Democracy And Free Markets: Is That All?

Evaluating Proposed Solutions

Don, I noticed you said 20th century. My feeling is that the forces at the end of the 20th have really changed the situation. Markets, corporations and information cut deeply into the old structures. Citizen and democracy are both poorly defined. New thought has undermined both. Ken Arrow and Nash (Of beautiful minds), two Nobel laureates in economics, argue that markets are far more rational than democracy and a better way to determine policy. We are living out their thinking at the level of actual practice.

Do think any of your proposed suggestions can work? I don’t mean their inner mechanics, but being adopted as policy supported by taxes? Some can be financed by philanthropy. Certainly "citizen's councils" that gave opinions after longish conversations on key issues could have a real impact. The problem seems to me to do with money. The general consensus is short term gain vs. long term development in education, technical research, or infrastructure. (This is because of concern about the long term viability of any US economic initiatives). Hence education, either public or new private initiatives, is not available except for career education for the more wealthy who will pay to protect their own children.

Taking money out of politics is seen by the courts as being against freedom of the press, and they have a point. But the general issue of one dollar one vote seems to e to cut deeper, to the philosophical level. This gets back to education.

So I need to ask, do you both propose these directions based on a strategic sense of success, or out of a sense of futility? Is strategic, what would be the actual political path to get there?

I think of it all this way. On my island there is a beautiful valley. Land is divided of course into parcels. People buy them and build seven thousand sq foot houses for a family of three. Each is maximizing their use of their parcel. The general aesthetic of the valley--vistas, either to be seen or to be seen from, the stream that runs down the middle, the best trees - all sacrificed to the money and the parcel mentality. No one saw the valley! (But the strange thing is, they all do, and yet it has no impact on policy).

Then I feel guilty for thinking about this when it is obvious (try driving there) that there are vast areas in greater Seattle (not on the island) where all legitimate grocery stores have left, and poor people are forced to buy high priced miserable quality food. They do not have access to the market. There is a move in the legislature here and other states to use new tech (GPS) to tax cars, not on gasoline, but on where the trip is, making desirable places more expensive. That means that the wealthier can afford to pay without much notice, but the poor cannot, which means reducing their access even more.

So to come back to the problems: economic and political - do we have to go outside the box to solve them (make them better), or can it be done from within the existing conditions (to which I would put cultural in the fore front)?

We used to have a society under god, where people had a covenant with god to then run their society to meet god's purpose. This was standard rhetoric, though, till WW1. Then it collapsed, and we got the economy and politics, and no common culture to give guidance. (It always was a bit of a cover story with nasty stuff going on anyway, but at least it gave a vision of good and bad that was more human than just economic performance).

The technical culture of our time comes down to risk analysis and economic choice (markets as information), which means voting by consumption, and such a system can be run centrally by machines. It is the model of society as a well programmed computer. Since corporations and governments are both tending this way, and they are customers of each other...

On the other side we have the fragmented individual. One big system and lots of isolated people. What kind of a future is that?

But we are not happy, the environment is not happy, the future for most children is bleak, and those who are truly marginalized live very poorly indeed.

Is it time for something else? Something big?

What if we had a new religion with just one major belief: if anyone is doing poorly, I am doing poorly. So what we need to do is, each human take the human situation that you know of that is the WORST, and do something concrete about it. Period.

What are we really competing with for viability? I'd say the world's people have several choices (and they will make them)

Christianity

Islam

Confucianism

Scientism (the world is atomic and statistical, and atoms are related to information and all things are sums of such information and humans are another thing that happen to be information processors i.e., they are computers).

Do we need a sixth choice?

So, for all those participating, there is some agreement about diagnosis (at the level of symptom but probably not about effective causes). Now, what is the therapy?

Realistically, I think they have the chance of the proverbial snowball.

In discussing some of this with friends we have considered the meritocracy system for our government (of course that's not likely either).

The real challenge in all of this is not with what might work, but how to get past the mindset that is so focused on its own desires and enrichment that it will fight tooth and nail to prevent anything it perceives as disruptive or challenging to their own agenda.

* I would strongly be against any thought of mixing religion with governance. Even if it were possible to dream up one religion with "one major belief" it would have, in Kip's words, "the chance of the proverbial snowball". Mixing religion with governance has never worked and certainly should not be tried here in the USA -- as much as Pres Bush is trying to do.

My second point in simpler and hopefully more understandable words:

* As I understand the meaning of "democracy", it is governance that responds to the perceived needs and desires of the citizens being governed. The procedures for doing this were developed for a time very different than the present. Over the years there have been numerous adjustments written into the constitution, but are now overwhelmed by the successful grab for power by the legislature and the executive and a diminishing participation by the citizens -- who theoretically have the power to blow the whistle when elected officials appear to be misusing their power. As I see it, there are two possible courses to take:

1: Redefine and restructure the role of citizens in acting as check and balance agents in our governance.

2: Redefine the structure of our governance with totally new instruments for checks and balances of those in power.

Much of our previous exchanges during our past weeks together have aired many different answers to my two basic ideas above. My intervention is simply motivated but a desire to see them organized in some sort of consensus (IF POSSIBLE) before we finish.

