I've been thinking about the various forms of social "management" that our civilization has attempted during its history, and it is somehow amusing to see that after all those years the thing we're currently stuck with is democracy, which is basically a system "invented" more than two thousand years ago. So why are we stuck with this system and does it actually work? Well, like an amateur philosopher which I consider myself to be, among other things, I've been thinking about how our modern day society works and how we are governed quite a lot, especially since I live in a country which is probably the best example of failed democracy in the world. So let's make a short general analysis of the original concept of democracy and our modern day establishment...

Well, back two thousand years ago, give or take a few more centuries, life was much harder on people than it is today. Today we have our jobs, our homes, our cars, our hospitals, we go to work 5 days a week so we can make money to pay our bills and hopefully have enough left to go out and have some fun on the weekends or on holidays. Yes there are exceptions to this, there are some that are very poor and some that are very rich, but I'm talking about the majority of people here. Because that's what democracy is built on, the majority, since the majority is the one that dictates who runs the state, thus, it is the purpose (or at least it should be) of the people that are in charge to please the majority. So in our modern times we are mostly focused on making money and spending it, and we go through our lives with little to no concern about our own mortality. Peace, health care, and economy have blinded us to the true problems of life, like sickness, war and death. Those are things we take for granted and we live our lives worrying about universally irrelevant stuff, like keeping our jobs, making money, and having fun, and sometimes, some of us which are less fortunate, get suddenly woken up from this dream of reality when bad things happen to them or their friends and family. Surely every single one of us has had at some point in his life lost a friend or a family member, and it is in those times where we really see life as it is, raw, and violent. Sometimes you hear people that came close to death telling you how that experience changed them forever and that they will never be the same again, and they will appreciate every second of the rest of their lives. Somehow I envy those people, because they get to appreciate the true value of life. Anyway, to get back to our subject, you can clearly see how our modern day society is so radically different from the ancient society that first generated the concept of democracy. Back in those days people were under the constant threat of death, there were wars, diseases and people worked from dawn till dusk just to obtain food for them and their families. Under those circumstances, life was very cheap, and life expectancy very low, people easily went to war or killed each other for food, wealth or power. And the upper classes had no exception from this situation, maybe they had more food, could afford medical services, slaves and guards to protect them, however they were in a constant life and death struggle to maintain their wealth and power, in a world where even the smallest mistake would cost you your life. So the most important difference between our modern society and the ancient society, is that the ancient society individual would not hesitate to risk its life in order to pursuit its interests, while us, living in a much more civilized society, are not willing to risk even our comfort in order to achieve our interests, and most of the times we settle for less, since even less is far better than what people had two thousand years ago.

Clearly you can see that even though the principles of democracy have not changed over two thousand years, the context in which democracy is applied has changed greatly. Back in ancient times, the government was compelled by the people to satisfy their needs and keep them happy, and the needs of the people always came first above everything else. Why!? Because when the people became unhappy they would rebel, and when people would rebel, it usually opened up an opportunity for your political adversaries to gang up on you, which usually meant your death, or at best, exile. So is not our modern democracy based on a similar principle!? If we are not happy with the way people run things, we just don't vote for them, we vote for the opposition... Really!? So let's see, what would motivate a man better, the fear for his life or the fear that he won't be elected on the next mandate... Wait, is that even something to fear? Not being elected again? If you have been elected, you have plenty of time in 4-5 years to do whatever you want, who cares if you don't get elected again. Even so, let's be honest, people are dumb, by the time your mandate ends everyone would have forgotten what you have promised and did not deliver on, put enough money into a fancy campaign, and you're set for another mandate, oh goody.

Sooooo, is that it!? Is that the only thing wrong with democracy? The fact that there is absolutely nothing to compel (note the term compel, not encourage) the elected entity to pursuit what is best for the people and the state? Hell no! But that's the most important problem with modern day democracy, it's the critical spot. If we are to ever make democracy work that is the first thing that needs to be solved, if that is not solved, democracy will never work.

So I'm telling you that democracy doesn't currently work!? Yes, it doesn't truly work, it just appears to be working. You're living your lives too bussy and focused on your own problems while encouraged by the political class into thinking that the system that is governing your society is correct, while it is not. In theory, there are two primary principles that define democracy. The first principle is that all members of the society have equal access to power and the second principle is that all members enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties. In practice, the first principle, although valid through law, fails in application because in order to gain votes you need exposure, and exposure is a pay per unit commodity, the more exposure you need to "buy" the more money you need to spend, and we're talking about a lot of money here. Thus, in practice, the first principle of democracy fails dramatically since the only people with access to power are the people that are rich enough to pay for it, or the ones that get "sponsored" by other rich people or entities, to whom, obviously, will need to be faithful once elected. It really doesn't take a genious to understand that no man or entity would spend a lot of money to get elected and become part of the government just so they can improve the lives of others and do good for their country. It's simple, someone will spend money only if they know they'll get something of value in return, power is the most prised commodity, and power makes a lot of money, thus, all people that ever get elected will primarily pursuit their own interests and/or the interests of whoever paid for their "marketing" campaign, and only secondarily, if at all, will consider the interests of the people and the country's interests. The second principle of democracy is freedom, there's a lot to be discussed on this topic and I won't go into details, but in simple words, yes democracy is the system that currently offers the best "version" of freedom to its individuals, however this freedom is just an illusion endorsed by our higher state of civilization that we live in, in reality, the freedom that we enjoy today is far more restrictive that the freedom that people had two thousand years ago, however, the difference is, that in ancient times, people had to protect their own freedom, while we, rely on our government's institutions to protect them. Thus, the second main principle of democracy fails in practice too since nowdays we are only as free as our government allows us to be, and the strongest restriction to our freedom, as stated in all democratic states of our modern world, is the fact that we are denied the right to seek our own justice and we are forced to rely only on the government's institutions for justice. Again, in theory, preventing the people from seeking their own justice and instead let the government's institutions handle it, is a good ideea, because it decreases the chances of accidentally punishing innocent people for things they did not do and it also provides a service to society, letting people worry about one less thing, however, in practice, as with all things, this system is flawed and prone to corruption and it will only be as good as the state's government makes it, thus, the quality of justice in a state will be relative to the quality of the governing entity.

