Democracy VS Dot-Com: Round 1

“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.”

Sir Winston Churchill

Now, one thing I would like to mention prior to saying what I mainly wanted to say in this post was this: I am in no way a politician, never wanted wanted to be one and can't say I like them very much. Also, haven't read any books on political theory and,generally, never really been into that subject at all. I'm not an expert, but rather an ordinary "user" or an average voter. However, so often it is only an ordinary user who can say "hey, your product sucks because ... and here's how you can make it better!" Please read it and tell me what you think.



Dot-Com Revolution

You know, I think that Web 2.0 has brought into this world much more than just a cheap and efficient way of communicating with people. It has started a new era of ultimate freedom of information. Anybody can share anything they want with people they know or don't, and nothing can stop this. I mean, let's take a look at the music/film industry and copyrights: Napster was forced to shut down back in 2002 by big guys in the entertainment industry who sought to protect their copyrights, however now, eight years later, you can download anything over torrents and it still doesn't cost you a penny to do that. There are two facts that always hold true about protectionism: 1) it occurs every time someone finds the way to do it cheaper (ultimately, for free as in our case) and better, 2) protectionists always loose in the end, no matter what. The way that torrents deal with copyrights is actually amazing: it's just impossible to make anyone responsible for breaching the law if, potentially, hundreds of people were sharing the same file! Most importantly, nobody cares nowadays, everyone does that and it's cool, it gives musicians that you otherwise would've never heard of a chance to make it to the top. Likewise Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other social networks have suddenly made it possible to share your ideas and content with millions of other people that you have never met before, all that for free and without much fear of consequences.


Democracy: when it fails

It's probably worth mentioning at this point where I come from, I mean geographically. Belarus. It's a country that used to be a part of a state which several hundred years ago introduced the first constitution in Europe. Now it is in a deep shit from both political and economic points of view, and it's not because people that live in this country are stupid or lazy or whatever, it's just because sometimes democracy fails. When the whole soviet thing collapsed in 1991 we had a chance, but unfortunately it all went downhill from there: now the country is ruled by a dictator who's been in power since 1994 and it doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon, GDP per capita is one of the lowest in Europe, the industry is largely suffering from lack of investment and entirely messed up legal system, all mass media is controlled by the government and so on. To be honest, the entire PESTLE of this country is crippled, if you know what I mean. Interestingly enough, back in the early nineties we had one of the most promising new-built democratic governments among the post-soviet freshly independent states. Then people elected a wrong guy, oops. A bright politician, he always had and still has, despite the poverty and all other damage he caused to the nation, massive support across the country. Why? A very, very charismatic person. People don't vote for his ideas, people vote for his personality, and that's what I think is one thing that is fundamentally wrong about democracy: politicians.

To have some numbers at hand, let's consider UK. At the moment the country is ruled by the coalition of two parties: 307 Conservative MP's and 57 Lib-Dems hold the legislative power. It's 364 people all together. No doubt, these guys are bright public speakers and excellent negotiators. However, do you really think that out of 60 million people that populate this country only 364 are smart enough to propose and legislate bills? You know, maybe there are people that that worked out better ways to deal with unemployment, credit crunch and environmental problems but you will never hear these ideas because they just aren't that great as public speakers. As long as the system functions, at least somehow, nobody cares. It's only when it utterly fails we start thinking of how we could change things and live better lives.


democracy.com

About two or three years ago I had a long argument with a good friend of mine about democratic concepts. You know, he's American, I'm Russian by origins, so we have quite different points of view. Anyway, the main conclusion of that argument was: yes, it's shit, but can you think of better ways? (that's, roughly, what Churchill said long time ago) This made me think, well, what if we could design, at least at the conceptional level, a system that would take advantage of modern tools and technology that would help to make this world a better place?

That's right, move the democratic system to the web! Anyone can vote and anyone can propose new laws. If local community likes your idea then it starts naturally generating buzz, as people discuss and vote for it. In other words, the visibility of your idea on the web grows like a social bubble, it's a bit similar to the way Facebook Top News system works. As soon as it reaches the regional level, people around your state or county will see it as one of the top proposed laws. Anyone can vote for or against the idea and propose their amendments (which can also be voted for or against) to it. When it reaches the top, country-wide level, the discussion is finalised and some legal entity responsible for that legislates the bill. That's it.



Conclusion (sort of...)

Now I'm not claiming this to be a panacea for the modern world political systems, but rather a cool thing to think of. Some might say, you Russians really have this thing for revolutions:) Well, that's really not what I meant to say by all that. Some time ago I mentioned that later on I would post about my business idea. Although it is definitely not about starting a social revolution or anything like that, what I presented here is the underlying concept of the system we're working on, this is where the idea comes from. Because, you know, if they, all the guys that made it to the top, say you got to dream big, then this is my dream: to live in a better world.

Thanks for reading!