Key takeaways from this chapter

From our research, we have learned that federal governments throughout the world, whether monarchies, socialist dictatorships, or democratic republics, exist to enable the elite ruling class to control and benefit from the masses. The elite behind all governments believe and consistently communicate that they are the only class capable of ruling.

We found that no current ruler selection process would help to solve our root cause. Even when national free elections are touted as "democratic," they enable the root cause because elections require funding and political party approval to win.

All of the current governing processes used throughout the world would contribute to our root cause of rule by the power elite through the political parties. Democratic governing processes such as citizens' initiatives and participatory budgeting allow the people a limited voice in a few special situations, but they are controlled by the political parties and used by them and special interests as well. In addition, the representative rulers have continually sabotaged democratic processes when the results didn't meet their agenda.

Lessons learned that apply to our new processes

As our root cause of elite rule through political parties is global and no solutions currently exist for it, we must invent new solutions to end it. The new solutions must change the way our rulers are selected and how governing decisions are made by those who rule. Several lessons from our research and analysis of government processes around the world are worth noting as we develop our solution to the root cause.

1. People want a voice and to participate. Based on levels of citizen satisfaction with democratic governing processes such as citizens' initiatives and participatory budgeting, people want a voice and are not apathetic to participating in decisions. Contrary to what we are often told, apathy occurs more from the inability to participate and have a voice than as a natural tendency of human nature or an unwillingness to spend the time and effort.

2. Democratic processes reduce complaints and divisions. Participatory budgeting (PB) was ridiculed by political representatives as unwise, impractical, and even as anarchy. The political experts and rulers said it couldn't work, but they were wrong. PB in Torres, Venezuela produced astonishing practical gains for the people. PB has only failed where the decisions by the people were ignored or the government disempowered the process.

3. Internet technology allows democratic process scaling to a national level. Private citizens in Taiwan created a website containing a new democratic solution process that helped citizens to reach a consensus on issues. The consensus was used to develop a collective solution that was acceptable to a vast majority of the voters. We could use relevant parts of their process as part of our design. The technology exists to scale democratic governing processes nationally.