Faults of Tiered Democratic Governance

TDG 46

I see a couple of serious faults with the TDG which need some addressing.

Loss of Entertainment

In most parts of the world, politics dominates the media and we citizens are concerned by the actions and words of the people who are governing us. While this interest is an important part of democracy — and should be encouraged — we are also entertained by the circus atmosphere that comes with politics while our society makes its decisions. The circus grabs and holds our attention, and gives us something to talk, discuss, and complain about. Many citizens are hooked on the entertainment of politics, similar to other citizens being hooked on watching professional sports or movies.

The TDG will not provide this kind of entertainment for us.

Training

To make a TDG work, a society must undergo some formal or informal training. The traditional methods of problem solving that we learned by living in western democracies — adversarial and partisan politics, noisy electoral contests with little substance, strong-willed opinions with little attempt to listen, and ignoring discontent until an opposition can muster itself into a political force — will have to go. Obviously, new methods of governance must be learned. In Chapters 4, 5, & 6, I will discuss more of the process that is to give us this training.