I’ve had a few Medium contributors say that Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG) will never work. Humanity is just too contorted to put such a humanistic system of governance together.
In 1688, England finally got its Parliament functioning along the lines of the Magna Carta. Undoubtedly, there were naysayers in the crowd who were saying: “We tried that before and it didn’t work.” Yet this new system of governance was able to colonize much of the world.
In 1789, the United States ratified its Constitution. There were naysayers in those crowds who were saying, “This new way can’t work.” Yet the American Constitution became a model for many other countries—and the USA colonized the world in an economic way.
After World War 2, the continental Europeans analyzed why their former systems of governance had failed them. They kept some features of their previous primitive democracy. They added some new features. Proportional representation and a few other features became a big part of European democratic governance. But there were naysayers saying, “The Europeans have always been at war. That’s their nature. This new democracy won’t last.”
In a way, all the naysayers were right. These were unknown, untried ways to elect a government and hold it accountable to the people. No one at that time was 100% certain of where these changes would take them. Failure was possible.
And yet, these institutions did not fail. They have lasted a long time. They have certainly long outlasted all their original naysayers.
These systems worked mostly because the advocates of these new ways worked to make them work.
And that is the same way the TDG will become the next step in our evolution of governance. The naysayers can naysay all they want, but they will have no further effect—after we get started.
Published on Medium 2021
