The Fundamental Flaw of American Politics

The Fundamental Flaw of American Politics

There is something fundamentally wrong with the American process of electing a president. It’s that the candidates are running on platforms and espousing solutions that they know little about. And then we, the people, are voting on those ideas when we too know little about them.

Even if our candidates were Einstein’s, even an Einstein is an expert only in his chosen field, such as physics. He’s not an expert in economics; he’s not an expert in social development; he’s not an expert in immigration.

Why are we electing people who are running on a platform they are not experts at? And why does the entire country listen to their ideas and vote whether their good or not, when we neither are experts?

If you run a business and you are going to develop a new product, or you need to find a solution to a particular problem, you go out and you hire the best brains in that field. You then put them in a laboratory where they experiment, where they try many solutions, until they see what works. And then only do you implement it and build your business upon it.

We are not doing that. Rather, we are swayed by a charismatic person who has a good sounding idea that they can speak persuasively about. The ideas sound good; but they’re not necessarily the best ideas. They haven’t been tried it in the laboratory of experience. And then we’re electing that candidate and their idea and immediately committing our national course of action to it. This is wrong. This is flawed. This is a recipe for mistakes on a colossal scale.

What we need to do is instead of electing a president based on a platform, we need to elect a president who says, “I will elicit the best minds of the country. I will draw upon the brainpool, the immense intelligence that’s there in the American people, to find the best ideas. Then, I will find a way of experimentation, a laboratory of trial and error, to try these ideas. And only then will we commit the nation to them”.

This is a fundamentally different approach to the American presidency and to leadership in general. Now the American president is not the leader touting a platform. Rather they are an executive managing resources, finding brainpower and creating experimentation. Then, when solutions emerge and are proven, they become an executive in the fullest sense of that word, meaning they execute upon the direction that has been chosen. They manage it, they implement it, they build it, but they don’t come up with it on their own.

We need to tap the brainpower of the American people. We need to find a mechanism of communication and dialogue where the best ideas rise to the top. And even the experts don’t always have the right answers. Sometimes the best ideas come out of left field, from unexpected sources; from the young guy in the mailroom who seems to know nothing but has a fresh perspective, has an insight.

We need to elicit the experts, and we need to elicit more; we need to elicit the creative intelligence and spirit of the American people far and wide, educated and uneducated, experienced and inexperienced. And even wider, we may need to tap, we should tap, the brainpower of the world, for many of our problems have effects and causes that are worldwide. Many of “our” problems, such as the immigration problem, have their roots in other countries. We need to look for solutions there too.

And then we need to experiment upon these ideas in relative zones of safety to see if the solutions really work. Only then we should act. What we are doing now in electing a president is not only dangerous, but it’s stupid. We have all bought in to a collective decision making process that is flawed, that is wrong, and is recipe for making wrong decisions.

Lets wake up from this illusion. Lets get smart. Lets use the smarts of the entire nation. Great things are possible when we all put our heads together.

Kabir Jaffe

http://www.essencetraining.com

kabir@iucis.edu

Wiki Government

Immediate Participatory Government

The concept of “Wiki Government” is a model of citizen participation in the activities of government. To create a context for these ideas, it is valuable to start with one of the foundational statements of the Declaration of Independence, “Government of the people, by the people and for the people”, and the forms of government that ensue from it.

In the times of our nations founder’s the government was based in Washington while the people lived in many far-flung locations. We therefore needed someone to represent us; and a representative is what we called our elected members.

But representatives are individuals with their own agendas. They are easily swayed by the influences of money, power, the press, and many other forces. The result is that they may not so perfectly represent the people who’ve they’ve been charged to represent.

In addition, our elected officials are dealing with an overwhelming number of complex issues, very few of which they are deeply knowledgeable about. So their decisions are not always based on sound facts or unbiased logic.

Immediate Participatory Government
Due to the advances in computers and telecommunications, there is the possibility today to address these issues in a different way. We do not need representatives in the same form as we did in the past. We now have the ability to involve the intelligence of great numbers of people in a form of immediate participatory government.

The goal of government of the people, by the people and for the people gets a whole new meaning through the interconnectedness of the Internet, the participatory nature of the software that we call wikis, and the ubiquitous penetration of the cell phone and text messaging. These tools can allow people to be involved in an immediate and comprehensive level.

The power of hundred of millions of minds creating together
What these tools do is allow issues to be put on the table and brought to the collective intelligence of our nation. We can draw upon the vast experience of millions of people. Ideas can be brainstormed, discussed, and looked at from many sides. We can create the means for facts, ideas and diverse experience to meet in constructive dialogue.


Secondly, we can immediately take the pulse of collective feelings through instant messaging, internet polling and voting. Today’s cumbersome process of collective decision-making can change into a continuous and immediate dialogue and feedback process. This process of dialogue and two-way communication is essential. Due to the predominance of TV, communication has become more of a one-way street. People’s voice needs to be heard. We need to talk together rather than be talked at.

The concept of Wiki government creates a new role for our political leaders. In our current political model a politician campaigns by standing for or against particular issues. They may have good ideas about how to deal with the issues. But this is exactly the problem; they are ideas, not necessarily deeply thought-through or tried in the furnace of experience. The real problem is that the model of a politician coming up with solutions to issues is fundamentally wrong. None of these individuals are experts and certainly not experts at the many complex issues they must deal with. Though they are applying their intelligence and coming up with solutions, these are the solutions of an individual or a small subset of individuals trying to deal with a large and complex problem.

Leaders as facilitators of social dialogue and implementers of the collective will
The model of Wiki government provides another way to deal with this. Imagine a politician who does not campaign on the issues but rather starts with the expression the more honest expression, “I don’t know.” One who has the humility to say, “The solution to this problem we face is too big for me to come up with a quick solution, one that I am then going to commit our nation to. Rather, I would like us to brainstorm. I would like us all together to apply our intelligence to the issue, to look at it from all sides, to hear the voices of many. And through that dialogue process, to allow a direction and decision of action to emerge.”

This is a new kind of leader operating in a new form of government. A leader does not have to try and be a know-it-all with solutions for everything. And people do not have to just trust and follow. Leaders need to become facilitators of social dialogue. Through dialogue there emerges a course of action. The leader then implements and manages these collective decisions. And through the ongoing and immediate involvement of large numbers of people, we can continually adjust our strategies as we learn from our experiences. After all, does not a business first research and test a new product before committing itself to it? Why does government not first test the many solutions to issues before we commit to them?

I believe that when several hundred million good minds and passionate hearts focus on a issue that not only will we generate a creative insight that is immense beyond anything that we have yet experienced, but that we will come up with the best of solutions. And not only will we come up with the best solutions, but we will all be involved in the solution. As each individual is more knowledgeable and feels that he or she has a hand in them, we become more committed to playing our part in making it work. Not only would Wiki government generate the best ideas, but it would bring back in to the collective decision-making process a great many creative individuals.

Kabir Jaffe

http://www.essencetraining.com

kabir@iucis.edu