Thank you Jeremy. The idea that this is a design problem really shifts things.
It helps explain why so many people feel disconnected or frustrated. Not because they’re disengaged, but because the system wasn’t built to reflect or respond to them in the first place.
What stands out is that alternatives aren’t theoretical. They’re already happening, and they show what becomes possible when people are actually included in meaningful ways.
It also feels like this could go even further. But even this shift, toward more genuine participation and shared responsibility, already points in a different direction than what we’ve been working within.
That alone feels significant, especially right now.
The essay is mistakingly thinking candidate selection back when we had robust lower case "d" democratic governance structures was like it is now with natinal level candidate selection. Governance was organized through robust small “d” democratic structures, candidate selection and accountability were deeply interwoven within dense local civic ecosystems instead of being mediated through distant, centralized filters.
Local parties, civic associations, trades groups, business groups, municipal institutions, and others functioned as continuous vetting and accountability mechanisms people rose through visible participation, reputation, and demonstrated competence within their communities, not just through fundraising or media positioning. Because most policy authority and fiscal control sat at the local and state level, officials were directly accountable to constituencies that interacted with them regularly and could exert real pressure or replace them without navigating nationalized party hierarchies. This produced a tighter feedback loop between decision-makers and the governed, where accountability was practical and immediate rather than abstract and episodic.
A big problems with this is proposal is that in order for meaningful democratic capacity to exist it requires widely and deeply federated decision power. Just replacing elections with sortition or deliberative assemblies inside a centralized political economic structure doesn’t restore democracy; it just switches out the interface while leaving power concentrated. And if you do return to widely and deeply federated structures than the random assembly system becomes void. The key variable isnt the selection mechanism, it’s whether the system allows for genuine local autonomy, legal variability, policy variability, and distributed and pluralized capital formation.
And the proposal as given would quickly smuggle in an unexamined managerial layer that becomes the real locus of power, this is because some people must design and audit the lottery, define eligibility, curate and sequence topics, select and brief experts, set deliberation rules, allocate time, and integrate outputs into binding policy, yet none of these actors are themselves selected by sortition or subjected to equivalent accountability, so the system simply displaces decision making into a technocratic meta-structure that is upstream of the assemblies; without locally grounded institutional ecosystems (fiscal authority, capital control, civic integration, etc) to constrain it, this “deliberative” layer is far easier to capture, standardize, than even the current system we have is
And it doesnt answer, or even ponder a single structural question
How do you explain where forms of this neighborhood based democracy is ALREADY working and showing much better results than the oligarch fascist “democracy “ (aka USA)??? Take your time….
Thank you, Jeremy, for a fantastic piece. The fact that societies are considering deliberative democracy seriously is positive and Audrey Tang's work is so encouraging as it shows it can be done at scale.
Amazing how little we hear about these alternative forms of governing. By design, no doubt, inherent in the system that desperately needs to be changed and that fiercely resists any meaningful attempts to change it. We need to get the word out! This is a great contribution. Thank you.
lets take a brief look at the two examples the essay provides, because they don’t actually support the essay’s sortition argument. Kerala and DAANES/Rojava both rely on layered, territorially grounded governance with embedded institutions, not random selection. Kerala’s model is built on elected local bodies, neighborhood groups, and long-standing civic and political organizations tied into real fiscal channels; Rojava’s model (to the extent it functions at all) is structured through councils, parties, and administrative layers, not lotteries. In other words, both cases align with what I described: participation emerging through durable, locally embedded systems with continuity, accountability, and integration into real decision-making power, not episodic, randomly assembled panels.
At the same time, both examples have intensive flaws that need to fixed (although the DAANES/Rojava has, at least in theory, an excuse derived from the near constant state of armed conflict the territory has been in for well over a decade) and which leave them with quite coercive centralized constraints, which is part and parcel the structural matters I’m raising. In DAANES/Rojava, the commune layer exists alongside, and is ultimately subordinate to, military/security command structures (SDF/Asayish), which is at least partially explainable given constant conflict. But in Kerala, the constraints are more revealing, even where local participation is real, budgetary authority is partial and conditional, major economic decisions are shaped by centralized banking/financial systems outside local control, and regulatory frameworks channel regions into predefined roles within a larger, coordinated economic system. So even one of the strongest real-world examples of participatory governance still operates within structural limits that prevent full democratic autonomy.
