The Logic of Democracy

As we have seen, natural selection favours people who form cooperative groups that use democratic decision-making to maximise their chances of long-term survival. Now we need to apply those concepts to a democracy at national level.

democracy: a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people collectively, and is administered by them or by officers appointed by them; the common people; a state of society characterised by recognition of equality of rights and privileges. for all people; political, social or legal equality; …

The Chambers Dictionary

So we each have two roles to play; citizen and democrat. Everyday we go about our lives as citizens. We know our weaknesses; individually we have little significance, the elite give us what they think we want without asking us, they often make decisions which we should make through referendums, minority groups trample our rights and so on. The problem is that we citizens speak in many tongues and are disorganised so we can usually be ignored with impunity. However, we do have some strengths. We are on the receiving end of all decisions made by Parliament and local government. So we know who and what we like or dislike. Then the clear-sighted know who to vote for. On the other hand, on many days, there are events described by the media which should make us stop and think. We need to assume our role of democrat to decide how we should react to them through our local pro-democracy pressure group. In fact, we should give our role of democrat precedence over our role of citizen.

As democrats, we constitute the ruling class. We have to adopt the objectives and attitudes of all rulers.

1. So our prime objective is to protect our sovereignty against all comers. There are numerous sources of threats to usurp our power such as foreign nations, treacherous internal factions, public institutions and so on. We must be paranoid and act about any words or acts that might threaten our sovereignty. Yes! Paranoid! When in doubt, we must lash out!
2. We the people have delegated our decision-making power to the House of Commons. In return, we require it to protect and possibly enhance our sovereignty by identifying and responding appropriately to all threats. We need transparency, so we can judge them and their actions. Then we know who to hire or fire at the next election.
3. It is essential that the elected House of Commons be the dominant, unchallenged public institution. In this way, we can hold them responsible for all the public sector’s decisions and actions. Then to protect our sovereignty, we only need to control the Commons through the ballot box and by national referendum.
4. We must learn to recognise potential and actual threats to our sovereignty such as arbitrary changes to the election system or setting limits on our rights and freedoms or attacks on the media to deprive us of the information that we need to assess situations and people and so on. One problem is that our fellow citizens are so used to these anti-social acts that they don’t realise that those acts are also anti-democratic. Further, citizens regard such acts are one-offs and don’t aggregate them to see the whole picture of democracy being undermined. Our pro-democracy pressure groups must constantly remind the public of past anti-democratic acts and point out the new ones as they occur.
5. The supremacy of the House of Commons has consequences. All other public bodies are subordinate to it and in particular the judiciary and the House of Lords.
6. The House of Lords is there to revise proposed legislation sent to it by the House of Commons. The idea is that the peers have more time and more expertise to revise proposed laws and iron out any weaknesses. They should, in fact, offer constructive criticism to make new law clearer and more effective. In practice, things are very different. The normal procedure is for the Lords to revise proposed law , then send it back to the Commons to debate again. While the two Houses disagree on the law’s final version, the Lords can send it back three times. Then the Common’s version prevails. However, each revision takes, at least, one parliamentary term to complete, so bills can be delayed for over a year. This undermines the effectiveness of government. In fact, the situation got so bad, that the Commons had to limit the number of revisions to one for vital, urgent legislation like financial funding bills.
7. The House of Lords has other weaknesses that make it unfit for purpose. When a peer is appointed, they are paid for their arrival at the House and not for how long they work. So we have the obscene procedure whereby to receive a day’s pay, a peer can arrive at the House, sign in and then leave. Further, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have the right to appoint whoever they like to the peerage. They have made some very bad, indefensible choices. When the governing party changes, the Prime Minister floods the House of Lords with new loyalist peers to take control of it. They all have to be paid for and they have the job for life along with a gold-plated index-linked pension on top of any other income. But the point is that both Houses are filled with the same kind of people which undermines the ability of the Lords to revise the law expertly and in the best interests of the nation. The House of Lords is not fit for purpose. See “Our Agenda” about ideas for a Second Chamber.
8. The Honours List is a good idea. People who have served the community well should get the recognition and praise for their efforts. But Parliament has prostituted the idea by using the List to elevate mainly their cronies to the wealth and status of a peerage. Obviously, the Honours List should be a list of the honourable with no money and no peerage attached.
