An Alternative

Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, tells us the Civil War was fought to ensure that “…government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.” Unfortunately, we have since devolved to government of the many, by the few, for the extremely few. How and why this happened is beyond the scope of this forum post, nor will I attempt to defend this assertion. Instead, I will focus on the immediate, urgent problem—the extremely few are using their extreme wealth badly from the points of view of universal wellbeing and human survival.

Fifty percent of the people on our planet are trying to live on a few dollars a day. Fifty percent have no toilet in their home. Well over a billion are chronically malnourished, literally fighting starvation, and many lose that fight. Over 20,000 children die every day from starvation or easily cured diseases. According to the Atlantic Magazine (July 19, 2016) even in the United States, the richest country on the planet, hunger is a serious issue for  “…approximately 17.4 million homes across the United States, populated with more than 48 million hungry people.” According to the Washington Post (December 21, 2017), a million people in Yemen now have cholera. Over 65 million people are refugees, forced to leave their homes to flee violence or environments made unlivable by drought or flooding, including sea level rise, or by industrial mining, logging or farming. According to the Global Slavery Index, “…45 million people are still trapped in modern slavery.” And all of us are constantly threatened with instant annihilation by nuclear arsenals.

I could fill several pages with miserable statistics, but you already know that the current level of misery is unacceptable. How can any of us be having Merry Christmases and Happy New Years knowing that billions upon billions of our sisters and brothers are suffering so terribly?

I refuse to believe that misery and inequality are increasing because those with great wealth and power are Satanic evildoers deliberately trying to make life miserable for the poor. It seems to me they are just playing the game pretty much like I do, according to the current system of rewards and punishments. Our economic and political system rewards selfish acquisitiveness and punishes altruism. In fact, in the US, corporate managers are prohibited from knowingly reducing profits to shareholders in order to give back to the community or protect the environment. Acts that appear altruistic must be defended as good for corporate image and somehow good for profits in the long run. Otherwise, the offending managers can be sued. CEOs and executives in large corporations are required by law, by custom, and by unwritten rules to put profit for shareholders above all other priorities. Business leaders know that if they seriously sacrifice profit for something ridiculous like worker welfare or the ecosystem, they will be replaced by someone less soft-headed.

So the core problem is our hypercompetitive, adversarial, power-hungry political/economic system. In other words, we have to change the methods and the criteria we use to make decisions. But how can we possibly change a system that most of us are carefully trained to believe is right, proper, immutable and as natural as the sun coming up in the east?

The quickest, most effective way to make the changes sought by the vast majority is to start a new political party. The people who run for office on this new party’s ticket must all be clean and charismatic, of course, but most importantly, they must be trained, experienced, professional mediators. (mediator: a person who tries to end a disagreement by helping the two sides to talk about and agree on a solution—Cambridge English Dictionary) These mediators would run on a platform of “no policy promises, government as process, and no money in politics.”

“Government as process” means that elected officials do not determine government policy (hence, no policy promises). Rather, they control the process by which decisions are made and policies determined. They convene massive meetings or computer comment processes that bring all the key stakeholders together to make decisions collectively. The elected mediators would implement the policies, but only after achieving consensus or near consensus among all parties. The policies they formulate and implement would, as a result, be supported by the vast majority of the population.

The paradox here is that the new Mediation Party (the party of mediators) would have to win an election and obtain sufficient political power to take winning and power (money) out of the political process. Thus, they will need another element to persuade voters to trust them and make the new party a genuine change (not just another party seeking power). This other element is “no money in politics.”

All candidates and all officials elected backed by this Mediation Party would have to take a vow of poverty. The details of this vow might vary from one district to another. Many variations are conceivable, but two elements are essential. 1) The elected official must vow to receive only a minimal salary and never to gain any economic advantage from any decision taken by the government. 2) The official’s tax records and even bankbook(s) must be open to the public. All mediating officials must be completely open and transparent regarding the money they personally have, receive and spend—while in office and for several years after losing or stepping down.

Taking this vow of poverty and transparency would convince voters that the candidates and elected officials are working for society as a whole, not for themselves or for any subgroup. Once elected, the mediating officials would have to actually control the decision-making process and help the stakeholders arrive at good, creative, and broadly accepted policies. Before attacking these ideas as hopelessly idealistic, please find out they might work by reading The Adventures of Rebecca Whyte.

In this series of short adventures, I present “government as process” and “no money in politics” in a fiction format that is often exaggerated and playful, but I’m serious about the basic ideas. I may be wrong about the details. It may turn out that some other approach is better, but I’m quite sure that nothing less than a massive shift away from competition toward cooperation will save us; we need a complete overhaul of our adversarial decision-making system.

One more thing. I wrote 27 episodes long before this website was ready. I was planning to post one episode at a time, say one a week. However, these 27 episodes are already way out of date and keep me from reacting to events as they happen. So, I have just posted all my finished episodes. I hope you will accept them as a New Year’s present, and I will accept all feedback as a present from you.

I will continue to write and post episodes, announcing them when I do. Please read and respond. And if you suddenly get the urge to write an episode yourself, please do and send it me. I will read it and post it if I possibly can. I’m sure you will notice that I need lots of feedback to help me improve Rebecca, her political party and her effort to save the world.