So I think I would replace "religion" as the organizing force with "design". And my guess is that you would too.

1: Accepting the "wisdom" and "political pressure" of we, the people, as a check and balance for the honesty and of our elected officials is essential for the preservation of our democracy BUT

2: This citizen role needs the kind of upgrading in education of citizens that we have been discussing.

I don't know where you would stand on experimenting with a drafted sample of citizens to play this role as I have described it several times before.

There is also the issue that what we mean by cultural neutrality and the taking on of techno rationalism is itself a deeply religious project. That is where the real shock has come for me - to realize that all he "better the world" language and the mission of the Royal Society and The Masons was deeply religious, to search out the mind of god, which turned out to be clock, and then, minor adjustment, a computer, working on information.

The founding fathers had a covenant mentality right out of the old testament. If we lose that fabric of the culture, can what is left survive? That is in part what I meant with the loaded question: democracy and markets: is that all?

The question of what to do - I am suggesting that we need to go outside the box of politics and markets to find a solution to the markets and democracy problem. Just as energy policy requires us to go outside the normal box, to life style, use of technology, rethinking towns and architecture.

I am suggesting that we need to go at least as far as looking at the major aspects of our culture, with its market maximization at any cost, including social well being.

On citizen councils, a small philanthropy could do it, and it would be a wonderful contribution.

Are there any of us who imagine that if we stepped onto a football field with pro players and followed the rules that we would suffer anything but injury? Do we think that the pro players (with all that's at stake in a game) would consent to change the rules to accommodate our age, our lack of ability and talent, our gentle natures or questioning minds? The game is structured such that the rules favor those who are able to play. There aren't any rules to enable those who can't play physically to have an equal shot at winning - maybe not even at surviving.

I don't see that the question is "what to do?" We have all of the information and knowledge necessary to make the world a better place. We know what rules are necessary, what the game should look like, etc., but why should the pro players accept any changes to the rules that would weaken the advantage they have? The pro players will change the rules only when they have to - in order to keep on winning. We might benefit in some ways from those rule changes, but they'll still be the big winners.

I have no doubt that significant changes are ahead, and democracy and free markets may not be the solution of the future (my real interest is what might be). Nor do I have any doubts that whatever the system is it will be the same game. This is, I think, mostly due to the audience - the appeal of the Circus Maximus.

I would argue that, as the different ethnic and political segments of our world become more interrelated by travel, migrations, and speed of communications, the separation of church and state should be an urgent goal.

At the same time, those parts of church/religion that convey ethics, rules of humanity and behavior, charity -- those and many more rules of behavior are imperative for any viable state and its governance. I am no student in this field, but I would hazard a guess that if you stripped those features from most religious beliefs, the list of does and don’ts would be very similar. It is the different mystical beliefs and sense of righteousness in different religions that in my mind are incompatible with modern governance.

This is my contribution to your "provoking us to think through the separation of church state".

For example, we know a lot about child development, but no one, not even the experts, knows how to grow one. Indeed, the events that seem to contribute to positive development in the child are calamities that we would not wish on anyone, and would actually protect our children from. What parents do deliberately to help their children makes almost no difference at all in how they develop. What their parents ARE (Democrats, alcoholics, Catholics, wife beaters, tennis players, hypochondriacs, intellectuals) makes a lot of difference, but that is essentially not within their concept of childrearing, and not entirely within their control.

I'm afraid the same paradoxes apply in any social engineering project. Things never work out the way they are planned. The field of social design is full of backfiring, unintended consequences. Some things work for a time, and then don't work. Almost every well intended disruption of an existing system works for a while, and then it doesn't. Utopias become dystopias. And the reason we cannot, in this conference, design the clearly better system is that we recognize the complexities and paradoxes and underlying assumptions and larger context. Ironically, the more we understand, the less able we are to offer solid answers. Even if we had the power, we could not, in good conscience, indulge in imposing a simplistic new rule on the masses as could those leaders (can we call them utopians?) like Hitler, Mao, and Mussolini.

What then can we do? I see at least three ways in which we can (and I hope will) contribute. First, we can make the invisible visible. If we take the time, and have the kind of leadership that Doug is giving us, we can come to see the present more clearly, and then we can point to it. The present is almost invisible to everyone, but when they see it they may constructively alter their behavior. We cannot see the future, but seeing the present is the next best thing.

Second, we can offer wisdom and perspective. That is, we can identify the timeless lessons of history; we can explain how things really work, instead of the way that most people think they do; we can be an early warning system.

Third, we can become social designers. Even though plans seldom work out as planned, and we cannot see the future, we can nevertheless attempt to study and design the social and physical arrangements, both small and large, that may enhance the lives of those we are trying to assist. Indeed, a fundamental rule in design is to involve those who will be the beneficiaries of the design in the process.

Even if fixing the world is a lost cause, it is one very much worth working on. Plans may not work, but planning is a valuable human endeavor. Design, like leadership, is a powerful organizing force. Nuclear energy, greed, territoriality, love, hate, spirituality--all are weak until mobilized by leadership and submitted to the design process. Quixotic as it may seem, we should always dream the impossible dream. As a discipline, design will test our ideas for their workability. We owe it to our intellectual process to submit to that test.

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