Decentralization ~ Community and Regional Social Circles

A new egalitarian ethos has to center modern politics around community and regional radiuses. The neighborhood scale of the new economy will need a neighbor-based political system profoundly involved in the reshaping of local forces of production and in control of their self-determination. At this scale communities will rediscover the participatory democratic subsets that keep personal interest in check and people power in control. Eliminating arbitrary abuse of power and government over others is critical in the development of a new egalitarian ethos. Perhaps we could learn from the early collector-societies of the hunter-gatherers who practiced “reverse dominance” to keep power in check. “Reverse dominance” prevented anyone from assuming power over others; in these systems, the many acted in unison to deflate the ego and ridicule anyone who tried to dominate. In these egalitarian societies consensual decision-making was a core value that extended equity shared among themselves.

Consensual decision-making is manageable at the scale of local government. At this scale collaborative decision processes are likely to be efficient, effective, and transparent. Made up of neighbors with community accountability, this system will have much more bearing and power on their own livelihood than the federal government or any other form of central government or power monopoly. Thomas Jefferson would argue that “there is no safer depository of the ultimate powers of society than the people themselves.”

In today’s representative democracy, cronyism and selection by appointment dominate politics, and the voting system has become a sort of monarchial electorate system instrumented by super wealthy groups to appoint groomed and malleable candidates to office to represent their special interest. The power grabbing that occurs in the revolving doors of big corpo-government has no regard for what is good for the people or what is good for the environment.

We must fan the flame of liberty and democracy, getting reacquainted with the spirit of participation, where public life comes back to the people and we engage in a new interactive democratic membership that is direct and transparent. This new rationale will shrink government back to regional jurisdictions, where they will break up and decentralize into smaller self-regulating constituents. Governmental decisions will use smart online collaborative systems, community meetups, and crowd-solving technologies that interpret results of wide online surveys.

An example of this kind of system is the open-source software online project LiquidFeedback, which is being used by several parties in Germany. The online interactive democratic process can include the legislative body as they incorporate artificial intelligence and cloud management platforms to administrate complex systems. These programs facilitate lawmaking, maximizing network participation and decision-making around community issues, local interest lines, and regional social circles. In this online open environment, deliberation and debate contribute directly to the development of solutions. In this interactive democracy, questions and differences are not settled by vote but by participation and debate through collective moderation and many rounds of editing. In these systems voting is left for the last option: arbitration of irresolvable differences. It can also be used to measure consensus, like the label ratings of environmentally friendly products. Imagine the democratization of online consumer product reviews scanned for company ratings and fair-trade healthy economic practices and non-GMO organic food. Imagine the power of the consumer if we can collectively come together to boycott destructive economic practices and toxic products from our tables and homes. In these interactive democracies buyers and sellers can be measured on a scale of direct transparency. In this economic activity, reputation becomes a new online currency. This kind of currency is already being used in places like eBay and B2Cs.

Unlike the static, monolithic, bureaucratic states of nationhood, collaborative government systems are a cross-pollination of opportunities whose time is ripe and waiting to happen; they must be transparent to be effective and built out of mutual consent. They must promote mediation of conflict and arbitration in an evolving system where change is always a constant.