Chapter 8: The Post-Transition

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

C. S. Lewis

In Chapter 6, I described a process to legally transition from the western democratic model to the TDG. I also stated that this transition would involve changing western democracy’s electoral laws, as they are incompatible with the TDG. All other institutions of western democracy would more or less remain in place, and the new TDG would initially work within all these institutions.

However, it is important to realize that the TDG is not just an updated version of the western democratic model. It is a whole new process of governance that has a whole new way of thinking and reaching societal decisions. If I wasn't clear enough in the preceding chapters, I am going to summarize the main points in new ways.

• The positions of TDG governance will be open to all citizens, so society will have a bigger pool of talent to choose from.
  
  
• If constructed properly, a mature TDG will have created a culture that minimizes an overly ambitious individual's quest for a powerful position in governance.
  
  
• Most citizens will be indifferent whether they are elected or unelected, whether they rise higher in the TDG, or whether they are appointed to the advisory board. They will see whatever way the TDG calls them into governance as an honor to the positive attributes they were given or have developed. Many called into this service will give their best efforts to the TDG, whether that be for a short time or a long time. When they are no longer called, they will willingly accept this decision and make way for the new people.
  
  
• If we have such individuals being elected or appointed to governance, what is the likelihood that they will abuse their positions of influence and power?
  
  
• But even when a high-ranking TDG official does put him- or herself in a position that brings discredit to the TDG, that individual will most likely not be re-elected in the next annual election. In essence, the annual election becomes an important check-and-balance to remove the infrequent corrupt officials from office, albeit in an undramatic way.
  
  
• There will also be a different relationship between the general citizenry and the TDG officials. Citizens will see many people of good character and competence elected and appointed into government. They will have more trust and respect for these individuals. They will also know these people are making their decisions by employing the consultative process. There are no favors to be paid off, no party unity to be displayed, and no re-election considerations. The people making the decisions will be altruistically motivated—only for the good of the society they serve. Since the citizens know and feel this new way, they will be more likely to be accepting of TDG decisions that they disagree with. In other words, they will be less likely to fight the decision or degrade the decision-makers. They will, instead, have an attitude of: “Well, I don’t understand why the TDG made that decision, but they have more insight than I have, and maybe the decision will all turn out well. If not, I’m sure they will fix any mistake.” 
  
  
• With such an acceptance, there will be new strategies for implementing government initiatives. New initiatives can be tried, monitored, and changed without fear of some kind of punishment. The society or community will learn new things from these experiments. If a new initiative is not found to produce effective results, it will be because the society or community tried its best to make it work and could not make it work. Therefore the initiative can be fully discarded, with certain lessons learned, because it is truly a failure—not because of opposition was successful in supplanting the initiative before it was allowed to bear its fruits (or lack thereof).
  
  
• With opposition to a perceived bad initiative curtailed, it might seem the TDG stifles debate and discussion. This, however, is not the case. The TDG should encourage all sorts of discussion and debate and perspectives and consultation. After the decision has been made, the elected and appointed officials should all get behind it to see if it will truly work or not. And the citizenry should accept that some very capable people have listened to many sides of the issue and come to a conclusion based on what they felt was best for the society or community.
  
  
• The process of consultation is the act of combining the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of all participants to create the final decision. We need to realize that we, as individuals, reach certain conclusions and decisions based on the current knowledge, experience, and wisdom we currently hold. But if we had more of these assets, we will likely come to a different conclusion or decision. We need to see the people who often disagree with us as a source of knowledge, experience, and wisdom we don't currently have—so that we can come to a higher understanding of the issues that face us.
  
  
• The advisory board of the TDG provides the elected representatives with a source of credible knowledge, experience, and wisdom—which the elected institutions can use to reevaluate their consultative processes and decisions. These advisors will have both an important part of the decision-making process and a check-and-balance to encourage the elected representatives to work within the spirit of the TDG.
  

The final result is a much greater trust between the citizens and their elected representatives. With this trust, comes an ability to make further changes to governance—and create an ever advancing civilization.

Post-Transition Changes

Because the TDG-in-waiting will not be investing much of its resources towards a total overhaul of government institutions and operations, many of the existing institutions will be in place when the transition occurs. As the TDG works with these institutions, it may discover there are some good reasons for why things are the way they are and will leave them alone. But it could also discover new and better structures for governance.

