Welcome to my “practical spirituality” series which tries to translate very abstract esoteric concepts into practical implications and actions.
I invite you to discover my “Spiritual Journey” series if you want a to know about the abstract, theoretical spiritual background these articles rely on. In short, the “main” idea which will be explored in this series is the implication of the “we are all one” idea that you hear, time and again, in esoteric teachings. What if each human is one cell inside the body of a “larger being” or entity? How does that change our way to do politics, economics, science, or just about anything?
In this article, we will examine the political system and how to improve on the current representative democracy system. If you consider humanity as one global organism, politics should be the decision making center, the brain. However, representative democracy, as a model, is under severe crisis and is showing cracks and limits on all sides:
- The separation of powers is failing: the executive and legislative branches have nearly fused in many countries, and have gained control over the judiciary branch either via “starving the beast” (under-funding, especially certain “areas” of the judiciary which are in charge of keeping the other branches in check) or by direct control (appointing judges which have a specific ideological view in line with the people in power).
- Representative democracy isn’t representative anymore. Thanks to a gradual privatization and control of mass media and a perfected art of political campaigning (propaganda), the parties and politicians elected serve the same interests (mostly, those of the ultra rich, corporations and financial institutions). Any politician campaigning for real change is publicly stoned via “scare” tactics on mainstream media.
- Nation states are powerless in the face of supra-national entities such as global corporations or financial institutions. Even if a political party which seeks real change is elected, any and all policy attempts are sabotaged (for example, via raising the interest rates at which that state borrows on international financial markets, which nips in the bud any positive effects of its policies).
In this regard, it is important to reflect on how to reform the political system to allow for real change. My second article, “Keeping the Heart Beating”, which deals with the reform of the financial system, is already a key step in the right direction. The first key step in reforming politics is to reclaim parts of the sovereignty which has been delegated to politicians. For instance, reclaiming the control over monetary policy by setting up a decentralized crypto-currency in the hands of the people already solves half of all problems, since money is a much more powerful voting mechanism allowing to shape our overall economy then the political voting mechanism.
My main proposal is to reinvigorate the separation of powers.
First, by splitting the legislative branch in two chambers, one with elected representatives as is already the case, and the second, where citizens are elected via sorting (randomly selected). For any legislative proposal to go through, both chambers have to come to an agreement. This ensures a real representativeness of the legislative chamber, where you find a true reflection for the diversity of the population: as many women as men, a representativeness of low skilled workers and low socio-economic class, minorities etc. In today’s parliament, you find a predominance of middle aged white men from a higher socio-economic background, thanks to the political parties system which skewed politics to manipulate what’s on the menu, making sure that you had the choice between Coke and Pepsi (especially in the USA, where you only have the choice between Democrats and Republicans).
Secondly, the judiciary system should benefit from an independent source of financing (levy their own taxes), separate from any influence from the legislative or executive. Of course, this could also lend itself to abuses of power, so the legislative branch could step in with a 2/3 majority in each chamber, and curb the tax levy of the judiciary.
These are just the first initial steps of the political reform, but understand that there are going to be domino effects from many of the changes, especially from citizens reclaiming the control over monetary creation and simplifying the tax collection process.
Governmental agencies, public services and plenty of accountancy and consultancy firms will either be dissolved or have to adapt in a major way. Once you tax income at the source by taking a fixed percentage of the daily monetary creation process (see my second article), and via VAT, then there is no more room for fiscal optimization and avoidance schemes. You don’t need to tax income or corporations since whatever money they accumulate, if they don’t re-inject or re-invest it into the economy, its value will melt over time like snow in spring time. Accumulating and sitting on a treasure trove of money will be pointless.
The fact that any citizen could now be chosen at random to take decisions on behalf of his/her fellow citizens means that investment in public education will ramp up. The cost of an uneducated population will come at a very high price for society as a whole, contrary to the current situation where uneducated masses are manipulated by the elites and mass media, as they are receptive to propaganda. As I like to put it:
Each system is confronted with the same dilemma: ensure that people are smart enough to contribute positively to the system, but dumb enough to never question it.
And that balancing is failing fast in the present day. People are either too smart to blindly follow the system, or too dumb to positively contribute to it and sabotaging it due to their sheer incompetence and lack of education. You can see it with the rise of populist votes where the voters don’t understand the first thing about basic economics, and are therefore a liability to the system. In that regard, this is a positive development overall, since it will bring the current system to its knees.