The Digital Democracy — Part 2: The Economy
A Democratic Economy: Responsible Resource Allocation & Industry Practices
In a Nutshell:
We explore the concept of a democratic economy, where instead of finance being based on whimsical investment of self-serving businesses and biased, corrupt, or irresponsible governments, the general population can vote on the allocation of society’s surplus budget. It can therefore be the People’s decision to construct, maintain, develop and invest in the general operations of society—business, technology, science, construction, environmental projects, and anything else we might deem worthy of collective investment.
Where the Ten-Tier System has previously talked about democratic management of society’s operations, here we talk about the democratic allocation of budget and resources, the democratic dictation of resource management and business culture, the calibration of value for goods and services, and the expansion and evolution of investment culture to ensure responsibility and democracy in the world of finance.
The push for democracy, as usual, stands as a strong anti-corruption feature that draws upon our collective intelligence to construct a universally agreeable future. As discussed in The Digital Democracy: Part 1, the designs of such a system can make use of modern technology and a live digital platform that is integrated ethically with our citizens’ personal profiles.
Core Questions:
How can we design the world of business to prevent oligarchy?
How can we ensure responsible business practices?
How can we stabilise the economy and ensure responsible financiering?
How can we support beneficial or interesting projects while limiting destructive or undesirable business and industrial expansion?
How can we recorrect imbalances and unfairnesses within the economy and job market?
Key Points:
Reconceptualising investment culture
Democratic calibration & fine-tuning of the economy
Responsible and democratic budget allocation
Discussion:
The capitalist world is rich in opportunity more than anything else. But opportunity for whom?
On what used to perhaps be a fairer playing field, this game of societal Monopoly is way past its centrepoint and has delved into a realm of shadow investments and exploitation of the poor. Finance, when it is being controlled, leads to corruption and manipulation; when it’s not being controlled, it’s chaotic and often immoral. Either way, we are witnessing a system that is gravely unfair.
After all, in the world of business, who really gets to decide how much money you make for your role?
Is it something that has been generally agreed upon? Is it totally circumstantial in a whimsical market? Was it set by some kind of personal assessment by your employer or industry leaders? Usually, it is a combination of things.
But is it fair? And is it in society’s interest to make pay fairer?
One of the main criticisms of capitalism is this perceived unfairness. In theory, a poor man can become rich by making his own luck, leveraging a niche or riding an opportune trend through an investment in the right time and place. But as the industry giants continue to swell, the gaps of opportunity close ever more tightly; and while the Internet has changed the game somewhat and outliers still defy the adage of ‘money making money’, it seems a miserable lot of unfairness will always prevail within this kind of system.
In this late-game capitalism, we’re already too far gone for ‘the little guy’ to impose meaningful restrictions on those who have the power to make the rules. Taxation hurts the people more than it helps to enforce responsible business, and distribution of wealth just isn’t enough to reshape society into a utopian dream. To truly conduct the operations of society, it’s imperative to restructure the financial system, dictating how money can be spent, which ideas float to the top, which sink to the bottom, and limiting the ability for an individual or company to buy its way into public or political influence.
Taking back the reins of society’s operations, democratic control over resource allocation can be a profound transformation in business and culture. Let’s see what that might look like.
A Democratic Economy: Reconceptualising Finance & Investment
Without changing the overall wealth of society—although that too is the goal—we might see an opportunity for greater efficiency and perceived fairness in collaborative management of resources. Where we currently see corruption, collusion, and unhealthy manufacturing and consumer cultures produced by profit-seeking capitalism, the implementation of a different system could allow for better management and directorship of money.
If we replace the proverbial carrot of commercial profit with benefits from goodwill and collaboration, we begin to incentivise unity and healthy business practices—not just mutual benefit between two parties, but universal benefit. The goal of the business then changes from wealth and expansion—exponentially attracting and making use of others’ investments—to catering first and foremost to society and its inhabitants. This is an effective conversion to altruism, meaning that while the business owner and employees are still working hard for self-benefit, that benefit does not derive directly from the business’s profits. This creates an opening for a profound shift of business focus and consumer culture.
