The single greatest scam and failure of our nation's current political system is its electoral system. It is a set of loaded dice that overwhelmingly favors the wealthy. It lies at the heart of most of our failures as a society including our inability to achieve honest representation of the entire populace in government. More than anything else, it keeps powerful, wealthy elites in the seats of power and in a position to perpetrate many other scams against the rest of the populace.
The demos has an entirely new electoral system from that which we have today. Any number of candidates (who need not be wealthy or wealth supported) may take any amount of time to run for office for free within the demos and build a following. Members of the electorate may take any amount of time to study and deliberate about candidates and to reach out to each other across states or the entire nation to directly elect not "lesser evils" that are financed and, therefore, preselected by the wealthy as is done today but their champions, truly representative officeholders that resemble them in body, mind, interests and pocketbook.
The resulting senate and house automatically demographically resemble and serve the true and balanced interests of the entire electorate as they create laws, rules and policies for government, business, labor, mass media, environmental protection, etc. No quota systems, political parties or complex electoral schemes are required to achieve this balanced, honest representation. People just get to directly vote for whom they really want.
The second great scam and failure of our nation's current political system is the economic warfare conducted by the wealthy and wealth serving against the rest of the populace once they gain office. While the free, at-large, demos style elections proposed in Beyond would produce much more balanced and honest representation of the entire electorate than today, as insurance against plutocracy certain fundamental economic powers are moved from the other branches of government into the demos where the the electorate is empowered to directly set economic values that our government and nation must use as they function. Among other powers, the demos has the sole power to tax at the federal level.
Unlike plutocracy, which only achieves the consensus of a simple majority of elites, and majority-rule democracy, which only achieves the consensus of a simple majority of the electorate, consensus democracy achieves a political-economic consensus of the entire electorate. It produces a balanced, equitable market economy, a lean, centered, moderate, functional government and free, responsible citizens within a just, open, pluralistic, peacefully evolving, ever improving society that avoids the extremes and screams of both the Left and the Right.
While there would be some amount of learning and adjustment were it ever instituted, consensus government would not feel radically alien and unfamiliar to today's citizens. No attempt is made in Beyond to micromanage our government or our lives or to achieve some kind of idealized, altruistic or supposedly "objective" behavior or governing process. The powers of our government are simply reorganized in a way that does not unduly favor any particular group. Just as today, both our private economy and our government would function by the messy processes of "horse trading" and "wheeling and dealing," and each of us would have to study, work hard and find our place within society. But now, at long last, everyone would be fairly included and represented by an honest broker, an honest government.
Adapted to specific locales, the partial redesign that is applied to the American government in Beyond may be applied to every government in the world and to every level of government. The design creates a new kind of relationship both within and among nations that takes us well beyond our current dominance, authoritarianism and plutocracy.
It is our right and duty to win true democracy
"Change" is the key word and promise of every election. And we do indeed change back and forth over time between a kinder, gentler plutocracy and a harder, more carnivorous plutocracy. But the only changes that really matter--the creation of an honest electoral system and true democracy--never happen.
Any real change away from the status quo that so overwhelmingly benefits them is characterized by the elite as activism and radicalism. In truth, our current plutocracy is extremely radical, and the elites' relentless fight to ever increase their power, wealth and privilege is extreme activism.
Beyond's consensus government is designed to avoid all extremes and achieve the inclusion and a moderate consensus of the entire electorate--a golden mean--that facilitates justness, equity, individual freedom, personal responsibility and good citizenship.
In The Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote that it is our right and duty to throw off despotism. We now suffer a despotism of extreme plutocracy. It is our right and duty to win true democracy, honest representation and just governance for our nation and the generations to come.
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