Meritocratic Democracy

Disclaimer: A lot of the assumptions I make about the historical states of humanity come from a handful of books and papers. If I'm incorrect about any of them, please do let me know at hobbleabbas@gmail.com and I will amend the article. However, I do not believe that the examples have influence on the main thesis, they are rather there to add narrative and illustrate my points.

In this essay, I introduce why I believe that not everybody should have an equal vote, and propose a new governance model that I call meritocratic democracy. It's a lot less provocative than I make it sound in this introduction, and so I would recommend reading the full essay with an open mind.

The History Of Governance

Humans didn't always live in one place, like we generally do today. It wasn't always the case that we had a central governing structure that organized laws, created or adhered to fiscal systems, and made general decisions for another, larger group of people.

For most of human history, people knew their local leaders. Often it was the strongest among the group. Leadership wasn't formalized or bureaucratic, and didn't require extra structures or maintenance.

As with any system that scales, as humanity grew so did the need for a more organized system of governance. It was about 5000 years ago that the first small city states appeared. With them came the advent of a system in which the people living in an area did not necessarily know their leaders, and vice versa.

It was no longer a small town, where you could walk a few houses down and meet the man responsible for the outcome of your civil disputes.

Rather, it was the first case of an insulated decision making structure. That isn't to say that the leaders were necessarily unaware of the needs of their people - on the contrary, leadership switched often and was almost exclusively possessed by warlords or their children.

If the children became complacent or disconnected, one could expect another warlord in their generation to overthrow them.

Such was the frailty of these systems that monarchies often likened themselves to deities, hiding behind man's irrational belief in a higher power.

For most of humanity, a monarchy liked system reigned supreme, with a notable exception of the Roman Empire's republic system.

Then came the popular revolutions, replacing monarchies with governments created by the people, for the people. Not a new idea, it caught on across a large scale for the first time.

We now adhere to democracy as gospel, just as monarchies were adhered to as gospel. It's considered heresy to insinuate that everybody's say may not be equal, when it comes to the public sphere. And while there is merit to this because it has an impact on everyone, is it strictly true?

A Changing Government

We are, in my opinion, in the midst of a transition to a new governance model. While previous government changes were caused by changes in population and weaponry, this change is being spurred by technology.

The ability to monitor and control society has been vastly increased by technology, but growing at an even faster pace is the ability of citizens to avoid regulation.

Globalization through the internet has allowed people to transfer information (and currency) in a near unregulated manner, and this trend is increasing at an accelerating rate.

No longer can governments reliably strangle enemies through a monopoly on currency - cryptocurrency can allow free exchange of monies without a central arbiter or verifier of exchange that can be regulated.

What remains is the governments monopoly on violence, but even that is at risk when people can record and send this across the country, potentially sparking outrage.

When the US government has to backtrack and apologize for the accidental killing of 10 civilians in the Middle East because of an investigation by the NY Times, you know something has changed.

Further, governments globally have not kept pace with the rate of change and innovation (and nor can they feasibly be expected to be in such a large structure).

This is the basic premise of this paper - we need a new government for a new world, one which throws out all previous ideas of government in favour of a more scalable model, based on field rather than nationality (I'll explain what this means in a bit).

The Goal Of A Society

In order to propose a governance model for a society, we first need to define a goal for the society. The government's role, after all, is to regulate and aid the society in moving forward.

There's a few differing views on the goals of an organized society. One is simply the care of its individual members, to varying degrees. Another is progress, because a group of people together can make more headway than just an individual. Yet another is to simply provide a communal space in which people can confer.

Most people have a combination of the above views, with varying extremes of each. For example, socialists may be in extreme favour of care for its members, with some emphasis on communal care. A capitalist may focus more on progress, with communal influence being a means to that end. One may believe the society should provide minimal care for its members, and allow them to do what they please, while another may believe the society should focus much more on caring for its members, and less on facilitating individual growth and gain.

In the end, it is usually the government that acts as the ultimate enforcer for these policies. Under an autocratic model, the society moved according to the whims of a few select individuals. Under a democracy, it moved with the whims of the masses.

The Problem With Democracy

There are two very large problems with the current democratic model we currently employ. The first is that it often results in a system where only a minority subset of the population is happy. People generally have a few major issues they care about. For some, it's religion; for others, technology, or social justice, or education, or medical care policy.

Unfortunately, you can't really vote for only an individual policy to any effective degree. While you can influence your local area to a degree, this defeats the point of a government, which in theory, should handle this.

This isn't to say that everyone's policy wishes will be fulfilled, but rather point out the system isn't very efficient. What ends up happening is that you end up voting for the party that aligns most closely with the goals and policies you care about.

If someone believed in fiscal conservatism, but was also pro life, they wouldn't really have effective representation in the government (the alternative being to vote for a 3rd party, which is equivalent to lighting your ballot on fire).

The second is that democratic governments do not seem to scale effectively. Like large organizations, increased size of government often results in less progress. More time is spent in bureaucracy and headlock, with incredible amounts of money and time being wasted.

One solution is simply to limit the size of the government. While a more nimble government would (at least in my personal view) lead to more progress, at a certain point it wouldn't feasibly be able to cover effectively the needs of the many subsets of a society.

