Council Government: adding the ultimate mechanism

[Jos Boersema]

(In the below I will up to the first * explain what a Council
Government is, and up to the ** what was already proposed many times
before, the system of sub-councils to defeat bribery.)

A Council Government is a form of Government and elections, where people
form groups small enough to convene and debate. Each of these groups may
elect a representative, and these representatives can then also form
Councils.

This form of Government is (or seems) natural. You group together and
you talk. When you have reached some conclusion on some topic, you rest
and start to wonder: what do all the other people think, who are not
part of this group. If you see other people also having formed groups to
talk, it is evident that you will try to find out what they are
thinking, talking about and deciding. An obvious way to do that is to
send a messenger.

This form of Government has been attempted in 1917 during the Socialist
/ Communist Revolutions, because it had become apparent how Capitalism
and Parliament (massive election pools for each candidate, creating a
great gap between voters and politicians) was not functioning as hoped.
Parliament was notoriously corrupt. The benefit the Council Government
form promises, is that you can immediately repeal your messenger, your
representative, once they have been bribed by the rich and start lying.
Mechanisms for immediate recall and replacement may have been invented
for massive election pools, but they can not be effective. It is too
much work to do a re-election.

*

Here I assume a voter group of 50 or a few more people, and also the
higher Councils will typically have that size.

The fundamental question this whole system tries to solve: how can we
reduce the power of evil people. People who are bribed or who are lying
or skewing things becausue the sense wealth opportunities for
themselves, are these evil entities. You cannot just detect them,
although you can replace them.

There are also more sophisticated attacks possible on the representative
system, which do not rely on a single corruptible person. For example a
wealthy person may bribe several people, let's say 4 persons out of 50
in a Provincial Council. While this does not sound much, they can have a
disproportionate influence, especially if they keep their co-operation
and funding a secret. We will assume to deal with experts at these
crafts, because soon they will be. If there is enough money in it,
some people will do almost anything. Criminal conspiracy is not rare. It
may seem fairly benign if some people have a friendly get together with
their wealthy friend. Who can make a law against it ? It might all be
innocent.

It is dangerous to start pointing fingers and demonize people. Moreover,
it is indeed part of a democracy that wealthy persons also have the vote,
and being wealthy does not necessarily mean evil either. People should
talk about politics, they should get together. The risk of creating a
witch hunt in the Councils, is potentially a greater danger than even
any conspiracies (criminal or less so) might pose.

One mechanism to help with this (see book, already in there), is to
divide the Council up into smaller councils of about 10 persons. 10
persons is a handy size for a debate. If you have 4 people conspiring,
their ability to influence is shattered. If they want to play as a team
and start lying because they expect to be paid for lying, they are down
to 2 persons in 2 of these sub-councils, or just one person in 4 of the
5 subcouncils. The rich man now needs to bribe more of the Council,
which gets increasingly costly and risky. You can also argue that if the
majority can be bribed, so that literally the majority of that nation
can be bribed and not just a few politicians who have made this into
their carreer, you get what you deserve. You are just a bad people in
general.

You can of course keep reducing the size of these sub-councils, to make
bribery increasingly difficult. The ultimate in this is just 2 persons.

Let's assume a Council of 50, and subcouncils of 10. This also goes for
the voter group at population level. They too are a Council, can debate
and influence their Representative. They don't have to, but they can.

The idea is that the sub-councils pre-cook any topic with themselves, so
that later in a grand meeting of the whole Council the proceedings are
faster and less prone to demagoguery. A lot of people will not feel well
talking to 50 persons, you can already have an effect of people who are
adept to manipulating crowds, and using social bickering, hatred and
atmosphere poisening around topics and opinions to get their way. In a
smaller council, people generally feel more confident. If you don't
understand some small thing, you won't easily raise your hand in a group
of 50. In a group of 10, many more people will. Some still will not.

