Time for New Paradigm
The survival of a democratic model of governance is under threat. Our Party-based electoral system is dangerously obsolete, suffering — as do all technologies — from atrophy, entropy and corruption, unable to respond to wholly different and escalating system demands.
Democracy Signal Processing
Democracy dysfunction can be understood as a signal processing break-down. The signal — the will of a sovereign electorate — has been suppressed, choices strangled and disconnected from actual government outcomes to meet growing national needs, aspirations and expectations.
Triple Breakdown
Our current political mechanics suffer on all three measures: Signal Formation, Transmission & Reception.
- The electoral signal gets manipulated, confused and constricted by collapsed voter participation, intentional noise and distortion.
- The transmission gets corrupted by interposed, self-interested special interests with their own overpowering signals through illegitimate channels of lobbying, access, influence and (worst) money.
- The reception mechanism – public officials – have usurped original electoral signal power with their own incentive structure, ruled by a privileged political class, empowered by a small minority of wealthiest interests.
Mandate Democracy® Instead
- Sharpens the electoral voice with Referenda votes that matter on specific governmental actions and outcomes.
- Surmounts the overwhelming transmission interference to a clear-channels carrying information through a new generation of independent i-ballot boxes.
- Slaves government officials to Referenda outcomes, representatives held accountable to represent. And by “No confidence” and recall votes.
Negative Feedback Loop
Our politics today create a democracy death spiral:
- The more that governance shows itself insufficiently responsive — and intolerably dysfunctional –
- … The more that faith in democratic institutions deteriorates.
- … So the electorate becomes more susceptible to exploitation by malign forces
- … reinforcing more disillusion.
- Which enables the appeal, rise and encroachment of autocrats and zealots who further poison the democratic polity…
and so forth, like melting permafrost exposing more dark earth, which soaks, up still more heat to melt more permafrost and soil …
The very existence and survival of what we imagine as democracy itself, as a functioning paradigm, is now in question, in established democracies and those polities which aspire to such.
The Global Perspective
- Democracy as a governance paradigm is under global assault not seen since the Age of the Dictators gave us WW II.
- The forcing function in Western Democracies — for some time — has been electorate hostility, resentment and disenchantment –to status quo politics in the face of social and economic dislocation and inequality.
- These same socio-political forces coalesced to shake the civilized world in the wake of WW I; the Treaty of Versailles; the Great Depression; the Smoot-Hawley tariff collapse of international commerce — all contributing to the emergence of the “Age of Dictators” which produced the global holocaust of WW II.
The Science of Change
No different than non-linear, step-function singularities in earthquake tectonics, in metal fatigue fracture, political systems too can just snap. Repeated stress relieve themselves in strain, phase change abruptly takes ice to water, water to steam; — under repeated stressors. Denominator limits approach zero.
Defending Our Heritage
The United States always has been a political beacon, sanctuary and bastion, linchpin and center of gravity for democracy and a governance of hopeful change: The world’s technological and intellectual – not just industrial — “Arsenal of Democracy,” striving for the promise of a society rooted in Liberty, Freedom and Human Dignity with Equal Justice Under Law. These are our God-given, inalienable rights as American Citizens.
Mandate Democracy® means:
Each citizen is a participant in an historic challenge — to shape the outcome of what de Tocqueville called an inevitable “change of epochs,” now thrust upon us again. With technological innovation and reliance on the fundamental principles of a democratic Republic we’ll prevail to create a still better society of our children. Our Heritage won’t permit us to do otherwise – but to heed Edmund Burke’s warning that we’ll fail only “if good men and women do nothing,” to make it so.