The flaws that kill our democracy
Why Your Judge Can t Take Bribes, But Your Lawmaker Can Trade Votes Why unfair lawmakers make unfair courts Picture a courtroom. A judge sits in black robes. He promised to be fair. He has no favorite in the case. He doesn t take secret meetings with one side. He doesn t trade favors. We build strict rules around judges to protect this fairness: rules about who they can talk to, rules about when…
Democracy as an Information System A democracy is, at its core, a bottom-up system . Its defining feature is that information flows from individuals up to shape collective decisions. Citizens signal their preferences about taxes, healthcare, the environment, and countless other issues. Ideally, the political system responds. Contrast this with a top-down system, where decisions originate at the…
Why constitutional monarchies are (currently) more democratic Being both democratic and in favour of a royal head of state may be paradoxical. But in the current political context, that is the right thing to do. We can’t know “the will of the people” without elections, but that does not mean that every election reflects “the will of the people”. I don t think that most of the presidents are…
Book cover of The Myth of Left and Right Book Review: The Myth of Left and Right and the Problem with Political Ideology After watching Andrés Acevedo’s YouTube video “ The Political Spectrum Is a Myth .” I picked up Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis’s book The Myth of Left and Right . The book strongly confirms many of my own thoughts on ideology, so I was genuinely excited to engage with what the…
The Flaw In Banning Billionaires I recently watched the excellent video “ The Political Spectrum Is a Myth ” by Andrés Acevedo on the YouTube channel The Market Exit , and I absolutely loved it. That should not be surprising given my book that proposes an inclusive party system that debunks the unidimensional political spectrum. I found the ideas compelling and strongly agreed with its arguments,…
Lessons on democracy from Iran Learning From Undemocratic Systems We can loosely define democracy as a system where political power is shared. A dictatorship or oligopoly, on the other hand, represents a system where power lies with a few. To improve our democratic system, it is useful to learn from good examples. But equally important, and actually much clearer, is to learn lessons from a bad…
Are we forever condemned to vote for a giant douche or a turd sandwich? What are elections? I love South Park. In season 8 episode 8 , the children of South Park Elementary School are required to choose a new school mascot. The two candidates for this role are a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Stan doesn’t want to vote because both these candidates are bad candidates in his opinion. However,…
Meer Democratie Webinar Guido De Bruyker van Meer Democratie recenseerde The Flaws That Kill Our Democracy. Het boek werd goed onthaald en men stelde voor om een webinar over het boek te geven, waar ik met plezier op in ging.
Commentaren op podcast van Zjef met Simon Ik heb met veel interesse geluisterd naar de Podcast van Zjef Van Acker en raadt jullie dan ook aan deze hier eerst zelf te beluisteren. Geïnspireerd door het gesprek van Zjef en Simon Ghiotto vond ik het dan ook noodzakelijk om enkele van mijn ideeën te verduidelijken. De uitspraken die ik hier uitlicht van Zjef en Simon (in cursief) zijn niet de…
Exclusive Parties Organisations Our society consists of individuals. These individuals can organize themselves in structured groups, named organisations. There exist many different organisations, each with their specific size, structure and scope: e.g. businesses, sport clubs, religious organisations, civil society organisations, the state and political parties. Because we interact on a daily…