By: Hanno Kaiser

Hanno Kaiser — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:44:04 +0000

I doubt that the cure for democracy lies in a return to Rousseau's ideals. Rousseau's vision of democracy is one in which the burgeois transforms himself into a political citoyen by subjecting his individual will to the will of the body politic. That, in my view, is bad metaphysics, and a strange political dualism. Rousseau is not our ally in the fight against totalitarianism. No, if anyting we need less subordination of the individual will, more individuals who speak up, and less conformity, driven by fear and identity politics. We need to encourage people to have the courage to use their own mind. (Remember: sapere aude!) How does that translate into politics? In my view, mainly through procedural improvements. Radical campaign finance reform ought to be on the top of the list. Ideally, all political campaigns would be financed by the state. (Yes, I hear your frowns, my libertarian friends, but regulation is justified where there is market failure.) Each candidate gets a certain sum of cash, newspapers and networks will be required to carry a certain number of ads per candidate on a non-discriminatory (e.g., randomized) basis, and that's it. Strict limitations apply to the use of the candidate's private funds, and third party campaign contributions are impermissible. Of course, such a system would still be imperfect, because there would have to be a threshold for reimbursment, e.g., 5% of the votes, to weed out bad faith campaigns, etc. But the overall effect would be to break the only strong causal link in politics, that between campaign spent and political success. With lower entry barriers, elected officials would face disruptive competition. There would be no safe districts any more. (Other changes to the system would include simplified districtis, uniform voting standards, and voter-verified, randomly paper audited voting technology.)

Comments on: American democracy doesn’t work

By: Hanno Kaiser