9. The judiciary make law by their interpretations of the law’s text, by applying precedent, by applying unapproved principles or by mission creep. Recently, the law has been used to limit the power of Parliament. Intolerable! With one exception, all courts must be subordinate to the House of Commons. So they may advise Parliament but not command it. The exception is when Parliament itself is being treacherous or appears to be so by proposing or passing law to undermine the people’s sovereignty, There should be a constitutional court that specialises in assessing and solving this problem. After the electorate had agreed to join the Common Market, PM John Major and the Conservatives surrendered our sovereignty to the EU without obtaining our assent through a national referendum. A constitutional court should have had the power to insist that a national referendum be held. After the BREXIT referendum, the Commons passed a law that tied the hands of our EU negotiators. There is no way this law serves the best interests of the nation. A constitutional court should have the power to call a general election. The Labour Party says in its manifesto that it will give the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. It has suggested that it might put proportional representation into its manifesto as well. But will it promise a national referendum to gain our consent to such a major changes? If not, a constitutional court should have the power to force the government to hold a national referendum whenever a proposed law could possibly challenge the people’s sovereignty.
10. The judiciary are an insidious danger to our democracy. They make major changes to our rights and nobody takes any notice! The other day, a mother took her daughter’s junior school to court because the headteacher would not let her inspect some teaching materials. The court rejected her plea on the trivial grounds that a parent’s inspection of these materials could adversely affect the supplier’s copyright! Now, all schools can forbid parents from inspecting teaching materials. But what is important is that the absolute right of a parent to protect their child has been demolished. The other day, a trade union took an employer to court. While his employees were on strike. he had hired temporary staff to take their place. The trade union thought that he should not be allowed to do that. The court agreed. The court should not take sides, This dispute is too important for a court to decide. Either Parliament should decide or it should stay as it was because the free market is an impartial decision-maker.
11. It has to be said that public institutions, especially Parliament and the judiciary, are the most dangerous source of threats to our sovereignty. So we must make clear what their limits are. What have we NOT delegated? We have not given them the right to hand over any of our sovereignty to any other group permanently without our approval by national referendum. This includes no change to the electoral system without our consent. There are times when the government temporarily suspends national sovereignty to negotiate treaties like agreeing fishing rights or terms of trade or international law. This is acceptable because if the situation worsens, they can withdraw from the agreement and reclaim our sovereignty.
12. Through taxation, we pay all our public servants, from the Prime minister to the most humble pen-pusher. In return, we expect them all to serve us by making the nation’s best interests their highest priority, above their party’s interests and above their personal interests. By “nation’s best interests”, we mean “the maximisation of the nation’s chances of long-term survival”. To ensure this, at election times, we democrats should eliminate all candidates whose party’s manifesto appears to threaten our sovereignty. From the reduced list, we vote for the candidate who we believe will serve us best, no matter what party they belong to. For we want to fill Parliament with people who put the nation’s best interests first. In the case, where there is no candidate that we want to vote for, we must vote but invalidate our voting slip. In this way, the authorities know we are frustrated, not apathetic.
13. We must make clear how democrats assess public institutions, especially Parliament. For all proposed laws, democrats check it for any threats to our sovereignty. If any threats are found or even suspected, democrats must react against them through their pro-democratic pressure group and the courts. Otherwise, democrats need to observe and to assess whether an evidence-based, democratic decision-making process is being followed as natural selection advises. Any deficiency will lead to criticism by democrats. However, democrats ignore the proposed law’s content! For example, are you for or against nationalisation? It doesn’t matter because its content. What the democrat is looking for is whether the decision-making process being used is capable of deciding for or against nationalisation based on evidence in a transparent democratic way. We need each decision to be justified as being that which is in the nation’s best interests.
14. Our second major objective, is to improve the quality of government. There are two particular situations where we need transparency. One is when government applies a policy that has failed in the past. We want to know why they think it will work in the future. Similarly, when government avoids using a policy that has worked in the past, we want to know why they think it won’t work in the future. If there is no plausible explanation, we must assume the government is either incompetent or corrupt or both.
15. Further, by concentrating on the quality of the decision process being used and not the issue being decided, two democrats can cooperate in defending the democratic process despite, as citizens, holding fiercely different views on the issues involved. This is consistent with our principle that it is Parliament that makes the decisions.
