Politics

Decisions are not Conclusions

Many people confuse decisions with conclusions. Decisions are not conclusions.

To decide is to PREFER. To draw a conclusion is to DIAGNOSE.

A decision is a preferance, a conclusion is a diagnosis.

There are four differences between a 'decision' and a 'conclusion'.

• 1. To 'decide' is to choose one option from a number of options. If only one option exists we cannot choose and there is nothing to decide. To choose is to prefer.

  Preference is determined by a priority. So every decision is determined by a priority.

  To "reach a onclusion" is utterly different. Only one right conclusion exists and we cannot choose it according to our priorities. We must deduce it from the data by using logical reasoning and technical knowledge. Data, reasoning and knowledge - not priorities - determine a single right conclusion. We must accept it even if we prefer a different one.

• 2. A conclusion can be 'right' or 'wrong', (2+2=5), but not 'Good' or 'Bad'. There are no bad conclusions, only wrong ones. A decision can be 'Good' or 'Bad', but not 'right' or 'wrong'. There are no wrong decisions, only bad ones..

• 3. Those making a decision are responsible for its outcome as they could decide differently - by a different priority - and get a different outcome. Those who draw a conclusion are not responsible for its results. They could not draw a different conclusion that is right.

  They are responsible only for the conclusion being right, not for its results.

• 4. Data determines conclusions, it does not determine decisions. The same data forces different people to draw the same conclusion, but they can make different decisions on it because of their different priorities.

To clarify further the difference between a decision and a conclusion, let us compare Hamlet wondering "To be or not to be?" with a doctor pondering "To amputate or not to amputate? " Hamlet has two options and must decide which to choose. Knowledge and logic cannot help him, as they do not determine what is 'Good' for him. On the other hand, a doctor must solve his dilemma by medical knowledge and logical reasoning leading to the right medical conclusion. If this has 'Bad' consequences the doctor is not to blame.

A doctor is responsible only for his conclusion being right.

Imagine a patient suffering from a tumour in the leg. Analyzing test-results the doctor concludes that the patient has cancer and says: Amputation can enable you to live longer; without it, you'll die soon. By applying logical reasoning to medical data a doctor draws a single medical conclusion ('diagnosis'). If the conclusion is wrong it is due to faulty data or reasoning but not due to the doctor's priority. Medical data determines a doctor's conclusion, but not the patient's response to this conclusion. The patient - not the doctor - decides how to respond to the doctor's conclusion. The same conclusion can lead different patients to make different decisions due to different priorities. Some decide to die rather than live as disabled, others decide to live as disabled rather than die. Which decision is "Good"?

Can the same conclusion lead to contradictory decisions, both "Good" ?

Can two decisions that contradict each other both be 'good'?

Surprising as it may seem the answer is - Yes.

The reason is simple: different patients have different priorities, some prefer disability to death, while others prefer death to disability. Both decisions are 'good' in the eyes of those who made them, as they are determined by different priorities, not by facts, knowledge or reason. Different people have different priorities, and there is no absolute priority enabling us to grade all priorities.

How does all this relate to politics?

Are politics decisions or conclusions?

Do politicians 'decide' or 'conclude' policy?

In politics people vote. Voting is choosing. To choose is to prefer. We decide what to prefer.

Anyone deciding policy - King, Dictator, President, Prime Minister, Leader, or ordinary citizen - chooses one option from a number of options. We cannot choose a conclusion. Answering "What to do"? is always a decision, never a conclusion.

Decisions are determined by priorities, not by data, knowledge or reasoning. The same facts, knowledge, and logic, can lead to different decisions due to different priorities.

Politics is decisions, not conclusions. We decide political issues. We don't conclude them.

Those who make a decision are responsible for its results as they could make a different decision (motivated by a different priority) and get different results.

Politicians whose decisions produce undesirable results usually try to evade their responsibility for such results by saying I had no choice pretending their decisions were conclusions. But they voted. Voting is choosing. One cannot choose a conclusion.

Priorities

A priority is a principle that determines preference. Without a priority we cannot choose.

To 'decide' is to choose one option from a number of options. To choose is to prefer. We prefer according to our priority. Priorities determine what we consider as 'good' and for whom it is 'good'. Many believe priorities are 'natural' or 'self-evident'. Not so. They are arbitrary assertions we make as without them we cannot make a decision.

Before World War I in Europe many believed that 'good' means 'Whatever is good for King and country.' In the United States some believed that 'What's good for General Motors is good for the United States.' But is the 'Good for General Motors' also good for the Ford Motor Company? Ford employees may think otherwise.

Human priorities are created by people, not by 'Nature', not by 'God', not by 'History', not by 'Reality.' Priorities are not imposed on us from outside, above, or below. If they were, there wouldn't be political problems. Many people believe 'Survival' is the ultimate priority imposed on us by Nature. Hamlet refutes this. If survival were his priority 'not to be' cannot be an option, as he must conclude 'to be' and has nothing to decide. But for Hamlet 'not to be' is an option, so he must decide, not conclude. For Hamlet - and many others - survival is not the ultimate priority. There is no ultimate priority.

A BBC survey conducted in 2004 showed that 71% of US citizens were ready 'to die for God.' They value God more than their survival. Many value their WAY of life more than life itself. Many prefer to risk their lives for Freedom or Honour rather than to live under oppression, or in shame. 'Death before dishonour!' and 'Freedom or death!' motivated millions to fight against oppression rather than submit to it.

Is submission to Nazi rule preferable to fighting against Nazism? Many replied - No.

Human society was not created by Nature. It is an arbitrary creation of human beings. By creating society people liberated themselves from total subordination to Nature. In Nature behaviour is dominated by biological needs. There is nothing 'good' in being completly dominated by biological needs: it abolishes freedom and reduces priorities to one - survival. Living in society liberates us from this enslavement by making the fulfilment of biological needs easier. Society frees us to choose priorities set by us, not by Nature.

Life in society enables us to choose our own priorities.