That’s why the sortition proposal is actually weaker than both examples, and weaker than what we have now. It removes even the imperfect pathways of accountability (elections, party competition, public scrutiny) and replaces them with temporary, randomly selected bodies that lack continuity, institutional memory, and embedded accountability, while simultaneously introducing an unaccountable managerial layer that sets agendas, frames decisions, and controls implementation. Without restoring distributed fiscal power, local control over capital, institutional plurality, and real jurisdictional autonomy, those assemblies wouldnt govern, they would pseudo-deliberate inside a system whose core decisions are made elsewhere.
What's your take on a potential solution? I like seeing counter arguments so that I can think critically and learn from people like you, but I also think critics should speak to possible alternative solutions. Either actionable reforms within current system or countering with another alternative design.
So, one possible solution might be the establishment of an actual social contract for citizens/voters/residents. The contract is self selective and renewable. It ties in to local governance first, and lists rights/privileges as well as responsibilities/obligations. Issues in need of resolve/actions are issued as a form of currency (political capital). Individuals can decide themselves how to vote by accessing data and research provided, or seek their own. If voting exposes a participant, they can pass the decision to a representative of their choice to mask themselves politically/religiously/sexually/etc. A kind of stock exchange of political capital emerges. Government efficiency lowers the cost of delivery and customize service and infrastructure delivery which can lean on pledged obligations and responsibility to deliver and implement community services through community service and deepening local sovereignty in terms of supply and delivery of essential services.
Social contracts could be gamefied to allow participants to quest for higher agency and authority within community thereby becoming leaders and increasing their local basic income/welfare payments.
This could extend to organically train and deploy police, sanitation, energy, food, care, and nursing equivalent workforce, decoupling from "for profit" ROI frameworks in relation to basic community services.
At larger scales of regional/national/transnational/global governance the system can scale more effectively because the issues will be about wider policies and distribution of interregional flows of resources/capital and policy frameworks. Ideological posturing becomes irrelevant as governance becomes about delivery rather than choosing the team that delivers. Datasets that are transparent from the bottom up, but opaque from the top down will help alleviate vulnerability from rivals and neighbors.
Everything could be blockchained to ensure records and prevent corruption to some extent. Lobby groups wanting to pay for influence will have to make community wide donations. Global business or other entities with particular geographic interests regarding resources or trade routes pitch directly on the local community exchange. Payment rails are built in.
So, I actually propose a middle ground myself that I believe solves a lot of the problems we see in elections, while also addressing some of the concerns being outlined. I've published a peer reviewed paper on this topic, and am building up the model on my substack piece by piece for a broader audience.
Basically, I maintain elections (though, using a proportionally representative system, as we see around the world today), however, instead of using majoritarian rules where you need 50% of the vote to pass legislation, I make it so that any legislation that reaches a mere 20% is approved. Approved legislation doesn't become law, but it does reach the next phase, which is a trial.
Those who write and approve legislation act as the defence, and those who vote against it act as the prosecution, and a sortitional body acts as a jury. I argue this sovles a great deal of problems we see today.
First, the way legislation is passed in a majoritarian system is one of dominance. Passing legislation doesn't require that the legislation be good, benefitial, or to serve, only that the party writing it won the most seats. This makes the mechanism to gain power one of elections and campaigning, entirely. A politicians job isn't to create legislation, but to campaign. Legislation serves only to benefit campaigns. If a politician believes bad legislation can pass without harming their campaigning, then they are fine passing it. Even worse, bad legislation can often help their campaign, as campaigning is expensive and wealthy interests can provide funding to pass legislation for their own interests, but few else.
This also creates a highly competitive environment where in order to gain power, one must dominate the other parties. This incentivizes partisanship, as a clear path to victory is simply making the other party look bad.
