Optimocracy Brings The Engineering Mindset To Governance
Every smart politician knows that there is a segment of the population whose members harbor a certain resentment that comes from their inability to understand the world’s complexities. Things are just a bit more complicated than they are equipped to handle. For good reason, they feel left out. In n my previous article, Thwarting The Power Addicts by Thwarting Goebbelsology we called them “the seventy-fives.”
The member of this group is likely to become a victim of goebbelsology, the use by power addicts to manipulate the perceptions of this most easily manipulated part of the population. Those who just don’t have the bandwidth between the ears to deal with the complexity of modern life are easily turned into the “True Believer” described in Eric Hoffer’s insightful book by that name. Their vote is guided by some simplistic bumper sticker slogan or a total susceptibility to party lines and demagoguery.
Whenever a seventy-five is among people who show by their conversation that they have a fair handle on the world’s complexities, the seventy-five is compelled to confront their own inadequacy. Encounters like that tend to foster an untapped, seething anger borne of this unintentional ostracism.
Politicians know how to tap into that anger – and into the votes that come with it. It involves two simple steps:
1. Communicate with the seventy-fives audience using language and concepts that are suitable for a seven year old.
2. Repeatedly suggest and assert that the elites constitute a monolithic cabal of intellectuals and academics, whose simple agenda is to keep power for themselves and away from the seventy-fives.
Normal angry voters are one thing, but angry seventy-fives who have been told in very simple and direct language that their situation is the result of intention by the elites are an entirely different thing.
They’re ready to hear from a demagogue a simple story telling them that all their problems, all their anxieties over their inadequacies, come from a particular group. That’s at its most dangerous when that group is an ethnic or racial group.
The seventy-fives are a hazard to civilization, but in normal times they seethe in a corner by themselves.
The danger arises when a nation’s economy sours, or when some affront to a nation such as the Treaty of Versailles provokes justified anger among a more mainstream population; or, in an updated example, a troll farm such as the Internet Research Bureau skillfully manipulates both the left-outs and part of the broader population.
That’s when autocrats get elected.
But wait, if the seventy-fives are a minority, how do they ever get their way?
A pointed question will provide the answer: Have you ever found yourself in a voting booth without the knowledge to make an intelligent choice between candidates or referendum positions?
And did you vote anyway?
Of course you did.
Mea culpa, so have I.
Because, after all, it's “our civic duty to vote...” And in this case our vote was probably subconsciously influenced by advertising. Yes, you and I helped elect Mr. Super-Pac, the pol with the coziest connections to the big spenders.
When you and I do that, we are no better than one of the seventy-fives.
When we vote without knowing who or what we're voting for, we become like just another member of the seventy-fives. And there, my friend, is the trouble with existing political systems. The more there is to know about candidates and issues, the more complex life becomes, the stupider the system gets, due to a combination of stupid voters and busy voters who might as well be stupid.
If someone is that unconcerned about the governance of their municipality, state or province, or nation, then what is the chance they will have done their homework to learn the issues and the real backgrounds and qualifications of the candidates? When we decry bumper-sticker politics and sloganeering and negative campaigning, you just know these are the techniques that generate votes from the vast bloc of voters who are too busy or unconcerned or, yes, unintelligent to know what or whom they are voting for.
And yet “Everyone, get out and vote” is seen as essential to democracy.
What to do?
Here’s the first step: recognize that just as complexity has changed the nature of the problem, the tools to fix the problem have also evolved. In fact there is a superb set of tools for the job that are virtually ignored by those involved in governance, while in the world of technology those tools are applied in ineffective bits and pieces.
Before I continue, it is essential that you understand one very important set of those tools. This set of tools is almost always completely misunderstood by those who could put it to use. To deflect you from the path that has led to that widespread misunderstanding, we have changed its name. It's now called “puzzle kit “infrastructure. You need to understand how it works, because it is immensely important.
So please watch this two minute video before we continue. I’ll be waiting right here.
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Seriously, none of this will make sense until you watch that video. 2 minutes. Please.
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OK, thanks for watching the video. Now where were we…
Oh yes, now that you know how we can have true digital signatures from measurably reliable identities, let's continue…
The Solution: Optimocracy
Optimocracy is a system of governance that assures that only the well-informed participate in governance. If that makes it sound like optimocracy is undemocratic, that’s understandable. But optimocracy is in fact democratic.
