In this substack series, we've spent the last 2 years and sixty-something posts trying to describe the motivations for and inner workings of a Panocracy.
We've described, in outline (and with some diversions!), a practical and workable system that enables direct democracy.
The decline and fall of western society and its magnificent achievements is increasingly looking like a real possibility, not because of viruses, climate change, general purpose AI, foreign invasion or any other spectres raised by the professional scaremongers but because of bad government, or perhaps more precisely a bad system of government.
Enter panocracy.
It's time for a summary of where we've got to and where we go next.
Who needs Democracy?
Nearly everyone claims to believe in democracy. And yet, when confronted with the idea that their neighbours would get an equal say in running their town, county or country, most recoil as if they'd touched a hotplate. People prefer to place their trust in complete strangers of whom they know nothing except that they have an ambition to do the job. And a pretty coloured rosette.
The panocracy we're describing brings this fundamental dichotomy into sharp focus.
What panocracy offers is a practical way to implement a direct democracy while addressing the objections to it.
What is Panocracy?
Panocracy is a system of government which has no professional politicians, no monarch, no dictator, no despot and no donor class do-gooders to become corrupted – or absolutely corrupted – by commercial, military, ideological or religious interests. In a panocracy the government is the people and the people are the government.
Panocracy separates administration from politics, ideologies and religious beliefs. We've argued that this separation of function is essential to avoid degeneration of government into corruption.
Panocracy is able to directly address the problems of voter apathy, bureaucratic indifference, administrative incompetence and the disproportionate influence of tiny but vociferous minorities.
Much of what happens nowadays in the name of government, like irresponsible public spending or censorship of dissenting opinion, is removed by the panocracy. There simply isn't any group with the power to misallocate hard earned taxes or shut down dissenters. Policy proponents, sceptics and dissenters will have their say and have to defend it in the lists of the RFC system.
Panocracy is not a solution to society's ills; it is a tool to allow society to solve its own problems.
Core Values
The core values of our panocracy are inspired by enlightenment ideas and ideals. The enlightenment was a period in which the religious and ideological certainties that had hamstrung industrial and social progress were supplanted by the notions of reason, debate, diligence and evidence. Men 'Dared To Think' rather than supinely accept authority.
Such values have brought about the enormous improvement in well-being to western populations through the science, engineering, industry and commerce which flourished under enlightened thought.
Government has been a conspicuous outlier.
Panocracy offers a 'free market' of policy creation (and removal) as opposed to the 'central planning' model of government we have now.
How Will Panocracy Work?
There are two parts to the operation of the administration in our Panocracy.
Firstly, the creation of proposals for new policy, legislation, and change or removal of existing legislation becomes the task of the general population and not of politicians, party grandees, billionaire philanthropaths, financiers, charitable trusts, arms suppliers, ... the current list is rather long.
Secondly, Panocracy enacts policies, laws and regulations by means of referenda - but not quite as we currently understand the term referendum (this is explained below in more detail).
To make the handling of all the information a practicality in our Panocracy we have to use Information Technology. Before you melt down in apoplexy, this use of IT is analogous to what happened when computers took over payroll back in the mid 20th Century. This freed up a number of payroll clerks to do more productive jobs; it didn't change the nature of business management.
As with business accounting, the application of IT in operating the Panocracy is a prescribed and highly controlled activity. We can think of Panocracy as engineering with all the rigour that the word implies, in contrast to politics which has no rigour whatsoever.
After all, we've used engineering to take everything else out of the age of the horse and cart, why is government still stuck there?
In summary, the administration of our Panocracy is politically, religiously and ideologically neutral. The intention, as in science, is to get measurably good outcomes that positively improve society.
How are Laws, etc. made and unmade?
Let's imagine we are already members of a working Panocracy and consider a very simplified example.