It also simplifies responsibility. Sometimes a party may in fact be doing the best possible action at all times, but due to circumstances outside their control (like a global pandemic, unpredictable economic outcomes, wars), the economy goes poor. Since people really only experience outcomes, and don't necessarily know whether it would be better or worse with different decisions, their reaction is simply to vote out the current party.
In my system, different parties are able to push out legislation independently of one another and parallel to one another. Power does not come from electoral dominance, but through successful trials. Campaigning is no longer their job, it's only a portion of it, and a significantly smaller portion, as the return on investment diminishes. Instead, working on ensuring one can successfully argue the beneficts of legislation against scrutiny is how they find success.
Since they aren't in direct competition, they can act independently of one another, partisanship is no longer incentivized. It likely will still exist, but not nearly so intensely.
Also, since no party is responsible for all the laws that must be made, parties don't have to generalize with broad platforms, but can specialize. A party can run purely on, say, rural rights, or on behalf of unions, or healthcare, or LGBT rights. They don't need a broad platform, as other parties can fill in the gaps. People can vote for the issues that matter to them directly, instead of having to try to parse out broad platforms.
When things go wrong, you cannot simply point to the party "in charge". A more complete analysis is needed. If there was bad legislation to blame, citizens may focus on a party that promises to reverse it. Doing so still requires a trial.
If this interests you and you want to know more, please check out my substack. I'll be posting more and more information on how it all works (like, for example, what stops a party from spamming legislation to clog up the system. The answer to that is in my paper, but will be on my substack in the coming weeks)
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system that had legal and regulatory variability, policy variability, an intentionally diffused and pluralized private sector, and local fiscal dominance. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters by serving as an organizational interface and coordinating mesh for a wide array of organizational linked publicly accessible decision making bodies that spanned economy-schooling/training-culture-science-government, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they don't offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
American Democracy was always, from the start, conceived as a oligarchical, ruled by the elite, system. While centralization clearly occured, there is still plenty of variation between regions, and many of the core problems are still solveable on a local level.
Nonetheless, I would argue that centralization is an inevitable process as humans tend to continuously build structure. As complexity increases, increased cooperation increases, and stronger systems to manage various areas becomes necessary. I think attempting to resist this is largely futile.
What I propose is a middle ground. It maintains the more centralized structure in terms of power, but splits that power up into a greater number of groups, structurally, to ensure the individual needs of each group are taken into account at each step of the process.
RE: "American Democracy was always, from the start, conceived as a oligarchical, ruled by the elite, system"
Well thats challengeable. For example, during the Jacksonian era many groups often described what they were doing an effort to "restore democracy"; they didn't use that phrase as rhetorical cover, but as a statement that things had previously been different and of intentions to engage in a meaningful restructuring of political and economic power away from centralized elites. And when forced into real debate, even their Whig and Federalist opponents, such as Daniel Webster or even elements within the great anti-democrat Biddle’s circle, acknowledged that the early republic had featured broader popular influence, and only with increasing complexity and financial centralization had this eroded. The Jacksonians' (in the NE and Midwest, not the South) disproved those arguments and successfully reversed that trend
RE: "centralization is an inevitable process as humans tend to continuously build structure"
Its always just an organization design choice. Xi and Co have been trying to centralize China in recent years, and theyve been pushing that into overdrive this year (there are signs that serious pushback may be emerging, but I dont know); but at least until quite recently its been running both an economy and a political economy thats quite structurally decentralized and in some key ways strikingly resembles the USA's old system. While the USA was thoroughly decentralized, these same complexity arguments were, for hundreds of years in a row, in other vast territorial systems who said they had to be like that, but the USA wasnt, its just design differences
Good news! People have already been pursuing actionable reforms in the direction I'm talking about and some, with increasing frequency, have actually been having success! Around the country there are examples of local areas have been clawing back rights. And people are starting remember the knowledge of the workings of capital structures again!
