∙I.d.5 – Beyond top-down “Democracy”: crowdization of GOVERNANCE

Some points developed in this chapter:

● claims to solve the problems produced by Social Democracy, with the same Social Democratic methods that created them.

if Democracy is to be healed, it is necessary to restore the founding principles of Democracy

● The essential difference between real Democracy and Social Democracy: while in real Democracy the people are Sovereign – that is, “above all” – in Social Democracy the State commands the People.

● The endemicity of the problems of Social Democracy: the incompetence of leaders and managers

● The need for Democracy to rely on active management by the Citizens

It is not possible to solve a problem with the same tool that created it.

Yet today

we claim to solve the problems produced by Social Democracy with the same Social Democratic methods that created them.

Doing so is like trying to heal a person of poisoning by making him drink more poison.

<see the problem of public spending in “Beyond Social-Democracy”>

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In this series of articles it is clarified that this is the basic error of European governments: European democracy is increasingly in crisis as it insists on trying to correct the economic and social problems created by the current leaders and experts who have replaced the Purely democratic government “by the People” (to the “sovereign people” indicated by the modern Constitutions), when instead

if Democracy is to be healed,
it is necessary
to restore the founding principles of Democracy.

That is, today it is necessary to resume governing with the truly democratic method: with the active participation of citizens, in the mode of government “by the People” (as the first real modern Democracy, that of the United States, was defined at its foundation)

And restoring “government by the Citizens” means bringing Democracy back to its original dimension (which worked not only in ancient Greece, but for millennia in villages around the world, and also, since its foundation, in the towns of the United States), in which

Citizens are directly interested in the management of issues concerning their territory, their social life.

The essential difference between real Democracy and Social Democracy

To understand the importance of active government on the part of citizens, we must reflect on why Social Democracy (European Democracy) is not a true Democracy. That is, why “theoretical” differences (at the level of Principles) lead to radically different consequences.

The difference at the level of Principles is that:

while in real Democracy the People are sovereign
– that is, they are “above all” –
in Social-Democracy the State rules over the People.

In other words, the peculiarity of European-type democracy is that of a State “takes care” of the Citizens in an almost total way (“from the cradle to the grave”). And it does so by deciding in all respects what they must do (note that in this case they have no right not to accept the “aid” – the services – that the State offers them; possibility that in the language of political science is called “Option out”).

Basically, Social Democracy, as analyzed in the next chapter “***”, transforms Democracy from a regime in which the Citizens, the Demos, (the regime of freedom of choice of citizens) in an Authoritarianism (regime in which the choices are imposed from above).

<see also my Document “The Liberal approach (real democracy) and the social-democratic approach of democracy: the definitions“>

∙The need for Democracy to rely on active “management” by the citizens

In Democracy, pro-active government “by the People” is not an option: Democracy can only work when citizens are able to actively participate in Government. The basic conditions of this government “by the People” are the possibility of an accurate monitoring and management of “public issues” by Citizens.

The problem is that a Society – like that of Democracy – in which the government system is set up to be managed “by the People”, if the People does not take care of satisfying their interests (they are not aware of what is happening) , Politicians gradually occupy the spaces left free by it, working to satisfy interests that are not those of citizens. <see my text “Having even a small amount of power in a system allows you to increase that power“>

ç_Democracy reset: why better dictatorship

The endemicity of the problems of Social Democracy – the incompetence of leaders and managers

To understand the importance of the Sovereignty of Citizens (of “government” by the People “) it is necessary to understand what the problems of the Society of the current European Democracy derive from (economic crisis, quality of life, social violence, etc …).

The problems of the current form of “Western Democracy” derive, in essence, from an inability of the Rulers to deal with the satisfaction of the needs of the Society

(of people’s needs).

An inability to govern effectively
that is intrinsic to the Social Democratic system,

That is, on a more general level,

1) of the inability of Social Democracy to perceive the real needs of the people; is

2) the inability to manage organizational structures: the Rules, and the Managers chosen by them, are neither able to organize a correct management of public “companies” such as the health system, public services and infrastructures, “Financial services” (collection of taxes, distribution of pensions, etc….). Nor, much less, they are able to manage that “big company” which is the machine of the social democratic state.

