Yuval Harari argues in “Nexus” (2024) that the difference between democracies and dictatorships is how they handle information. Dictatorships are more interested in controlling information than seeking truth, while democracies are the opposite. The one is top-down hierarchical in its goal of authority and the other is bottom up and therefore self-correcting in search for truth. Thus the age old struggle between the two is essentially a matter of information. It is the question of our times — how can ideal society balance he opposing benefits of control and truth.
Collective public support of elections, via government funding, is the natural way to remove money from governmental influence, to fight corruption in government.
The problem of corruption and disfunction is well recognized but reform seems out of reach, discouraing attempts to doing anything about it. But governance reform must become a central axis societal development in the information age, and will become so if the organic societal system matures in a healthy way. Since so many organic beings do in fact mature through their middle phases and reach maturity, there is every reason to home that humanity will grow up too.
In many ways, we know what needs to be done, e.g. get the money out of politics and government, but the opportunity to do so has not yet appeared. It will take a groundswell of public opinion manifesting as ballot box activism, to overcome the power of money. That development may be hard to imagine at present, but the potential benefits from reform are self-evident and the need is obvious. It’s the way forward and if we believe organic systems mature in a constructive direction toward realizing their potential, than we can believe society will eventually institute this and many other governmental reforms.
As part of imaging improved and ideal government, we’ll need to clarify government’s proper role in society and therefore it’s mandate. Political science gives us some basic guidelines about which there can be little dispute. Dispute may arise out of political jockeying or by force of moneyed corruption, but if government is serve what’s best for society, as a maturing social system, then certain basic principles are clear. Government’s role in society needs to be clarified and rationalized away from the corrupting influence of money. Government needs to step in to take more responsibility in some area, and step back in others.
We need government to administer the rule of law, to manage income distribution and equality or inequality, and to represent the interests of public goods. Philosophically, the need for collective action and a role government can be seen as coming under three areas: society’s legal structure, its income structure, and its boundary and interface with its surroundings. This means not only its natural environment but also temporarily its relationship to future generations, neither of which are directly represented by the voting citizenry.
First, we need government to provide legal and judiciary systems and enforce them with policy and military functions, all reflecting the will of the citizenry, so that we have a society of laws. To this end we need the legislative system to craft rules and regulations reflecting the collective desire of the citizenry, a judiciary system to evaluate those rules and regulations for adherence to fundamental principals, and an executive apparatus to carry out those rules and regulations. Police and military functions are part of the executive, bestowing power on the collective bodies of government to enforce their authorities. The legislature writes the laws, the judiciary evaluates them, and the executive carries them out, performing functions of feeling, thinking and willing in the body governmental.
With these administrative responsibilities clarified, next, government needs to address various tasks of a collective nature. It needs to accept responsibility for the degree of income equality or inequality in the system, for example as measured by the “Gini coefficient”, and address that income distribution according to the collective will of the citizenry. Government affects the income distribution through its tax and spending policies. The easiest most direct way to address the matter is through a progressive income tax with a progressively negative income tax below a certain threshold.
We need government to protect our collective public resources, e.g. air and water and much more. Environmental externalities, and environmental protection, would be with fees and financial incentives to match those externalities and reflect the public value of those environmental resources.
Many other aspects of society can be argued to be public goods, and to that extent would deserve governmental intervention to protect them and address externalities that would arise if left entirely to market forces. This it can do by imposing fees and costs to account for those externalities and the value of public resources not appreciated by private market forces.We can debate to what extent a healthy, informed citizenry is a public good, justifying a government roll in health and education, but to the extent it is a public good, to that extent it would justify government subsidizing to address any externalities that would arise if left entirely to the marketplace.
Tax policy needs to be rationalized. Other than for purposes of addressing income inequality, the most efficient and direct way to fund government is through a Georgist-type land tax, a tax on ground rent.
Global warming needs to be addressed by a carbon tax.
Government’s direct involvement should become judiciary, police and military functions, protection of public goods, anti-trust enforcement,
Government needs to withdraw from any meddling in cultural sphere, which in
We have a lot of work to do growing into this our societal adolescence, but we’ve begun. It may be hard to imagine, but if the analogy is a guide, we’ll learn how t