Democracy And Free Markets: Is That All?

Leadership and Influence

The market system of creating and manipulating human desires is certainly not one.

Creating public leaders can control through dictatorship is not one, because people tend to respect those who can resist them.

Some form of democracy is the best candidate, but we are discovering that treating the public as a market, and democracy as a commodity, has eroded the kind of respect we would ordinarily think would develop among leaders through democratic organization.

Having had experience in the military, in business, in universities and in humanistic growth centers, I'm not at all convinced that respect for those being governed increases in the order I just listed, maybe just the other way around. Given that paradox, how can we safely and effectively introduce the humanistic (and spiritual?) concerns that we wish would replace the rampant materialism currently undermining our development toward a sane society?

A key criterion for a democratic society is a citizenry composed of individuals who, for their own interest, will seek enough information and spend enough time to understand the major direction their elected leaders are taking us. As a result, those leaders will respect their views as the only force that will keep them in power.

To make this possible, no money can be sent by any citizen or citizen-owned corporation to any candidate in or seeking office. Electioneering costs should be limited to an allowance from the government.

In short, I am looking for concern of leaders for approval by the people who elected them, and satisfaction of the people for the quality of the leaders they have elected.

(Participant) Don, I surely don't disagree with you on your desires for a better system. But I think the point I make is still the most important. As you might guess, I think it is a paradox. One cannot blame anyone for thinking that the important thing is for the public to respect their leaders and for the leaders to seek that respect. But I don't think it works most successfully that way. In an organization, I would make the case that it is more important that the leader like and respect his or her employees than that they like and respect him, because that is the only arrangement in which respect can grow for both leaders and followers for each other. If you start with the leader seeking to be liked and respected by the followers, you will get the opposite of your intent. The leader will do things that will not make him like and respect them. And if that happens, we are all led down a path of erosion. I know it seems absurd, but......

(Participant) I agree what you say about the employer/employee relationship in a corporation.

In that case, the leader/owner of a corporation is in business for himself and his stockholders. The corporation is designed to benefit its owners and what will make it profitable is what should be done. To have the employees like and respect the owners is, in most cases, simply good business. Sometimes, employers, for various reasons, do things (like holding back on wages) that the employees don't like. If profits are increased or not jeopardized, this is still OK in a capitalistic system.

In a nation, it is the reverse. In effect, the citizens own the nation and they elect individuals to run the nation for their benefit. If those they elect do things that the citizens believe are for special interests or are unwise, they should throw them out of office.

At least in my understanding, that is the way those two systems are supposed to work. But in both cases, the true owners (stockholders in business and citizens in national politics) have lost or yielded their prerogatives. Designated leaders and elected officials have taken over the direction of the nation and the corporation.

The size of both organizations, many times larger than was contemplated by their original designers, may be part of the problem. And, as you say, we are all sliding down a path of erosion.

If this is approximately true, the outcome of an election between leaders and led is not to be modified by changing one or the other, but both: their values, expectations, culture.

Next, if we add that most people have a character, values, motives that are adaptive to the circumstances, then it is circumstances that need to change.

Right now, leaders align with existing power trends, the tsunami of a new party monopoly (the buzz today is about the pressure on Bush from internal folks to go after Iran), that is, chose power over creation. Having messed up Iraq makes no difference. The power opportunity is there.

What combination of tech, money, law, regulation, media allow that to happen?

If we don't go after the infrastructure, those who are adapted to it—leaders and led—cannot change.

And I am increasingly looking to culture shifts to lead the way. Later today I will start a new item on What to Do.

(Participant) I think, Doug, you're on the right track that trying to change one or the other will not be effective. We need to change the framework itself. And we have to do it somehow working within what it and with at least some tacit consensus from the 2 groups. If you change the rhythm the dance itself will change.

(Participant) Doug: I disagree strongly with your 2/84 that leaders and led have the same values. To start with an exaggerated model: was this true of the leaders and the led in Iraq? Or, to a lesser extent, of President Bush and many of our fellow citizens?