The following is a list of a few of these changes I anticipate. However, I should make it clear that I do not necessarily recommend that any future TDG make these changes. I’m just simply pointing out the potential for new structures within governance will be possible because we will have a much more trustworthy system of governance in place. I shall leave it the future TDG to make these kinds of changes.

Melding of Municipal, Provincial, and National Levels

As alluded to in Chapter 3, there may be need for only one government. For example, future TDG representatives at the neighborhood level could be addressing issues that are currently under municipal, provincial, and national jurisdictions. We may even go into a world government via the TDG. We will have to see how the TDG evolves.

If there is just one level of government, then the highest tier will set the authority and responsibilities of each tier, decentralizing some decisions and centralizing others. These changes will happen naturally as the needs of society change. Political scientists refer to this structure as “unitary government,” which is already common within many western democracies.

Introducing and Passing Bills

A TDG could create interesting relationships for bills in parliament. Such TDGs may allow lower level tiers to introduce bills into higher level tiers. Or higher tiers may need the approval of both itself and several lower tiers to pass a bill. All sorts of relationships may evolve for the introduction and passing of bills.  

Ministers & Ministries

Traditionally, western democracies put elected politicians in charge of the various government ministries. These people may or may not have technical experience to handle these ministries, and usually they stay in charge for less than two years. While political scientists probably have good reasons for why ministerial positions have evolved in this way, one has to wonder how any long-term planning can occur with such a revolving door of variable and questionable talents.

The TDG could create a different kind of ministry. I envision the individual minister being replaced with a four-person committee. One member of this committee comes from the highest tier; one member is an acknowledged expert appointed by the highest tier; one member is appointed from the general public, probably someone who has served in the TDG at the lower levels for several years; and one member is a senior and long-serving employee of the ministry.

Each member serves a four-year term. Each year, one member is replaced. In this way, the ministerial committee keeps most of its institutional knowledge, yet allows fresh thinking into its group on a continual basis. 

And with four members instead of one, the citizenry has much more access to the “minister” to present their case.

And of course, each ministerial committee should work with a consultative mindset and have its own advisor to help it attain that mindset.

I should repeat that this new form of minister is just an idea at this stage. As the TDG evolves, it is likely to create a different kind of minister than what western democracy has created.

Parliamentary Procedures

In most western democracies, the rules of passing bills into legislation can be quite onerous. Such complexity allows the citizenry sufficient opportunity to know about the government's desires, which provides opportunity to make appropriate appeals to their elected representatives. With these rules, the government behaves less arbitrarily, having to give their bills due process before they become laws.

But often these same rules are used to thwart much needed legislation. A small minority of parliamentarians can use the rules to hold up a particular bill in parliament. Even if they are not successful in defeating that bill, other bills will be delayed or dropped. So the rules, not the logic or popular support of an opposing position, become more important in deciding what bills are turned into law.

As well, onerous rules often discourage much needed legislation from being created. Only when public support reaches a critical level will the government be convinced to do the right thing, and put the bill on the agenda to go through the process to create new legislation.

The future TDG will involve the public more fully and allow all sorts of discussion while drafting bills. Its very nature will mean the parliamentary rules will no longer be as necessary because there will have been so much public consultation before the bill is introduced. The future TDG could streamline the formal process of turning a bill into legislation. A TDG would not only pass more legislation than any western democratic nation, it would be quicker to repeal or amend laws that do not work.

Appropriate Accountability

Dishonest people have indirectly created many laws with their dishonesty. If a dishonest person manages to attain funds from government (or someone else) by fraudulent means, the politicians are under pressure to craft some legislation to deal with that fraud.

The intent of such legislation is well placed. But the legislation also puts extra burdens on honest citizens to conduct their own affairs. When such legislation has been created, has it struck a reasonable balance between preventing future fraud and keeping those burdens to a minimum? If the legislation becomes too burdensome, how long will it take to change it?     

When a certain accountability law no longer serves a balanced purpose, it could probably be amended or rescinded more easily under a TDG than with a western democratic process.

And as TDG representatives and citizens become more honest in their reports to government, there will be less of a need to keep the more onerous accountability systems in place.

Appropriate Regulations

In western democracy, unbalanced regulations remain in effect for many years because the government is too busy dealing with more pressing issues than fixing regulations that have lost their balance. Under a TDG, regulations can be more easily changed to create a balanced purpose. 