The problem is that this inability is inherent in the social democratic system. That is, the current problems of European Democracy are not an execution error:

the problems of European (and North American) society are precisely the result of the application of the social democratic method.

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In other words

Social Democracy is plagued by some manufacturing defects, which prevent it from correcting itself.

For this reason, the current problems of the “Western Society” cannot be solved with the methods and tools of the current form of Government (the Social-democracy based on a pseudo-representation in which Citizens have a marginal role in governance issues). But it is necessary to re-establish the essential factor of Democracy: the active participation of citizens in the administration of public affairs.

Only in this way will it be possible to correct the current problems of Western Democracy such as inefficiency of services, and out of control spending.

The current problems of Democracy derive substantially from the incompetence and corruption of the people employed in the administration of the state <see my text “The two factors of Social Democracy to be exploited (self-destructiveness, incompetence)“>..

These two problems derive substantially from the lack of effective participation of Citizens in government.

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This endemicity of the problems of Social Democracy derives precisely from

a manufacturing defect: which means that
USING ITS OWN TOOLS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT ARISE WITHIN IT INEVITABLY LEADS TO AN AGGRAVATION OF SUCH PROBLEMS.

The need to restore the direct participation of Citizens in the government process (Government “by the People” or Citizen’s Sovereignty)

The need to reintegrate the active participation of Citizens in the various aspects of Government therefore derives from the fact that Democracy can only work if Citizens directly participate in the management of “public affairs”.

The problem is, in fact, that otherwise there is a disconnect between the Rulers (who escape the control of the Citizens) and the Society (the real needs of the Citizens). And therefore a substantial lowering of the quality of life develops (expenditure out of control, poverty and unemployment, inefficiency of services, chaos and violence, etc.).

Or

in a Democracy in which Citizens cease to deal with government, a condition is created in which rulers and managers lose contact with reality, and are no longer able to satisfy the needs of the society.

Of course, in this condition of incompetence, the Rulers are not even able to understand how to recover that dimension of management of the Society in which the real needs of the Society can be satisfied.

The fact is that

it is not possible to escape from the current crisis of Western Society if not recovering the dimension of pro-active government “by the People”

In summary, only with the recovery of the active participation of citizens in government it is possible to obtain a condition in which:

● Government is able to develop solutions to satisfy the needs of citizens.

● Citizens can effectively “manage” their Representatives (today totally out of control).

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∙The users of the Services are essential co-designers of the solutions to satisfy their needs

ç_Users as designers

What does it mean, more specifically, to restore real Democracy?

We must first of all consider that:

● Democracy is aimed at satisfying the needs of Citizens: in a Democracy, public institutions must be aimed at satisfying the needs of citizens ”(government“ for the People ”).

Any other purpose leads government towards a non-democratic dimension: the government system loses the ability to really satisfy social needs, and begins to pursue the satisfaction of other interests (Ideologies, Companies, etc.) that do not correspond to the interests of Citizens <see “Democracy was born as a system for satisfaction of citizens needs”>

● the best designers of solutions to needs are the holders of these needs, the Citizens.

That is the rule that applies

the satisfaction of needs can be developed effectively
only when the holders of the needs
are directly involved in the solution design process.

A similar problem underlies the Market <see The problems of the current Market strategies: toward a crowd participated Marketing  – Why does innovation fail today? The inability to understand in new Customer Needs>

Civilization improvements have always happened bottom-up (from the Crowd)

To understand how participation in the definition of solutions for the satisfaction of needs of people who have such needs is crucial, we must first of all reflect on the fact that all the improvements of human civilization have always come from the ideas of those who had a problem to solve, that is a drive to improve his life.

In fact, the real improvements in the quality of life of man in his community have never happened – as is sought to do in today’s modern Democracy – with ideas produced top-down (by people who observe the situation “from the outside”). <<ee “Innovation is intrinsically (historically) bottom-up”>

It must also be considered that the solutions we are talking about, such as those for satisfying the needs of Citizens, are complex to implement, since they require continuous fine-tuning work that must be done “in the field”, directly by those who live them. consequences of applying the solution.

<see my Article “Crowd-driven Innovation/Crowdsourcing”>

<see my Arcicle “Bottom Up Reform Initiative: introduction”>

<see my Article “re-thinking – The elections are now irrelevant: it is necessary to act on the foundations of the institutions“>