I do think that your comment was much more appropriate in the early days of our democracy. In those days citizens and leaders often changed hats and shared common experiences. True, there were aristocrats and followers then, but I suspect that the differences between them were less than they are today.

I may be in a minority here with this opinion. But unless I am, I think it will be important to help straighten it out as you move us into your WHAT TO DO phase.

If this is approximately true, the outcome of an election between leaders and led is not to be modified by changing one or the other, but both: their values, expectations, culture.

Next, if we add that most people have a character (values, motives that are adaptive to the circumstances), then it is circumstances that need to change.

Right now leaders align with existing power trends, the tsunami of a new party monopoly (the buzz today is about the pressure on Bush from internal folks to go after Iran - that is, chose power over creation. Having messed up Iraq makes no difference. The power opportunity is there.

What combination of tech, money, law, regulation, media allow that to happen?

If we don't go after the infrastructure those who are adapted to it, leaders and led, cannot change.

And I am increasingly looking to culture shifts to lead the way. Later today I will start a new item on What to Do.

(Participant) Much of the shift to a more consumer oriented society has been by the Peace and Love Generation and their children. What happened? How did the trend of democracy and capitalism overwhelm people who just wanted to drop out and make love and sing songs? How did materialism tempt those who supposedly eschew material wealth?

If the 50% of the population who vote are the elite or at least wealthier and better educated than those who don’t vote, which statistics seem to confirm, and we are displeased with their choices, what is the risk of getting everyone to vote regardless of how well informed they are? Worst case, they might validate the choices of the upper 50%. If they were "fooled" into making the same choices to their detriment, would they learn and vote differently next time acting as a counter balance?

Don, I don’t miss neck ties and for today’s generation how can they miss and more importantly want to go back to what they don’t know? I think a compelling argument against a move toward fascism is that most people who are under 40 and are or will be the elite want and believe that they can have their own company and be independent. They don’t want to work for "the man". If there is major pressure it will be either because this group feels that their opportunity has been denied which could happen as a result of pleasing the other group, or from this other group, which currently feels that they are not participating fully in the current system and have had enough. If the economy goes into the tank both groups will suffer but to achieve their objective for recovery could put them in opposition. In any case I don’t think a large part of the county is enamored with the strong man, particularly if under 40, whether it is government or big business. My guess is both will shoulder the blame for the next crisis with a desire to move more in the other direction.

(Participant) My concern is that the upper 50% is not educated either. I don't worry about just having everyone vote, because they usually vote with their families, but uneducated they become especially vulnerable to demagoguery.

(Participant) Dick, are the upper 50% uneducated or do we just not like their choices? Also, are the voters less educated today in the so called information age than in the past?

(Participant) More people are graduating from high school than ever before, but their education is suspect because about half are functionally illiterate, and almost none of them remember what was in the curriculum. I think I told you that a multiple choice test comparable to about a 7th grade history and general information test was administered to Ivy League seniors, and the average grade was 53. On a multiple choice test one could get a score of 25 by random guesses. To have a class of people educated to deal with the kinds of questions and challenges posed, for example, by this conference, or by a real examination of a ballot proposition, would require a very different kind of public education.

(Participant) I don't believe that it is possible to label any groups as being more or less "educated" as voters.

With regard to John's question, I think that most voters today are less educated largely because there are so many more complex issues today than ever before and most issues are also more complex.

I think we need to reexamine the process for registering opinions of "we, the people" with regard to substantive issues that appear in referenda. I have said this before, but now is a good time to repeat my suggestion: there is as much need to educate citizens asked to give opinions in a referenda as it is to educate them in a jury. We now have the capability of educating facilitated discussions of literally millions of persons leading up to polling their preferences after they have gone through such procedures -- a far better process than to ask for a yes/no answer to a short question in the ballot box. Yes, such new procedures will bring new problems which can be discussed in more detail. But it seems to me this is the kind of issue we need to discuss here in connection with our feelings regarding the role of citizens in our democracy.

This is related to my suggestion that we needed to invent new procedures for the 21st century to replace those invented in the 18th century.

(Participant) As Doug keeps reminding us, we have representative government. How much education does it take to decide on who you want as your representative?

