PART 1
IAIN DAVIS
I propose a new sociopolitical model that I call Voluntary Democracy. You may reasonably ask how I became arrogant enough to even contemplate doing such a thing.
I am no one or everyone, depending on your perspective. I am a very average bloke with some limited life experience, a modicum of knowledge, and sufficient interest to talk and write about the topic we are about to discuss.
I do not profess to have all the answers or even know what most of the questions are. I am just about as flaky as it is possible for a man to be and am undeserving of your trust which is among the reasons I ask you not to place any in me.
I am merely proposing an idea. My only hope is that you consider it. If I’m lucky perhaps you will question it and, if I’m very fortunate, start expanding on it.
We are going discuss some of the problems with representative democracy which is the political model of state preferred by most people I will refer to a statists. I’ll call this model simply the state.
I was born and live in the the state called the United Kingdom (UK). Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be ruled by a king or his government, but that is the nature of the state. It’s not a choice to be a subject of the state. Though statists claim it is.
Therefore, I will use the current alleged constitutional monarchy, the claimed basis for the UK state, as my test case.
What Democracy Is and What It Is Not
Democracy is a political system first formally established in ancient Greece by Cleisthenes (c. 570–500 BCE). Cleisthenes introduced “sortition”—which is the random selection of citizens drawn by lot. Under his reforms, the Boule (executive) proposed legislation, and the Ecclesia (legislature) would then debate the proposed statute laws and vote on their enactment.
The citizen members of the Boule and the Ecclesia were selected by sortition. Once their work was done, the Boule and the Ecclesia were disbanded. The people would return to their everyday lives. The next time the Boule and the Ecclesia were needed, sortition would again be used and a different group of people selected.
Sortition was also used to form juries, whose citizen members sat in the Dikasteria (courts). The jury in the Dikasteria represented the highest law in the land. Any Dikasteria could overturn the enactments of the Ecclesia. This political system enabled the people to create legislation (statute law) as well as law derived from precedent (case law).
Crucially, Cleisthenes empowered the Dikasteria (the law courts) to overrule (annul) any law that was found to be unjust in a jury-led trial. There were no judges. Magistrates were merely administrators for the court. If the defendant was found guilty, both the judgement (ruling) and the nature of the punishment (sentence) were decided by the citizen jurors.
If the full application of the law (including legislation) did not serve justice, the jury could annul it. The defendant may have technically contravened the law but could still be found not guilty if the jury believed the defendant had acted honourably, without any intent to cause harm or loss (mens rea).
In such a circumstance, it was the law, not the accused, that would be found at fault. Any flawed legislation would be wiped from the statute scrolls and the Boule and the Ecclesia would have to amend or abolish it in light of the Dikasteria’s ruling.
The word “democracy” (demokratia) derives from “demos” (people) and “kratos” (power). Literally translated, it means “people power.” Cleisthenes proposed a governance system whereby the people were sovereign by virtue of exercising the rule of law through jury-led trials. This, and only this, is “democracy” and it has nothing to do with voting or electing anyone.
So-called “representative democracy” is not democracy. In representative democracies the people are permitted to select representatives who make all decisions for them for the next few years. During their rule, the representatives enforce their collective will upon the people.
Representative democracy is based upon the people handing all their decision making power over to a tiny clique of privileged rulers. It is the antithesis of democracy.
We are allowed to elect the legislature, which we call Parliament (Ecclesia). The dominant faction, usually formed from the most popular mob—chosen by those who bothered to vote—then forms the executive. We call this the government (Boule).
Depending on how dominant the ruling mob is—determined by their relative number of parliamentary seats—the executive (Boule or government) can either easily compel the legislature (Ecclesia) to adopt its desired policies (legislation) or engage in some horsetrading with their “opposition” to amend their legislation (policy diktat) prior to its almost inevitable adoption. “Opposition” is a misleading term because the people who actually rule control both the government and the so-called opposition.
The current British government, despite only securing votes from a small minority of the population, enjoys a massive parliamentary majority. The government (Boule) can “whip” its own representative members of Parliament (MP’s) to push through pretty much any policy it likes without bothering to consult anybody.