There is also the issue of aggregation of power with a small number of people, especially when each individual person has a lot more control.

We see the result in today's America, with a crippled federal government that can't make serious progress because half of the country hates the current administration. There has to be a better way, one that may be a bit better for todays rapidly changing world, a world in which the government needs to be agile more than ever.

Meritocratic Democracy

A meritocratic system, at its core, is the most just one. It is a ideal of a system where people are selected solely based on their capabilities and merit (as the name suggests). This does not mean that it is the most equitable system - if two people work equally hard, it isn't equitable for the more capable one to be chosen. However, assuming good intention, it will allow for the best outcome (given that the best candidate is chosen).

The system I am proposing is meritocratic democracy. There are four core tenets of this system:

1. Instead of comprehensive authorities, issues are dealt with by their respective experts
2. A small central government exists solely to settle court cases and disputes between various fields, as well as ensure fields are working for the good of overall society
3. Anyone can vote on a given issue, but how much one's vote is worth depends on how educated they are on a given topic.
4. Optional taxes, where you choose to pay for services you'd like
5. Weighted voting, where not everybody's vote is equal

Local Field Experts

My idea proposes to replace grand central authority structures with local field experts. For example, instead of having a mayor decide where a hospital should go, it should be decided by a local council of real estate developers and medical professionals.

The central idea is that the developers and doctors would know better on how to properly zone and allocate resources than a central mayor would.

In effect, policies would be enacted not by a bureaucratic central authority, but rather by informed experts on the ground with skin in the game.

Small Central Government

The second part of this system is a small central government that handles inter-field disputes and elements that can't feasibly be handled by experts without conflict of interest, such as a judicial system, road construction, etc.

The central government, unburdened by projects, would be used to ensure progress is being made and individual fields are acting in the best interest of society. To what extent they should be able to regulate individual fields is not something I have a particular belief about.

Open Voting

The third part of the meritocratic democratic system is open voting, where all issues are available to vote. This maintains the element of democracy, not allowing a small group to fully control any system. It also removes the element of partisanship - instead of voting for a single party that you most align with, you can actually individually assess each item on its own. This also, in my opinion, removes a major flaw with our current system where people agree with a policy solely because their party supports it.

Optional Taxes

The fourth tenet of meritocratic democracy is optional taxes, where taxpayers can choose to pay a flat fee for services that they use. Doing this forces local fields to perform effectively or risk losing funding to taxpayers who can pay other groups providing the same service - for instance if my local medical system is doing a poor job, I can pay the next town for their service.

This tenet has the most issues, from monopolistic services (such as roads) to underfunding in poorer areas.

Weighted Votes

The last tenet of meritocratic democracy is weighted voting. As per the Open Voting tenet, anybody can vote on any issue. However, it makes logical sense for people educated on a given topic to have more say. This brings up issues of equality, but as previously outlined the goal of meritocratic democracy is simply maximum efficiency.

Weighting would consider factors such as the profession of the voter (for example, a teacher would have more weight in an educational decision than a doctor, and a doctor would carry more weight on a medical issue), the degree of education (a specialist doctor would way more than a general doctor, but only on medical issues), and age.

This allows a democratic system where everyone gets a say, but those most educated on a given topic have the most say.

How Meritocratic Democracy Solves Democracy's Problems

The major issues with democracy, in my opinion, come down to improper representation and inefficient government.

In a meritocratic government, instead of a series of large state or federal governments, you would have small, local groups that both have skin in the game and are small enough to be nimble. This would allow a government to be far smaller and more efficient, focusing on a few core tasks including regulating fields, the judicial system, and foreign policy.

Open voting on every issue would allow people to vote on the issues they cared about irrespective of what a larger party aligned with. You can be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, support gay rights but also be pro life, etc.

Risks, Drawbacks, And Major Issues

The biggest downside to this system is that it assumes that people will act with the best intentions.

Conflict Of Interest

One major issue with meritocratic democracy is risk of conflict of interest, where fields may make decisions better for them but not for society. For instance, a developer may zone a hospital in an area of maximum profit, rather than accessibility.

Meritocratic democracy would try to solve this in two ways. The first is because every issue is open voting, there is room for the public to have a say, enough to force parties to consider the optics and ethics of their actions. The second is that most issues that could have a conflict of interest would have multiple parties with conflicting goals - for instance a hospital would want to find a cheaper location for their own budget constraints.

Weighting And Voting Manipulation

One element I'm unsure about is how votes are weighted - on a medical issue, should a doctors vote be worth 1.5x more, 100x more, 1000x more? The actual weight difference is very subjective and difficult to define. This, as well as the timing of voting hours, could pose a major weakness and be prone to manipulation.

Inequality

A meritocratic democracy would mean that while underrepresented groups get less say - the unemployed, less educated, and less wealthy would have, on average, less of a say on matters. However, the goal of the system is efficiency, not equality.

Conclusion

Meritocratic democracy is a new idea for a form of governance, one featuring many small field councils and a nimble central government. In a meritocratic democracy, your vote on various issues would be weighted on your knowledge on the issue itself. There is much to be worked out, including how votes are weighted, handling conflict of interest, and more.

This is an early draft of my essay. Please send any ideas or comments to hobbleabbas@gmail.com.