But when profit and growth aren’t the primary measures of success, how does a business operate sustainably and successfully? What happens to this profit if it doesn’t go directly back into the business or the pockets of those who operate and invest in it?
Using ye ole maritime terminology (text from joedubs.com):
Our currency is like current in the sea.
The stream ebbs and flows, directed by the banks on either side.
The river-banks control the current, but the money-banks control the currency.
This is why our ‘cash flow’ is a ‘liquid asset’.
‘Liquidity’ is literally available current-sea.
While this might seem something of a silly little ditty with coincidentally named terms, there seems to be relevance here to the Maritime Law that uses specific terminology to cleverly manipulate legal loopholes. In any case, the analogy works well for perceiving the world of finance not as a means to stockpile money or generate wealth, but as directorship for flow of an ever-shifting resource.
Because who is it who really gets to decide how the big money of society is spent? It’s not us, the fish. We are the ones that live and breathe the river. And while the public as a collective does have the theoretical power to undermine the economic manipulations of conglomerates and investment giants, we are still somewhat uncoordinated and powerless to the inflation caused by government money-printing and fractional reserve banking. We spend where we are allowed, going along for the ride while the real controllers strategically channel wealth to their own advantage, rigging the game in favour of inflation, profitable booms and crashes, corruption, lobbying, monopolisation, and collusion, as these are how they keep a controlling upper hand over society. Conspiratorial or not, we have witnessed for too long the irresponsible resource use, world-sickening manufacturing processes, manipulation of stocks, oligarchy, monopoly, and other destructive forms of control and expansion that continue to poison humanity and strip us of power.
So instead of banks, governments, asset management companies, financiers and giant conglomerates being the ones that primarily direct the main flow of finance, could we make our economy something more stable, even something of a democratic process? Is it possible to create an economy where the general population has input into this directorship, channelling the huge resources of money in a way that is favourable and responsible, rather than leaving it in the hands of Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Tech, and Big Brother?
The Proposition:
What the Ten-Tier System envisions is another use for the Digital Democratic Platform (DDP). Most likely in the form of a specialised social media platform, it gives the everyday citizen the ability to express interest—by way of vote—in projects, businesses, and operations of society. While the DDP can go beyond this basic level of engagement, a simple quantification of public interest can stand as a primary influence for how the excess wealth of society can be distributed to take individual businesses or projects beyond their baseline operations and into surplus funding where they may expand and develop according to democratically set boundaries.
This concept requires a reimagining of Industry itself, which we will get into deeper in another article. The premise in short is that businesses would operate as part of a grand unified societal structure, where ‘cash in hand’ for a product or service becomes a thing of the past. Value generation is accounted for, products bought and paid for in a similar way, but does not exist as an exchange of physical dollars. The ‘profit’ of a business would still be a recognised metric, but would not directly enrich the business or its operators.
To engage the public with economic directorship, we may first need to carry out comprehensive, logical, sensible analysis of how true societal value is generated. With a universal accounting system in place, we could in turn create this digital interface for the everyday citizen to vote on how excess value (combined societal profit) is to be used.
Instead of direct investorship, where individuals and conglomerates pump their own money into stocks and businesses they hope to get a return on, we may seek instead to create a similar investment culture that channels finance on principles of personal interest and societal benefit, rather than what is strategically most likely to provide monetary ROI (return on investment) or personal influence (on the big scale enabling industrial or governmental corruption).
While it tends to be the rich who play this game of investment to further bolster their bank accounts, a transition away from capitalist profiteering could still make good use of the idea of investment. After all, having skin in the game makes it more likely to put intelligent thought into decision-making and how money ought to be spent. A change in investment culture to limit individual profiteering, creating something more altruistic and societally responsible, may in some ways diminish the drive for serious investors. But that might not be an entirely bad thing. It may lower the bar for quality investment, but in opening the gates to the public we may see a more casual and even social transformation that blunts the cutthroat culture of finance.
It may very well be our intention to move away from personally strategic investment and towards goodwill and sustainability. We can create a way to understand what is most valued by society, what is most important for responsible global and local management, for maintenance and development, and for health and happiness.
