Politics Are Broken: Re-imagining Politics and the Redistribution of Power
It’s election time in France. We’re going to elect a new president in a few months.
What is it for? Are things going to change if we elect the “right” president? It seems to me current political systems are broken in fundamental ways.
The society seems to be geared towards even more power distributed to a select few, reinforced by powerful lobbies and strategic alliances between those who detain political power and those who detain economic and financial power. These people, no matter which political party they’re from, support the system and the system supports them. Their interests are simply not aligned with the interests of the nation anymore. Politics place their friends on top of the biggest companies, where they make sure that nothing changes and that a ever-growing part of the pie comes back to them.
I’m going to vote, but with no convictions things will change this time.
Politics are broken.
Can it be changed with the “right” candidate? Will someone magically have the good ideas that will make sure banks are not going to misuse public money, that wealth redistribution happens, that it’s not only the rich who become richer? That proper incentives are put in place so that citizens are motivated to find work and not to rely on public aid when they’re able to work?
I’m not sure it has to do with the right candidate, and it has more to do with a power redistribution back to citizens. Oil & gas lobbies make sure nothing happens that would be against their interests, finance lobbies do the same. Who has the more money wins. Power is distributed in the hands of a happy few.
What can we do? I think here too, Internet and entrepreneurs hold a part of the solution. We’re about to invent new ways to re-imagine politics and how it connects citizens together. Internet, social networks and online communities are in their infancy, but tremendous potential lies there, and waits to be exploited.
Fire the politics. Or at least, redistribute power.
What if people could form small groups of interest, lobbying for the causes they identify with? What if decisions were more democratically taken, and not defined by who gave more money to a few influential politics? What if data about campaigning and current issues was immediately accessible to anyone? The Big Data trend is going to tap into this, and there’s potential for major disruption.
I’ve recently discovered some startups are starting to address these problems. YouLobby, for example, proposes to “reinvent democracy” by giving its users the possibility to make propositions, follow them and vote them (in the United States).
We live in interesting times. What are your ideas to reinvent politics?
Hello,
100% agree with your theory, especially as statistician i like the idea
But I think that what could really change monetary (and therefore politic) system is the share of knowledge related to sources of energy, technology, materials and in general knowledge of the real resources that we have and how to use them.
It is possible to optimize A LOT the way we use the resources. Technology allows right now to transport, build, grow, live in a much more efficient way, but people just don’t know. They all need to get interest about technology.
If people have the knowledge of how to use resources like wind, sun, water to generate electricity for example this could easily bankrupt some big companies that makes us think we need them to survive. This is just an example.
The problem is that too much political power exists. When the government can essentially pick who the financial winners or losers are – there’s a massive incentive to corrupt any political system that exists whether its monarchy or direct democracy or anything in between. Regardless of the political system, getting the government out of giving out bailouts, subsidizing any types of industries, restricting entry into new industries would do more to eliminate corruption than moving to a direct democracy. Without anything to corrupt, there’s zero incentive for corruption.
I would not trust direct democracy either – the vast majority of people (even educated folks) do not know very much about economics. Placing more of our fate in the hands of the everyday person walking down the street is a bad idea.