The idea is also that the sub-councils can talk to each other directly,
especially if they reached some conclusion. The ideas then go from
subcouncil to subcouncil, and can there be discussed. If you think the
whole process is going to be long, perhaps longwinded and take many
sessions for every topic, many days or weeks: exactly ! That is what we
want. Slow and careful decision making, rather than rushed demagoguery
and rolling over people. If the topic is law, then the aim is to make
law for forever. You look at it extremely carefully, and make a wise
decision.

**

What you could do when convening in a subcouncil, is to have a session
where you have everyone talk to one other person. You could put two
chairs accross each other, for 5 pairs total. People can talk at the
same time, which of course saves on the total time. If you keep it
fairly short, you might get through the whole thing in an hour or two.
It might be good to keep it short, because you could always do it again,
and those who find out they have a lot to talk about, can continue on
their own time. If people talk 5 minutes to each other, and there is two
minutes to change chairs, 7 * 10 = 70 minutes. With a break half way of
15 minutes, the whole thing takes 1.5 hours. It is a bit long, but you
can also do one half one day, and the other half another.

To coin a term "carrousel" ? Makes sense I guess. You could then have a
sub-council vote to do a carrousel on some topic ...

To make it even more structured, you could flip a coin on each meeting
between 2 persons start, and the winner gets to choose if they go first
or second. Each could first talk for one minute, leaving maybe 2 minutes
for some questions and answers between the two.

Under these conditions, everyone should be able to talk and express
their opinions, and listen to that one person accross from them. It will
be a bit of an excercize in brevity (I need that too I guess ;-), and
with time people will probably become better at it, which might help
them also if they want to express their opinions, questions etc., in
larger groups.

A mechanism like this seems to have some potential of both toning the
shouters down, and those who usually are silent in the back to speak up.
Some people who are overly dominant, will still do that in a two person
meeting, and some people who are too silent will probably still be quiet
(although the really quiet ones are not even organizedat all, they stay
home completely).

However ... when you are dealing with overly dominant people, you can as
a group get shouted down and be intimidated. The demagogue on top might
make everyone think that everyone is already agreeing with him. If out
of 10 people there are 2 overly domenant persons, all the other people
also get a reprieve from all this pressure when talking to someone else
who is not overly domineering, aggressive or manipulative. The not so
aggressive people get a chance to see each other, and basically to
organize a resistance that way.

Example.

A Council of 50 persons, 1, 2, 3, ... 50. Divided in 5 subcouncils of
each 10 persons, A, B, C, ... J. Four persons are bribed and form a
conspiracy to lie for the benefit of some business, and force some
proposal in a certain direction. Nobody knows about this co-operation.

-Case 1: just one big 50 persons councils, no subs-council meetings.

The group of conspirators get together, and with enough money to make a
good presentation, they position themselves and their crafted materials
to right away take charge of the debate. They for example decide to
present their case with 2 persons, and then the other 2 will rally from
behind as if they never heard of the plan before, to pull the rest over
the line because the many will think that those two just happen to
honestly hear the proposal and agree to it. If it gets really serious,
they might have one of the group do some education or get a certificate
or pretend to have experience, so that the group will be impressed by
his (her) opinion.

If all the other people are more or less blank and undecided, all
operating alone, this manipulation could easily have a deciding impact
(I think). The only thing remaining is that one of the four will
pretend to be a really good person known for being charitable or pay
for the coffee of the day, ... etc.

-Case 2: the same but now with subcouncils.

Since they are with 4, they cannot be in every subcouncil and even in
the sub-councils with 1 person they risk quickly loosing control over
the debate, because people will get a bit irritated if one person is
constantly pushing.

If they go with 2 in one subcouncil they can probably control that a
lot easier, because they outnumber every single person always with the
two they are, until the whole sub-council starts ganging up with each
other, but that doesn't necessarily happen. They may quickly gain some
following, and then they are already with 3 or 4, against disconnected
people. However, they sacrifice the control in 2 subcouncils now
completely, they are not even part of that at all.

The sub-council system is likely to shatter conspiracies for illicit
control.

-Case 3: the same with subcouncils and also a one on one carrousel done
once or twice.