The problem is our choices of potential representatives. The current big money, time consuming process to get elected, not to mention the invasion of privacy discourages many potential candidates.

(Participant) If we are going to elect representatives that will do a good job for us, then we have to vote for more than attractive smiles. It will take a lot of education to enable people to make those choices intelligently, because they will need to know where the candidates stand on the issues. And picking representatives is by no means the only task of completing a ballot.

(Participant) Is what you are describing something that we have ever had, that is the majority of the population (voters) with a lot of education? Is that a realistic goal? I think we know were candidates stand on the issues but do we know if that is were they should stand and does it take a lot of education to know or is it enough to know what is important to me as an individual and vote that way?

(Participant) The following estimate from Wharton appears to come closer to the real situation we will be facing. With no room to move, the idea of democratic involvement in designing a future is rendered moot. The options are being foreclosed, not issue by issue, as they would be discussed in a democracy, but entirely and deliberately by the creation of unmanageable deficits. The Republicans made the end of the estate tax permanent today. Every day there is a new tax break, and new heart break. We face the eventual collapse of the entire social infrastructure--welcome news to the libertarians. The actions of two men, Ralph Nader and Osama bin Laden, have transformed the world, but only one of them would be delighted with the result of his work.

Fate Worse than Debt: Can the U.S. Deficit Rise to $45.47 Trillion?

The U.S. government’s future obligations outweigh its projected revenues so heavily that it would need a permanent income tax increase of 66% or the immediate elimination of all federal discretionary spending to put it on track for balancing its finances. Such is the startling conclusion of a report by Wharton insurance and risk management professor Kent Smetters and Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank economist Jagadeesh Gokhale. The two argue that the government’s accounting system is backward looking and so has failed to properly account for future outlays such as Social Security and Medicare.

click here for report

(Participant) Several questions there, John. No, we have never had an educated citizenry. It is definitely a goal we should strive for, but will we even approach it? It’s unlikely, I would think. In any case, it will always be a relative matter. When you say "we know where the candidates stand on the issues" you're talking about very few people, very few. Even fewer know where they should stand. Actually every issue is in some way important to the individual, but few of us realize that. The person, whose issue is fixing potholes, is simply unaware that the candidate he or she votes for is going to be making decisions on all sorts of matters that actually affect the voter more than potholes. So there is no escaping the need for a liberal education. Meanwhile, we just cope as best we can.

(Participant) John, just a quick response to your question "Much of the shift to a more consumer oriented society has been by the Peace and Love Generation and their children." What happened?

First the government made their drug of choice (LSD) illegal, then it launched a campaign to seriously criminalize the use of pot, then business began to turn their unique dress style into trendy and expensive fashion, then in 1971 the price of sugar spiked hugely and launched several years of very high inflation. It became impossible to live without seriously joining the work day routine, and for anyone with children the penalties for "turning on and actually enjoying life" surpassed the reward. Government and business created pressures and harsh realities for the Peace and Love generation. Lacking a pleasant alternative they joined the game with a high degree of cynicism and resentment.

(Participant) I think John really nails it when he says "The problem is our choices of potential representatives." But I see that the candidates come from us. They are a reflection of us and our system.

When he asks "is it enough to know what is important to me as an individual and vote that way?" I take that as a serious question. Is it enough? An anthropologist friend of mine recently returned from India and we talked a few nights ago about his time there. Usually he is in villages, but this time he lived in upper middle class neighborhoods. One of his acquaintances there has coined the term "amoral familism" which he uses to describe the tendency of Indians today to base their decisions solely on what is good for the family-- ignoring completely any consequences for the culture or society at large. He also said that he was surprised that every middle class person he met there was constantly "working the angles".

Is that the society we want to live in? Well, perhaps it is.

(Participant) John: Your image of democracy seems to be limited to the selection of representatives. That may well be the best definition, but there really has been no recent public discussion of this. And certainly not here.

Meanwhile, exchanges similar to the ones we have had here discuss this serious question without ever really coming to terms with it. I have sought to get a discussion going on the role of citizens in this century, but instead of discussion we all are just repeating our previous and not fully understood (even by ourselves), definitions.

