On the state and top down governance

Introduction:
The vast majority of modern nations rely on a state that utilises a top down government. This means, in simple terms, that a small group of people are in charge of most or all aspects of said country with little or no accountability. Even in Western democracies it is incredibly hard to impeach the ruling class even if the majority of people agree that it should be done; modern politics is a closed system, where it is only worth voting for parties that are likely to win, and it is hard to run for them unless you know the right people. This is frequently referred to as the two party system, a decidedly undemocratic system kept going by the fact the masses are told, by the political class who wish to keep power, that the only other systems are tyranny and chaos. However that is not the case but, when an alternative system is proposed, and begins to take root, the government are quick to suppress and demonise it.

A conflict of interest:
There is a growing an undeniable conflict of interest between the Capitalist and working classes that the left has primarily focused on, and not unreasonably. When I say the Capitalist class, I am referring to those who benefit most from the Capitalist system. The governments of the West have a tendency to measure their success off of how the stock market performs, except the stock market is but a glorified casino for the wealthy. Investors buy up stocks in the hope of selling them off if and when the value increases. The real wage of the worker has been going down consistently in recent years, even though the stock markets continue to improve as I write this. In fact, this happens just before every economic crash, as investors over invest into stocks only to flood the market, causing the value to drop massively and the investors to lose money. These investors tend to be employers and so they are forced to cut worker’s wages to compensate for their losses. This is a gross simplification, of course, but is a large factor into the economic crises of Capitalism, a crisis of excess if you wish.

The loan economy:
Another major factor is unscrupulous Capitalists giving out loans that they know the individual or company taking out are unlikely to be able to pay back. In the past, individuals would take out a loan to buy something of use to their livelihood, such as a farmer buying a tractor. They could use their increase in earnings to pay off the debt. However, with the modern oversaturation of the market by an excess of existing industry and increasing relative living costs, more and more loans are taken out for things that do not increase earnings, such as a house or a car. The loan companies often are aware that the loanee, the person or company taking out the loan, will likely be unable to pay back and so ask for collateral. This is often the loanee’s house. When, predictably, the individual fails to pay back the loan, the company forces them to sell off the collateral and makes a profit; although, even if they fail to profit this way, governments often will often bail out failing banks.  One common yet nasty trick used is to set the payment frequency and amount so that interest keeps the debt at the same or a similar level, although some countries have indeed outlawed this practise, as well as the once common practise of charging for early repayments.

Socialism and the state:
Historically even the most well meaning revolutions have failed due to attempting to create real change while keeping a top down hierarchy. Take the  October revolution, in then Feudalist Russia, and the Soviet Union, for example. Whilst the people that got the Communist Party into power truly believed they would achieve a utopia, it quickly devolved into state Capitalism, where the government sought to improve the countries performance on the global market. Although they had avoided loan entrapment and treating the stock market as an indicator of success, they had not avoided having a closed political system. Lenin had naively assumed that the people were incapable of self-governance and needed an elite to educate them and run the state until they were ready. This resulted in a lot of the party becoming egotistical and feeling that they could do what they wished, the epitome of this type of thinking was Stalin, who even changed the government's structure to establish his party, which he was leader of, as the de-facto main governance, thus ruining hope of a more democratic system. This is what eventually led to mass discontentment and the union’s eventual, albeit mostly peaceful, dissolution.

Top down economics:
The inherent flaw of the top down approach of both the Capitalist and Socialist state is that it creates a political loop where the ruling class inevitably loses touch with the workers and begin to do what they feel is best, rather than what the people they are supposed to be working for feel should be done. They obviously, cannot know the situation of every person under their jurisdiction and so their policies often have unexpected results. Take a snooker, or pool, table and neatly organise the balls into the triangle, then use the cue to hit the white ball into the front ball of the triangle. Notice how the move around? Now reset the table and try to predict where the balls will go if you do it again, try this a few times and you will realise that you cannot; this is known as a chaos system. You are like the politician, the white ball like the policy and the rest of the balls the people it affects. Keeping this logic, the random path of the balls represents the effects of this hypothetical policy in the respect that whilst you can tell that it will cause movement, and you might be able to have an educated guess on the rough direction of the balls on the outside, you cannot know what will happen at all for the balls on the inside of the triangle. A good example of this comes from UK’s 2015 psychoactive substances act, where a seemingly well meaning law meant to gain popular support was so strong that they had to make exclusions for things like coffee and caused mass outrage.

Is there a solution?
The problem with chaos systems is that you can not reasonably expect to understand and influence them from the result, there are too many variables. In the case of a nation, the variables are people and these individuals are in control of themselves. The solution then is simple, give control to the variables, the people. The way this should be done is by allowing communities to self-dictate via direct democracy. Local communities know the issues they face far better than a centralised government, and have more time to figure out a solution that works for them, rather than the fairly limited amount of time a centralised government has to figure out a generalised solution. Regional councils of representatives from these communities would exist, as direct democracy on a national scale is unreasonable. These representatives, however, should be held accountable with the ability to replace them if the community deems them to be unfit for their position. These councils would be used for solving issues that affect the region as a whole, such as building and maintaining trade and transport systems. This, however, can slow down decision making down, thus it may sometimes be appropriate to nominate accountable representatives to form and take part in a fully transparent committee to mitigate this issue without resorting to centralisation.

How do we achieve this?
With the current closed political system, the only way to achieve such a society would be via a revolution. States only exist as long as enough people comply with the system, so what we must do is to educate people of the alternative. As this ideal gains popularity though, assuming it does, the current government will do more and more to stop it. They will discredit it with lies, set its followers against each other with sectarianism, and may even suppress its followers with violence. Resist their tactics, however, and eventually the critical mass of dissenters will be reached.  When and only when the critical mass is reached will the revolution happen, as by that point it will be inevitable and the government left powerless to stop it.

By Matt Batko, 2018: Public domain