Panocracy 25 – A Brief History …
… of the Future
“When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.” - Euripides
I've been prattling on over the past 9 months or so about an alternative type of democracy which, I'm arguing, offers a sane alternative to the cliff edge where our increasingly hysterical governments are leading us.
Winston Churchill said - with the imperiousness that only a politician could muster - that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
If we're to find a suitable replacement for the failing system of government often misdescribed as representational democracy then we need to look at what has been tried so far and what has not.
Monarchy, Tyranny, Oligarchy, Theocracy, Communism and many more had previously failed and continue to fail to improve the lot of the ordinary person. For example, liberal democracies will no doubt claim the credit for taking us from a life expectancy of 40 in the mid 1800s to 80 nowadays. But the credit for this is due to the great engineers of the Victorian era. 'Democratic' politicians had to be dragged screaming into the provision of basic amenities.
Our more recent technocracy has also come to grief - and for much the same reason as the other systems: the corruption of the people in charge and their acolytes by the power they have. There really is only one way out and that is to stop lending our political capital to other people, no matter how well-intentioned they say they are.
Anarchy is one way of running a nation that doesn't entail giving away individual power. However Anarchy has no structure, no institutions, no culture and rather quickly leads to ambitious and immoral individuals seizing power for themselves – oligarchs or warlords. Anarchy is not an option.
In contrast, and even though no one has to give away their political power, Panocracy explicitly encourages the minimum level of administrative structures, agencies and institutions to bring a society together rather than tearing it apart.
This time we're going to review and summarise what's been proposed so far for our Panocracy. If you're new to this substack why not have a look at some of the earlier articles that provide more detail (The most informative ones are Panocracy 4 - A New Hope and Panocracy 5 - The Open Agenda.)
This is not meant to be a lecture to a passive audience so I do hope you will look carefully at the ideas and find things wrong with them. Criticism is a time-honoured way of developing ideas that has proven very successful (and often painful to the proposers!) in other realms like science (excepting Covid 'science' and Climate 'science' where dissenting views are actively suppressed).
Here on substack we do things the old-fashioned way.
What's wrong with what we've got?
Nothing at all – if you happen to believe that elected governments are staffed entirely with altruistic and honourable individuals - people who are impervious to outside influencers like big industry lobbyists, ideological pressure groups, or the media - or even to moral blackmailers in publicly funded agencies. You also need to believe that governments don't resort to propaganda, bullying and - ultimately - force to get their own way.
At the moment what we are subjected to is two-faced government. Manifest government is the bit you see - what you read about in press releases: the glossy headlines of huge policy 'successes' spiced up with juicy stories about naughty goings-on to distract us from the real business (at the small expense of a few ruined careers). Latent government is the behind-the-scenes stuff of botched management, vanity project kickbacks, under the counter political deals, lobbying and plain old-fashioned graft.
The thing is, we keep re-electing these people and they take that to mean that they have our support.
They don't.
It's just that (a) our choice is limited by who they put in front of us, (b) we don't want to rock the boat and (c) we're fed up with the current lot.
That's the system, folks, and we all watch the party from outside in the rain.
What is a Panocracy?
It's a way of redistributing political power back to the people who have allowed it to be taken from them. It's a system of government that doesn't require political leaders.
Most people have trouble with the idea that we can do without leaders - and indeed do a lot better without them. It's a frame of mind that's deeply embedded in us and is rooted in a fallacy of leadership – that the shepherd is there to look after the interests of his flock.
Even though we introduced democracies a while ago we never quite let go of the idea of the benevolent patriarch (or matriarch) so our democratic systems are open to abuse by small groups and individuals.
Panocracy is democracy done right. It's a system within which people can decide their own future without the help of professional politicians, tyrants or demagogues.
Surely We Need a Government?
Well, yes and no. Belgium got along fine for a couple of years without a government a few years ago and there have been other cases where countries have even increased their economic wealth in the absence of a ruling elite (who would have thought … ?).
What happened in those cases was that things just ran the way they'd been set up to run. The Police still policed, Accountants still accounted, Taxmen still taxed, Firemen still … well, you get the idea. Society didn't collapse in a heap. People just did what they do best – got on with their lives.
It's not that we don't need government – let's call it direction – it's that we can get better direction without the idiots and incompetents we allow to be foisted on us at the moment.
How is Panocracy run?
It's run by administrators who are expressly forbidden to engage in political activity in the course of their work. Their work is required to be open to public scrutiny to ensure that they can be held to account if they stray into murky political territory.
Some parts of the day to day operation of our Panocracy are expected to be done by IT systems for the same reasons that computers currently do payroll, billing and a bunch of other tedious tasks.
Other parts are more interactive so you can make your voice heard.
Why is it better than what we've got?
Firstly, there are no political representatives. That means no political parties vying for power and prepared to do and say anything to get it; no more promises that will never be kept; no more vanity projects feathering the nests of big corporations at your expense.
Secondly, everyone has a vote on every issue. Did you get to vote for lockdowns, masks or mandatory vaccination? Or the supply of weapons to Ukraine? Or the sabotage of the Nordstream gas pipeline? You would have in a Panocracy.