All political priorities can be sorted into just five types by posing the question:

The five possible answers are:

• 1. Good for me/my family (the Ego-centric priority)
• 2. Good for my King/Country/Nation/tribe (the Ethno-centric priority)
• 3. Good for Humanity (the Anthropo-centric priority)
• 4. Good for God (the Theo-centric priority)
• 5. Good for all Nature (the Bio-centric priority)

At any moment we have a single priority. We need it as without it we cannot decide.

We cannot have two priorities at the same time, as we cannot prefer two things. We may want two things but if we must choose one of them we must prefer by using our priority.

Each priority excludes all other priorities. 'Good for King and Country' excludes 'Good for me'; 'Deutschland über Alles' excludes 'Rule Britannia'; both exclude 'Good for Humanity.' Many people use one priority for one purpose and another priority for other purposes but at any given moment everyone has only a single priority.

Economic and political conflicts originate from conflicts of priorities. Ethno-centrism of one group comes into conflict with ethno-centrism of other groups and often leads to war.

Egocentrism of one person comes into conflict with the egocentrism of all other persons.

Ego-centrism, the priority principle of Capitalism, contradicts Anthropo-centrism, which is the priority principle of Socialism and of Christianity.

Each priority has sub-priorities, to decide what does 'good' mean. 'Good for me' can mean maximum health, or maximum wealth, or maximum power, or maximum happiness, or longevity. Here too we can have only one sub-priority at any moment.

How do priorities affect Hamlet and the doctor? They affect Hamlet but not the doctor.

Hamlet decides according to his priorities but the doctor concludes by applying logical reasoning to medical data, not by personal priorities. If Hamlet is religious then his priority makes him choose 'to be' as all religions forbid suicide. But if his priority is 'good for me', and if he prefers death to dishonour, then he'll decide not to be. A doctor cannot choose a medical conclusion. Conclusions are not chosen but imposed by the data and by logic.

What about politics? Is Politics conclusions or is it decisions?

Politicians vote. One cannot vote for a conclusion, so politics consists of decisions.

'Good for King and country' was the priority of most Europeans up to World War I, and millions of Europeans volunteered to die for that priority.

Two world wars changed people's priorities. Today most people in Europe and the United States have another priority: Ego-centrism. 'I do what is good for me'.

In his inaugural speech in 1961 President Kennedy appealed to the citizens of the USA to change their priority. He said:

Ask not what your country can do for YOU. Ask what YOU can do for your country.

He asked them to change their priority from ego-centrism to ethno-centrism. Very few did so.

Priorities are programmed into children by parents, teachers, leaders. Once implanted, it is very difficult to change them - especially if this is done using authoritarian means.

People believe that their own priority is 'natural', 'self-evident', 'the only sensible choice'. But all priorities are arbitrary. No priority can be justified 'objectively' as every justification is itself based on a priority which requires justification.

Despite Kennedy's request, very few Americans changed their ego-centric priority.

Some Americans decided that Kennedy's priorities contradicted their priorities and assassinated him on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. This event - like all wars - demonstrates that conflicts of priorities often motivate people to kill.

Politicians

In ancient Athens citizens concerned with the Polis were known as Polites. The Polites proposed policies. Today politicians do not "propose" a policy but decide policy for all citizens while the vast majority of citizens cannot do so. This contradicst Demos-Kratia.

To vote is to choose. To choose is to prefer. In elections we decide who will decide for us what our society should do. We choose others to express our preference and expect them to prefer according to our priorities. They are supposed to serve as a mere extension of us.

In reality they impose their own priorities on us.

Why choose others to prefer on our behalf? Why can't we choose ourselves what we prefer our society to do? We elect representatives because to find out what millions of citizens prefer was very slow and difficult, while policies must often be decided quickly.

The easiest way to decide policies for a whole society was to authorize one person to decide for all. Therefore for many years, in most societies, one person (Chieftain, King, Emperor) decided what an entire society should do. Often, that person's priority was to make authority to decide for all into property of his family. Eventually people rejected such authority and elected representatives to decide policies for them. If one politician represents 100,000 citizens, 500 politicians represent 50 million citizens. These 500 can sit in a medium-sized hall to debate ('parler' in Parliament or 'congregate' in Congress) and vote by raising hands. Representatives make many decisions daily for those who elected them. This system is still in use as finding out what millions of people prefer, explaining to them the options and their possible results, setting up voting facilities, counting millions of votes, was - until recently - a very long and complicated procedure.

Nowadays all this can be done by TV, mobile phones, or magnetic cards.

Many believe that politicians apply the preferences of those who elected them. Usually they don't. Nor do they possess a special skill for deciding. Every decision is determined by a priority, not by a skill. Decision-making is a role, not a skill; everyone makes decisions daily. The Athenian philosopher Plato - who opposed Democracy - argued that decision-making is a skill like that of a ship's captain who steers a ship in a particular direction by using knowledge of ships and navigation. But society is not a ship. All passengers on a ship want to reach the same destination, but not all citizens in society want the same policy since they have different priorities. Politicians need some skills to get Power, like conspiracy (to defeat rivals); flattery (to get the support of superiors); and hypocrisy (to win voters) but they need no special skill for deciding policy.

Politicians decide policy according to their personal priority like everyone else.

The citizens of ancient Athens, who invented Democracy, declared: Every cook can govern. We see this is true when Arnold Schwarzenegger, a muscle man who became an actor, serves as Governor of California. He can decide for all citizens without any special skill or training because all decisions are determined by priorities not by a special skill.

Arnold has priorities just like anyone else. In 1980 Ronald Reagan, another Hollywood actor, became President of the USA. Did he possess a special skill required for being President?

Not at all. No President has a special skill required for being President, Acting as President is a role, not a profession. It can never become a profession.

Anyone can act as President. Whether he'll be good (for whom?) or bad (for whom?) depends on the priorities of those who comment on his decisions.

Forecasting the outcome of a policy does require knowledge and skill, which are provided by experts who study the various options and their possible outcomes. Such experts explain to the President the various options and their possible results, but they do not decide which option to choose. The President decides. Experts rarely decide policy, but when they do, it is their priorities, not their expertise, that determines their decision.