In the UK’s representative democracy, while statists think they are electing people who will represent their views and prioritise addressing their concerns, Parliament declares itself sovereign over all of the people. Statists actually select their own rulers—of sorts.
Parliament’s claim to sovereignty is false. The British have a codified, written constitution that makes the people sovereign. That doesn’t matter, however, to government as long as the population continues to assume Parliament’s claim is valid.
The advantage of “representative democracy,” from the perspective of the oligarchs who actually rule, is that it allows them to rule in perpetuity. Through lobbying, political party and campaign funding, government partnerships, corruption, coercion and orders issued to puppet MP’s, the vast bulk of parliamentarians represent only oligarchs’ views and prioritise oligarchs’ concerns. Oligarchs aren’t overly concerned about who wins elections.
In the UK’s representative democracy the courts (Dikestaria) are led by the Judiciary. As a Common Law jurisdiction, juries in the UK can still technically “annul” legislation. The judiciary “instructs” juries but never informs them they can annul. Consequently, British juries remain oblivious of their own rights and powers. The judiciary really doesn’t like jury trials in any event, and is working with the government to do away with them if they can.
The state supposedly operates on the comically misnamed separation of powers model. Everyone who lives and works in the UK knows this is total bunk.
The three branches of government comprise of the executive (government or Boule) and the legislature (Parliament or Ecclesia) which together form a single, oligarch controlled rule-making institution. The third branch, the judiciary (courts or Dikesteria), forces the people to comply with the rules and punishes those who don’t. It rarely, if ever, rules against the oligarchs’ rule-making institution and is completely divorced from anything the rest of us might consider justice. The only people who don’t have to obey dictatorial rule are the oligarchs who are above all the rules they impose on everyone else, often because they can buy themselves out of having to comply with any.
This, then, is the state.
Introducing Voluntary Democracy
The problem with “representative democracies” is that they always resolve in kakistocracies ruled by oligarchs. In other words, dictatorships. The people are merely given the illusion of choice through anointment ceremonies called elections where they are invited to crown the next gaggle of kakistocrats who will rule them on behalf of the oligarchs.
I suggest the solution to this is Voluntary Democracy.
Voluntary democracy wouldn’t necessitate reinventing the wheel. The three branches of governance would remain and the process of proposing, enacting, and ruling on legislation would continue.
The executive would be replaced with a body formed of citizens who would be randomly selected by sortition from the whole population and would serve on a temporary or perhaps issue by issue basis. We could call this the Boule or something else. How about “voluntary-executive” perhaps? Let’s use “the Volexec.”
The legislature would be a larger body—selected and serving in the same way—who would then deliberate on and enact legislation proposed by the executive. Again, we could stick with Ecclesia, but let’s use “the Volegis.”
The biggest procedural difference in a voluntary democracy, other than the selection process, would be the abolition of bench trials. All justice would be dispensed by jurors in jury led trials and judges would be replaced by conveners whose only role would be to facilitate proceedings.
The most important difference would be that all juries would be sovereign. Juries and only juries would represent the supreme rule of law in the whole jurisdiction and their only concern would be to ensure justice was served. We shall call these voluntary Dikasteria “the Volcourts.”
Through jury-led trials, these sortition selected groups of citizens—jurors— sitting in Volcourts across the land, would have the united and annexed power to annul any and all legislation and set case precedents wherever they deemed it necessary. In the event of annulment, the Volexec and the Volegis would need to either amend or abolish the faulty legislation accordingly.
There would be no government and no resultant state in a voluntary democracy. Voluntary societies would be jurisdictions without rulers, not jurisdictions without rules. Nor would voluntary democracy necessitate the existence of nations, though people could form them voluntarily and call themselves whatever they liked. Therefore, as we proceed to Part 2 and move away from the UK based example to broader considerations, I won’t reference the concept of nations but rather use “jurisdictions.”
