Mr. Andrew
I spent about a half hour with your website. I will concur that some people are looking at alternatives. But for some reason, they just can’t seem to let go of the political parties.
I live in a Canadian town of about 14,000 people. Like nearly all municipalities in Canada, the elections are political-party free. While some councilors may have a party affiliation at the provincial and national levels, they usually don’t emphasize it in the municipal campaign. And they don’t seem to bring their party ideology to the municipal decision level. I would say that we are governed reasonable well at the municipal level.
Because our town is small, I usually know a few people on the ballot to vote for OR not vote for. I think this knowledge contributes to our better government at the local level.
Having said that, our municipal voter turnout rate is about 25%. This might not be a bad thing. If voters are satisfied with the services enough not to take a more proactive approach, maybe their refraining from voting is a good thing as they might be apt to not vote so wisely.
And another detraction is that, because of a local meat packing plant, about 35% of our population are immigrants, many of whom have garnered Canadian citizenship and are entitled to vote. Our council is usually composed of 7 middle-aged white guys, not exactly representative of our population.
In our bigger cities, the citizen’s true knowledge of the candidates is much lower. Electioneering skills play a bigger role than reputation. Despite that, I do not get a sense of inept governance in the bigger cities (at least in my province of Alberta).
Provincially and nationally is where we get the half-baked ideas and corruption. As an example, we have publicly acknowledged,for at least two decades, that some Canadian soldiers coming from international assignments have post-traumatic-stress disorders. Yet we cannot find adequate funding to help them — despite political parties making promises to fix this mess, and these parties being replaced on a regular basis. And it’s not a lot of money!
So here is the paradox. We already have one level of government running reasonably well in Canada. It does not use political parties. We have two levels of government that breed apathy, cynicism, and distrust. They use political parties.
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I have also encountered thinkers who believe the world is changing for the positive despite any current system of government. For example, my local recycling plant was built with funds from a conservative national government and a conservative provincial government. Neither conservative party campaigned on funding the recycling center. And the recycling center would have probably been built even if the governments were of the liberal persuasion. For many things, the evolution of government is already happening — even in oligarchies.
If this is the case, then this minimalizes the importance of government. Then there really is no point in voting, is there? Maybe the oligarchies are the better modal after all.
In the TDG, all citizens are encourage to vote at the neighborhood level. This is an important check-and-balance to put capable people into governance. Some of these people will eventually work into higher positions who then oversee decisions like as funding recycling plants.
To me, this system is much better than giving the decision to a party hack or oligarchic appointee.
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In your post, you alluded to the communist system of governance and its failure. I have addressed that in my book, but I shall briefly address it here:
The communist system still had one political party. Despite its lack of political competition, it had a similar psychology to modern political parties; i.e. members strive to acquire status, influence, and power.
The communist parties were composed of less that 10% of the population. They did not seek direct approval from the 90%+, but they knew if they were too inept or too corrupt, they could be replaced in an undemocratic way. To join the communist party, the applicant to buy into a certain economic and social ideology. And eventually many of the communist elections became rigged to support the top leadership.
The TDG will do away with all that. All citizens are eligible to vote and be voted for. There is no required ideology. If the electoral districts are small enough, it will be hard for parties to organize at that level and proffer acceptable candidates on a regular basis. And it would be difficult for the “top dogs” in the TDG to rig neighborhood and district and higher tier elections and build the alliances for the purpose of sustaining the top dogs in their high position. In fact, the TDG will create a new culture such that these kinds of politicians will be replaced in the next annual election.
But it will take a couple of decades to build this new culture. From a structural perspective, the TDG could be in a short time. But the new culture to make the TDG work will require a decade or two to build. Read Chapter 6.
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If you have any further questions, let me know.