A President acts like the jury in a court of law. Jury members are not legal experts. They listen to lawyers, to witnesses, and the judge, and then decide whether the defendant is guilty or not. When witnesses contradict each other, jurors must decide whom to believe. They do so according to their preferences, not according to their legal knowledge.

Politicians decide what society will do and the State carries out these decisions. This raises two questions:

• 1. What is 'Society'? and
• 2. What is 'The State'?

Society

Margaret Thatcher, Britain's Prime Minister during the 1980s, once said: There is no such thing as society, there are only individuals and families. She said this to justify her policy of privatization, arguing that coal mines, railways, electricity plants, must be run exclusively for profit, not as a service to Society, which is - according to her - a fiction, not a reality.

At first it seems she is right. We see no entity called 'Society'. We see only people.

But if she is right, then one can also say: There is no such thing as an Army, there are only people wearing uniforms. We know this is nonsense. An Army is more than people wearing uniforms. The difference between an Army and people wearing military uniforms is not in the way they look but in the way they behave. People wearing military uniforms as a fashion do not obey orders and do not act together according to a plan. They do not risk their lives or kill others, even if ordered to do so. Only soldiers in an Army do so.

The difference between people and society is not in how they look but in how they behave. A society is not merely people living next to each other but people behaving according to rules accepted by all of them. These rules - known as laws - are made to resolve conflicts between people, and are accepted by most people in a society.

Obedience to laws makes people into a society. Different societies make different laws, but only when a group of people accepts the same laws do they become a society. Not everyone obeys every law, but most of the time most people obey most laws. Some do so out of fear of punishment, but most people in most societies obey most laws because they know that without laws there will be constant strife and living together will be impossible. A crowd of people, each obeying their private laws, as in frontier towns in the Wild West of the United States in the 19th century, is not a society. It is merely a crowd without cohesion. Such crowds lack stability and viability. They live in constant strife, lack communality, and eventually fall apart. American Indians used to say the Wild West became Wild only after the whites arrived. It became wild because each white immigrant obeyed only his own laws. When people obey only their private rules they constantly fight each other and society does not exist.

Before creating societies, hominoids were just another species of apes lacking speech and thought. Life in society produced speech and thought thus 'humanizing' primates. Speech and thought are not produced by Nature but by Society. If, as Margaret Thatcher said, Society does not exist, then speech, language, and thinking, could not exist either.

The State

As we have seen, people living together and obeying accepted rules are a society.

To make the rules (Laws), to enforce them and defend them, people created special systems. All of them together are - 'the State'. The components of the State are:

• 1 Parliament - a group to discuss and decide laws and policies for an entire society.
• 2. Government - a commitee deciding how to carry out each policy.
• 3. Courts, Police, and Prisons – people trained and organized to enforce the Laws;
• 4. An Army - people organized, and armed, to attack other societies or defend their society from others.

All these together are "The State".

The content of the laws depends on their makers. If one person makes the Laws they will depend on that person's priorities. If a group makes them they will depend on the group's priorities. Peoples' survival depended on society and society depended on laws accepted by all. In the past people attributed the creation of laws to God. The laws were deemed to come from God. Laws were engraved in stone to be permanent and visible (in Hebrew 'to make a law' means 'to engrave in stone'.) The Bible story about God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai is an example of the belief that the laws by which a society lives are made by God. According to the Bible Moses engraved them on two stone tablets, but he recieved them from God.

Mohammed too was convinced that God dictated the Koran to him.

Actually it is people who make all laws. Moses - not God - created the Ten Commandments, and Muhamad - not God - created the Koran. Human beings, not Gods, make laws and States, and they can - and do - change them. Every State is designed, created, maintained and paid for by all the citizens and they have a right to change it whenever they so wish.

The basic issue of politics is: Who makes the laws and sets the policies of a society?

Until four centuries ago the answer was - the King.

Many citizens opposed laws and policies made by kings and decided to make the laws themselves. No King liked this. A violent conflict between kings and citizens started. The King called for 'Law and Order' denouncing the citizens as 'outlaws' and 'lawless'. By 'Law and Order' he meant his Law and his Order. The citizens wanted the "Law and Order" they made themselves. The conflict between the citizens and the king was not conflict of 'law vs. lawlessness' or 'order vs. disorder'. It was a conflict of "King's law" vs. "Citizens' law" and "King's order" vs. "citizens' order". Eventually the citizens won, but the issue, 'Who makes the laws and who decides what the Order should be?' Is still with us today.

Nowadays 'law and order' is decided by politicians, yet many citizens disagree with many laws and much of this 'order'. Today we can have a system where all citizens - not their representatives - decide what the laws and the order should be.

Such a system is a Direct Democracy (DD). It is a society run directly by all its citizens. This will be denounced as 'Disorder' and 'Lawless' by those who prefer Rule by Representatives (RR). A system where citizens are represented by others but can represent themselves directly and determine the laws and the order themselves, is not a democracy.

This raises the question: What is Democracy?

Democracy

Democracy was invented in the ancient city of Athens by Cleisthenes about 2,500 years ago. In Greek, 'Demos' means 'the people of the community'; 'Kratos' means 'power' or 'authority to decide'. 'Demos-kratia' (Demokratia) means 'a system to decide what a group should do where all members have the right to participate in all decisions'. Nowadays we would call this a Direct Democracy as citizens themselves - not their representatives - decide all policies. In Athenian Demos-kratia all free adult men (but not women or slaves) decided all the laws and policies of their society. This was not 'rule by referendum' asking citizens to vote on questions set by others. Every citizen could propose every law and policy, amend or debate it, and vote on it.

Denying women and slaves to propose and vote on policy is a major fault, but in most ancient societies also free men could not decide policy or law. Only kings or elders made all laws and policies. Athenian demos-kratia was unique by enabling all free men to vote.

Today we still admire Egypt's pyramids, but they are not something we can use. Yet Athenian democracy is something we can use today. Democracy is still very much in demand, though its content and form have been perverted beyond recognition.