In my "shallow" opinion, I think that if we limit the citizen role to selecting representatives, democracy has outlived its usefulness in the modern world. But even this needs serious re-thinking before we accept it and move on. But if we do think that there is a larger role for the citizen, we have a future task equal to the one that Doug has been steering.

(Participant) Don, if our citizens lack the education to intelligently select representatives, how can we expect them, and do we want them, to decide on other issues? As an experiment on more participatory democracy, California is a failure.

The key is leadership. More qualified leadership would come from a better pool of candidates, which the system currently discourages.

(Participant) John: Leadership is of course a key to good government. But if, for a number of reasons, we fail to elect good leaders, what other leaders, and what is their role, that you have in mind?

In various places in our discussion here, there has been opinions voiced that an important role of "citizens" is to monitor the integrity of those whom we elect.

Some have also suggested that elected officials listened more to the wishes of their donors than to those of their constituents. To help rectify this gap in our government structure, citizens could play the role of monitor if there were better ways for choosing them, educating them, and facilitating their discussions in this task. There are an increasing number of on-going experiments to develop ways for doing this. In fact, this afternoon I will be attending a demonstration of one of these -- America Speaks.

I agree with you, John, that the infrastructure for using citizens in this role does not now exist. I hear you say that you doubt that it could be useful even with new technology and programs, and you point to the California experience. But California still is stuck in the old process of yes/no referenda which, I agree, IS A FAILURE. I have no hard evidence that the new experiments will work. But I do believe that we are in enough trouble to warrant continuing experimentation with new ideas.

Again, John, I think our only disagreement is whether or not the current government of our great nation is in enough trouble to warrant this experimentation.

(Participant) I think we could all agree that leadership is crucial. The point that I think both Don and Kip are making, however, is that the quality of leadership that can develop will depend upon the quality of citizenship. The chance that we can have wise leaders and unwise citizens is remote. Witness our present Congress.

(Participant) I am not convinced that our government is in any worse shape than it has ever been. I am also not convinced that it caters more to special interests today than in the past. The world is more complex today which requires a better functioning government. How can we accomplish that? I fear that empowering the individual will have the same negative consequences that allowing individuals to manage their own retirement accounts has had. The solution for retirement accounts was more regulation and strict enforcement of the companies responsible for managing pension assets, instead we have put the burden on those who are least qualified and will suffer the most from deficient retirement assets. Allowing or requiring more participation by citizens could lead to even less involvement giving an even smaller number of people control. I would not have citizens monitor government either but professionals who are expert in the function similar to auditors or the SEC and paid accordingly.

But as you and others have pointed out what can we realistically do today?

Kip, I was amused by your comments about the Peace and Love Generation. Some hard core surfers I know would say that they were not very committed. But how do they go from resentment to embracing consumerism resulting in the biggest shopping spree in history? I only ask because it makes me wonder how permanent the effects of culture are as the same group has lived two very divergent lifestyles.

(Participant) Dick, I think that there are plenty of quality citizens who would be very good representatives but choose not to enter politics for the reasons mentioned earlier. I don't think that our country is going to pot. I am quite encouraged and optimistic about the future. My frustration is that we could do better. I don't think we are doing any worse than previous generations but if we are not doing better that shows a lack of enlightenment or growth.

(Participant) John: You know far more about this than I, but in view of the recent happenings in the financial world, I don't understand how you would write above: "I would not have citizens monitor government either but professionals expert in the function similar to auditors or the SEC and paid accordingly."

The above is a genuine question, not a smart-Alec probe.

(Participant) Don, you mean, who watches the watchers? Good question, but for all the highly publicized cases that auditors and the SEC failed to prevent there were far more that they did prevent just by their presence and regulations. Rigorous enforcement of existing laws would have gone a long way to preventing others.

Plus like the auditors and SEC, I would expect citizens to bring situations that they are concerned about to their attention for investigation like any policing entity.

But again, I don’t see at this time a realistic chance of something like this being enacted.

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