Thirdly, the agenda is decided by everyone and not by party grandees in cahoots with big commerce, globalist ideologues, old boy networks, … the Latent State.
Panocracy would beat representative democracy even if political leaders were any good at running countries:
Panocracy leverages the skills, talents and expertise of all of us when forming policy;
It allows - and encourages - us to participate in the process of deciding our future;
We get the laws and regulations we actually approve as opposed to the ones that powerful groups desire.
Agencies and institutions are no longer subject to the whim of the ruling party or its leaders. They are directly and openly accountable (see e.g. the bad cat's take on the latest data from the UK Office of National Statistics where he eviscerates their bogus analysis designed to gloss over excess vaccine deaths).
How would it affect me?
For people like you and me life will be more like it was before governments started meddling in our private affairs. You will almost certainly have a lot less interaction with 'them' as there will be a lot fewer of them.
If done peaceably (see below) a Panocracy will most likely start off with the laws, regulations and customs we have at the time. It will be up to us to decide whether to keep them, change them or replace them.
Your vote will be cast on every issue. Although in principle you could do this yourself, most people don't have the time so it will be done by a proxy - an agent. (see Panocracy 4 for details).
You'll want to make sure your agent represents your opinions correctly so you'll need to spend some time with them. You don't have to do this but don't complain if you don't get your way!
If you care a lot about some issue then you can get involved in drafting laws or regulations. It's no longer the province of wheeler-dealers in smoke-filled rooms.
You can find a fuller explanation of agents in Panocracy 4 and of gathering your opinion in Panocracy 20. How laws are changed and developed is in Panocracy 21.
What about State Agencies?
Here in Britain, we take it for granted that certain institutions and agencies, the judiciary for example, are independent of the state and its political bias. Most people seem to think this is a good thing. As a result we don't have political trials presided over by senior judges appointed by the political executive.
The institutions within a Panocracy would have no political appointees: there are no politicians to appoint anyone, so the agency staff are not obliged to any political ideology. Instead, the agencies and institutions would be staffed with those who wanted the job for the benefits it offered to them.
Because we the people create and decide the rules and regulations we could for example make a rule that someone who quits their job in an industry regulator cannot join that same industry: the gamekeeper could not become the poacher. A tax collector could not become a tax advisor to a big company. Many might think that harsh - but at least we could have the debate in a Panocracy and everyone would decide.
In Place of Strife
The powers that be are set on a course which will inevitably lead to violence across the Anglosphere and elsewhere too. Their continual willingness to interfere, fail miserably and then blame the people whose lives they've messed up has inflamed everyone who wishes to live in the peace and freedom hard-won by our forebears. Their active and tacit encouragement of cultist groups masquerading as do-gooders and demonising those who dissent from their crazy ideologies risks a massive backlash.
Perhaps we're seeing the start of it. Formerly quiescent ordinary people (I'm one of them) have now taken to the media to rail against the execrable Covid policies and the people who pushed them.
People allow themselves to be taken for suckers only up to a point – the point at which they have nothing to lose by going against the status quo. A society then enters a dangerous phase. At some point an opportunist splinter group – like the Bolsheviks in Tsarist Russia, the Nazis in Weimar Germany or the revolutionaries in Bourbon France – seizes the initiative. The group doesn't have to be very large, it just has to have the acquiescence of the majority. Civil war and terror ensue. The pent-up indignities are expiated only by barbarism and extreme violence until people eventually come to their senses.
Perhaps a civil war is something that people must go through before they can appreciate its horrors and realise how lucky they were before.
Panocracy offers a rational alternative to revolution, dictatorship and blood on the streets.
Anything Else?
As always, comments and questions are welcome. If there's something you don't understand about Panocracy, please ask in the comments. There really is no such thing as a silly question (though the world is littered with silly answers).
Next Time
Next time we'll be examining the tendency of people to 'follow the crowd', how it plays into the hands of chancers, demagogues and technocrats - and how Panocracy will defend against it.
I've thought a little more on what I said earlier and I don't want to be prescriptive about what positions or agencies can or can't exist. A Chancellor of the Exchequer would be fine as long as he doesn't have the power to, say, dictate tax rates. A Treasury is also fine provided its functions are limited to, for example, assessing the financial consequences of policy proposals made the panocracy way. The remit would have to be very carefully written.
The issue is keeping political power out of the hands of the agencies of state, which is essential if we're to have direction given by only the voters. A shrewd operator might find a loophole in whatever job contract was written that would allow them to manipulate the system to their own advantage or that of their pals.
One reservation I have is how the executive function is carried out. So, for example, the panocracy might decide that VAT be reduced to 10%, income tax limited to a maximum of 40%, that a wealth tax of 1% p.a. on all assets be imposed, and that the overall burden of taxation / expenditure as a proportion of GDP should not exceed 35% p.a.
The Treasury / OBR could report on the estimated impacts of these policies on government spending, growth etc but who is going to implement the policies, make the day to day decisions, respond to events in the wider world? Who is going to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and how will he / she be appointed, be answerable to the people and how often? Daily? Weekly? Annually?