The following discussion clip is from the Occupy Wall Street demand discussion list
Nanook:
I want to address the problem people keep raising about getting a legislature we can trust. This is a bigger issue than most people realize because it isn’t just about minimizing influences during voting.
Society is in DENIAL about the COMPLEXITY of our modern technical world, and the limitations of human brains. People want to believe that every one of them understands enough that they could be leaders of the country. People want to believe that, even if politicians argue about the pros and cons of an issue, those pros and cons EXPLAIN the whole issue. Therefore, they conclude that regular, average people, who they think politicians should be, are capable of running a government. They want to believe this “other” American dream – that their kid can grow up to be President. The problem is, none of this will work using the current system of government.
The U.S. Government was designed for a simple minded, very small population, homogeneous, agricultural society that needed 2 weeks to send a message by stage coach from one end to the other. Laws didn’t have to be complex. Today’s world requires complex thinking, has a population that covers the globe, power tools, automation, chemistry, electronics, high speed world wide transportation, and instantaneous world wide communications. No human is capable of understanding it all any more. And very few laws can be so simple that there are only two alternative models which can be chosen by a vote.
In short, the whole structure of a “legislature” needs to be re-invented. It wouldn’t resemble anything we have now. Instead of a power based representative model, it would be a technically based, service model. The “legislators” would have to be very smart and capable specialist and systems analysts. They would be selected for their ability to COOPERATE. Their jobs would be to develop programs and laws, not to polarize an issue, but to address as many citizen views as possible within the constraints of sustaining life and happiness on the planet.
Using LibertyFirst’s analogy, we are being forced to make a devil’s deal because when we look at the existing governing models, all we see are flames and devils. We don’t have a clue what an opposite realm might look like. To understand this point further, take a look at A3society.org under the Democracy tab. The Plural Democracy page has such an example.
