How To Organize Society From The Top To The Bottom

Chapter 17

Political Solutions

The next issue is how to make politics and politicians work for and with the people they supposedly represent?

Inequality means politics has been distorted where politicians essentially work by and for the rich in the political sphere.

The ideas of Marxists, Communists, and Socialists roughly make the argument that the working class is dominate in most societies and therefore should dominate in politics and they will rule in the interests of the people not the rich. 
Socialists have more varied outcomes where varieties range from Democratic Socialists, to Social Democrats, to Democratic Socialists from Europe wth an emphasis of wide partipation of many different viewpoints in government.
We cannot parse all these at the moment and will come back to these later.
For now we want to examine the ideas whose objectives focus how to remove the overweening influence of the rich and the inequality it produces.

The first example, prior to our look at the Weyl “100 credit” proposal, is one is called “rank choice voting.” It is currently in use in California and at least ten other localities in the United States.


Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGGxv9MqYRw


http://www.fairvote.org/data_on_rcv#research_rcvamericanexperience

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting

Currently, the variety Weyl presents is one where each voter has 100 credits or points which he or she can allot to any issue or candidate with a given issue or candidate. It is assumed that each issue or candidate will vary, for example, one person allocates all his or her points to an issue or candidate and others might split them evenly among candidates This method gives us an indication of how intensively each voter feels about the given issue or candidate.
These elections would be funded by government and private lobbying funds would not be allowed.
This is similar to the system which is used in the European Union for its elections.
This has been in place for over 50 years. What we may say are the pros and cons of such a system?

We see that this is not a “winner take all” system such as we have in the United States. It results in a coalition type government which represents minority viewpoints and these minorities take part in actual governing in the society and their view points are respected. The same is true of various groups in society, for example, labor is represented in the government, and are represented on the boards of companies in society and help make policy for the company and this is reflected in society.

How has this gone in Europe?

We look at how well this has gone before turning to Weyl’s ideas.

See for next time:

http://www.fairvote.org/how_proportional_representation_elections_work