Athenian democracy produced the philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It invented Theatre, Drama, Persona, Tragedy, Comedy, the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and the method of proof by logical argument. We still use them today. They were created in Athens, not in Sparta which was nearby but was run by two kings and a council of elders. Philosophy, Theatre, Tragedy, Persona, grew from the public debates on policy which took place before voting, in a square known as the Agora. Every citizen could express his views in the Agora. On controversial issues there was even a duty (called Parhesia) to express views publicly - silence was punished by law.

All citizens debated and voted directly on all laws and policies of Athens.

In Athenian democracy there were no elections. Citizens appointed people to carry out policies. Such appointments were made by lottery, not by election. Posts were granted for one year only. No one could serve two consecutive years. Each year new lotteries appointed new people and the outgoing ones had to account for their deeds and were punished for failures. Appointing officials by lottery prevented the formation of an elite and eliminated competition and corruption.

This is utterly different from what we call Democracy today. Nowadays Democracy means electing a few politicians to decide for all citizens. This contradicts the meaning and spirit of original democracy where all citizens decided all policies, without representatives.

Politics without Politicians is the authentic, original, meaning of Athenian Demos-kratia.

Freedom

To be Free is to live by one's own decisions. Freedom means living by self-made decisions, and therefore those living by their own decisions are free. Those who live - knowingly or unknowingly - by other people's decisions, are not free.

Total freedom is impossible in any society. It is possible only when one lives - voluntarily - isolated from all people. Living with others requires accepting, occasionaly, their decisions, and limiting one's own decisions so they do not harm others. Even two people living together voluntarily have disagreements, and each must, occasionally, accept decisions of the other. If the same person always accepts others' decisions, that person is oppressed. But if people take turns in accepting others' decisions they limit their freedom - voluntarily - for the sake of living together. This occurs in most families, communities, cities, and societies.

In society people agree to obey decisions of others if others in turn obey decisions of theirs. If the same person or group always has to bow to decisions of others, they are oppressed.

Total freedom for every member of a group is impossible in any group, even in the smallest anarchist commune.

Most people prefer to live in groups such as family, tribe, society, with partial, rather than total, freedom. However, there are different degrees of partial freedom. Living under elected rulers gives people more freedom than living under unelected rulers, as the ruled can at least decide who will decide for them. But those living under elected rulers have less freedom than those living without rulers. A society where every citizen can propose, debate and vote on every law and policy is self-ruled, and its majority lives by its own decisions. The minority must obey majority decisions but if the minority has a fair chance to become a majority it is not oppressed. These citizens enjoy far more freedom than those who live in a society where representatives decide every law and policy.

Politics without politicians (Direct Democracy) allows the highest level of freedom possible in any society. It is not total freedom, as majority decisions are binding and the minority must accept them. So the minority is not totally free. However, those in a minority on one issue can be in the majority on another decision. A minority that can promote its views and become a majority is not oppressed. A minority prevented from becoming a majority by rules (laws) forbidding it - or restricting its ability - to publicize its views, is oppressed - but if it can publicize its views, gain votes and become a majority, it is not.

Direct Democracy enables every minority to promote its views, however disagreeable they may be .This stimulates public debates on policy, increases people's concern for their society, and raises the quality of life in society as a whole and of each individual within it.

Indifference to society breeds boredom and depression. By encouraging people to participate in deciding what their society should do Direct Democracy will dispel their indifference to society and thus the boredom and depression most people suffer today.

Cleisthenes

Principle of Political Equality (PPE)

The American Declaration of Independence runs:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

And women? Are they created equal with men?

The formulators of this declaration did not consider women – or slaves – as equals. They opposed the idea that women must have the same rights as men.

As no two creatures are created equal the declaration also contradicts biological facts.

What equality did its authors have in mind? Did they mean biologically equal? Legaly equal? Economic equality? Political equality? These are different matters. It seems they meant legal equality - namely, that all laws apply equally to all people, whatever their origin, race, sex, creed, wealth or power, so no one is above the law. The dismissing of President Nixon in 1974 for his part in the Watergate scandal demonstrated this equality, it showed that even a President of the United States is not above the law.

So much for applying the law equally, but what about equal authority to make laws? Do all citizens have equal authority to propose, debate, and vote, on every law?

Certainly not. Very few citizens are authorized to vote on laws or policies. Those who do so are not legal experts but politicians. Applying all laws equally to all citizens is important, but equal authority to vote on laws is more important. Authority to vote on laws and policies is authority to make the rules which all citizens must obey.

Every citizen must have the right to decide what laws society should accept. After all, the purpose of law is to improve the life of all citizens. Shouldn't those whose life is to be improved decide themselves how to do it? Apparently not, as in no society today are all citizens authorized to propose, debate and vote for the laws and policies of their society.

The Principle of Political Equality (PPE) asserts that even though no two citizens are biologically equal all must have equal authority to vote on every law and policy of their society. Only those who have this equality live by their own decisions - and are free.

When all citizens have equal authority to make laws, they can legislate other equalities. They can decide all laws of society, including other equalities.

PPE must be applied to any group, couple, family, tribe, nation, army, place of work, school, and to society itself. PPE asserts the right of every member of a group to propose, debate and vote on every decision of the group. Some will accept PPE as self-evident. Others will prefer to die rather than accept it. They will oppose its application to society - but even more so to family, school, and work. PPE abolishes power and domination in every domain of society, in families, schools, places of work, trade unions, and political parties. It equalizes leaders and the led, dominators and the dominated. No political party leader, Right or Left, will accept that all members of his or her party have equal authority to propose, debate and vote on every policy of their party.

Many democrats denounce PPE for taking Democracy too far, and label it Populism. They distort the meaning of original Democracy and write it off as dated or unrealistic. It is a safe bet that hysterical campaigns against PPE will erupt whenever demands for PPE will appear. The scope and intensity of hostility to PPE will exceed the hostility to Socialism, Anarchism or Feminism. Socialists will oppose PPE no less than Capitalists, arguing that what really matters is the Principle of Economic Equality, not of Political Equality (PPE). Socialists ignore the fact that in all the states based on economic equality (the USSR and the former Eastern Bloc) only a handful of officials decided everything for everybody, and 99.99% of all citizens had no authority to decide anything, not even who should decide for them. No wonder such systems collapsed without bloodshed. Very few of their citizens supported them. Such systems were supposed to overcome oppression and exploitation caused by economic inequality but being based on political inequality they produced greater oppression and exploitation by denying their citizens political freedom. Most people who grew up in former socialist states prefer economic inequality of capitalism to political inequality of socialism. No wonder.