Joe holds the belief that the current abortion law is morally wrong and wants to see the law changed. On his panocracy app (or by a more traditional method) Joe creates a Request for Comments (RFC) where he expounds his motivations for wanting to change the current law on abortion and how he wants to see it changed.
As the RFC system (outlined here and here) is an open discussion area – like a modern social media forum - other pro- and anti-abortion groups and individuals can weigh in. Some of them may be medical, legal or ethics professionals, some may have strong religious beliefs and other lay people may offer suggestions to improve the proposal or expose its flaws.
The proposal is debated over an extended period of time and various tools are available to help it along. For example, summarising the affiliations and interests of commenters on an RFC is hard work but, as Phil Harper shows, it can be automated and made available to all. This can expose attempts to subvert the process - as various interests will undoubtedly make.
There's a chance for everyone to have their say, though maybe not their way.
Eventually, a form is reached that has enough support to put to the general vote.
The proposal is positioned in opinion space (see below) and evaluated algorithmically against the political will of each individual in the population in what is effectively a referendum. It is either approved in which case it becomes law or it is rejected. Approval may take the form of a simple majority or some other measure.
It is the automation of this process that makes practical the direct democracy that is Panocracy. Of course, there is always room for those who wish to operate in traditional ways – with pen and paper, human interaction and so on.
How is the political will of an individual known?
Implied in the above is the need for the voting intentions of every member of the population to be established. This is a technical challenge whose methods are well-understood but which must be demonstrably reliable.
Each voter's political views are characterised as a point in a conceptual 'space' called opinion space. This is just a way of positioning each voter's opinions with respect to every other's. An individual's political views may change with time and the system must accommodate that.
The panocracy can use various methods to capture a voter's opinions. The simplest of course is simply to ask them, but there are obvious dangers here such as subject reticence or questioner bias.
Another option is to use the data obtained from people's social media behaviour. It seems perverse that large foreign corporations unaccountable to the people whose data they harvest can use that data to predict their voting intentions. Such companies may not be easily persuaded to part with their spoils so we may have to look elsewhere.
We've proposed agents as one way of discerning political views. Your agent would be like your family doctor: able to discern your deepest beliefs and yet bound by an oath of silence about them. Agents might compete with each other to develop and provide the most accurate ways of predicting voter outcome just as doctors 'compete' to produce the best health outcomes.
There may be other, better ways of characterising voter intentions and each will have its pros and cons.
Benefits
Panocracy brings many benefits over representative democracy. Here are some of them:
An end to the closed system of policy formation. Anyone can propose and champion a new law. This may result in a Cambrian explosion of new ideas, most of which will not survive the process of informed debate. Some them, however, will be better than anything we have now.
An end to legislation that has been accidentally and deliberately made obscure, patched and fiddled by vested interests, is difficult to interpret or is a stalking horse
An end to voter apathy. Everyone will vote in every referendum. Abstentions in any referendum are possible, practicable and affect the outcome.
An end to hidden influence by outside interests. Without party political government, there is no group with enough power to be worth influencing.
An end to ideologically driven government. The sum total of the ideologies of all the thousands or millions of people in a panocracy is essentially zero. As an example of how an ideology can lead to failure, see the US CHIPS program
The end of crony corporatism where large commercial corporations work hand in glove with government agencies. It's bound to increase their influence on the political process and vice versa to the detriment of the rest of us. The apolitical nature and structure of the Panocracy should be a powerful antidote to this.
Panocracy capitalises on the skills, experiences and talents of the many and not just a few. A nation of tens of millions of people is likely to contain at least a few who can come up with brilliant ideas on any topic.
A revival of trust in government. The capital of public trust is all but spent in the west. Electing different leaders with more extreme or grandiose promises will not change this. Panocracy opens up the process of government because that is the only way it can be seen to be trustworthy.
