Terabell

When it comes to systems of government the ideal is held up to be democracy.  This is because it supposedly fulfills the idea of citizens living in a free environment where they are able to live the lives they want to live with the rules the type that represent their morals and how they believe a country should be run.

I fully support the ideal and do want to live the way I want to live with the kinds of people that I want to live it with.

The more I think about it the more I think that the current systems we are calling democratic are far from that.

We have the situation where you never meet personally with the elected representatives so they have no idea what you think.   If you write to them and there is no election on then they do not get back to you.  If you elect someone from the opposition your voice may be heard but has no say in what actually happens so half everyone’s votes are wasted.  If you vote for a party based on their policies they may change it in the middle of the term or even a couple of days in if “things have changed” so you actually don’t know what you are voting for when you cast your vote anyway.  Controversial decisions are not even mentioned at elections even though they are planned and implemented later.  I love that if something was briefly mentioned at an election fought on totally different grounds then they have a “mandate” and have to pass that legislation.  If something was not mentioned then it is something that “is in the best interests of the state” and therefore must be passed too.  Finally if something was the opposite then as mentioned before “Things have changed” and it must be passed.

As far as I can see that if you base elections on when you vote then you don’t know what you are getting and your say is basically wasted as it will come down to one of two parties that are pretty much the same in charge.  The people in these parties are ruled by consensus of the party including unelected officials.  As you can see it does not sound like the people being governed by the way they want to be living how they want to live.

If you look at the practicalities of the situation you have people voting in electorates based on where they live.  This ensures that you get a broad mix of people who may have nothing in common voting for people arbitrarily based on location.  This feels like a system geared towards keeping the status quo and not representing my values.  This also leads to the situation where a key group of electorates has more power than others and their interests are overrepresented in federal decisions compared with the rest.  We also get the farce where for a few issues at the moment 80% of the population support having a particular law changed (I can name 3 at the moment without really trying) where they are not being passed because of religious interests which could topple the marginal seats.  Again hardly democracy at work.

I have been giving this a great deal of thought and I feel a lot of these problems is because populations have been increasing whilst the system remains the same.  Comparing Australia now with 100 years ago, the number of representatives has not increased proportionally with the number of seats.  This leads to less representation per person and more farcical situations.  Technology has improved incredibly such that whereas when things started there could be months in gathering public opinion it is now taking days.  I wonder if it would not be best to keep democracy but change the way it is implemented such that people can live the ideal.

I have done a lot of reading recently about small and micro nations.  I feel that they may be one solution.  I don’t see why communities (especially rural ones) can’t create their own countries.  For all intents and purposes solar and wind could power them, they could use rain harvesting for their water and self treat their sewage.  There are enough resources online for them to educate their communities.  I think that I could draft a beginning set of laws for the nascent country and they could have a democratically elected government who truly represents the wishes of the community.  Policing could be achieved.  The only things that I think there would be problems with are Defense, Hospitals and Jails.  I don’t see however why countries could not form cooperatives just like NATO and have a common defense force amongst the micro nations.  For hospitals the countries could pay other countries a realistic price for providing those services to their citizens.  Not every micro-state would need its own hospital.  Finally for jails depending on the laws there is no reason that the vast majority of prisoners could not serve out their sentences in the community.  Using restorative justice why can’t prisoners help repair things or work off their debt to the community.  It is not as if they are not strangers if they are a citizen of the place.  If they are visitors then prisoner sharing arrangements such as those proposed between Indonesia and  Australia they could work between communities.

Alternatively we could change the way officials are elected? If people can chose where they live why can’t they choose the electorate they wish to vote in? I would like to see members who want to represent the wish of service people or healthcare professionals or other areas, with 150 seats there could be a lot of focused politicians supporting a specific aspect of society.  Then the wishes of their members could be clearly communicated.  I think if individual members campaigned for specific platforms specifically targeted at a group of society we would remove the party stalemate that seems to be dominating the way our country is run.

I am thinking of researching the creation of Micro-states and how they could be recognized as part of a Masters / PHd thesis.  What do you think? Do you feel adequately represented or do you feel like other agendas far beyond your control are shaping the way you live?