In this case, the overpowering nature of the prepared and funded little
conspiracy group gets stripped away, and everyone who decides against
the proposal of the conspirators gets to talk with every single one of
their council for a while, without beingh interrupted, made fun off or
other tricks of the social manipulation game. There are now many, a
majority, of little debates going on, where the conspirators are
entirely not present.

They will have to hope they made enough of an impact with their initial
proposal, if they are even allowed to do that. It depends here a bit on
how the Council organized the debate in order. Is a full Council debate
first, sub-councils first, or a carrousel first. On this topic I
personally have no opinion (never thought about it). It seems it could
be equally dangerous of having the conspirators talk individually with
a lot of people and overwhelm them one on one, as it is to talk first
in the grand Council. If they talk first in the Grand council, those
who decide against know what they are up against, and can then use that
information to talk in the one on one sessions to convince people
otherwise. All possibilities seem to have risks and advantages.

Conclusion: it seems to me that if you go down to one on one sessions as
part of the overall debating, you are doing the ultimate in what is
possible in a democratic decision making process. Bad choices can still
be made, but that is an inherent part of a democracy, and any other form
of decision making. The goal would be that the group who makes the
decision is as large as possible, so that as many people as possible can
learn from their mistakes ;-).

Isn't this how life works in general ? Making mistakes and learning ?

It remains to be seen how practical this is, given the time it
takes. However if the economy is also correctly structured and finally
things at least in theory can work in the long term (which they cannot
in Capitalism, which is a crescendo of ever worsening impossible to
solve problems due to the centralization of power until society breaks
down into Tyranny and war). The society is basically functional. This
should mean there are fewer difficult problems, and it is more about
streamlining and detail decisions. Nevertheless, it may be the case that
going as far is one on one debates, however short, is only going to be
possible for some topics on some occaisions.

Another noteworthy aspect of it all is the potential for reduced warfare
on Earth, due to the economic question being solved. There are no
fundamentally unemployed people who need to be killed (according to the
super rich criminals who fear Revolution), and there are no super rich
psychos with their wold domination obsession, or just lusting for the
markets and wealth of other Nations. Common people might be evil enough,
but they are also going to be the cannon fodder, and so their lust for
war is probably somewhat reduced compared to that of a criminal ruling
class who will send other people to die.

When warfare and the fight of all against all is much reduced or even
entirely over, what is going to be important in life ? Everything that
was already important is still going to be important, but I think one
issue which is going to rise in importance is simply these social
relations with other people. The Great and ever lasting Peace is going
to relax people a lot. They will be much more their true selves (for
better or worse I guess). With much of the corporate rat race over (but
not entirely because it is still a dynamic market economy, we still need
to eat of course, and some/many people still want to be rich also),
there is more time for other things. One of these things is having
meetings, and convene in Councils and just have a good time making some
decisions, or just talk about some topic for a while to see what it is
about.

You will not have the modern political parties as much anymore, or at
all. Things like Communism - a centrally planned economy - or the
Capitalists - markets in everything - these ideologies will all have
found their place already. Communism is for a family, sometimes also for
inside a (small) business. That's a planned economy, you know each
other. People who want markets, they have their markets. Land markets
are rental markets, and that's fine (it couldn't be any other way).
This big struggle between the "haves" and "have nots" is over: everyone
finally has their share. If they are lazy, stupid and incompetent, they
will be less effective with their share, and that is how it should be.
However, they are still not slaves or even killed off as excess.

On all these issues there is just a whole lot more rest in society, a
lot more time. With the wealth spread out more because ownership is
spread out more, there is also likely more time and funding for such
activities as Council operations. If you don't like it, then don't
participate, that's fine. If you finally see something go wrong and you
want to get in there, you should be able to do so almost immediately.

So much more rest everywhere, and I hope and believe this can lead to so
much more civility and good behavior. Then people might take more
interest in each other also, because we are all less in a panic about
what is our crazy evil and lying ruling class going to do next, because
that can easily be a war while we are still alive, or some other
madness. The panic goes down and therefore the fear goes down. The
people will likely trust each other a bit more, because this great evil
is out of the way.

