands and policy proposals.
Visitors to the site would be invited to reflect on three questions:
- What needs to happen for your own life to get better?
- What needs to happen for your community to get better?
- What needs to happen for the whole world to get better?
Humans from around the world, with or without a computer, with or without an internet connection respond to these questions. In the next step, an editorial team, selected democratically by lottery, will place the answers in the cloud with minor edits for clarity and possible match with existing answers. All these inputs to the database will be stored in the form of a fully-accessible blockchain to guarantee complete transparency.
Imagine your labor union seeing that 10 million people in the world demand a free universal health care, or free universal education, or a livable guaranteed basic income, or the abolition of the billionaires, or a maximum limit on wealth, or the reduction of the working time with no loss in income and wellbeing. Now imagine your labor union also seeing that 99% of its members support the same demands. Would that not be an extremely powerful motivation to demand those policies from the ruling class?
The purpose of the crowd-sourced global policy cloud is to act as a popular foundation to the vast number of research papers, policy briefs, expert testimonies, letters from scientists, and many top-down initiatives that attempted to convince governments to act. This kind of persuasion hasn’t worked. Let us try a bottom-up popular mobilization, but this time around based on concrete demands that come from the minds of many humans.
What is a policy cloud good for?
1. Bypassing the impasse of electoral democracy
It is no secret that governments are at odds with the desires of their electorates. There is vast majoritarian support worldwide for: no wars, healthcare as a human right, taxation of the super rich, the expansion of wellbeing for all humans, the phasing out of fossil fuels, yet governments continue to ignore these demands. While it may take some time until we will have legislatures by lot, a dynamic policy cloud can send loud and continuous signals, in a digestible form, that would publicly pressure governments into acting, while countering the elite narratives of special interest groups.
2. Waves of global strikes
Probably the most radical use is to serve as a backbone for waves of anti-establishment global strikes, as I have indicated in the video version of this essay. Certainly, radical revolutionary narratives may not sit well with some members of the public. At the same time, there is no secret that most victories against oppressive power have been done with contrarian narratives, resistance, truth-telling, disobedience. Having a tool to support anti-hegemonic struggles would add strength, coordination, sense of direction, worldwide solidarity, while guiding disparate movements towards synergy.
3. Real-time pulse of global citizens
In addition to massive global surveys such as Peoples Climate Vote 2024, that largely collect opinions and sentiments, a policy cloud would collect policy proposals, continuously, along with relevant demographic data (such as nationality, gender, age etc.). Data is kept in a blockchain-based cloud, to serve as source for modeling, correlation and causation research, anchoring with real-life events, policy planning, economic reforms, betterment of the quality of public relations, and journalistic investigations.
I leave other potential uses open to imagination.
Inspired by this article? Here is what you can do to help bring the idea to life:
- Share this text on your social media and tag an organization that you think might be able to implement this idea.
- If you represent an organization that might be able to run this project, get in touch with me via the Post Growth Institute.
- Add suggestions in the comments about how to make this project better, and how you think it can impact your life.
Change is coming.
Find out more about the Post Growth Institute on our website.
