What I hope to prove

I'll argue for 7 anti-populist ideas

Our world has become complex and so we increasingly depend on highly trained experts, technocrats who have some narrow area of knowledge in which they know far more than anyone else. The depth of their knowledge is useful, but its narrowness is dangerous. For understandable reasons, the public is wary of allowing too much power to accumulate in the hands of these technocrats.

Populists often gain votes by promising some kind of revolt against the limits of this system, yet when the populists gain power they often appear to be either ineffective or corrupt. Left-wing populists often attack highly trained experts from the police or military, yet later rely on the police or military; for instance Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York City by promising to reform the police, but once he was elected he took no action and even defended the police when they were accused of wrongdoing. Likewise, Donald Trump became President of the USA in part by promising to ignore experts regarding the environment, and he put someone in charge of the EPA who favored business over the environment, but Trump seemed to lack the skill to inflict any permanent damage on the environmental bureaucracy, so the situation reverted to normal once Trump was gone. In short, whether left-wing or right-wing, populism seems to be an ineffective way to control the technocrats.

Paradoxically, it is an anti-populist process that offers the best hope of democratic accountability for the highly trained experts on whom our society must for now rely.

I've spent 21 years writing software and leading teams of software engineers. I've also a life-long interest in the question of leadership and systems of accountability. On this weblog, over the next year, I will take what I've learned to prove these 7 anti-populist ideas:

1. A problem that happens in one country can probably be fixed by passing an ordinary law in that one country, but a problem that happens simultaneously in every democracy suggests a much deeper pathology that can only be addressed through fundamental changes to the constitutions. Likewise, a campaign strategy that fails in one election was simply a bad strategy, but a strategy that fails in every election (“we just need to elect the right people”) suggests a structural problem that can only be fixed with constitutional reform. There is one correct way to amend a constitution: two majority votes separated by a certain amount of time. (See the essay here: part 1 and part 2.)

2. In the early 20th Century the increasing complexity and specialization of our society caused all legislative work to move from the general assembly to the committees. We can only have good government if we continue with this trend, therefore the power to pass laws must now move from the general assembly to the committees. The remnant of the legislative general assembly should only have two tasks, appointing people to the committees and amending the Constitution. (See the essay here: In our highly specialized and complex world, all real political power needs to move to specialized committees.)

3. Simple math teaches us that electing one individual to represent a specific geographic area must lead to some kind of biased gerrymandering, no matter how much the people drawing the map make an effort to be fair. Therefore the whole public should vote for the whole government; the public should never be split up into geographic regions. (See the essay here: How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surprising.)

4. The best protection against populism is to have both a judiciary and a legislature whose members enjoy the independence granted by very long terms, perhaps being limited to a single term. We will discuss whether the term should be a fixed term (11 years? 18 years?) or whether it should be for life, as Plato suggested for his wise Guardians, and as the USA currently allows for its Federal and Supreme Court judges. (See the essay here: Longer elected terms would lead to better government.)

5. The best protection against authoritarianism is to have both a judiciary and a legislature that is elected/appointed on a staggered schedule for long periods. (See the essay here: Is there a benefit to holding elections every month?)

6. Intermediate assemblies can increase popular participation in the democratic process while limiting the damage done by the least informed voters. What if 80% of the public follows the political issues and is well informed? What if 40% have rational reasons to vote for the right-wing, and 40% have rational reasons to vote for the left-wing? Then it is the most ignorant, badly informed 20%, voting somewhat randomly, that will determine every election. And therefore elections become random events. So if we want better elections, we should want to limit the influence of that 20%, by first asking the public to vote for community members who seem to be politically active. (See the essay here: How to fix democracy: empower the best informed voters.)

7. Many of the features that helped Western democracy reach it's full flourishing (strong labor unions, competing newspapers, competing civil organizations, transparency regarding how money is spent, transparency regarding how votes are counted) were discovered by accident but will need to be added to the Constitution to be made permanent. An example of the benefits of adding these things to the constitution was the joint USA/German decision that labor unions should be added to the German constitution of 1949, and for this reason labor unions remain stronger in Germany than in the USA, and Germany now seems better protected from authoritarian demagogues that the USA is.

What is the point of exploring these ideas? Mostly to question the default assumptions that currently exist around Western democracy. The basic structure of our governments (executive branch, legislative branch and judicial branch) was suggested by Montesquieu in his book "The Spirit Of The Laws" which he published in 1748. Although there has been a major effort to expand the vote to more and more people, there have been no major changes to that basic structure since Montesquieu suggested it 270 years ago. Yet nowadays, everywhere, democracy is in crisis. It is time to rethink some of the basic assumptions with the hope of coming up with a system that ensures we continue with a government that is accountable to the people.

A final note: I’ve many close friends whose politics are some variation of anarchism. They all make the case that humans would be happier if we lived in less hierarchical societies. This strikes me as a point about as obvious as saying the sky is blue, I don’t think reasonable people can argue with it. But I do think there are some difficult questions to be answered about how the high levels of specialization that we now have can be reconciled to less hierarchy. As the anarchist arguments make an interesting counter-narrative to my main thread, we will be considering their arguments carefully.

But most of the time, I will be detailing anti-populist arguments that I hope will be considered by a broad swath of friends and allies on the Left.