Imagine if we had a day where we could allow our politicians to speak their mind. To really tell us what's hindering them or what's wrong with Britain. They could do this without affecting their chances of re-election or pissing off their rich donors, business and vested interests? What would they really say? That's probably what the Bilderberg group is for. You see, it's only wealthy people that can be trusted with this information because they have as much to lose as the politicians when the Ponzi scheme that is Capitalism is discovered by the people.
Now, I don't choose either politician party. Each have merits and disadvantages, and most choices in life do. It's not quite black and white. The problem is telling the truth is now impossible if it upsets any powerful vested interest who can prevent that message being delivered to the population. Take the hacking affair - it took two years for the Guardian to plug away until that made any impact. The damage it did to Rupert Murdoch was obvious and no one was powerful enough to take on the media Barron.
Today many secrets exist in plain sight, talked about by masses of journalists but unavailable to print because of super injunctions. If our public service bodies aren't there to serve our public interest then what are they there for? If people are manipulative liars shouldn't the public know? Even if it's deemed tittle tattle or gossip its misrepresentation if you choose to let celebrity in your life. There are plenty of people who live in the public eye and don't appear in tabloids - that's how we know it's achievable!
Officials once had a duty to serve the population but that sense of government has long since disappeared. In fact in all walks of life professionalism has been replaced with clock watching or box ticking. You can't measure passion and pride that easily at work. It's one of the reasons the NHS has begun to be a heartless organisation - process is king and money is the measurement. Is that what the public want? No.
The trouble is politicians have to ask the public to reign in their spending and manage expectations. That is difficult to do when the last 25 years have only re-enforced the idea that greed, consumerism and individuality is good. In fact, its actually not terrible but like anything its about moderation. Politicians just didn't want to tell people about moderation. Our elders in society are meant to use their experience to prevent previous issues affecting our future society. They have the benefit of hindsight. Unfortunately, when you give humans this power they tend to use it to enrich themselves rather than save the masses.
Take a simple example like house prices. If they rose at 10% a year (as they were in 2003-2006) for even one average life time say 75 years. The average house would be worth £165m. Obviously not sustainable. Why did they not tell us or implement rules to stop this? It's because they got greedy. The vested interests, banks and developers realised they could enrich themselves so they paid off the politicians to do their bidding. Newspapers still seem to think that this "hand in the cookie jar" is of some great surprise to the public. Sure, it sells papers, but everyone knows it happens and that no one will stop it. Its not even "news" anymore.
So how do we create a politician system free from this moral hazard, where the richest get to control feckless politicians for their own nefarious purposes? Well, its time to use technology. We need a crowd sourced government with multiple voting opportunities. We need summarised information for each part of society and equal ability to vote in this new world. The answer seems to be the mobile phone software. Use it vote, capture your thoughts to elected representatives and publish results borough by borough. Basically we need direct democracy - by the people for the people. Mistakes will be made and i'm sure people will attempt to subvert the system but the wisdom of crowds suggest that it would be very difficult to do this on a country wide scale. Now I'm not suggesting I write down a full manifesto here but here are some key suggestions:
1. Enable a simple text/web/phone based voting mechanism that sets deadlines and broadcasts votes and deadlines on all communication mediums next to the programmes with the largest captive audience (make this a broadcaster condition of licence)
2. Enable parliamentary debates to begin with 100,000 signatures on a web portal. The debate should simply present all the material and allow a mass vote.
3. All contracts the government farm out should be presented on an open bidding forum where all limited companies have the right to participate. If they do not complete the contract correctly they receive negative feedback from the people whose service they provide (i.e allow the public to vote if a NHS records system is working correctly - that way you have limited the possibility of corrupting individuals). If we did this at a council level wouldn't it improve voter apathy?
4. Vote in politicians but rank them via a vote system on the number/quality of solutions they have proposed to a larger is of parliamentary debate problems. They are supposed to have access to the finest minds so technically they will come up with the best solutions from which the public can choose the one they want.
5. Enable governance of employee bank accounts and relationships with civil servants. If they choose to be civil servants they have to be above reproach and more scrutiny will be applied to their private lives - they need to accept this.
6. Bankers should become civil servants to only gain bonuses when the companies they back succeed on improving society. The measures of this need to be worked out but in essence the ideas they back with money should make life interesting, exciting, better, easier or simpler. Difficult to measure but I'm sure we'll think of a way.
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