Democracy 2.0

I am someone who has lived in democracies throughout my life. Is it perfect way of governance? Clearly not. Is it best way? Probably yes. At least to me. Just like no single medicine is cure for all diseases, democracy in traditional form may not work for all societies in the same way and I do appreciate that fact. Knowing clearly that democracy is not perfect system, I sometimes wonder what can be a perfect or just even a better system of governance. Trying to put down some of my thoughts of what can be done.

1) Wisdom of informed crowd can be better than wisdom of crowd: There are different ways to look at it. One of them being that in traditional democracies, there are groups formed by legislative bodies to help study a problem and come up with recommendations to vote from. Now these groups can be called informed crowd spending time and utilizing SME(Subject Matter Expert) comments to weed out lot of bad options. This is good. But, we still see that the recommendations of these groups/panels are often ignored. We can't get rid of this process still because of the value it brings in cases where the recommendations are followed through. So some level of smartness is part of the process. How about increasing the voting age? As I think about it, I am more inclined towards this option. Seeing my understanding of the world change based on my experiences as I age, I find my self opting for really bad choices during my teens or even twenties. I think the minimum voting age should be 30. No, I didn't just cross 30 recently. I know some might suggest why I am proposing 30, why not 60 or any another number for that matter. If we go very high, we loose on the general representation a lot. Another idea to find right age can be to link it with median age of the country. Just like there are initiates like population surveys that are taken up every few years/decade, the minimum age can be revised and kept little lower than median age so as to still cover most of the people in the country and at the same time tilt it towards people with more experience in life so as to make better choices.

2) We stop appreciating what we have: This is true for most aspects of life. When it comes to democracy or any system of governance, none of which are perfect, lot of negative feelings develop over period of time. For newly created governance systems, there are people who remember the pain of the change. As time passes, we forget the pain as a society and stop appreciating what we have. I was wondering if there should be secured zones in the countries where the traditional governance systems will stop working so people can visit and do whatever they want without any controls that exist in society. Anyone can go there, they can try to become a king if they desire. They can setup any currencies, some sort of government or keep it like a jungle system. No one will stop them. They want to fight till death or have a war with any person/group resisting, they can do that without any charges.Think of it like leaving the country so there is a checkpoint based entry to that region and everyone made aware that anything is fare game in the region they are visiting. After that, it is individual choice. Checkpoint is required to make sure people are not being forced to that part of land just to be killed without any negative consequence. Checkpoints are also required to make sure that stuff not getting carried inside to launch an attack on the other parts of the country. For most practical purposes, this part of land is like foreign country.  There will be no service provided by government in these zones. No taxes imposed either. In fact, government can act to create unrest in these zones so as to make sure people don't get comfortable in simulated environment trying to just evade taxes and getting free security from external state. Just like any real country having whatever form of governance, there will always be external influences trying to impact internal dynamics. I am sure most of the people visiting these zones will rediscover the value of what they have or we will invent a better system in that cradle of innovation. One argument against this proposal can be that you let people travel out of the country and same can be done even now. There have been reports of people participating towards overthrowing rulers in foreign land and going to high risk regions and getting killed. The way it is different is that in lot of cases there are diplomatic ties and people can be charged in some cases. In others, the foreign governments can claim that the activity by a citizen are actually motivated by government to achieve foreign policy objectives and result in diplomatic backlash. With a land inside the country, all these complexities can be avoided.

3)Impact of Web 3.0, cryptocurrencies: With Web 3.0 still in its infancy and growth of cryptocurrencies, there are big changes happening. Even the definition of Web 3.0 is too loose to say much about it. I do understand one aspect of Web 3.0 and that is basically creation of global identities. Some might like anonymity provided by internet, Web 3.0 is probably going to result in proper identities. I have heard arguments that you should need a license to get on internet as there is whole lot of negative impact of uninformed or ill intentioned actors spitting out content to harm societies intentionally or unintentionally. With strong identities, we may be able to associate responsibility of actions on internet in better fashion. This can also open up the possibility of wider and more frequent public vote in the field of governance as well. There can be newer capabilities built like asking for vote to issue municipal bonds to fund schools. I have seen those on ballots. I wonder how someone can decide if it is a good option or bad option without any understanding of finance/economics and also the current state of affairs in terms of what is current loan obligation, income, growth projections, etc. So with Web 3.0, we can have a capability built where you can vote and attach your credentials like a degree in economics/finance that is already part of blockchain and linked to your vote. Your vote will only count if it passes the rule check for degree in these fields. It is really hard to predict the future of cryptocurrencies and what shape they will take. But, one change I can see is a move away from state control and going in the direction of global citizenship. This weakens the national identity and any type of governance. I have lot of doubts about current state structures letting the control go away that easily. But any version of the governance might have to live with this if cryptocurrencies survive the test of time and remain outside of any single government control. This aspect ties up with first proposal on informed crowd wisdom and provides a technical backbone for the same.

4)Role of AI in governance: This is already happening in some form in the field of executive branch. Example could be police issuing a ticket for traffic violation. Now, lot of camera/AI based tickets are getting issue in different parts of the world I am not sure what role it can play in legislative branch at this time. What if there is more and more done by general AI in terms of helping main executive of state making decisions. Whosoever is the President/PrimeMinister/Mayor/Governor, anyway gets lot of public wrath. Any decision they make, you can find lot of people calling it bad. What if AI makes the decision so the blame can be shared by AI or totally put on AI. With society going more complex, it is getting even more tough to manage the state and keep mental state in order to be making the right choices as a leader. It may already have gone out of hands for any person to handle. It may be lack of trust/technology that is keeping is away. In terms of need, we have surely crossed the line. I am sure newer world order is going towards that in some sense. In judicial branch, there is a scope of AI being a helping tool in terms of looking at vast amount of data and being able to guide the outcomes. Again, some level of usage is already present. I understand there is some sort of system generated scoring created to decide upon the punishment periods where there is a range. Now, coming to the next branch, some call media as fourth state/branch. Clearly AI has made lot of negative inroads in this branch. Deepfakes, Facebook, WhatsApp University are some of the examples. The current state of society is getting stressed by these changes. There is a chance that lot of societies will go into chaos as a result of this development. The newer governance, including Democracy 2.0 would have to learn to handle these changes in society and be resilient of it

Any other ideas?.