The USA’s political economy actually still contains quite large degrees of heterogeneity and diffusion; its just sort of nullified. And I’m increasingly seeing/hearing discourse on the ground level reminiscent of 1830s gen 1.0 Democratic Party’s commentary and the domestic set up we have now is deeply enabled by the planetary economic central planning structures of capital “G” Globalization which very well may be on its way out the door…
This is a most helpful collection of alternative models to the dysfunction‑by‑design form of democracy we struggle with in the United States—one shaped by wealth supremacy and white male supremacy. Grassroots, neighborhood collaboration on real problem solving fosters group cohesion and group cognitive sovereignty. It reflects the subsidiarity dimension of what Blake and Gilman describe, in conjunction with planetarity, in Children of a Modest Star: decision‑making and problem‑solving happening at the most local, competent level, with higher levels supporting rather than overriding. That’s a natural and necessary component of regenerative, planetarity‑based approaches to democracy and economics.
I thought the introduction was worth the $ of the book; a masterful summary & similar in effective scope as Pope Francis’ executive summary of Querida Amazonia; both intros stand-alone gems.
To the extent that democracy ill can be fixed through structural change this is a brilliant and useful piece. Thank you for writing it, Jeremy.
What remains to be written however, is a companion piece, that addresses the affect, attitudes, and ideals that citizens need to bring to any restructuring efforts in order for them to work. It's the same problem realized by those Swedish intellectuals when they discovered that the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals would be unreachable without what they subsequently developed and call the Inner Development Goals.https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/
Luke Kemp: "One thing to bear in mind is that we put absolutely no money into the sphere of creating innovations in democracy, to improving how we represent people at scale. If we actually rewarded this like we reward startups in the space of AI, imagine what we could do." [1]
Roman Krznaric: "There’s a new wave of deliberative democracy, direct participation through random selection. Anyone can set up a citizens assembly in their own town. They tend to come up with much more radical and transformative policy proposals than regular politicians, and tend to take a longer view than the politicians caught up in short term cycles. They are sowing the seeds of asabiyyah, of social trust, helping to build a new society in the shell of the old, so that in a moment of crisis we are ready." [2]
This is certainly one of your best posts to date Jeremy!
I think you hit the nail on the head by naming sortition as the preferable solution when it comes to governance. A close second to sortition would have to be some other radical change, such as ranked choice voting, which has been gaining in popularity (however has continually been challenged by status quo interests). Ranked choice does allow better representation of voter preference, however it still retains some bias in favor of "charisma, wealth, ambition, and connection,” whereas sortition lacks any regard whatsoever for those attributes.
I want to name a few more thinkers in this space, as there has been a lot of speculation regarding how one might separate these left hemisphere attributes (though in other ways perhaps good and necessary) from the more altruistic telos of a right hemisphere disposition. Zak Stein has written about "values-guiding-technology" (see axiological design) [1] and Daniel Schmachtenberger has spoken at length on "wisdom-binding-power." [2] There was also a paper by Harold Hutchinson and George Yarrow concerning the possibility of "lateralisation in the governance system." [3] They wrote:
“[Our governance systems today] attend far too much to activities concerned with power, control and coercion, to ‘grasping’ actions that are the focus of the left hemispheres of human brains… Without right hemisphere input, governments have become easy meat for the partisan lobbyists importuning Leviathan to use its monopoly power in ways that further their own narrow interests, without adequate consideration of their system-wide implications.”
But I think sortition is the best way to achieve the desired separation. Because if we did have sortition, such a governing body could in fact freely deliberate on the important qualitative issues facing society, drawing upon expert testimony as needed, with only their unencumbered “valueception” guiding them. In this way, perhaps we could make some real progress addressing those most complex issues facing us today. If there were ever a moment in history that should wake us up to the need for a radical change of just this sort, that moment is now.
This is a lens that makes the wave of AI layoffs look like an opportunity to participate in real governance. The key, it seems to me, is that bit you mentioned about "significant renumeration."
This is a really optimistic piece much appreciated. For me, it shines a bright spotlight on the difficult and problematic relationship between modern fiat money which PAYS for the things we need to collectively achieve—and which is something that can only be CREATED by the sovereign government—and the movement/need to find ways to operate outside and independent of that sovereignty when it becomes oppressive. It’s a “Catch-22” we have yet to resolve.