Voluntary democratic jurisdiction won’t be perfect and they won’t solve all our problems. Nonetheless, I think they could resolve many of the injustices we currently suffer. Not least of all by effectively removing oligarchs’ political power.
To realise the promise of a voluntary democracy we would all need to work through a major philosophical shift. Our fundamental belief and value systems would need to change. For example, obedience would no longer be a virtue but rather a failing. Initially, individuals would have to start by learning to think differently. Ultimately, if we wanted to operate voluntary democracies at the macro scale, all of us would need to develop and adopt a new political philosophy. Statists, who form the majority, all currently share essentially one political philosophy so there is no reason why voluntaryists couldn’t do the same and become the majority themselves. We’ll expand on this in Part 3.
So I hope some will be sufficiently intrigued to read Part 2. If not, thanks for voluntarily reading this article.
This article (Voluntary Democracy – Part 1) was created and published by Iain Davis and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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PART 2
IAIN DAVIS
In Part 1, I proposed a new sociopolitical model called Voluntary Democracy. I suggested the three branches of government—the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary—could be replaced by three voluntary bodies: the Volexec, the Volegis, and the Volcourts.
This would create a real democracy. There would be no government and no political state. Simply the jurisdiction of the people—voluntaryists. The three new administrative branches—Volexec, Volegis, and Volcourts—would form the voluntary democratic jurisdiction of the voluntaryists.
All adult voluntaryists, who chose to actively participate in the jurisdiction, would need to agree to voluntarily serve, at any moment, in all three branches of the voluntary democracy. The Volexec, Volegis, and Volcourt juries would be formed using a random sortition of the people. Much as jurors are today—in so-called “representative democracies”—they would serve on a temporary basis and return to their regular lives once their service was concluded.
The Volexec and the Volegis would be drawn from the entire population of the jurisdiction. The jurors in Volcourts across the land might be selected from more localised populations. It will depend on the the size of the whole jurisdiction.
The most essential component of voluntary democracy is that every Volcourt would have the united and annexed power to annul any and all legislation issued by the Volexec and the Volegis. All Volcourts would have equal standing. There would be no higher courts. The Volcourts would each be sovereign, as would every citizen of the jurisdiction, and each Volcourt would represent and exercise the supreme rule of law, as would every voluntaryist citizen of the jurisdiction.
In a voluntary democracy the supreme rule of law would serve one function only. The sole purpose of the law of the jurisdiction—law of the land—would be the restoration of justice. Where any citizen or group caused injustice, harm or loss to any other individual or group, the Volcourts role would be to restore justice.
Those who wanted to live in the jurisdiction, but did not wish to serve in any of the three branches of the jurisdiction, would be free to opt-out. Opting-out would make little practical difference to their lives. As long as they didn’t harm or cause loss to others, the Volexec, Volegis and Volcourts would have no notable impact on them. That said, there would be unavoidable, though extremely limited, exceptions.
Whether they volunteered as voluntaryist citizens or not, everyone who chose to live in the jurisdiction would need to agree not to cause harm or loss to anyone else. This seems like a reasonable basis for any society to me. Observing justice—living honourably—would be the only requirement enforced on anybody in the jurisdiction. We’ll cover the few “unavoidable exceptions” in a moment.
Just as we have national and local government today, so voluntary jurisdictions would operate at the macro and micro jurisdictional level. The checks and balances on authoritarian political power, supposedly provided by the mythical “separation of powers” in modern political states, would be provided by Volcourts with the power to annul. There would be no political authority but the rule of law could impinge on some on rare occasions.
Obviously, urban and rural communities face different issues. Local or micro Volexecs and Voleges could be tasked with addressing specific local problems and might issue micro-legislation to address them. Such localised micro-legislation would not apply to the whole jurisdiction.
Setting macro-legislation for the whole jurisdiction would be done at the central or macro jurisdictional level. Perhaps the entire jurisdiction might have a capital where the macro Volexec and Volegis would convene. However, in nearly all circumstance no hierarchical structure could possibly be enforced.