Executive/Legislative/Judicial

Western democracy has split the executive, legislative and judicial functions of governance as a check-and-balance for each other. The most important reason for this split is to minimize the tendency of powerful people to overlook and override the laws when they don't suit the powerful people’s purpose.

But with the elected representatives of the higher tiers being people of trustworthy character, maybe the TDG can take down some of those walls between the elected representatives and the judiciary to provide a more efficient and more justice-oriented approach. Maybe the TDG society can rely less on the written laws to reach decisions and rely more on sound judgment from small committees of wise citizens. Maybe the TDG could elect or appoint long-serving jurors who would make it a full-time job to review cases coming to the courts.

Likewise, the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of government, which vary considerably between today's western democracies, could also be changed by the future TDG. It may be wise to widen the split or narrow it. All sorts of new combinations are possible.

Adapting Positive Values

Recalling the story of Gstan and Hstanfrom the first chapter, the leaders of one society let its citizens develop their own value system while the leaders of the other society gently coaxed its citizens to spend less of their time on a rather wasteful and potentially harmful form of recreation. Unlike the western democratic model, which does not have a good history of leading people to do the right thing at the right time, the TDG can be much more proactive and effective in shifting societal values. Such shifts could create levels of prosperity for future generations thatthe western democratic model is incapable of attaining.

Boundaries

Most boundaries between nations, provinces, and municipalities have historical roots. Sometimes these boundaries were created without much practical consideration at the time. But even if these boundaries were practical at the time, the world has changed so much that it is mostly history that holds geographical areas within a specific political unit.

Under a TDG, boundaries could be changed that better fit an area's geography, economic and trade patterns, environmental challenges, and future social-economic development. Some jurisdictions could be split into several smaller jurisdictions while other could be amalgamated. These kinds of changes will result in new economic and societal efficiencies as well as give jurisdictions a greater sense of purpose. If changes to boundaries can create new organizational opportunities, the TDG will be able to make these changes.

Legal System

Western democracy's legal systems tend to favor the side with more financial resources, both in civil and criminal law. Maybe a TDG could set up legal procedures such that a wealthier side could not use the legal rules to financially drain their opponent as its means of attaining victory.

In criminal law, the TDG could set up professional juries where citizens spend a few years on the jury bench, deliberating on 10 or so cases during their tenure. As they gain more experience as a juror, they will be looking at cases with more maturity and understanding—and teaching the new jurors about the jury process.

I have always found it strange that citizen juries, who are amateurs in law, need unanimous consent to convict or acquit, yet the supreme courts, backed with years of legal training and experience, require only a majority vote. Maybe this relationship needs to be thought over.

Limiting Freedoms

In general, citizens should still have the freedom of association for most things. But by being more credible in the eyes of the citizenry, the TDG may suspend these rights—after a great amount of consultation—for certain organizations, such as organized crime. People associating too closely with such organizations should face societal sanctions, not hide under laws designed to keep corrupt government officials from abusing their power.

Again in general, citizens should have a great freedom of choice in most things. But some citizens, like drug addicts, are incapable of making good choices for themselves. Societal intervention is necessary for these people to progress to their true potential. A TDG will be capable of judging when intervention is necessary and establish the rules of that intervention.

More Committees, Less Figureheads

True consultation really doesn’t require a “leader” to make the decisions when committees stall into opposing positions. Elected and appointed TDG officials will make timely and effective decisions to move their society forward. Consultative committees just won’t stall.

Eventually, the public will put more trust into the TDG process—and not be too concerned about the individuals who seem to have a leadership position. Many citizens will understand that their annual vote to find someone of character and competence in their neighborhood is critical to the TDG process.

Direct Tax Allocation

In most societies, citizens do not have direct say in where their taxes go. The TDG could allow citizens to choose which government department to send that citizen’s taxes to; for example, national defense, social assistance programs, scientific research, etc. In this way, citizens will become more content with paying taxes knowing that their money is going where they want.

We could argue that such tax payments will reduce the need for elected representatives to make decisions. This will not happen for two reasons. First, not all citizens will allocate their taxes in this way; their taxes will go to general government revenues. As well, there are other sources of government revenue that the elected representatives will have control over. The elected representatives would be in a good position to know about other government departments that are not as popular with the public. Second, the elected representatives still need to establish the rules on how the allocated taxes are to be spent. And the elected representatives need to monitor those government departments.

Media Tax Allocation

Taxpayers could also allocate some of their taxes to their preferred media outlet. In this way, media outlets would be less reliant on advertising revenue, thereby reducing its influence on the stories reported.