Thanks Jeremy. I think we have to zoom out one more level. When the territorial nation-states of today were formed, the main difference was the uniformity of rule. The royals suddenly had absolute power to impose one rule for all. The State was theirs. "L'État, c'est moi" as King Louis XIV put it, just after the elites had agreed to stop fighting the 30-years war and split up the continent between themselves.
When governments were set up, they were set up not to represent the people, but the State. The citizens are the subject of the State. To maintain some kind of facade, they allowed people to cast a vote once in a while about who was to represent the State.
But the fact remains that someone still controlled the State. I have never seen a document saying that it was handed over to the people. Wouldn’t I have a certificate saying so? No, instead I get a birth certificate indicating I’m a subject of the State. When I had my first child, the bureaucracy threatened to name my child if I didn’t register an official name.
I like to draw parallels to how a mafia works. They have their turf, small bosses and big bosses. They meet occasionally to collude on what works best for them, but never hesitate to backstab each other when they get the chance. And they see the residents as their cash cows. The more land and residents, the more money they can extract. When they get big enough, they set up a council to help them run the show.
So what if they want to be nice and let the residents cast a vote about who their preferred boss would be? Wouldn’t that reflect poorly on the residents if they accepted that? Realistically, they would be offered a few rotten eggs to choose from, and maybe it would make sense to vote for the least bad one. But to keep voting for these selected rotten eggs would not change much, because they still represent the mafia. And the local mafia still pulls the strings, until overrun by a bigger or neighbouring boss.
I’m not sure who the big bosses are in the countries I have lived in. But I’m under no illusion that the government is there to represent me.
And until we attempt to break the foundations of the territorial and absolute nation-state, the imposed uniformity of rule, we are its biggest supporters. Ordinary people being angry at our elected leaders is just projecting.
the only way to avoid choosing between such set of elite will rule over you is to ensure that elite are dismantled and prevented from being created. without that preventative measure, we're going to run into this over and over again. that weed removal is essential.
Thank you Jeremy. This so resonates with my belief in local decision making over one's place. The fact that most localities can now also generate their own energy, at least in theory, makes such a transition even more possible. We just have to believe that we can do this. That another way of doing things is possible. That the Nation State is a 19th century invention suited to western European conditions at that time and that other ways of organising ourselves are possible.
That was interesting. I've always had an issue with democracy because as I understand it, women and slaves were excluded from the process. I can't help but feel that somewhat scuppers the whole "for, by and of the people" premise.
I definitely think picking folk at random makes sense, that way you are going to get a more representative sample of the population.
“POVERTY OF PARTICIPATION is related to the fact that most people of the world do not participate in the decisions which affect them and that very frequently when they do participate they have no autonomy to do so, which is the requisite for making it meaningful. This is particularly true for women who are marginalized, just as men, by the authoritarian structure of society. Women are, in addition, marginalized by men due to the parternalistic structure of the family and society. All kinds of social inequities within societies are rooted in this kind of poverty. Distribution of satisfiers tend to be more equitable when defend their interests. This kind of poverty has not been analyzed and discussed enough.” - Carlos Mallmann (Maldevelopment… 1983)
Without participation, there is no creation (with autonomous agency), but someone else creates for us.
Without Participation, there is no Love, but control and order.
Without Participation, there is no Synergy/Maintenance, but alienation that erodes other human needs.
Participation is the most underrated human need and at the core of what we can call 'pseudo-democracy' and maldevelopment.
Thank you Jeremy. The idea that this is a design problem really shifts things.
It helps explain why so many people feel disconnected or frustrated. Not because they’re disengaged, but because the system wasn’t built to reflect or respond to them in the first place.
What stands out is that alternatives aren’t theoretical. They’re already happening, and they show what becomes possible when people are actually included in meaningful ways.
It also feels like this could go even further. But even this shift, toward more genuine participation and shared responsibility, already points in a different direction than what we’ve been working within.