Regardless of whether legislation was issued at the macro or micro jurisdictional level every Volcourt, no matter where it was located in the jurisdiction, would be able to annul any and all legislation where it was found to cause injustice. As micro-legislation would only be applied to micro-jurisdictional level, it would be the responsibility of the relevant micro-Volcourts to ensure the micro-legislation was just.
As the Volcourts would exercise the supreme rule of law everywhere you might wonder what purpose the Volexecs or Voleges would serve in a voluntary democracy. If every piece of legislation issued at the macro and micro level could be annulled by the Volcourts, what would be the point of issuing any?
This, I suggest, would be the primary advantage of living in a voluntary democratic jurisdiction. Legislation could only possibly persist where it was just. Unjust legislation would be eradicated. Legislation, decided by the people, would effectively be little more than necessary regulation to maintain justice in the jurisdiction.
For example, the macro-Volexec might propose legislation to ensure food products aren’t laced with poison. The macro-Volegis might consider this worth adopting and issue the legislation. No Volcourt is likely to annul this legislation because doing so would be to cause harm through negligence. If a Volcourt lost its mind and did overturn such legislation, it would set a case precedent that would soon be overturned by every other Volcourt. The food safety regulation would probably remain.
Equally, if the Volexec and Volegis lost their minds and, for example, set legislation making it a crime for anyone but pharmaceutical corporations to research, trial, and sell potential cancer cures, Volcourts around the jurisdiction would annul this legislation in a heartbeat as soon as someone was prosecuted for this ludicrous crime.
Consequently, at both the macro and the micro level, Volexecs and Voleges would only be practically able to legislate to to try to resolve extant macro-jurisdictional or micro-jurisdictional problems. If the consequence of their legislation was injustice, perhaps unforeseen injustice, a Volcourt would highlight the problem.
Volcourt annulment wouldn’t necessarily require the complete removal of the legislation. The issuing Volexec and the Volegis would need to convene to deliberate on potentially amending the legislation as required to ensure justice is maintained.
Legislation in a voluntary democracy would be very limited and, in scope, a tiny droplet compared to the current ocean of legislation we are collectively drowning under. Providing individuals and groups, such as corporations, caused no harm or loss to others, they would be free to exercise their inalienable—or unalienable—rights in full.
Striking the just balance between rights and the necessary responsibilities would be crucial to sustaining voluntary democratic justice. Ultimately, the necessary mechanism for serving justice would be delivered by the Volcourts.
Voluntary democracies would operate along genuine free market principles. A cattalaxy—a self organised market system— would replace the regulated economy common to representative democracies—the state.
Competition in a free market would mean that some businesses would be winners and others losers. That is to say, the commercial activity of one business might lead to loss suffered by another. But this is not to cause loss unjustly. If the losing business made a claim of injustice against and the winning business, the Volcourts would examine the evidence and, if the winning business had acted honourably, the Volcourt would be unlikely to require the winners to make reparations.
If, on the other hand, the evidence showed unscrupulous business practices were used to gain unfair advantage, the losing businesses’ loss would be unjust. The Volcourt would be likely to rule in favour of the claimants.
Voluntary democracy would not end poverty nor the accumulation of wealth. As there would be no government there would be no welfare state nor, indeed, any state.
Statists often point to the lack of a welfare state as an argument for keeping government. In Part 3 we’ll consider many statist objections but, for now, I’ll merely point out that this criticism is based upon the assumption that the population is comprised of people with statist mindsets. Voluntaryists, living in a voluntary democracy, would have a very different worldview. Again, we’ll discuss the implications in Part 3.
Harm and loss is suffered by individuals but they form communities and it is in meeting the needs of the community where the voluntary democracy would have to establish a hierarchy. Vital infrastructure projects, for example, may require some to face unwanted loss. But, in a voluntary democracy, that loss can never be unjust.