The encouragement of engagement by the public with matters that affect their lives. People taking more responsibility for their society is essential to prevent it perishing in the fires of bankruptcy, totalitarianism or anarchy
A revival of the enlightened mindset as a consequence of the opening up of political discourse via the RFC system
The potential to have a 'cooling off' period following a change in legislation should this be thought advantageous to the community. For some short interval, voters would have the opportunity to review the way their votes had been cast and change them if they wanted.
The ability to review all policy and law regularly as voter sentiment changes over time. As an example, consider English witchcraft laws which were repealed only in 1951 - after 4 centuries. The last witchcraft trial was in 1712 (and resulted in a conviction followed by a royal pardon). Thus these laws remained on the statute book for over 250 years despite their evident and universally accepted irrelevance.
An explicit acceptance of the ineradicable presence of religious and ideological dogma within human beings, and the means to keep these toxic influences out of government.
Panocracy brings the concept and benefits of spontaneous order to government. What we have at the moment is a quasi-religious belief in a designed government. Spontaneous order is the tendency of a system to reach an optimum without the involvement of a designer. Perhaps the best known example is Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.
As there's no pressure on politicians in a panocracy (as there aren't any) to 'prove' that their policies have been successful, the effects of some policy can be measured, evaluated and presented without interference from 'on high'. An example might be the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) legislation in Canada whose physical and ethical outcomes are now the subject of controversy.
Many have argued that government is simply a way of transferring wealth from the poorer to the richer: you work and you pay tax much of which goes on lucrative government contracts awarded to cronies in big business, pressure groups and extravagant white elephant public works projects, to mention just a few. Panocracy with its strict and public controls over the administration would end the misallocation of public funds.
It might be argued from the above that panocracy is a route to greater equality. At the moment, capital seems to have the whip hand over labour. If those who work for their money get more of a say then perhaps that imbalance will shift.
Transitioning to Panocracy
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard” - US President John F Kennedy, Address at Rice University on the United States' Space Effort, September 12, 1962
We realise that getting a panocracy off the ground is a huge undertaking.
A pilot project is necessary to establish a baseline system which exhibits the main functions. This can be used to inspire further refinements and 'harden up' the details.
Assuming this can be brought to the point where it's a good working model, influential figures need to be brought on board to promote the use of this system. It's hard to see why anyone in any current political establishment would support this and in fact we may assume that the establishment will fight it tooth and nail. It's an existential threat to the comfortable lives and easy money these people see as their right.
It's also hard to see how any of the narcissist class would support a system which would give them no personal power. One incentive might be not losing your head - in the plausible scenario that things might come to such a sorry state. Another might be the promise of eternal lionisation as a 'founding father', a Ben Franklin de nos jours. A third might be the opportunity to pose as a figurehead for the panocracy – powerless but famous nonetheless.
But these are musings for the future. At the moment, some technical expertise must be gathered to develop a pilot system and some group then persuaded to take it on as a proof of concept.
Sounds complicated. Maybe it's simpler in practice. I think a major problem with our current system of governance is that there are too many laws trying to regulate all of human life, which is madness. We need to have less new law. We need to repeal most law. Most laws are not big statutes - they are Statutory Instruments (Regulations.) Perhaps a way forward for societies in an ideal world would be for many panocracies to exist within defined spheres. For example - building regulations. Should not the people making laws about 'building' know something about building things? Some random politician is going to know zip. Some civil servant - who is supposed to consult 'appropriate' bodies before drafting regulations will also be ignorant and have no accountability. Maybe we need a fractured system of rule-making? Those suggesting and arguing for new 'rules' should be part of a network of sufficiently qualified people and they have the ability to create new regulations for the sphere in which they have knowledge and/or qualifications. Moral or general questions - like your abortion example - could be open to general comment and a whole country referendum. Other questions, like drainage say, would be too technical for the average person. I would also advocate for a federal hierarchy of governance to create subsidiarity - so some issues dealt with at parish level totally, some at district level, some at county level and very little at national level - safety standards, international trade and defence only perhaps.