That alone feels significant, especially right now.
The essay is mistakingly thinking candidate selection back when we had robust lower case "d" democratic governance structures was like it is now with natinal level candidate selection. Governance was organized through robust small “d” democratic structures, candidate selection and accountability were deeply interwoven within dense local civic ecosystems instead of being mediated through distant, centralized filters.
Local parties, civic associations, trades groups, business groups, municipal institutions, and others functioned as continuous vetting and accountability mechanisms people rose through visible participation, reputation, and demonstrated competence within their communities, not just through fundraising or media positioning. Because most policy authority and fiscal control sat at the local and state level, officials were directly accountable to constituencies that interacted with them regularly and could exert real pressure or replace them without navigating nationalized party hierarchies. This produced a tighter feedback loop between decision-makers and the governed, where accountability was practical and immediate rather than abstract and episodic.
A big problems with this is proposal is that in order for meaningful democratic capacity to exist it requires widely and deeply federated decision power. Just replacing elections with sortition or deliberative assemblies inside a centralized political economic structure doesn’t restore democracy; it just switches out the interface while leaving power concentrated. And if you do return to widely and deeply federated structures than the random assembly system becomes void. The key variable isnt the selection mechanism, it’s whether the system allows for genuine local autonomy, legal variability, policy variability, and distributed and pluralized capital formation.
And the proposal as given would quickly smuggle in an unexamined managerial layer that becomes the real locus of power, this is because some people must design and audit the lottery, define eligibility, curate and sequence topics, select and brief experts, set deliberation rules, allocate time, and integrate outputs into binding policy, yet none of these actors are themselves selected by sortition or subjected to equivalent accountability, so the system simply displaces decision making into a technocratic meta-structure that is upstream of the assemblies; without locally grounded institutional ecosystems (fiscal authority, capital control, civic integration, etc) to constrain it, this “deliberative” layer is far easier to capture, standardize, than even the current system we have is
And it doesnt answer, or even ponder a single structural question
How do you explain where forms of this neighborhood based democracy is ALREADY working and showing much better results than the oligarch fascist “democracy “ (aka USA)??? Take your time….
This is a thing In Process. But I like the question!
Thank you, Jeremy, for a fantastic piece. The fact that societies are considering deliberative democracy seriously is positive and Audrey Tang's work is so encouraging as it shows it can be done at scale.
Amazing how little we hear about these alternative forms of governing. By design, no doubt, inherent in the system that desperately needs to be changed and that fiercely resists any meaningful attempts to change it. We need to get the word out! This is a great contribution. Thank you.
lets take a brief look at the two examples the essay provides, because they don’t actually support the essay’s sortition argument. Kerala and DAANES/Rojava both rely on layered, territorially grounded governance with embedded institutions, not random selection. Kerala’s model is built on elected local bodies, neighborhood groups, and long-standing civic and political organizations tied into real fiscal channels; Rojava’s model (to the extent it functions at all) is structured through councils, parties, and administrative layers, not lotteries. In other words, both cases align with what I described: participation emerging through durable, locally embedded systems with continuity, accountability, and integration into real decision-making power, not episodic, randomly assembled panels.
At the same time, both examples have intensive flaws that need to fixed (although the DAANES/Rojava has, at least in theory, an excuse derived from the near constant state of armed conflict the territory has been in for well over a decade) and which leave them with quite coercive centralized constraints, which is part and parcel the structural matters I’m raising. In DAANES/Rojava, the commune layer exists alongside, and is ultimately subordinate to, military/security command structures (SDF/Asayish), which is at least partially explainable given constant conflict. But in Kerala, the constraints are more revealing, even where local participation is real, budgetary authority is partial and conditional, major economic decisions are shaped by centralized banking/financial systems outside local control, and regulatory frameworks channel regions into predefined roles within a larger, coordinated economic system. So even one of the strongest real-world examples of participatory governance still operates within structural limits that prevent full democratic autonomy.