The Consultancy

An earlier section of this chapter alluded to a different kind of ministry. A TDG may want to set up another institution, which can be called The Consultancy.

Acknowledged experts from different academic fields—such as science, sociology, economics, etc.—can be gathered to form panels for their respected discipline. When an elected tier or ministry needs some outside perspective on an issue, it can call in an appropriate panel of The Consultancy. The panel will take in the issue and—from its collective knowledge, experience, and wisdom—offer the decision-makers its position on the issue. The decision-makers are not obligated to take the advice of the panel. But with the wise commentary from the panel, the decision-makers should reach a better decision than if they didn’t have the panel’s recommendations.

Ideally, a panel of The Consultancy should reach a unanimous position. But if not, alternative perspectives should be party of its report to the elected side of the TDG. 

The consultancy is different from the advisory board. The advisory board is about the process of governance; the consultancy is about providing respected technical insight into any issue. Any elected tier of the TDG should have access to the consultancy to help it make better decisions.

Similar to the advisory board,citizens who accept positions in the consultancy should resign any elected or appointed positions they hold in the TDG. Members of the consultancy can be voted for in the TDG elections. If they are elected to the tiers or appointed to the advisory board, they must choose which position is which they want to serve. A citizen can serve only in one of three sections of the TDG: the elected tier, the advisory board, or the consultancy.

A branch of the consultancy may create its own tiers. For example, the highest tier may appoint acknowledged experts from agriculture to an agricultural panel. This panel advises the highest tier and second highest tier on matters of agriculture. However, it may not be practical for this panel to work with the lower tiers. So it creates a second tier of agricultural experts to deal with agricultural concerns of the lower tiers.

Similar to the advisory board, the highest tier of the agricultural panel will appoint qualified people to the lower consultancy panel. These people will be getting great experience at this lower level and would be likely candidates when a vacancy in the higher agricultural panel occurs.

If the TDG does go in this consultancy direction, I would advise that the people appointed to these panels should not just proffer their own views, but also the views of various sectors of their discipline. Let the elected tiers be informed of the different theories within any discipline. Provide several alternatives with the pros and cons of each alternative. And if the panel is unified on a certain consensus, let the tier know of this unity. When the panel of the consultancy has presented its report, let the elected tiers figure out the best way to implement the knowledge, experience, and wisdom the panel brings into the decision.

This particular idea came to me by Spencer Ferri, author of Post-Existential Transhumanism.

The Legislators

Rather than having legislation being drafted and decided at the higher tiers, the higher tiers will identify a societal need that requires new legislation. The tiers then appoint people to draft that legislation. These people could come from The Consultancy as described above, civil service, and current and former lower tier representatives. This group would focus fully with just this one piece of legislation, with few other distractions of governance.

Several alternatives should be presented. The group should try to better all the alternatives, before selecting one alternative over the others. Some members will be championing their preference. And this is OK as other members will take a more neutral approach and be the wise oversight of the decision. When a decision is made, the group will recommend it to the higher tiers.If a clear majority is not attained, the group will give two or three alternatives for the higher tier to consider.

Once the legislation is passed, the group is disbanded.

The particular idea was inspired by Tony Bracks, author of “Solving for Democracy.” Mr. Bracks thought common people should be more involved in the legislative process, but they needed to be focused on one task. Mr. Bracks has other interesting ideas for improving democracy. I really recommend this book.

Social Contentment

Many more citizens are going to take an active role in TDG governance than whatever western democracy provides. Consider the neighborhood representatives, district representatives, higher tier representatives, low tier advisors, higher tier advisors, juries, the consultancy, and the legislators—all calling citizens to a small active part in government. Not only will many citizens have a better understanding of how government works because they have experienced it (much different than watching or studying it), their involvement will also provide more personal contentment in their own lives for having participated in this way and a stronger connection with the world around them. The TDG is about people working with people learning about people.

Evolutionary Changes

The future TDG will keep many western democratic principles and features as part of society's basic democratic values. However, as the TDG unlocks more of humanity's potential, the reasons for maintaining these principles will become less important. These kinds of changes could happen with or without any formal action of the TDG parliament. For example:

• There would be no need for the TDG to take away the democratic right to peaceful protest. But with better governance, the citizens will have less need for this tool to make their concerns known and felt.
  
