Alexander Kjerulf - Let’s Reboot Democracy
Reboot8
Democracy and Politics are broken.
Has written a manifesto (in Danish)
Has some ideas
Needs people to work with him on this idea
Small group of people making the decisiions
Large group of people are inactive
(“The greatest threat to democracy is an inert populace.”)
More people vote in American Idol than they do in American Presidential Elections
Did a quick stretching exercise.
NY Times: Politics has become a game of meaningless, mindless battles, conducted by unscrupulous methods and peole designed to transform even the most serious policy debates into sport. –Al Gore
==BEGIN BRAINSTORM with NOVEMBERBORN.NET==
Mark Rutte heeft gewonnen = goed
Voor stemmen hoef je niet zoveel te kunnen/weten.
Niet erg. –Wisdom of Crowds
Makkelijke manipulatie door media en andere hypes. Waan van de dag. Negatieve tendens. = probleem
Angst voor terrorisme, ANGST. Gevoeligheid voor negatieve campagnes gebaseerd op angst.
Lack of attention to digital civil liberties and privacy of citizens. = BAD
Short term vision. Lack of attention to longer term things.
==END INTERMEZZO==
Brain storm on what is wrong with politics.
List of bad stuff:
Lack of good participation
No real options
Too expensive
No accountability from politicians
Risk-taking costs votes
Afraid to be unpopular
Lack of long-term vision
Lack of good leadership
Lack of transparency
Playing on fears
Lobbyists
Monopoly of political parties on the system
What politicians represent people
Media = race
People dont want to hear truth
Votecrs don’t like decisive decisions
Spin and simpliciation
Corporate domination
Frustration over low voter turnout
Alex’s ideas:
-The media, the mass media distorts
-Not transparent, how do politicians reach the decisions they make
-Political parties, made sense 50 years ago, people are all over the place, don’t have clear cut boundaries anymore
Can only vote for the party you disagree the least with
What’s right:
Stability
Society works
Global politics is also a problem. How can we influence America?
What probably won’t work:
-Complaining
-Voting indifferently
-Change inside existing parties
What might work?
-bottom up
-participation
-transparency
-open at all levels
-Fun!!!!! (Is the most radical change necessary in politics.)
A suggestion
We are going to found our own party. People that don’t agree on the issues, but do agree on the process.
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Groups of people can be smarter than individuals
Groups of different kinds of people together can be smarter than experts
Anybody can be a member
Program is going to be a wiki site
Physical meetings, organize meetings bottom up and get real life experts to attend
A process
Administration
Who will be involved with that decision? The people that care about it.
(Won’t you get the same indifference problems that you already have. People just don’t care that much.)
(Idea: figurehead elected officials that are controlled by the crowd behind it)
(Wikipediazing or WisdomOfCrowdsing politics is an interesting idea, but this guy does not lay forth any kind of vision.)
This has not been thought out in that much detail yet but we should be able to solve it.
