Tag Archives: IVCS

Overcoming Systemic Voter Disempowerment with a System Changing Technology

By Nancy Bordier and Joseph M. Firestone

Most governments claim they are democracies because they hold popular elections. A large majority of their citizens who cast votes also think their governments are democracies.

But there are other criteria besides elections for determining whether or not a country has a functioning democracy — or a failing democracy.

A major criterion, possibly the most important one, is whether voters actually control elections and their legislative consequences.

– Can voters decide who runs for office and set the priorities for the legislation their elected representatives pass if they are elected?

– Can voters freely run their own candidates? Or must they vote for candidates run by intermediaries like political parties or special interests?

– Do institutions like the U.S. electoral college and election authorities place limitations on voters’ ability to run their own candidates by imposing requirements voters find it difficult or impossible to fulfill, such as collecting massive numbers of signatures, paying unaffordable fees, etc.?

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A Technological Fix for Failing Democracies

Dysfunctional democracies are provoking anger, confrontations, crises and conflicts for the following reasons:

  • In many cases, the citizens of dysfunctional democracies are unable to decide who runs for office, who gets elected and what laws are passed because of obstacles erected to prevent them from doing so.
  • Several of these obstacles, for example election laws in the U.S., result in the election of lawmakers, such as those who control the U.S. Congress, who represent only a minority of eligible voters and pass legislation that rarely represents the will of a majority of voters.
  • According to extensive research, special interests, wealthy individuals, corporations and financial institutions tend to exert greater influence than voters over lawmakers’ legislative actions because they finance lawmakers’ electoral campaigns.
  • Rogue lawmakers whose actions are not controlled by their constituents but by influential groups and wealthy campaign funders are contributing to the creation of increasing inequalities of wealth that enable a small percent of the population to acquire most of their nation’s wealth, while the rest of the population has little or no wealth and few if any opportunities to create wealth.
  • Undemocratic political parties that control electoral machinery and do not allow competitive parties to take root prevent voters from setting party agendas and nominating and electing candidates of their choice, increasing the legislative disconnect between voters’ and lawmakers’ priorities.

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The Technology Solution to the Democracy Crisis

By Joe Firestone

The spectacular intrusion of special interests into the passage of the $1.1 trillion government spending bill on December 13, 2014 was breathtaking as bankers and lobbyists whipped the vote by calling Congressional representatives directly to demand a host of special interest provisions, including the following:

  • Repealing the Dodd-Frank prohibition on locating derivatives trading activities in the same bank subsidiary company as their depositories containing checking, savings, and other accounts insured by the FDIC.
  • Raising individual campaign contribution limits by roughly 10 times the present limit.
  • Allowing businesses to default by as much as 1/3 of their private pension obligations.
  • Preventing the EPA from introducing new climate protections. 

So it is now abundantly clear that what we have is government by minority rule in which special interests reign supreme. Clearly, this cannot continue. It is for this reason that we are sharing the post below describing the only solution to the democracy crisis of which we are aware that can be implemented in the near future. It is long and we do not expect many readers to get through it in one sitting, or even at all. But if it piques your interest, you can re-locate it here at a more opportune time. 

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Equality, MMT, Real Fiscal Responsibility, and Re-inventing Democracy

Inequality and MMT

For some time now, MMT has been receiving criticism from self-identified progressives charging that MMT economists and advocates aren’t concerned about one of the most pressing problems in modern democracies and especially in the US, namely, increasing and often extreme inequality. MMT supporters have responded by citing much previous work on inequality, a lot of it done at the Levy Institute, by pointing out their great concern over the problem, and their work in advocating for a Federal Job Guarantee that would do more than perhaps any other single piece of legislation to ameliorate both poverty and inequality.

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The Re-invent Democracy Platform and MMT

The MMT Uptake Problem

Proponents of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) approach to macroeconomics have had many successes since the approach was first synthesized in coherent form by Warren Mosler. There have been successful predictions of economic conditions: much work showing that the historical record accords with the MMT point of view, rather than the views of other approaches and paradigms, and also many instances where representatives of other approaches to economics have suddenly begun to use economic views first put forward by MMT economists.

So, it’s surely true that MMT has been making progress in its quest to become the dominant economic paradigm guiding macroeconomic and fiscal policy in nations. But for some of us writing about issues relating to MMT progress seems painfully slow. A big part of the reason for slow progress is the difficulty of getting MMT views into the mass media consistently, which is seen as a necessary step in getting them popular currency.

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Bordier — A Bottom-Up Solution to Cross-Border Conflicts: The Case of the Middle East and ISIL

By Nancy Bordier
(reposted by Joe Firestone with permission of the author)

Introduction

The outbreak of another Western-led military conflict in the Middle East is widely viewed as unwinnable. It is also viewed as counterproductive because of its potential to help its target, ISIL, the anti-Western fanatical social movement, recruit new volunteers in its crusade to topple Middle East regimes.

My view, as a political scientist, is that none of the players currently involved can bring peace or stability to the region. The “perpetual war” the protagonists appear to be unleashing is more likely to cause even more human suffering and displacement in the region on a scale previously unimaginable.

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