Administration in post democratic, post capitalism, post socialist society. . .
Your point is the missing piece allowing for direct democratic rule? That was a touchy issue included, more or less, in the fight over how democratic to make the republic as a structure. To avoid getting into detail that I have not taught for many years, the whole American Experiment ended being a very limited system of representational government. To put it in plain words, the landed gentleman of the state legislative bodies had the say and, while drawing their authority from the people whom they represented, didn’t trust the people to have any sense. The justification for the Declaration of Independence was the Enlightenment principle that government comes from the people and not from god(s) or individual families, etc. This was tricky as the British crown was based on both aristocracy, royalty, plus the Magna Carta that gave the landed lords a share in the rights of government so they could legally refuse the king’s requests. The problem was that didn’t extend to their colonies that were wholly owned but the king who granted them to whomever he wanted. The founding fathers needed the Enlightenment principle to justify overthrowing a destructive government but weren’t interested in taking the principle to its logical ends.
The final compromise was the procedure for states voting on suggested changes to the constitution by amendment. To the minds of those people that satisfied the requirement without threatening the government. They could have done a plebiscite and the incredible slowness of the process over months would have allowed things to be controlled but even that was way too scary for them. So we do not have a democratic government but a very limited republican government that has been pushed to its limits with inclusion of diverse populations.
The whole thing has been made pointless by instantaneous communication that has, in the last twenty years specifically, created a completely new type of human society based on virtual communities and communication completely unrelated to distance within astronomical limits, i.e. light speed delays. While this was presaged by 20th century telecommunications the limitations of that and the focus on broadcast delivery kept things close enough to the 18th century model that landed gentry rule could be maintained with corporate lords replacing landed lords. Obviously capital is very similar to land as a indication of value. But the Internet age knocked the basic concepts of social order out from under the “modern” nation-state. Historically it was a good run of 200–300 years. But now its dead, dead, dead.
I’m not arguing against the need for a way to allow people (not oligarchies or their representatives) to initiate governmental change. A plebiscite is the way to do that in a system that justifies government by a active decision of citizens. Oops, that’s another antiquated concept that doesn’t play anymore. Citizen is generally based on geography assuming that human societies are based on place of birth or, later, at least place of occupation and residence. The fact that people live in places that have nothing to do with where they were born and work in places they have never physically been demands a new definition of citizen. Add to that the very bad consequences of atmospheric change creating growing climatic disasters forcing vast population movement and we need to redefine the way people link to their governmental administrative system. This is the thing that I’m most focused on now. Simply stating an incredibly complex change, we have both a failed governmental system (republic style semi-representative government), an evolutionary challenge that people cannot understand even the problems we face on a planetary level let alone any possible solution, and our post industrial societies have evolved completely outside the range of effective government under the 18th century model with 19th and 20th century modifications.
But . . . wait for it . . .That’s not all. The governmental model that is planetary now is based on politics as it’s overriding design. Our need is for administration on a planetary level. Politics is the allocation of power to the, well, powerful. The 18th century model as discussed above justified some power (as little as possible) being given to the a broader level of the society consequently limiting the power of the already powerful. Politics are the rules of that half hearted struggle. But it doesn’t work well at all because in limited representative governments the hyper wealthy, that are the inevitable consequence of capitalist economics that, if unregulated, consolidate wealth in as few hands as possible, simply buy the representative power they need.
So the process of administration of society including protection for everyones rights and planetary resources are constantly upended by power struggles among the oligarchs who own the government. The goal of the oligarchs is to eliminate as many rights as possible and convince people that they don’t need rights (it’s bad for their health and people won’t like them if they have rights) because that limits the oligarchs political power. This was the early problem of wage slavery identified in capitalism by Marx and others. This is also irrelevant because most people are not needed as wage slaves. Robots work without the moral problems (well, for now at least). I’m being very succinct here but hopefully you get the gist.
Where we are going we will be focused on:
- Expanding individual rights,
- improving education so that people aren’t bored,
- removing politics from administration by transferring political power to every individual on the planet,
- disconnecting citizenship from geography,
- replacing capitalism with “innovationism” with value in intellectual property that is inherently shared by every sentient being
- (I’m anticipating AI and genetically modified dogs, cats and hamsters.)
This is not some utopian ideal but what I see happening around us now. We are just confused by the extent of the change. This is happening spontaneously based on changes in human society from our technologies and success at automation. Because people are being constantly told to think the old way by the oligarchs many people are still confused. But more and more people realize this everyday. That is the paradigm shift . . .
I’m covering this for several directions:
Want to support my writing? You can say so by clicking the heart or contribute at paypal.me/gigator