Democracy doesn't work in practice as it does in theory, and we can't really change it in any way, so what is there to be done. Well, the first step you need to take in order to solve a problem is to understand it. That's has been the purpose of this article all along. It is me, sharing my understanding of democracy and pointing out why it fails to properly work. Unfortunately for me, and to my frustration, no matter how much I think about this, I don't appear to be smart enough to come up with any ideeas that could fix those problems I pointed out above. However I do strongly believe that democracy could dramatically improve if somehow, we could manage to fix what I pointed out to be the critical flaw in our modern democratic system, the fact that whoever is elected is not in any way compeled to pursuit the people's interests. I can only immagine what humanity could achieve if only the leaders of all democratic countries would pursiut the interests of their people and of their countires instead of their own selfish interests. And that's just one fix, immagine how the world would look like if somehow we could fix all the other problems of democracy, I can almost dare to think that we could ultimately create a society which provides a clean, peaceful environment that brings out the best in people and provides true quality education instead of a corrupt, dirty society, with no etical and moral standards, which generates social garbage instead of quality individuals.

For the last 8-10 years I refused to exercise my right to vote in my country, since I had already experienced the incompetence and corruption of the people that were running in the elections, in previous mandates. The thing that really frustrated me is that in democracy, there is no possible way for people to just vote against a candidate, or against all candidates. It is just as someone would allow you to choose which one you want to eat, a rotten apple, or a rotten orange, yet they are both rotten, you just don't want to eat any of them, but in democracy, you have to, and if you refuse to choose, that doesn't mean you won't be eating a rotten fruit, it just means someone else will choose which rotten fruit you eat. So that's when I had an idea. Wouldn't democracy greatly improve if people could just go and vote against candidates? In my country, for the past twenty years since the people's revolution that overthrew the communist dictator and established democracy, we've seen the same corrupt thieves taking turns in the government and systematically destroying the country. Yet the democratic system keeps forcing me and the rest of the population to keep choosing between the same individuals. Most of the people just stopped voting. Why bother wasting your psychical energy choosing between two rotten fruits, you can just skip ahead and preserve your psychical energy so you can cope with having to eat whichever rotten fruit gets selected. So I'm saying, why shouldn't democracy come with a "3rd option", which should allow everyone to go vote against any candidates that they do not want to be elected. Our country's elections usually have a 40-45% participation from the total number of people who are able to vote. And the winning candidate must get more than 50% of votes, which means that the fate of the state is decided by 20-23% of the people who are able to vote, that means for every 10 people, 2 decide what's best for all of them. So how is that correct? It's not. But that's democracy... flawed. What would happen if we would allow people to vote against any or all candidates instead of for a candidate, and pass a law to make voting mandatory instead of optional. Well that would change everything. First of all we'll probably have a participation of around 99%, which means, everyone will be involved in the decision that regards everyone. And secondly, but most importantly, people won't have to "eat rotten fruits" anymore. If nobody wants candidate A, and nobody wants candidate B either, then the elections are ran again, and this time candidates A and B will not be allowed to participate anymore. This way, the candidates who have the financial power to "purchase" exposure (run a big and expensive campaign) but are not desired by the people, will just be filtered out, allowing the other candidates to rise to the surface and gain free exposure, and giving them a chance to get elected too. So basically my idea of introducing negative voting to democratic elections would fix the problem with the first principle of democracy, and ensure true equal access to power to all individuals, regardless of their wealth. Of course, that doesn't mean candidates will not still benefit from a wealthy campaign, however it will dramatically increase the chances of independent candidates and candidates that have less financial power or none at all. At the same time, negative voting would also insure that the government is elected with true consent from the people and truly according to the people's desires.

Now I'm sure that the first thing that a politician would say when hearing my negative voting idea is to jump up and say, hey you can't do that!!, do you have any idea how much it will cost the state to run elections over and over and over until everyone agrees on a candidate? Yes, I do, it will be pocket change compared to the state's budget. Yes the amount of money that goes into running elections may sound huge to an average individual, but compared to the state's income, it's really not so much. And the price per value worth of a negative voting system far outweighs the costs. Imagine how much money can a corrupt government that does not care for the people's interests and that does not represent the people, could steal from the people during a mandate of 4-5 years, and how much damage such a government could do to the country. Certainly all that financial/political/social/infrastructure damage that a country could suffer because of a bad government is far far grater than even the maximum possible amount you could ever spend running elections using a negative voting system like I propose.

With that being said, I would be pretty interested on what people have to say about my idea of negative voting. I for one would be delighted to go vote against some specific people I know and came to detest, and I would definitely enjoy seeing them crash and burn in the elections after spending millions of their sponsor's money. This would filter-out some of the political garbage quite nicely. I'm not naive to think that such system would solve everything, it certainly won't prevent inadequate people from getting into the government, but it will at least level the playing ground and open true possibilities to independent candidates, not to mention allowing the people to vent their frustrations by voting against people that disappointed them.

That's about it, drop me a comment with your thoughts if any...