That’s why the sortition proposal is actually weaker than both examples, and weaker than what we have now. It removes even the imperfect pathways of accountability (elections, party competition, public scrutiny) and replaces them with temporary, randomly selected bodies that lack continuity, institutional memory, and embedded accountability, while simultaneously introducing an unaccountable managerial layer that sets agendas, frames decisions, and controls implementation. Without restoring distributed fiscal power, local control over capital, institutional plurality, and real jurisdictional autonomy, those assemblies wouldnt govern, they would pseudo-deliberate inside a system whose core decisions are made elsewhere.
What's your take on a potential solution? I like seeing counter arguments so that I can think critically and learn from people like you, but I also think critics should speak to possible alternative solutions. Either actionable reforms within current system or countering with another alternative design.
So, one possible solution might be the establishment of an actual social contract for citizens/voters/residents. The contract is self selective and renewable. It ties in to local governance first, and lists rights/privileges as well as responsibilities/obligations. Issues in need of resolve/actions are issued as a form of currency (political capital). Individuals can decide themselves how to vote by accessing data and research provided, or seek their own. If voting exposes a participant, they can pass the decision to a representative of their choice to mask themselves politically/religiously/sexually/etc. A kind of stock exchange of political capital emerges. Government efficiency lowers the cost of delivery and customize service and infrastructure delivery which can lean on pledged obligations and responsibility to deliver and implement community services through community service and deepening local sovereignty in terms of supply and delivery of essential services.
Social contracts could be gamefied to allow participants to quest for higher agency and authority within community thereby becoming leaders and increasing their local basic income/welfare payments.
This could extend to organically train and deploy police, sanitation, energy, food, care, and nursing equivalent workforce, decoupling from "for profit" ROI frameworks in relation to basic community services.
At larger scales of regional/national/transnational/global governance the system can scale more effectively because the issues will be about wider policies and distribution of interregional flows of resources/capital and policy frameworks. Ideological posturing becomes irrelevant as governance becomes about delivery rather than choosing the team that delivers. Datasets that are transparent from the bottom up, but opaque from the top down will help alleviate vulnerability from rivals and neighbors.
Everything could be blockchained to ensure records and prevent corruption to some extent. Lobby groups wanting to pay for influence will have to make community wide donations. Global business or other entities with particular geographic interests regarding resources or trade routes pitch directly on the local community exchange. Payment rails are built in.
Etc.
So, I actually propose a middle ground myself that I believe solves a lot of the problems we see in elections, while also addressing some of the concerns being outlined. I've published a peer reviewed paper on this topic, and am building up the model on my substack piece by piece for a broader audience.
Basically, I maintain elections (though, using a proportionally representative system, as we see around the world today), however, instead of using majoritarian rules where you need 50% of the vote to pass legislation, I make it so that any legislation that reaches a mere 20% is approved. Approved legislation doesn't become law, but it does reach the next phase, which is a trial.
Those who write and approve legislation act as the defence, and those who vote against it act as the prosecution, and a sortitional body acts as a jury. I argue this sovles a great deal of problems we see today.
First, the way legislation is passed in a majoritarian system is one of dominance. Passing legislation doesn't require that the legislation be good, benefitial, or to serve, only that the party writing it won the most seats. This makes the mechanism to gain power one of elections and campaigning, entirely. A politicians job isn't to create legislation, but to campaign. Legislation serves only to benefit campaigns. If a politician believes bad legislation can pass without harming their campaigning, then they are fine passing it. Even worse, bad legislation can often help their campaign, as campaigning is expensive and wealthy interests can provide funding to pass legislation for their own interests, but few else.
This also creates a highly competitive environment where in order to gain power, one must dominate the other parties. This incentivizes partisanship, as a clear path to victory is simply making the other party look bad.
It also simplifies responsibility. Sometimes a party may in fact be doing the best possible action at all times, but due to circumstances outside their control (like a global pandemic, unpredictable economic outcomes, wars), the economy goes poor. Since people really only experience outcomes, and don't necessarily know whether it would be better or worse with different decisions, their reaction is simply to vote out the current party.