Well, all that may be a bit too optimistic, but it seems like a
possibility for those who want. Keep in mind that all this is only going
to be as good as those people are good. Evil people, a generally evil
and stupid people, it would probably still be a complete disaster one
way or the other. In a democracy like this, it all depends on the
people. The people are not necessarily good, but at least they are also
the likely victims of bad policies. Kings and Tyrants are also not
necessarily good, and may be the most evil of the Nation. Therefore it
is realistic not to have too much hope that it will make an enormous
difference, because the systems which are operating in some country have
grown out of its history. There are reasons why it became what it
became, and those reasons will still be there, and they will express
themselves somehow again, probably only with minor alterations.

Hence when it all starts up, if you want it to, then this starts up as a
minority movement. That would be good, and it would not interfere with
the existing Government. It can then become better by people learning
how to do it. It is basically meant to organize the good people in the
Nation (first), so that their efforts hopefully become more effective.
The good people should not be Divided & Conquered as they usually are,
but be on one mind on a program they can all heartfully and mindfully
agree on, and then also to organize as one. First the good people, and
then later perhaps the entire Nation. This is of course the only way ti
is going to happen anyway.

You should be careful that once you get strong enough, which may already
start from several hundred to thousands, the enemy is going to notice
your effort and start their attacks. When you are small, their attacks
will be potent. The enemy has more weight relative to a small group.
I think it will therefore in the beginning be a lot about perceverence,
even about starting up again after the enemy has somehow destroyed the
effort. By trial and error it will hopefully eventually succeed.

I still think that restructuring of the economy is more important than
reforming Parliament, but a more refined democracy can help, and can
also help push such economic reform to their conclusion.

The chances of all this don't seem great, because most people do not
seem interested in decision making, debating or democracy in general.
However, the point was to organize the *good people*, to make *them*
more effective. They can then take the lead in the Nation, and both be
ideologically of one mind, and also organizationally be one.

I think in the whole, it will be a shift from the "Big Life" of the few
with the masses being "the public" who merely watch and serve, to a life
where your own life is so much more a little adventure, embedded in a
wide open and supportive culture. You have land, the power is close by
and an ongoing process, the markets are open, small business flourishes,
of course there is education and families and all that. There are
Nations and each one is Sovereign and therefore different. Life become
smaller and more adventurous I believe, while at the same time safer and
more reasonable. The Great Peace will possibly have a big effect on how
people feel. Peace is not boring, but rather the exact opposite: it is
liberating.

(Sorry to make it too long as usual. I just need and want to cross every
t and so on, and make it all extremely understandable. In any kind of
normal society, all of this should already have been done ages ago,
which begs the question: why don't people understand ? Is it so hard ?
Why can they not understand simple things, let alone agree or disagree.
it's fine with me if people disagree, but I don't think they even get to
the point where they understand enough to do either. So I keep making it
long in the hope that someone finally understands, even though you
should be able to say all this in just literally one line. I should just
be able to write "We can do 1:1 meetings in the sub-councils for a
Council Government, like rotating. It would just take 1-2 hours." That
should be enough. Maybe it would have been enough, and the problem is
not understanding after all. The problem may be ill will and apathy. I
do admit that it will all be a fair amount of work to get done and keep
going. On the other hand, it is also incumbant upon me and those who
wish to think about solutions like this, to think beforehand and in
great detail about every aspect of it, to see if it will cause damage
and if it is worthwhile to try.)

All in all, I think in western countries at least, and perhaps many, a
limiting factor is going to be the intelligence of the participants.
Their intelligence might be dangerously low, leading to instability.
Trying is knowing I guess. It might only attract the more intelligent
anyway, and the less so at least still benefit from power closer at
hand. An experiment could be helpful.

--
Economic & political ideology, worked out into Constitutional models,
with a multi-facetted implementation plan. http://market.socialism.nl