The collapse of the USSR was the historical proof that economic equality is inferior to political equality - and cannot create it. Only political equality can create any other equality and is therefore far more important than any other equality.

Opponents of political equality argue that most citizens lack the knowledge to understand the laws they vote for, either their benefits or their drawbacks. But this [also] applies to most politicians who vote on laws nowadays. Most of them are not legal experts, yet they debate and vote on new laws and policies. They call experts to explain the consequences of proposed policies, then they choose the option that suits their own priorities. Every citizen can do the same. Citizens can listen on radio or TV to panels of experts explaining a new law or policy, and later vote on it. If a law or policy has unforeseen negative results, the citizens can always repeal them. All panels of experts must be drawn by lottery and changed regularly.

Political Parties

A political party is a group of people acting voluntarily to promote a particular policy. A political Party is not part of the State. The State can function without political parties. If some citizens want to promote a particular policy they can form a political Party to do so, but the state can function without them.

A large Party needs people to run its offices, to publicize its views, to organize meetings and talks, to raise funds, to create new Party branches and communicate regularly with Party members. To do all this Parties hire full-time employees, known by various names – officials, secretaries, bureaucrats, nomenklatura. The names don't matter; what matters is that these people earn their living by running political parties and controlling their work. They decide what to do and how to do it, they influence nominations to Party posts.

Many of these officials care more about their Party job than about the Party's policies [because their livelihoods depend on their jobs, not on the Party that employs them or on its effect on Society.

Each Party has its own policies, but there can be different versions of these. In most parties, different sub-groups advocate different versions of the Party's policies.

When a particular Party wins a majority in an election - in which many voters may not have bothered to vote – it starts to run the State. Its Head becomes President or Prime Minister and Party leaders become heads of government departments. This Party then runs the government and its leaders use their government posts to implement the Party's policies. This is how all democratic states work today. Actually this contradicts the basic principle of democracy authorizing all citizens to participate in deciding all laws and policies. It also contradicts the democratic principle of nomination by lottery only.

Party Rule is not democracy. In Demos-kratia the citizens vote directly for policies, not for political Parties. What is called Democracy today is Rule by Representatives (RR). In Democracy Party leaders can decide only the policies of their Party, not of society as a whole. Parties can propose a policy to the citizens; but not decide it for them. A political party advocating a particular policy contributes to democracy, but a Party deciding all policies for all citizens is blatantly anti-democratic.

After World War II, Political Parties everywhere deteriorated in three ways:

• 1. The officials took over the Party from the policy-makers.
• 2. Parties began to seek power for their own benefits, not for the benefit of society.
• 3. Most Political Parties have become vote-collecting machines.

Today, in most countries, Party officials run States (and Parties) for their own benefit, not for the benefit of all citizens. Many people came to believe this is normal.

Democratic Theory and the Public Sphere

One way of understanding alternative media is to consider their role in the process of democratic communication. Philosopher Jürgen Habermas proposed that a healthy democratic community requires a space where rational debate can take place between engaged citizens. It is essential that the dialogue in this public sphere occurs outside the control of any authority so that citizens can exchange ideas as equals. This translates to the need for free speech and a free press.

In Habermas's idea of the public sphere, participation is open to everyone, all participants are considered equal, and any issue can be raised for debate. However, this view fails to note the inherent exclusion of women and minorities (and their interests) from the debate in the public sphere. In light of this social inequality, philosopher Nancy Fraser argues for the importance of multiple independent public spheres, in which members of subordinated groups can first deliberate their issues and concerns among themselves and later assert those issues into the larger public sphere. The alternative media associated with these counter-public spheres are critical in developing the needs and identity of the group and in challenging the larger dominant public sphere. A feminist counter-public sphere is, for example, responsible for circulating the view that women's issues such as domestic abuse and reproductive rights are deserving of debate in the larger public sphere.

Direct Democracy

Politics means two things:

1. To decide what an entire society should do.
2. To carry out these decisions.

In a Direct Democracy every citizen has the right to participate in the first task, to propose a policy, to debate and vote on it. Public debates on policies are the core of Direct Democracy. In Athens these debates stimulated people to produce Philosophy, to invent the Theatre, Tragedy, Comedy, and to convince people by logical reasoning rather than by imposing one's authority. Public debates on policies are genuine only if facilities exist enabling every citizen to participate. How can millions do so? Today they can do it - by using TV for the debate, and mobile phones, magnetic cards and touch screens for voting. In ancient Athens citizens debated policy in an open-air space called "Agora". The modern Agora is TV where every citizen can speak to millions of other citizens. In DD every government Department (Health, Education, Industry, Finance etc.) operates its own TV channel around the clock all year round. Tuning in to a channel will show a panel debating policies for this department. Panel members must have knowledge and experience with issues of the particular department. They will answer questions phoned in by the public. They will explain the good and bad points of every proposal. Panel members must be drawn by lottery (not by elections) from a list of those with the required expertise. Panel members will be changed regularly; no member will serve two consecutive periods. Any reward to panel members will be a punishable crime.

The TV channel will display lists of all proposed policies and the panel will debate the pros and cons of each one. Viewers will be able to phone in at any time to question, criticize or suggest ideas. Every proposal will be allocated a discussion time (set by Constitution). When this time is up the proposal will be put to the vote. The public will have 48 hours to vote on each one. Any proposal receiving the required number of votes will be submitted to a second round of debates and voting. A policy gaining the required number of votes in the second round of voting will become state policy. If citizens demand a third vote, the proposal will be submitted to a third round of debating and voting.

