I have long sought to best summarize in as few words as possible my book’s redesign of our government. I believe the following approximately 1,000 word summary to be my best effort to date.
Plutocracy is governance by the wealthy. America is not really a democracy but a plutocracy dominated by the wealthy who, both in our market economy and in our government, serve themselves first and best, much to the detriment of the rest of the populace.
In my book Beyond Plutocracy - True Democracy for America, available free at www.beyondplutocracy.com, I offer a partial redesign of our government that, I believe, really fixes in just the right way what is really wrong with it. Achieving true democracy is the right repair of our government. But as the phrases the tyranny of democracy and the rule of the mob suggest, not only plutocracy but also democracy has deep shortcomings and pitfalls and must be handled carefully.
My book’s mission statement is: To overcome the tyranny of plutocracy and maximize the responsible freedom of the individual while avoiding the tyranny that the wrong kind of democracy can become.
Listed below are the principal elements of my repair of our government.
The demos: A new direct democracy branch, the demos, is added to our
government.
- The demos has limited powers balanced with the limited powers of the
currently existing branches.
- It has a nationwide electronic voting network. One may vote from almost
anywhere including even from one’s home.
- All of-age, able citizens have the civic duty to vote. Disenfranchisement
for any reason is unconstitutional.
- The demos has a fixed set of 12 issues: 9 economic and 3 electoral.
In a vastly simplified tax system with only 3 tax revenue sources and no exemptions of any kind, the demos has the sole power to tax. The electorate may set tax scales ranging from very flat to steeply progressive.
The 9 economic issues
- Overall federal tax rate (which, over time, determines the size of the federal government)
- Division of the tax burden among 3 tax revenue sources: corporations and businesses, personal incomes and inheritances.
- Corporate and business tax scale
- Personal income tax scale
- Inheritance tax scale
- Hours in the workweek
- Minimum wage
- Amount of federal debt or savings
- Portion of federal tax revenue for the military, healthcare, other entitlements and all other government functions
Voting on the 9 economic issues
- The demos votes on 5 tax related and 4 other economic issues, setting and maintaining over time 9 economic values the government and nation must use as they function. These values are considered as laws, the only laws the electorate makes directly.
- The demos does not practice majority-rule democracy but a new kind of democracy of my own design I call consensus democracy.
- Consensus democracy achieves the consensus of the entire electorate, not just of the elite, as today, or of the simple majority.
- Voting is ongoing, not periodic. Each voter has a lifelong vote riding on each economic issue that the voter may change at any time.
- Although the issues are economic, there is no math. The voter simply selects green to increase, yellow to keep as is or red to decrease an economic value.
- Every vote always counts. All votes equally affect the demos consensus.
- The demos economic consensus avoids all extremes and varies slowly about moderate norms over time, keeping our society functioning smoothly and evolving peacefully as demographics, conditions and our decisions change.
The 3 electoral issues
- Election of the president
- Election of senators
- Election of house representatives
The demos electoral system
- The demos has an entirely new electoral system from that which we have today. Primaries, the Electoral College (which currently elects the president) and state electoral district systems are all scrapped.
- The president and all 100 senators are elected from the nation at-large by direct popular vote. Representatives to the house are elected from states at-large.
- As with the economic issues, voting is ongoing. Each voter keeps a vote riding on a candidate for president, a senator and a house representative that, with one exception not discussed here, the voter may change at any time.
- Any number of people may take any amount of time to run for office for free.
- At-large voting empowers all voters to reach out to each other across their entire states or the entire nation in support of their champions, people that resemble them in body, mind, interests and pocketbook and that truly represent them. No voter is stuck voting for “lesser evils” financed and therefore preselected by the wealthy as is done today.
Demos deliberations
- While voting on the 9 economic and 3 electoral issues is a civic duty, participating in demos deliberations is optional. One may participate as little or as much as one wants.
- Each voter has a private space in which to run for office or simply express views.
- Each of the 12 demos issues has its own deliberation area in a public space.
- While the demos only makes law on its 9 economic issues, demos members may discuss anything.
- Demos deliberations inform our government and nation as to the true and often divided mind and will of the electorate on issues.
Congress automatically demographically resembles and honestly serves the entire electorate. No quota system, political parties or complex electoral schemes are required. People just get to vote for whom they really want.
These direct economic and electoral powers put the electorate firmly in the driver’s seat of our government and redeem the currently plutocratic ‘representative’ branches by making them truly democratic and representative of the entire electorate as they write laws, rules and policies governing our market economy and all the rest of society, making them honest, inclusive, just and equitable.
This design empowers the electorate to choose how much government and how much private sector it wants. While I personally favor a moderate equitable market economy firmly managed by an honest government that truly rests in the hands of the entire electorate, I do not force what I favor onto the nation. My design empowers our nation (or any nation) to evolve peacefully over time and to explore a vast, always truly democratic, political-economic landscape ranging all the way from unbridled capitalism to full socialism and virtually unlimited moderate variations between them.
Consensus government, as I call it, significantly increases the responsible personal freedom of everyone and the level of cooperation among us. It empowers “we the people,” all of the people, to peacefully and intelligently choose our highest wisdom.