The vocabulary of democracy's architecture

We need a richer vocabulary to better describe the details of systems that work

We lack a rich vocabulary for describing what the architecture of democracy will look like in the future. I've been inventing words to better describe how I think democracy must adapt to increasing levels of specialization. Words like "decentralization" or "socialism" or "capitalism" are overused.

As to how democracy might adapt to increasing levels of specialization, I've been thinking of this system, which takes the trends of the last 100 years and carries them forward into the future. In particular, I assume our current system of committees will become a system of independent legislatures. See what I wrote in “Committee size is the same as efficiency: the central bank versus the legislature.”

I refer to this as demodexio, a system that balances the will of the people with the will of highly skilled specialists (dexio being Greek for "skilled"). We should want a nomenclature that is somewhat more precise than older phrases such as "checks and balances." And we should avoid those words that are overused.

There is also a need to start over and escape the historical baggage that comes from old words and old debates. Words such as "capitalism" and "socialism" have become completely meaningless. One group uses them as synonyms for "good" and "bad" while the other group uses them as synonyms for "bad" and "good."

I've spent more than 20 years writing software, and when I write software I am offered a much richer vocabulary for the architecture of complex software systems. So this is my attempt to develop a similar richness of vocabulary for design decisions that confront us when we set out sketch new forms of democracy. (Also, when I write software I have to follow naming conventions so that the names of my variables have some consistency, and that influences the way I choose new words here.)

demodexio — balancing the demo of the people with the skills of the highly trained; a democracy adapted for a complex society that has a high level of specialization.

There are many variations of demodexio, I list three here:

demodemodexio — the public elects the members of every branch of government

demodexiodexio — the upper-house of the legislature is elected by the public but then appoints the membership of every other branch of government. (“The upper-house of the legislature” becomes an anachronism in a system with 300 branches of government, most of which have some of the powers that previously belonged to the legislature. It might be simpler to refer to this as “The Senate” but understanding that the context has changed and the meaning of “The Senate” has changed.)

demodexioomada — civil society, in the form of professional organizations, determines the membership of each branch of government. Those who pass the bar can become lawyers and can be considered members of the judiciary. Those who get a degree in teaching can become teachers and are considered members of the Education branch of government. This can be considered a variation on the idea of people passing a test to become a government official, an idea that goes back 2,000 years, to the first mandarins in China taking a test to become government officials. This remains democratic so long as the democratically elected Senate can regulate the rules by which people can join professional organizations.

The above assumes that either the public or the Senate or civil society (professional organizations) will determine the membership of the branches of government. The question then comes up, how is the leadership of the branch of each government determined?

To the extent that we are looking to build a system of checks and balances, then the branches of government need to be independent of each other, and so our decisions will be at least partly informed by the spirit of demodomatia.

demodomatia — a democracy of rooms, of compartmentalization, with a different room for every government function, for government can only grow larger and larger if it is split into smaller and smaller highly specialized compartments. For this compartmentalization to be meaningful, the rooms must have independent leadership (demoigesia) and independent revenue (demodiodia).

To specify those terms:

demoigesia — a democracy of different leaders, with the leadership of each branch of government being independent of the other branches of government.

demodiodia — a democracy of tolls, every branch of government must have its own source of revenue, either via its own tax authority or via an endowment or via property that it owns. Independent power comes from independent sources of money.

There are many possible variations of demoigesia, I here list three, starting with the pure form:

demoigesia — a democracy decentralized by branch of government, with the leadership of each branch being independent of other branches of government. Every branch of government chooses its own leadership, rather than allowing the legislative branch, or the executive branch, or the public, to chose the leadership. In our current system, in the USA, only the legislature choses its own leadership, but if we want every branch of government to be independent, we could allow every branch to chose its own leadership. For instance, the members of the judiciary could elect the Supreme Court, or they could elect a Steering Committee that then appoints the Supreme Court.

demodemoigesia — a hybrid model in which the public elects some part of the leadership of a branch of government, while the members of that branch of government also elect part of the leadership. For instance, the public could elect half of the committee that oversees the police, while the police elect the other half of the committee.

demodexiodexioigesia (or just dexioigesia) — a hybrid model in which the Senate elects some part of the leadership of a branch of government, while the members of that branch of government also elect part of the leadership. For instance, the Senate could elect half of the committee that oversees the police, while the police elect the other half of the committee.