Public debates on policies, by millions of people, are possible today. Clearly, when politics without politicians is established, all citizens will have to devise and adopt a Constitution to decide all the procedures. Unforeseen problems will emerge, but where there's a will, there's a way, especially with the help of TV, mobile phones, magnetic cards, touch-screen input and the Internet. What technology to use, and how, will be decided by all citizens when Direct Democracy is set up. For now it is sufficient to realize that by using electronic communication we can establish a political system where every citizen can propose, debate and vote on every law and policy.

When a policy has been decided a panel will be set up to carry it out. Panel members will be drawn by lottery from a pool of all those with experience and knowledge of the specific task. They will be changed at regular intervals. Complaints about panel members' inefficiency or corruption will be invistigated immediately - and punished if it was the case.

Basic Rules of DD*

Band

A band society, sometimes called a camp or, in older usage, a horde, is the simplest form of human society. A band generally consists of a small kin group, no larger than an extended family or clan. The general consensus of modern anthropology sees the average number of members of a social band at the simplest level of foraging societies with generally a maximum size of 30 to 50 people.

Bands have a loose organization. They can split up (in spring/summer) or group (in winter camps), as the Inuit, depending on the season, or member families can disperse to join other bands. Their power structure is often egalitarian. The best hunters would have their abilities recognized, but such recognition did not lead to the assumption of authority, as pretensions to control others would be met by disobedience. Judgments determined by collective discussion among the elders were formulated in terms of custom, as opposed to the law-governed and coercive agency of a specialized body, as occurred with the rise of the more complex societies that arose upon the establishment of sedentary agriculture.

A. R. Radcliffe-Brown defined the horde as a fundamental unit of Australian social organizations according to the following 5 criteria:

• It denotes people who customarily share the same camp and lifestyle.
• It is the primary landowner of a given territory.
• Each horde was independent and autonomous, regulating its social life by a camp-council, generally under the direction of a headman.
• Children belonged in the father's horde
• A unified horde identity was affirmed in all relations with external tribes.

In his 1975 study, The Notion of the Tribe, Morton Fried defined bands as small, mobile, and fluid social formations with weak leadership that do not generate surpluses, pay taxes nor support a standing army.

Bands are distinguished from tribes in that tribes are generally larger, consisting of many families. Tribes have more social institutions, such as a chief, big man, or elders. Tribes are also more permanent than bands; a band can cease to exist if only a small group splits off or dies. Many tribes are subdivided into bands. On occasion hordes or bands with common backgrounds and interests could unite as a tribal aggregate in order to wage war, as with the San, or they might convene for collective religious ceremonies, such as initiation rites or to feast together seasonally on an abundant resource as was common in Australian aboriginal societies. Among the Native Americans of the United States and the First Nations of Canada, some tribes are made up of official bands that live in specific locations, such as the various bands of the Ojibwa tribe.

Tribe

In anthropology, a tribe is a human social group. Exact definitions of what constitutes a tribe vary among anthropologists. The concept is often contrasted with other social groups concepts, such as nations, states, and forms of kinship.

In some places, such as India and North America, tribes are polities that have been granted legal recognition and limited autonomy by the national or federal government.

Tribes are associated with nonintensive food production and have villages and/or descent groups, but lack formal government and social classes.

Chiefdom

A chiefdom is a form of hierarchical political organization in non-industrial societies usually based on kinship, and in which formal leadership is monopolized by the legitimate senior members of select families or houses. These elites form a political-ideological aristocracy relative to the general group.

Within general theories of cultural evolution, chiefdoms are characterized by permanent and institutionalized forms of political leadership (the chief), centralized decision-making, economic interdependence, and social hierarchy.

Chiefdoms are described as intermediate between tribes and states in the progressive scheme of sociopolitical development formulated by Elman Service: band - tribe - chiefdom - state. A chief's status is based on kinship, so it is inherited or ascribed, in contrast to the achieved status of Big Man leaders of tribes. Another feature of chiefdoms is therefore pervasive social inequality. They are ranked societies, according to the scheme of progressive sociopolitical development formulated by Morton Fried: egalitarian - ranked - stratified - state.

The most succinct definition of a chiefdom in anthropology is by Robert L. Carneiro: An autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief (Carneiro 1981: 45)

State

The term state refers to a form of polity, that is typically characterised as a centralized organisation. There is no single, undisputed, definition of what constitutes a state.[1][2] A widely-used definition is a state being a polity that, within a given territory, maintains a monopoly on the use of force, but many other widely used definitions exist.

Two Sides of the Aisle

There seems to be a growing disconnect between political issues and science today. Though not the only effective approach to designing policy, many of today's issues require disciplined, dispassionate, and systematic thought, according to 2016 Democratic candidate for the 8th Congressional District of Pennsylvania Shaughnessy Naughton. In a article she wrote for Scientific American, Naughton, who is a scientist by training, outlines her observations on how science seems to have been left out of the political conversation.

That certainly does seem to be the case as the distance between the various sides of some issues that require the input and acceptance of scientific evidence continues to grow. One such debate surrounds the scientifically unfounded belief that vaccines can cause autism. While this belief amongst the general population is worrisome enough and has led to an increase in outbreaks of previously under-control virus, even more unsettling is the idea that the thought is shared by a known vaccine skeptic that may soon be in charge of the presidential commission on vaccine safety.

Then, of course, there is the hot-button issue of man-made climate change. The American congress is known to have among its ranks a number of climate-change deniers, and they often proudly trump up their position with less-than-factual data (it doesn't help that the President-elect himself has called climate change a Chinese hoax). Other issues include an often alarmist approach when it comes to GMOs and stem cell research, as well as a regressive attitude towards the development and use of nuclear energy.

The surprising thing is, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary, many people outside of politics believe these politicians, showing that the political sphere has influence beyond just the laws that go on the books.

The Need for a Scientific Perspective

Naughton thinks that these clashes are all made possible by the dearth of scientifically trained minds in the American Congress. I realize the importance of bringing the scientific perspective to bear on today's urgent and complex environmental and technological issues because of my background and training, she wrote.

To raise the profile of science on the political and public stage, Naughton founded a nonprofit organization here, and she wrote about the goals of that organization in her article:

Our aim is not to make science another highly partisan issue, but rather to let facts and empirically observed data trump emotional debate. It is far too common for politicians to find themselves defending oftentimes indefensible positions that can and should be approached and solved with a scientific perspective.