16. So to improve the quality of government, natural selection advises that we apply family values and attitudes to all survival groups to make make them inclusive, supportive and effective, Further, natural selection advises that certain subgroups be identified to decide what priority their needs should be given. It says priority should be given to children and fertile females before fertile males before nurturers before socially beneficial volunteers before “has-beens”. By “family values”, we mean the the values of the nuclear family (as described in The Logic of Survival) that encourage cooperation and evidence-based decision-making. The Logic of Survival also describes the argument for assigning priorities to subgroups.
17. Our democracy is rule-based. Like a family, if we obey the rules then we can work together. This cohesion encourages evidence-based democratic decision-making. We must encourage national cohesion so that most people identify with their nation. In other words, we want the nation to be a big happy family! We must apply the essential principle of fair shares for all, but not necessarily equal shares. In the good times we must share the gain, in the bad times we must share the pain. Further, we must identify anti-democrats and their groups that do not accept this principle, then we must marginalise them at the elections,
18. Our democracy is rule-based. But the rules are not chiselled in stone for all eternity. On the contrary, all rules need constant supervision to ensure they are still applicable. For example, the common law is continually changing in the light of verdicts in court cases that reflect the changing needs of the nation. It is impossible to write a rule that will stand the test of time for all eternity. They all need revision in the light of experience.
19. Our democracy is rule based. But we don’t want too many rules. The more rules we have, the more likely we are to get into the habit of breaking them. Natural selection prefers diversity of behaviour so the better forms of behaviour can be selected naturally. Yet every rule attempts to make people conform more and think less. Hence, we democrats want government to limit itself to its essential task of maximising the chances of the nation’s long-term survival.
20. We must encourage people to do voluntary work in support of their fellow citizens. Their work benefits everyone, including themselves! But above all, they strengthen national cohesion. Volunteers need laws to prevent them being abused or exploited, For instance, the volunteers in the National Trust should be treated as fully-paid up members, if they do, say, 50 or more hours of voluntary work per rolling year. To obtain their vote, the directors would have to answer the volunteers concerns. As a general principle, the people who will experience the consequences of the boards decisions, should have the right to vote. So the volunteers and staff should have the vote. Further, they would be the most knowledgeable and most effective guardians of the National Trust and its objectives,
21. Further, we recommend that government, when it is to implement a project, they should first offer the work with some funding to voluntary groups, if possible. If not, then offer it to the private sector. They should try to avoid giving projects to the civil service because of the attitudes of some senior staff and the way it is organised. However, the police and the military must be kept under parliamentary control because they are experienced in the ways of violence and so could be a threat to our democracy. Part of the problem with the civil service is that it was the “de facto” government while we were part of the EU. Too many still have the arrogance to believe they are justified in undermining an elected government.
22. As well as protecting our democracy, we seek to make all public institutions as effective and efficient as is reasonable. So as democrats we must collect and record data on all parts of national and local government, to enable us to assess the attitude and proficiency of all public services. This is a demanding task, but it is mainly about taking cuttings, classifying them and storing them safely. This is why we must form pro-democracy pressure groups, then each group only needs to monitor the national government and their own local government. Our purpose is to provide data to our local voters so they can make informed choices at election time.
23. The voting system needs upgrading to encourage voters to make evidence-based decisions at election time. We advocate that the people who should have the vote, are the people who will experience the results of that vote. This encourages responsible voting.
24. We must be ruthless. If anyone says or acts like an anti-democrat, then we must assume that is what they are. The onus is on them to show they they are democrats, not on us to give them the benefit of the doubt. Further, apologies and excuses are cheap and usually insincere. The miscreants must perform democratic acts to show sincere repentance.
25. All political systems can fail by foreign invasion, by riots, etc. But democracies can also fail because too many people refuse to “play by the rules”. Without the rules, everyone has to look after themselves and their nearest and dearest. Then the nation fragments into small groups. For a while anarchy reigns. Intolerable! Any fairly large, organised group can seize power. Almost always the new order will be a dictatorship. Too late to regret the loss of democracy! We democrats must be meticulous in identifying the anti-democrats, the polarisers and the “us and them” brigade and then marginalise them.

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