For every government function, there is a particular implementation demoigesia for that profession. We could list a hundred examples here, but we will only offer three:

demodikastis — a democracy of magistrates, a type of demoigesia, the judiciary elects its own leadership, and therefore the high court.

demodáskalos — a democracy of teachers, a type of demoigesia, the teachers elect their own leadership, to establish school policy.

demofrura — a democracy of police, a type of demoigesia, the police elect their own leadership, to establish police policy.

All of the above helps to describe, and guarantee, the independence of the branches of government (demodomatia) but to have a system of checks and balances, we must also specify the exceptions we make to demodomatia, and these exceptions are demodeno:

demodeno — a democracy of binding limits, for freedom can only be maintained with a robust system of checks and balances. Every branch of government is bound by other branches of government, so that no branch of government can act with absolute autonomy. Demodeno describes two things: one when branch of government is allowed to veto the actions of another branch of government and when one branch of government is allowed to appoint members to the leadership of another branch of government. Demodeno specifies the exceptions we make to demodomatia so as to balance the whole system.

Demodeno operates through two mains powers, and I will use plain English here:

Demodeno Veto: the ability of one branch to veto the actions of another branch.

Demodeno Appoint: the ability of one branch to appoint someone to the leadership of another branch of government.

There are several other questions need that need to be answered about such a system, of the most urgent are:

1. Who designs the system?

2. How long should the leadership serve?

3. How is the government funded?

4. What is the role of geography?

Some possible answers:

demomastoria — the craftsmanship of democracy, in which the Senate becomes the craftsman of the system. In demomastoria the Senate has only one power, which is to amend the Constitution, and thereby assign the powers of the other branches of government. See what I wrote in There is one correct way to amend a Constitution.

demosofia — a democracy of wisdom, favoring the long-term majority over the short-term majority, for the short-term majority is full of angry bigotries that cause injustice, whereas the long-term majority is often cool enough to think of what is best for the most people. The invention of the USA Senate, with its six year terms in office, was a good step in this direction, though longer terms, with more time-staggering of the replacement of officials, and with term limits to enforce their steady turnover, might be better. See what I wrote in Neo-Majoritarianism.

demoplotos — democratic wealth, property owned by the people, in which some corporations or property is owned by the government. The goal is raise revenue without having to raise taxes. Each corporation must be allowed to operate with total independence from the political process, which should be granted if we are to respect the ideal of demodomatia. See what I wrote in How to build a pragmatic Communism that works intelligently and efficiently.

demoperiochi — the democracy of regions. Both the USA and Canada have individual states/provinces that have a remarkable degree of freedom from the national government.

While talking about the strengths of the system it is also useful to standardize the terms we use when talking about the modern enemies of democracy. In this case, disinformation/misinformation.

demagogue — populist leaders stir up the public, use lies and false promises to gain power.

demomágos — invisible magicians manipulate the public from inside the government (for instance, when the CIA leaks rumors to the press).

demofími — rumors arising from the people (like the hysterics we see on social media).

Also, our politics would be slightly healthier if we had a single word that meant "political entrepreneurialism,” so that we can better talk about it.

demoneos — a single word that means "political entrepreneurialism" in both the negative sense (populists telling lies to gain power) and the positive sense (innovators offering new-ideas/new-coalitions to help society).

Fred Brooks has said that the most exciting aspect of any design will come from what the designers say “no” to. In my case, I am inclined to say “no” to demoperiochi, the democracy of regions. I’ve no particular criticism of demoperiochi, except there is some wasteful redundancy in repeating the full architecture of government at both levels. But that is mere personal preference on my part.

Truly independent regional government has largely died out, even in the USA and Canada, because the regional governments lack money and must depend on the national governments for some of their funding, and then the national governments attach policy concerns to the funding, so the regional governments can no longer seek an independent path, but can only implement what the national government tells them to implement. Nor can regional governments raise taxes very much, because people and businesses will move to some other state/province, if taxes go too high. So anyone who is serious about reviving genuinely independent regional government would also have to support some kind of demoagora, because that is the only way to find the money to implement policies that are independent of the national governments. And we can look at China after 1978 and see how successful demoagora can be. Indeed, to the limited extent that China liberalized after 1978, it was mostly because of demoagora, in particular the village-owned businesses.

But none of the specifics matter as much as the overall idea. Everyone will have their opinions about design decisions. What does matter is that we build a richer vocabulary so we can better talk about those design decisions.