We can improve democracy TODAY. Will we?

When democracy was ‘invented’ in Greece, citizens (but just the free ones) of the Polis, the city, would join together at the Ágora, a hill outside Athens, to discuss matters of the interest of the society and vote to create policies (named after the Polis). Every citizen (again, just the free ones) had a voice and a vote and could influence decision making process directly. This was called Direct Democracy.

According to a wikipedia article, “[out of the] 300,000 people in Attica […] some 30,000 would have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly.” Although this does not compare with modern nation states, its still a lot of people and I imagine how messy was this whole direct democracy process.

But nothing compared to the problem that is today. In a big country like Brazil, according to the last census in 2018, there were almost 150,000,000 voters. How can we possibly get everyones opinion and everyones vote on every topic to which a policy is required?

We cannot do it directly so we created an indirect system, in which we delegate our voting power to an elected oficial through elections. It was not feasible to do it all the time for every matter (remember, 150 million to vote is a lot of people), so we selected our elected officials every 4 years and they represent us at the forum in which things were being discussed and they would vote these matters according to our will. Well, at least in theory.

Theoretically was a good idea. However, when we created elected officials with the power to vote in policies and creating legislation, we created single points of corruption in the system. This officials, professional politicians, have a lot of power and not really a lot of accountability to their constituents. All that you can do is not to vote for them again in 4 years. And that is a long time.

In the best case scenario, legitimately, people do not agree on every topic and your elected official, while shares your views on universal health care, may not have the same view on minorities rights. It can also be that we ore them change our or their views over time with the acquisition of more information. Moreover, not every person that voted for the same elected official has to share the same views on the same topics. Whose view the elected oficial should follow to vote? Difficult to say.

But in the mostly seen worst case scenarios, elected officials are power greed people, pursuing their own self best interest and with little or no accountability to their constituents.

Churchill said that “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried”. But I think we’ve gone too far and today, we, the citizens, became hostages of democracy.

But maybe the problem is not with democracy but with indirect democracy and the single point of failure (or corruption) that it introduces.

If indirect democracy was a necessity because of the cost, both in time and money, to make elections and vote for every matter that matters, this necessity doesn’t exist anymore.

Today we have the technology to digitize elections and votes, in an extremely secure and cheap way, and bringing the decision power back to the hands of the citizens. all of them!

Yes, the technology uses blockchain, but this is only the how and not the why, what or what for.

The technology allows us to navigate in between indirect and direct democracy, with the citizen delegating its vote power to another citizen that he trusts is better informed to decided on a particular matter (and the delegations of voting power is JUST for that particular election or matter), of if the topic is dear to her/him and they don’t want to trust anyone with their vote, they can vote directly.

This is the idea behind liquid democracy. It empowers again the citizen (and makes him/her accountable), it removes the single points of failure/corruption in the system. It is also removes the need of time intervals between elections and voting power can be delegated or restored 24/7/365.

It is the end of lobby, qui pro quo, and professional politicians. and the rise of the sovereignty individual.

The technology to do it exists TODAY. The question is, are we ready for it?