Let’s say a city requires a new hospital to meet the health needs of thousands of people. Construction may require the purchase of a few individuals’ properties against there wishes. The city Volexec and Volegis would need to deliberate but, if they considered the hospital essential, they would “legislate” to compulsory purchase property where necessary. As causing no harm or loss would be the foundational principle upon which the whole voluntary democracy is based, minimising the infringement of individual’s property rights would be a core objective of infrastructure planning. Nonetheless, some transgressions may be unavoidable.
If thousands of people are continuing to suffer for lack of a hospital, and there is no option but to buy some properties in order to build that hospital, then a refusal to sell that property would be to cause direct harm to others. On the other hand, in a voluntary democracy it would be absolutely unacceptable, under any circumstances, to inflict harm or loss on any individual. Therefore, anyone required to forego their property rights must be fully compensated in order to ensure justice is maintained.
Which brings us to how the voluntary democracy will be funded. Obviously, running the voluntary democratic system of Volexecs, Voleges and potentially tens of thousands Volcourts will cost money. The forced extraction of people’s wealth without their voluntary consent—taxation or theft—is wholly unjust and would be completely unacceptable in a voluntary democratic jurisdiction. Therefore, the voluntaryist citizens would need to pay for everything voluntarily. Our envisaged hospital would not be built if the community it serves were unwilling to pay for it, including justly compensating those required to sell up.
Furthermore, in a voluntary democracy participation in the Volcourts could not be compulsory but providing equal access to justice for all would be by sheer necessity. It is not just to deny someone access to justice—or healthcare—simply because they haven’t paid for it. This seemingly raises the possibility that some people will pay for everything while others who don’t will benefit from their generosity.
Statists will argue, therefore, that no one will pay for anything. Society will collapse as a result, and “chaos”—which they call “anarchy”—will reign. Statists will foresee other practical shortcomings of voluntary democracy. Without theft—taxation—who will voluntarily choose to pay for roads, sanitation, defence and all the other things currently paid for through taxation? Again, these objections are based on the assumption that the people who form the voluntary democratic jurisdiction will hold statist beliefs.
To be clear: there would be no state in a voluntary democracy. There would be no state “protection” from violence, no state law enforcement, no welfare state “safety net,” and no state military. What this means is that each and every citizen of the jurisdiction, whether they be full voluntaryist participants or passive, would need to take complete responsibility for everything. They would have no state to rely upon or do anything for them. The people would rule themselves and all social problems would be theirs to resolve. The people would have to take responsibility for everything.
Through the macro and micro Volexecs, Voleges, and the Volcourts, every citizen would have the opportunity to exercise the full rule of law. Voluntaryists would accept the responsibility to serve, protect and deliver justice, even on behalf of those who decline to participate. Those who opted-out of voluntary contribution would still have to take full responsibility to live honorably, never cause harm or loss to anyone else, and accept the duty to maintain justice by their actions while they lived in the voluntary democratic jurisdiction.
This would require adoption of a radically different political philosophy. In fact, this would be a prerequisite for any group of people to establish a voluntary democracy. Presently, those who have already adopted this political philosophy are generally labelled anarchists. But anarchism is a wide umbrella term for a whole range of political philosophies, often seemingly opposing each other.
At the heart of all anarchist political philosophy there is, however, a common unifying belief: all human interactions should be voluntary, the use of force or coercion to control human interaction is morally unacceptable, and minimum force can only be used to restore justice where the actions of an individual or group causes harm or loss to another.
The wide adoption of this non aggression principle and the citizens’ commitment to voluntary interactions, their rejection of force or coercion, and acceptance of full responsibility to maintain justice, would be the foundation of the voluntary democracy. As the state is based upon the use of force and coercion to make citizens comply with its claimed political authority, the voluntary democratic jurisdiction would be formed by people who reject the state in its entirety. The voluntaryist would not believe in the claimed political authority of the state nor, indeed, of anyone. The concept of political authority would be an anathema to the voluntaryist.
In Part 3 we will contrast the state with voluntary democracy. We will consider the impact of rejecting the statists political philosophy—they have only one—and will look at how we can move from the present violence of the state to a better alternative: a voluntary democracy.
This article (Voluntary Democracy – Part 2) was created and published by Iain Davis and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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