Peace, opportunity, and prosperity
My heritage is of an Eastern European peasant. My grandparents were destined to a life of hard work and destitution. Had not the world evolved, my natural destiny was to follow a similar path for the progeny of peasants did not rise higher than their parents. My occupation would have been a farm laborer or hard-rock miner. These occupations do not lead to gaining the experience, education, time, and energy to write a book about an alternative democracy. My life would have been focused on survival, not about writing books.
But the world did evolve. It started evolving 200 years ago, when we started developing a significant surplus in our economy. Some of that surplus went to the 85% of us who did the dirty work. We could afford the time and a little income to develop passions outside of our work, family, religion, and alcohol.
I’ve been working on my Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG) project for 28 years. It has not provided me with any kind of a living. So I’ve had to take on jobs to pay rent and buy food. We can say that Tiered Democratic Governance has been my hobby. People around me think too much of a hobby.
But had I been born a generation earlier, that hobby would not have been an option for me. I would have been too busy trying to make ends meet, just like my grandfathers. In other words, I benefited from the rise of the middle class after WW2.
Development and promoting my works have given me a sense of purpose. This purpose could not have been attained with my various occupations. Even though I have not been “successful” with this purpose, I am a much more content citizen than my ancestors. With the internet, my ideas are “out there,” and that provides a great sense of satisfaction.
There are many hobbies that those of us in the proletariat class can embark on. Sports and arts are common hobbies. Some of us do find passion in our work. We can start businesses, get an education, or volunteer. Many of our lives are not the daily struggle to find food and shelter. We have the time and energy to do other things.
In my article My Experience with Communism, I explain how the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia knew the importance of social relief valves that allowed their citizens to channel their energy away from thinking about overthrowing the government or other destructive actions.
Citizens do not live on ideology for long. They need some peace, opportunity, and prosperity. They need a creative outlet. . . . . . Or they revolt. History gives that lesson over and over again.
Purpose in the TDG
In my hypothetical TDG city of 100,000 residents, I estimate 600 citizens will be involved in TDG governance. Today’s cities of similar size might have 15 elected officials. Opening up governance to many more citizens will give them a sense of participation in the decisions of society. Not only that, these citizens will be working in a much more friendlier environment than our current politics. They will enjoy this “hobby.”
Let me say this in a different way: Society has many capable people for governance. The TDG elections will filter out most of the psychopaths who aspire for public office — and their political games. So the more capable people will be happy to be in TDG governance, creating much better solutions than whatever the western democratic model has created for us.
Rother than drowning themselves in entertainment or other hobbies, these people will be much more content with their lives. So TDG governance becomes a social relief valve. And society gets much better governors.
Yeah, but Dave, your TDG is not built
So true.
Could building the TDG not be another social relief valve?
Wouldn’t it be better for your psyche to build this new democracy than to watch or read the political news all day, seeing how things are falling apart?
Maybe drowning ourselves in entertainment is deliberate so that we won’t build any “alternative democracy.” Think about that!
Published on Medium & Substack 2025