  
• The media should be allowed the same freedoms in the TDG as it had with western democracy. But with less scandal and confrontation to report in politics, the nature of the media is going to change.
  
  
• The attitude towards taxation will also change because the general citizenry will be more trusting of government and its decisions. Citizens will better realize the importance of paying their share of taxes as part of living in civil society rather than trying to find interesting ways to minimize or avoid taxes.
  
  
• The right to free expression should still be part of TDG governance. But with the TDG's abilities to change societal value systems and garnering respect for governance, many of the anti-constructive voices will not find much of an audience for their opinions.
  
  
• Likewise, guiding citizens to higher moral and ethical standards will reduce the market demand for many of the world's vices. This morality dividend could have a great impact on future prosperity.
  
  
• The motivation behind decisions will change. With the TDG, gone will be societal decisions based mostly for the benefit for political parties and their electoral success. Certain demographic groups, political careers, or political expediency will have much less effect on decisions. Rather, the elected representative will focus on what is best for the society they govern. 
  

Anticipating the Critics

I know that more than a few readers will think that many of the possible changes a TDG could make to democracy (described in the previous two sections) will not be beneficial to better governance. This initial reaction, I believe, stems from a common belief that western democracy is actually a very simple concept, easy to explain and easy to put into practice.Thus democracy can be platitude driven. If the platitudes (such as “freedom of choice,” “due process to create new laws,” and “unchangeable boundaries”) are challenged to any degree, this will justify—for some readers—throwing aside the entire discussion of the 12 limitations of political parties, tiered governance with indirect elections, consultation, and an advisory board.

What these critics conveniently will not mention is that western democracies are always in a constant state of changing democratic privileges and responsibilities. Laws are passed to limit freedoms; processes to change these laws are always being tinkered with; laws are not uniformly applied; some information is always being held from public scrutiny; some public information is not being utilized by the opposition or media; some vested interests manage to bend the rules to their favor. All these are examples of western democracies not being able to fulfill their own platitudes 100% of the time.

Western democracies have done well at not enshrining certain democratic principles into an absolute law (as the platitudes seem to suggest) but instead have a process that strikes a reasonable and acceptable balance between freedoms and restrictions. For example, “freedom of speech” does not give one citizen the right to tell outright lies about another citizen as libel laws can be used to compensate for loss of reputation. This balance has provided citizens in western democracies with more prosperity and opportunity—which, in turn, has created a more civil society.

A good example of the platitudes in action was Canada's law for impaired driving, brought on by the introduction of the breathalyzer, a machine to determine state of impairment of the driver. This was a controversial political issue in the early 1970s. Many Canadians at that time did not see a problem with alcohol impairment and operating a vehicle. For these citizens, their arguments were not that such changes were unlikely to make highways that much safer, but the very law itself was restricting the freedom of many citizens. And if the government could restrict this particular freedom, it would eventually restrict other freedoms. Hence, the opposition, in their own minds, arose to defeat this bill in order to save democracy. The fact that this new law was going to make this behavior into a criminal offence was not part of the logic they presented to the public.

It has been more than 40 years since this debate was silenced by passing that impaired driving bill into law. Canada has not evolved into some kind of oppressive state that the critics were predicting. In fact, most Canadians today have accepted keeping impaired drivers off the road is good for society. They would wonder why this legislation, which obviously limits individual freedom, was so controversial in its days of implementation.

The reason I brought up this anecdote of Canada's impaired driving laws is to show how opponents of many great social movements rely on various democratic platitudes as their main and often only point. I predict the same will happen with the TDG. Much of the opposition will make cries like “The TDG is undemocratic because it does not let the citizenry vote directly for the highest tier” or “The TDG will force repressive legislation on the citizenry because it will streamline the parliamentary procedures that took many decades to refine,” as if these statements are enough in themselves to explain why the TDG concept should be abandoned and possibly suppressed.

Most of the opposition the TDG will face will be strong and vociferous and influential. But it will be platitude driven, and thus not very intellectually guided. The TDG builders should prepare to defend against this rhetoric.

Conclusion

For sure, the future TDG will pull apart some of the institutions of western democracy. The main reason is that many of these institutions were based on society not being able to trust its powerful elected and appointed individuals. When the citizenry gains trust of its TDG representatives, the continuance of those western democratic traditions will not have the same necessity. New structures of governance are bound to be built. We should not fear these changes which will be an essential part of humanity developing its full potential.