"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." -Anonymous
Plato saw democracy as a degeneration of aristocracy. In his idealized aristocracy philosophers are the ruling class. Aristocracy has gotten a bad reputation because the ruling nobles aren't actually noble, the notion that the wise and just should have more power than the unwise and unjust can hardly be disputed.
Sweden had a public vote on if to dismantle nuclear energy, a majority voted yes, yet the option to keep nuclear energy won. This was because the vote was divided into three options, two for dismantling and one for keeping, thus even though more people wanted to dismantle their voices were "divided and conquered". This was likely done as a sleight of hand to avoid uninformed masses overturning the scientific consensus, that nuclear energy is less harmful, due to irrational fears. To avoid the need for such sleight of hand maneuvers the educated could be given more voting power in matters in which their education is relevant, creating a meritocracy.
The word noble has a root of "know", anyone can be noble in a facilitating environment, but not everyone remains noble under extreme duress. Thus the longer a soul has been through hell or tortured to cause betrayal of goodness while remaining noble the more we know es is noble. Such purified noble souls are instated by God to rule, and children souls created from a soul inherit that souls nobility. This is in direct parallel to the human belief in nobility as a bloodline divinely instated to rule.
Of course torturing someone to determine if they remain noble is not feasible on earth, but psychological experiments like the Milgram test and anti corruption sting operations can be developed to weed out those with questionable traits.
In the dominant political system on earth today, republics masquerading as democracies, the average citizen has minimal power: one vote every few years. To create a real democracy everyone should be allowed to vote on nearly every decision. Of course it is unreasonable to expect everyone to work full time as politicians, hence vote delegation can be used to create an emergent dynamic republic: people in a city delegate their votes to people who dedicate their time to inform themselves of policy decisions up for vote, and the parties thus formed further delegate their delegated votes to candidates who want to do likewise on a national level, and so on into the UN. This would prevent politicians renegading on promises made, as soon as they start voting contrary to what their supporters want the supporters can immediately start supporting someone else by redelegating their voting power.
States ought to be incarnations of justice. What is justice? Abstracting crime and punishment one arrives at: causing suffering will come around to harm you, or karma. To this I would like to add that victims of suffering receive some recompense. Thus I suggest a pair of foundational laws a state can adopt: power decreases when you cause suffering; power increases when you suffer.
States naturally want to evolve as fast as possible, this inclination can be made into law by seeing that evolution allows the state to be a more optimal and wider reaching incarnation of justice. So should states force their citizens to work to speed up evolution? As the current system of threatening homelessness for non workers practically does.
First of all, such forcing causes suffering, so the evolutionary power increase would have to outweigh the power decrease from the foundational law above, adopted by many higher powers. Even if a policy does in isolation increase evolution, if it does so at the expense of the favor of higher powers it is likely counterproductive. Communism might well be a better system, but if implementing a communist regime means relinquishing support from the dominant west a poor country might be better off sticking with capitalism. Thus consider that no matter how fast your state evolves it is unlikely to have any impact at all on the grander stage without evolutionary help, and the higher powers might just want you to be at blissful peace. To appease such higher powers that value destruction of suffering to give way to contentment a state could ratify and properly implement for example the human right to food, no forced labour required.
Secondly creativity and innovation is way more correlated to evolution than brute work; no matter how many hours a day citizens in one state are forced to carry bricks their brickmoving numbers will be quickly surpassed by another state that wins the race to invent steam engines. Being forced to perform menial tasks and/or fighting for survival and basic necessities is definitely not conducive to creativity and innovative spirit.
Having made all citizens content to foster creativity a state can motivate work with luxury, you may have a right to shelter but a private apartment could be reserved for those who contribute a set amount to society. These limits of luxury can be set by an AI that interpolates between votes on generalized scenarios; what car should a plumber drive? Vote!
Education in Sweden is free on all levels, people are even paid to attend university, along with a loan that has interest well below inflation. The world would certainly benefit from accessible education being provided to all, such as through online courses. Earth is like a parabolic antenna where the parabola is made of every soul reflecting progress by reasoning and tinkering to the antenna of global consciousness. Each part of the parabola can be improved by education but efforts on underdeveloped parts yield greater results, due to the law of diminishing returns. Clearly a billion spent on education in Africa will have a greater effect than the same billion spent in Europe. For reference a small traditional house can be built in Africa for a hundred dollars, so a rural school could be built for $1000, where teacher salaries are $50/month.
Updated on 2024-12-22.