To put the idea more simply (I hope), we might think of the whole planet having a singular stockpile of resources—the combined value of all our water, oil, food, raw materials, manufactured goods, human contributions (services and labour), and other value generation. These resources, which fluctuate constantly, can be represented in value by a singular monetary figure. Our collective investment budget might be a percentage of that figure—what we consider can be safely and sustainably ‘spent’ (including resources used) as a society. The excess value that is generated to be saved or spent is usually called profit, going into the pockets of individuals and businesses to in turn flow into self-serving endeavours that are free to ignore society’s greater needs. While there is a certain fairness in a capitalist economy where the individual reaps what they sow, bigger-picture thinking can expect greater efficiency and fairness from tighter collaboration and the limitation of personal gain (when it is at the expense of others). While the idea of profit in some ways is necessary for reward, reinvestment, and maintenance, capitalism ultimately enables selfish, irresponsible, and unfair channelling of capital to benefit the few over the many.
But what could society look like if the directorship of finance were to benefit the many rather than the few? Imagine an economy geared so that equilibrium and sustainability were the natural outcomes of industry itself. Imagine that the goal for any business, industry, or individual were to provide the greatest value to society and to consider the wellbeing of the environment and their fellow man. What would it look like to live in a world that labours for health rather than wealth? How would we begin to think when we are rewarded for altruism?
So how would we democratically direct society’s finance?
A few years ago, at our local petrol station, we received an orange token for every $100 we spent on gasoline. This bright orange token we could place in one of the boxes beside the exit doors. There were boxes each for the local fire brigade, a child-care foundation, the cancer society, and a few others we could choose between. The number of tokens in each box at the end of the month would represent how surplus funding would be split, which ultimately came down to what the locals considered to be most important at that moment in time. The more petrol we bought, the greater our voting power, and the more of our petrol dollars would go towards an honourable cause.
In a similar way, but likely digitalised, we can use this kind of voting concept to understand the priorities of the People. This may not dictate the entire budget of every organisation and aspect of society, but in a more intelligent design based on this principle, we can seek to understand the interests and priorities of our citizens to help shape and tailor a world to our own advantage or preferences. We might think of it in part like a crowdfunding website, applying this concept universally to business to support the development, maintenance or expansion of projects that the people of society deem valuable or desirable.
The general operations of businesses may be funded through a separate system (e.g. self-funded ‘capitalism’, proportional to expenditure and value generation / profit), ensuring the staples of society are upheld and that there is a natural ‘sink or swim’ element to business where poorly conceptualised or organised operations that don’t provide value have what is likely an important risk of failure.
But when we consider the surplus created from a world not based on individualism and profiteering, the heightened efficiency attained from closer collaboration and systems integration could leave us with a huge operational surplus that, when combined into a single resource, could give enormous power to a conscious financing process.
What we are left with is the decision for how investment capital is distributed and delegated across society, between all businesses, industries, operations, and even a greater ability to calibrate career salaries and the general wealth of the individual. This democratic funding could incorporate public valuation of technological developments, scientific studies, bolstered funding of education and healthcare, emergency services or public security, start-up businesses, environmental or restoration projects, and really anything under the sun that can benefit from financial investment.
While we could not hope to accomplish a perfect stock-take of all resources and items, we can at least understand in traditional terms how we have been spending and exchanging money for different materials, products, and services, and use some of the existing quantifications to support the operations of a more collaborative, more streamlined society.
How can we achieve intelligent public engagement? Does this tie in with the Contribution Index?
Not that you asked, but yes. This ‘democratic economy’ could essentially be interpreted as an idea-based economy, where there is quantifiable value in the perceptions, ideas, and votes of the public. This means we can even reward the individual for their contribution of opinion—which may sound questionable at first glance, but assuming we design this process intelligently, it may give the public extra reason to cast thought-out votes on matters that may not directly or immediately provide them value. As contribution is important for running this kind of economy, reward for engagement (especially high-quality contribution) could be the replacement for the individual’s incentive to invest cleverly. While one’s own wealth permits size and breadth of investment in this capitalist world, we could consider a limited periodic ‘allowance’ of votes for the individual that, in their use, over time may provide feedback by quantifying the success of a chosen project.