What science brings to political conversation is hard evidence acquired through rigorous and disciplined study and research, according to Naughton:

As scientists, we are trained to embrace uncertainty, use the tools of data, hard evidence, and analysis to solve problems. For scientists, there are no facile answers; rather, there are complex questions that require disciplined, dispassionate and systematic thought —our aim to arrive at solutions that serve truth above expediency.

To bring science into the political dialogue, scientists have to be more involved in the political process. By this, Naughton doesn't just mean being part of some advisory group or committee, but direct involvement. [We] strive to encourage scientists and pro-science advocates to become active in the political process, running for local and national office, she wrote.

Politics Without Parties

It has become a truism that political parties are the fundamental political actors in modern democracies, where elections are usually considered the main way for citizens to participate in democracy. Yet the last decade has seen trust in political parties and democracy decline dramatically in countries where those institutions seemed most consolidated—including in Europe.

The 2007 to 2008 financial crisis, corruption scandals, and journalistic exposés of politicians' unethical behavior (like those in the Panama and Paradise Papers) have spread the view that political representatives either don't have the public interest at heart or aren't able to resist the influence of efficiently organized private and vested interests.

Today, almost 80 percent of people in the European Union tend not to trust political parties, and governments and parliaments don't fare much better, according to the latest Eurobarometer survey. And, worryingly, citizens have also become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives, according to a much-cited paper by Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk, published in July 2016 in the Journal of Democracy.

It is democracies, often including faulty and low-quality ones, that allow for citizens to self-organize to become political actors in order to defend and promote the public interest beyond the parties and the electoral cycle. Many citizens who in the past might have joined a party or would have been content with voting are opting for a different course

The Internet Government

Welcome to 21st Century Representation

This is a platform created to represent ideas themselves. We're looking to create a better process for policy-making, and by better we mean more objective, more transparent, & more inclusive. We mean a more rigorous process in the pursuit of truth, for everyone's benefit. It's politics without the politics - and without the politicians.

We're a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental program reinventing the legislative process. Why? We just think the whole business of creating public policy could be more transparent, difficult to the corrupt, and verifiably representative of everyone. It's a huge undertaking (and we encourage you to learn more about it below), but you can help us! So, join us, donate, follow us online, or get a citizenship to help out the cause!

Politics Without Politicians

Perfect Knowledge*

Why Not Capitalism?*

Distributive Justice and Redistribution

The concept of distributive justice is sometimes understood as the moral assessment of distributions, or as the moral assessment of individual or collective decisions in light of how they affect distributions. Since the publication of Rawls's Theory of Justice, however, discussions of distributive justice have tended to focus more narrowly on the moral assessment of systems of social rules in light of how they affect distributions. These distributions affecting institutions include laws and other social rules governing what kinds of things can be owned (and by whom), how they can be acquired, transferred, relinquished, and forfeited, how markets and the production systems are structured, the manner in which decisions concerning trade policy and the monetary system are made, and so on. Because international institutions such as markets in capital and labor, the structure of property rights, the international trading regimes (including the World Trade Organization), the international financial institutions marked by the agreement of Bretton Woods, and other complex systems of international rules can also be assessed in terms of their effects on distributions, talk of 'international' or 'global' distributive justice has more recently become more prominent in political theory (Beitz 1979, Caney 2005, Hinsch 2001, Miller 2007).

The concept of redistribution has been invoked extensively in discussions of distributive justice in both the domestic and global context. Indeed, the differences between popular recent approaches to distributive justice, such as libertarianism, prioritarianism, and so-called luck egalitarianism, are sometimes characterized in terms of their attitudes towards redistribution (Scheffler 2003). Even when non-philosophers debate the justice of distributions, or of distribution affecting institutional arrangements, their discussions often take the form of questioning whether and under what circumstances the 'redistribution' of wealth is justified. Extreme poverty in developed and developing countries, for example, has led many to question whether affluent people or countries can and ought to 'help' or 'aid' the poor by redistributing resources to them, and whether they can be compelled by law to do so (for example, through the tax system) (Narveson 2002, 2003).

Given its robust role in discussions of distributive justice, it is unsurprising that disagreements concerning the permissibility of redistribution have often been quite heated. Robert Nozick (1974, p 169) for example, has argued that redistribution in the form of compulsory taxation is morally on par with forced labor. And he has famously criticized egalitarian principles of distributive justice, such as Rawls's difference principle (which categorizes as unjust any national economic order generating inequalities that are not to the greatest benefit of the lowest socio-economic position) on the grounds that they would require extensive redistributive transfers. In this vein, critics of so-called redistributive policies often claim that while individuals may have positive ethical duties to aid poor or unwell persons, it is morally impermissible to compel them to do so through state-administered tax and transfer or other means, unless universal consent for these policies can be secured (Narveson 2001, ch. 17). Egalitarians, on the other hand, have often argued that redistribution through compulsory taxation and other coercively imposed measures is required to meet basic material needs or to promote other valuable social goals, and provide a legitimate, though perhaps not morally costless means of doing so.

This essay aims to clarify and evaluate some of these disagreements by exploring the many different senses in which the concept of redistribution has been used. It also indicates some of the confusions to which equivocation among different senses of this concept has led. It concludes that the use of the concept of redistribution has tended to obscure rather than clarify the true nature of substantive disagreements about distributive justice.

Two kinds of questions concerning redistribution can be identified:

• Meaning/Status: What does 'redistribution' mean? Does it have a unified and coherent meaning? What kind of a term is 'redistribution': Is it purely descriptive, so that we can classify practices as redistributive without evaluating them? Or does the correct application of the term, like democracy, liberty, and perhaps also coercion depend on evaluative judgments? To what kinds of social practices does redistribution refer, and in what sense are these practices redistributive? Does the concept of redistribution provide a helpful framework for understanding and evaluating institutional arrangements, or does it invite confusion?
• Moral Significance: Can social practices that are commonly said to involve redistribution be justified? In what contexts and for what purposes is it permissible to adopt these practices? Does the fact that a social practice involves redistribution count for or against it, or does it lack basic moral significance?

