Much has been said in the past few months about the sanctity of American democracy, and the importance of defending it. It seems to be just about the only thing the two ruling parties can agree upon.
To illustrate my point, here is a short quote from Joe Biden’s first campaign speech on January 5th at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, PA:
“Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time, and it’s what the 2024 election is all about.”
Contrast that with some of Donald Trump’s words at the New York Young Republican’s Gala in New York City nearly a month before:
“For four straight years, our opponents have been waging an all-out war on American democracy. They tried to overthrow the duly elected president…
…Since Biden got in, he has been weaponizing government against his political opponents, like a raging third world tyrant.”
I’ve cut quite a bit out from the middle of that particular quote because Trump rambles on and spins tall tales like an old prize fighter with ten concussions and an adderall problem but you can see that the central point remains the same. American democracy, in its current form (or whatever form it had enjoyed before the evil elite of the Other Party got in to power) is under threat, and we must do all we can to defend it.
We are well supplied with information about all we are to defend it from: dictatorships and fascists, autocrats, bureaucrats and technocrats, plotting to return to a previous political and economic state, reminiscent of feudalism, where power is centralized in the hands of a tiny few who enjoy the privilege of passing it on to those who agree the most with their twisted ideology, and punish those who will not comply.
But isn’t that evil conspiracy eerily similar to the very world we have now?
And, come to think of it, the tools that both these parties seem to idealize are the very same ones that they despise in their opponents. Here is an example, from an earlier part of the same Biden speech:
Today — the topic of my speech today is deadly serious, and I think it needs to be made at the outset of this campaign.
In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge. General George Washington knew he faced the most daunting of tasks: to fight and win a war against the most powerful empire that existed in the world at the time.
His mission was clear. Liberty, not conquest. Freedom, not domination. National independence, not individual glory.
America made a vow. Never again would we bow down to a king.
Then, a few minutes later:
You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American.
How is this possible, Mr. President? How can you be anti-insurrectionist and pro-American, exactly, considering our history?
Not that I’m endorsing Trump’s lame attempt at taking power by force. It was a strategic no-go from the get-go—you simply cannot take power with an inferior force (I believe that this is the core logic of majority rule democracy, by the way, but that is a topic for another post). I’m just saying that the idea that the idea of democracy is more important the practice of democracy has been central to the American Republic from day one. This has, indeed, been one of its major ethical downfalls.
Both American ruling parties have attempted to force democracy into power all over the world. Both have been diabolically frustrated in that attempt—we face the “17th consecutive year of decline in global freedom,” according to Freedom House, whose job it is to track that sort of thing. Could it really be because the Other Party is the only party of the elite who secretly rule the world (and not us, though we will take their money), or simply because authoritarian violence is just not logical a path to democratic peace?
I argue the latter. I think that any democratic system worth its weight in spit should be able to spread itself without any threat of violence at all—only the threat of a real good time. Furthermore, I could care less whether our species’ suicide note be penned in blue or red—the system that both of these ruling parties are really defending is, itself, rather indefensible.
Indefensible, that is, as soon as something better is put on the table. That’s why I spent ten years of my life traveling, researching and concocting exactly such a thing—a new, dynamic and revolutionary economic system we call Llovizna (AKA Collective Allocation, or Coallocation for short). To get you started, here’s a couple of quotes from the books I wrote about it, starting with Consensual Revolution (Wesley Dawson, 2023):
“Llovizna is profoundly, naturally and directly democratic. It is an elegant and consent-based method of managing the structure and budget of an organized collective that aligns human empathy and intuition in such a way as to increase transparency, alignment, diversity, respect and service leadership. The only technologies that are strictly required for this variation of the system are tarot cards, symbolic objects, coins, pens, and paper.
Most modern large scale economic structures claim to be democratic, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the …United States Government. The problem with the claim that these systems are democratic is that if they were, and you and I were taking part in them, then their budgets could be reasonably expected to reflect our priorities, our conscious choices. If they were consensual you could expect for none of us to be forced to work for, nor to pay for any project that we don’t approve of, much less to also pay for the personal expenses of any leader whom we do not trust.”
Needless to say, these systems do not pass that test. But what sort of system would? For this I refer to Collective Allocation: Economic Democracy (Wesley Dawson, 2021):
“Coallocation, as a theoretical system, is almost structurally identical to the capitalist market, except in the case of the market’s key and fatal flaw: whereas the market is top-down and authoritarian in nature, coallocation is bottom-up and egalitarian. It accomplishes this by splitting the traditional role of executive into two forms of power: the power to decide, delegate and overrule organizational plans and structures on one side, and the power to control the flow of money on the other… The Collective Allocation philosophy holds that the first form of power, that of decision-making, can only be morally wielded when the second form, monetary power, is controlled in common by all.
Coallocated leaders are members who serve their community by carrying the weight of communal responsibilities, and who are given the opportunity to manage collective power to the extent that it is allocated to their projects. Coallocating members make use of the structures provided by leaders, and monetarily evaluate their leaders in respect to those structures.
Following this organization, a leader can only use funds that the community has entrusted them with, and is held accountable for these funds by receipt. A Coallocated leader takes home a salary that their constituents democratically decide is appropriate for the work they do, binding such leadership into a feedback loop far more powerful than constitutional checks and balances and creating a firm and lasting defense against the corruption of power.
When these forms of power—decision making on one hand and funding on the other—are separated from each other, the second form of power shows the first for what it is. Without money, a leader must rely on pure force of will, charisma, promises or threats to make things happen. The first form of power is not power at all—it is responsibility.”
That’s a lot of words, I know, but the core of the concept is this: numbers are easier and more effective to democratize than words (check out The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki if you’re interested in this phenomena, his research on the topic is impressive and ground breaking). Money is numerical. We ought to democratize the economy by making our own budgets for our communities and averaging them collectively to create our overall budget. If we do this, the politics will follow the flow of resources, just as all organized life has followed this flow since time immemorial.
There are many details left to cover. How does this work on the small scale—in my family, for example? How will it work in the community we are currently building into an example of the economy of the future? How might it work on a much larger scale? Why the hell am I so damned certain that it will?
But we’ll have plenty of time for all that, as long as we continue to enjoy one of my favorite hallmarks of our current, flawed-as-hell American democracy—relatively free speech.
Fingers crossed.
Thanks!
Wesley