Universal suffrage – the right of everyone to participate in governance, the untouchable foundation of democracy, is preserved in optimocracy. Optimocracy disenfranchises no one – not even children. In an optimocracy, anyone may participate in governance.
And yet, optimocracy discourages the seventy-fives as well as well as people who are capable but uninformed from participating in the political process.
In fact optimocracy is more democratic than the representative systems of national and regional governments, for the same reason municipal governments tend to foster more direct involvement than national or provincial and state governments. That’s because city hall is physically nearby. Unlike the hearings in your national capital, you can get to that commission hearing in person.
Because the voter is represented by a digital identity certificate, the source of governance of a community that physically spans the globe is even nearer. It’s as nearby as your laptop or phone.
The comparison with municipal governance goes further than the question of directness because, as with municipalities, the governance structure is built on commissions. All decisions are made by commissions, including a commission that decides in which commission a particular issue belongs.
Activists, that is, people who show up for hearings and who make a point of getting face time with city councilors and other decision makers, tend to play a large part in the governance of cities, Activists tend to know what’s going on in a city department, who is on which side on what issue. That’s another reason why optimocracy is patterned on municipal governance.
Governance By Commissions
Optimocracy resembles systems of governance that are used by many municipalities, where decisions are made by commissions, and effectively only those who have shown up at the hearings and engaged in the debate get to vote.
In optimocracy, a commissioner is anyone who has the time, interest, and intelligence required for regular participation. No participation, no vote.
The system benefits from self-selection. People who aren’t mentally equipped to handle complex issues are as unlikely to participate in municipal governance hearings, as are people who don’t have the time, discipline, inclination, or patience to participate. That is as it should be. If one is not prepared to cast an informed vote, one shouldn’t vote. But there is no oppressive authority issuing rules, regulations and edicts about who is and who is not qualified to vote.
Certainly a commissioner might represent a particular economic interest, but in optimocracy it’s difficult or impossible to sway votes with the kind of emotional, bumper-sticker-type appeals that the power addicts always use in order to manipulate the votes of the mentally lazy and the stupid.
Back in the old days participants in municipal commissions had to physically get to a hearing room in city hall, typically at night after work and after the kids were in bed. That fact severely limited the number of people who were able to participate in municipal governance, and gave the elderly and the childless an edge.
That has changed. Now, accountably anonymous identity certificates and other PKI tools mean that commissions need not gather in physical space. Deliberations take place in synchronous (realtime) and/or asynchronous (forum-type) space, as the commissioners and moderators choose. Probably if the commission has members in widely separated parts of the world, asynchronous debate would be favored. All comments are to be digitally signed. In synchronous meetings, responses to randomly timed quorum calls must be digitally signed. (Learn abut digital signatures here.)
Each commission is led by a moderator, whose only job is to keep order. There’s also a chief moderator who has a substantial amount of power – but nevertheless can be easily removed according to:
The Optimocracy Voting Formula for Leadership Choices
Moderators are elected by members of their commission according to a continuous plurality or majority vote. Each commissioner must at all times maintain a standing vote of confidence, no confidence, or neutral in their moderator.
The result of the standing election works according to the formula
y=12sin0.01x+60
where
y = per cent of standing vote required by either incumbent moderator or challenger to win
x = number of days the incumbent moderator has been in office.
Thus a moderator has alternating periods where she can be more assertive without fear of being tossed out, and periods of vulnerability, where she needs to be extra mindful of her relationships with commissioners. The function addresses the age old question of whether strong, assertive leadership or sensitivity to the needs of constituents is more important. This accommodates both views.
Some might say that average people don’t understand trig functions and so would not understand how voting works.
Others might say… “and your point is…?”
Another approach would be the trailing-average vote of confidence. As long as the moderator of a commission has a requisite level of support, he or she has a good deal of autonomy. Support is measured as a number between 0 and 1 representing a six month trailing average vote of confidence. That way, one unpopular decision won't tend to derail the chief's mission.
For more about optimocracy principles see
http://optimocracy.org
For more about parliamentary procedure as adapted to optimocratic online meetings see https://www.robertasrules.org/.
Let’s give the intellectual heirs of Churchill some hope that a newer, better “worst form of government except for all others” will result in governance that’s not perfect but which is hopefully less stupid than what we’ve come to expect.
Optimocracy lets that third of the population opt themselves out of participation. No IQ tests, not imposition of eligibility requirements; simply the fact that those most susceptible to the appeal of demagogues will not have the discipline, patience, and intellectual ability to follow the complex processes of governance.