This could be a valid area of democracy to consider a concept like Nevil Shute’s Seven Vote System, where a citizen’s achievements and subsequent competence (see ‘Competence Score’ section in ‘The Contribution Index’ post) stand as an earned and deserved metric of voting power.
This feedback loop is sort of how investment normally works, as a successful business invested in provides monetary return to its investors from its profits, which can in turn be re-invested. A successful investor reaps greater returns, which feeds back into their investments in greater confidence and budget. Although, in the case of the Ten-Tier System, the ROI winnings from traditional investment could be replaced with a different metric of success, such as level of public popularity or utility, which in turn contributes to the individual’s Contribution Score and subsequent wealth—i.e. being rewarded for having contributed meaningfully to society.
The democratic management system and public policy-making conceptualised in the Ten-Tier System (the ‘live digital democracy’ concept) could include in its design a democratic calibration of value and profit. This combination could very well revolutionise the way we trade and cooperate, once again standing as an anti-corruption design while giving charge to the citizens to create their own desired future.
[Don’t worry if some parts of this are confusing. The simple idea is that we are inviting the public to decide how money is spent within society. Like with any part of the Ten-Tier System, these are conceptual ideas that are likely to evolve and be refined as the concept accumulates greater interest and a larger number of collaborators.]
The Conclusion:
We have at our fingertips a way to fine-tune our economy, preventing collapses and inflation, stabilising an economy that is dictated by us, rather than being at the mercy of irresponsible governments, banks, and industries.
This means the job market can be intelligently manoeuvred and fairly recalibrated; it means our products and services can be brought to us at a fair price without manipulative tactics or cutting corners in production; and most of all the operations of industry itself can be empowered or disempowered at will by public demand, enabling and ensuring an ethically operated world. This brings a more profound cultural shift than one might immediately recognise, as it will directly reinstate health as a priority, nullifying self-serving business practices and bestowing on the population a kind of accountability in ongoing societal design. This provides us the ability for collective decision-making, revolutionising the culture of industry and business by reprioritising that which truly serves humanity.
There is no guarantee that even an intelligent democracy would coordinate decisions to manufacture a healthy and sustainable environment rather than superficial pleasures, although the trends of an increasingly conscious and communicative population show greater care for the environment, an emergence of health-focused technology and practices, and an inclination to discuss and understand what kind of future will sustain us collectively.
To recap:
Through this system, we can choose what scientific studies are funded, what technologies are developed, and what businesses ought to be bolstered or limited. In the modern world people will vote with their feet, which is a highly functional system that shows people’s willingness to invest at their own risk or expense, and in some senses is a self-policing Darwinian system that weeds out weak concepts. Theoretical investorship through a public voting system can at first run the risks associated with populism, but by hybridising capitalist principles with democratic financiering we can allow for the organic flourishing of private business while still giving the citizens the ability to override problematic business practices. And where the limitations and inefficiencies of capitalism’s individualist ideology have long been existing below cultural perception, it will quickly become apparent how extraordinarily powerful it is to have the full force of a coordinated society behind our innovations and developments. It means the public can easily fast-track popular ideas in what might otherwise be a slow, risky, or expensive (self-funded) business endeavour in a difficult market. While populism in politics is the game of one man’s charm, populism in cultural reinvention—particularly in the Age of Information—is much more likely to elect the specific policies and projects that will bring positive change.
One other huge advantage of a democratic economy is we can have more control over what resources are used, both by enforcing policy and by creating a culture in which cultural and environmental responsibility are commercially viable business practices. Public funding can incentivise healthy and responsible practices that include resource use, processing and packaging practices, and waste management. It can ‘punish’ by vote the practices that are environmentally destructive, unhealthy for society, or in other ways undesirable. We can ensure, rather than simply demand, that industries and businesses abide by responsible, sustainable practices, although this should already come to a natural equilibrium when profit discontinues as the core of business philosophy.
The Digital Democracy has a number of profound benefits and applications that can transform society. There will no doubt be complications and hurdles to overcome, but with a willing population and intelligent design, we will be able to create any future that we the People desire.