35. Light-speed Democracy.

Alvin Toffler got it exactly right in Future Shock. He wrote:

“Citizens of the world's richest and most technologically advanced nations … will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time.”

I believe that most, if not all, of the problems a modern democracy faces — redundance of institutions, inadequate amenities and services, a stagnant system of justice that sensationalists love to milk as ‘unjust’, a growing divide between rich and poor, and the plight of the battlers disenfranchised by ‘corrupt fat-cats’, to name a few — are caused by the simple fact that democracy as it stands is incapable of keeping up with a pace of life that will only become more hectic as time wears on.

The inadequacies of a static democracy are due to the way it was designed for small-scale administration. The birthplace of democracy, Athens, had an estimated population of only 10 thousand people, and cities with a million people only began appearing during the Industrial Revolution. By this information we can conclude that democracy was designed for application to small states, which automatically makes its functions weaker when applied to modern cities with populations around 10 million, and modern states with populations in the hundreds of millions.

How can we fix it?

Most of the sluggishness is due to the process of decision-making:

1. The legislative system is often slowed down by the rivalries of political parties. Banning political parties and making politicians vote individually brings democracy closer to its roots: a politician representing the wishes of his constituents and not the wishes of the party. This also goes to prevent the halting of decision-making by a party that is stone-walling, and the domination of Parliament or Congress by a majority party.
2. The idea of talking around problems that politicians have taken so much to heart is a great hindrance. Take Prime Minister John Howard: regarding this month's racially-motivated riots in Sydney, PM Howard insists that Australia is not inherently racist, even though we of ethnic origin know better. If democracy is going to improve, public figures must realise that a problem takes longer to correct if it is talked down.
3. While such a long-winded system like Parliament or Congress is necessary to screen undesirable legislation, it can be easily overriden, as PM Howard has done by using his party's majority seating to force controversial legislation through both tiers of Parliament, a tactic that makes an eminently valuable safeguard into “a rubber stamp to be trampled upon.” It is unknown how to speed this up without negatively impacting its function.

P.S. My copy of System Shock 2 is in the post! Mail-order is so exciting, and yet so frustrating! I doubt that it will get to me by Saturday, so I’ll probably receive it after Christmas day at the earliest.

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