We might begin to address these questions by looking more closely at the structure of the concept of redistribution.

The concept of redistribution can be characterized in terms of four parameters. (1) The subjects, such as individual persons or rigidly and non-rigidly defined groups whose holdings of goods are modified through the redistribution; (2) The baseline, the initial distribution of goods to which some other distribution is seen as a redistributive modification; (3) The social mechanism, such as a change in tax laws, monetary policies, or tort law, that engenders the redistribution of goods among these subjects; and (4) the goods, such as income and property (or perhaps opportunities and liberties), that are redistributed through this mechanism.

In assessing whether and how redistribution has occurred, then, the following four questions must be answered:

• Among which (if any) subjects did the redistribution take place?
• Which (if any) baseline can be defined, of which the present distribution can be seen as a modification?
• Through which (if any) social mechanism was the redistribution brought about?
• Which (if any) goods have been redistributed?

Redistribution refers to modifications of the holdings of particular persons, collective agents, or groups (as defined in terms of non-resource holding characteristics), or changes in holdings by groups (as defined by resource holdings). Sometimes those from and to whom resources are redistributed are defined as individuals, other times as groups to which individuals are rigidly assigned (for example, Whites and Hispanics), and other times to groups that are defined by their holdings (for example, the top and bottom quintile). We can identify patterns in terms of rigidly identifiable persons (John and Sally) or groups (Whites and Hispanics) or, alternatively, 'anonymously' (for example, as a percentile graph or Lorenz curve). We can imagine a scenario in which, pursuant to some institutional reform, the average holdings of the richest quintile and the poorest quintile shift from <5,3> at time t1 to <6,2> at time t2, while the average holdings of Whites and Hispanics or the actual holdings of John and Sally remain unchanged. Whether redistribution has occurred, then, can only be determined relative to the set of subjects that is identified.

Discussions of redistribution are not always very specific about which kinds of subjects they are concerned with, or about the possible significance of the fact that policies will be more or less redistributive depending on how these subjects are defined. Take, for example, the following claim by Harvard economist Richard Freeman (1999, p. 12), who claims that a set of policies he proposes will result in substantial income redistribution from those who have gained so much in the past 15 to 20 years… for it results in improving the living standards of those now at or near the bottom. The referent of 'those', in both the first and second clauses, could be understood as picking out groups of specific individuals (a set of proper names), or group statistical aggregates (the top or bottom quintile). If the claim refers to groups of particular individuals, then lack of change in the pattern of holdings between the top and bottom income quintiles needn't mean that no redistribution has taken place. If substantial numbers of people have moved up or down, then redistribution (in this sense) has taken place. My focus in this entry will be on the issue of the baseline, since this seems most fundamental.

The Baseline Distribution

Talk of redistribution implies a baseline, some distribution to which another distribution can be compared. We can explore this concept by examining the different baselines that are implicitly or explicitly adopted when people claim that redistribution has taken place. Once these baseline distributions are clarified, questions regarding the meaning and moral significance of redistribution can be more easily addressed.

Conclusion

There are, no doubt, reasons for considering certain economic systems just, and others unjust, but it has turned out to be difficult to use the concept of redistribution to mark out differences between them. Redistribution in any of the three diachronic senses, and in either of the unmoralized synchronic senses appears to lack basic moral significance. Redistribution as tax and transfer or as rights infringement may indeed have basic moral significance. The classification of policies and institutional arrangements as redistributive in either of these senses, however, has been shown to depend on our moral assessment of these practices, and cannot thus be used as a basis for such assessments.

But couching discussions of distributive justice in terms implied by redistribution smuggles in associations of forceful takings and rights infringements, which are not obviously appropriate in the context of evaluating social programs funded through taxation, or to discussions of reforms of the global economy. Moreover, focusing on the permissibility of 'helping' and 'aiding' poorer people through 'redistributive' transfers seems tacitly to accept the existing distribution of holdings as a morally unproblematic benchmark. This focus will tend to privilege the status quo, and foster resistance to more egalitarian social arrangements.

So, Why Not Socialism?

You, the reader, are probably not a socialist. But you probably accept the view just described: That markets are a kind of moral compromise, and that if we could harness the best within us, we would dispense with capitalism. You might not call yourself a socialist, but if you are a typical person, you probably agree that socialism would be best if only human beings were much nicer than they in fact are.

The best spokesperson of this widely shared view is the philosopher G. A. (Jerry) Cohen. Cohen is the leading Marxist philosopher—and one of the leading political philosophers, period—of the past 100 years. Capitalism has countless critics, but Cohen is perhaps its best moral critic. Why Not Capitalism? is a debate with Cohen. I want to show he, and everyone else who agrees with him, is mistaken. I debate Cohen in order to undermine the widespread belief that socialism is morally superior to capitalism.

Unlike Michael Moore, Cohen does not mince words. Shortly after his death in 2009, Cohen's work Why Not Socialism? was published. It argues that only socialism can be just. Capitalism, Cohen claims, is an inherently repugnant way for us to live together.

Although Why Not Socialism? is tiny—about 10,000 words over 82 pages—it punches well above its weight, as a reviewer in The Guardian says.11 Philosopher Jonathan Wolff finds the book's argument disarming. Ellen Meiksins Wood thinks Cohen says things that need to be said. Alexander Barker says that we, the readers, are challenged and ultimately persuaded that our objections to socialism are practical rather than moral. We in turn must confront the question of how to lead our lives according to these ideals in our less-than-ideal world. Andrew Stone agrees that the book is stimulating and thoughtfully argued advocacy of the better world that we need to fight for.

Cohen's book contains a simple but powerful thought experiment meant to prove that socialism really is inherently morally superior to capitalism, even if capitalism works better. Cohen means to prove our worries about capitalism are correct. For Cohen, to say of socialism, Wonderful theory, wrong species is to damn humanity, not socialism. Capitalism works better only because it harnesses our greed and fear. But socialism is the system of love and community. Socialism is not bad for us—we are bad for socialism.