In my system, different parties are able to push out legislation independently of one another and parallel to one another. Power does not come from electoral dominance, but through successful trials. Campaigning is no longer their job, it's only a portion of it, and a significantly smaller portion, as the return on investment diminishes. Instead, working on ensuring one can successfully argue the beneficts of legislation against scrutiny is how they find success.
Since they aren't in direct competition, they can act independently of one another, partisanship is no longer incentivized. It likely will still exist, but not nearly so intensely.
Also, since no party is responsible for all the laws that must be made, parties don't have to generalize with broad platforms, but can specialize. A party can run purely on, say, rural rights, or on behalf of unions, or healthcare, or LGBT rights. They don't need a broad platform, as other parties can fill in the gaps. People can vote for the issues that matter to them directly, instead of having to try to parse out broad platforms.
When things go wrong, you cannot simply point to the party "in charge". A more complete analysis is needed. If there was bad legislation to blame, citizens may focus on a party that promises to reverse it. Doing so still requires a trial.
If this interests you and you want to know more, please check out my substack. I'll be posting more and more information on how it all works (like, for example, what stops a party from spamming legislation to clog up the system. The answer to that is in my paper, but will be on my substack in the coming weeks)
The United States once had genuinely democratic governance structures, however imperfect and limited, fundamentally based around decentralized and publicly accessible mass-member parties. The Democratic Party, as a small "d" democratic institution, and the Republican Party, as a small "r" republican institution, were honest in their naming and functioned within a politically, economically, governmentally, financially, and scientifically decentralized and pluralized system that had legal and regulatory variability, policy variability, an intentionally diffused and pluralized private sector, and local fiscal dominance. These parties, while far from flawless, allowed for real representation, genuinely participatory governance structures even for very serious policy matters by serving as an organizational interface and coordinating mesh for a wide array of organizational linked publicly accessible decision making bodies that spanned economy-schooling/training-culture-science-government, and a level of public accountability in political, economic, governmental, financial, and scientific decision making.
However, after WW2 a long multi decadal transformation began due to the dirty deeds of a convergence of several interests and an assortment of powerful special interest groups, and then our parties were transformed into centralized, exclusionary membership organizations. The so called Democratic Party has become a technocracy party, and the so called Republican Party became a conservative party. Neither really represents their original principles of democracy or republicanism, and they don't offer meaningful access or representation to the public. This transformation of the parties has been accompanied by a broader centralization of political, economic, and scientific decision making, which has caused the effective loss of most democratic governance structures.
American Democracy was always, from the start, conceived as a oligarchical, ruled by the elite, system. While centralization clearly occured, there is still plenty of variation between regions, and many of the core problems are still solveable on a local level.
Nonetheless, I would argue that centralization is an inevitable process as humans tend to continuously build structure. As complexity increases, increased cooperation increases, and stronger systems to manage various areas becomes necessary. I think attempting to resist this is largely futile.
What I propose is a middle ground. It maintains the more centralized structure in terms of power, but splits that power up into a greater number of groups, structurally, to ensure the individual needs of each group are taken into account at each step of the process.
RE: "American Democracy was always, from the start, conceived as a oligarchical, ruled by the elite, system"
Well thats challengeable. For example, during the Jacksonian era many groups often described what they were doing an effort to "restore democracy"; they didn't use that phrase as rhetorical cover, but as a statement that things had previously been different and of intentions to engage in a meaningful restructuring of political and economic power away from centralized elites. And when forced into real debate, even their Whig and Federalist opponents, such as Daniel Webster or even elements within the great anti-democrat Biddle’s circle, acknowledged that the early republic had featured broader popular influence, and only with increasing complexity and financial centralization had this eroded. The Jacksonians' (in the NE and Midwest, not the South) disproved those arguments and successfully reversed that trend
RE: "centralization is an inevitable process as humans tend to continuously build structure"
Its always just an organization design choice. Xi and Co have been trying to centralize China in recent years, and theyve been pushing that into overdrive this year (there are signs that serious pushback may be emerging, but I dont know); but at least until quite recently its been running both an economy and a political economy thats quite structurally decentralized and in some key ways strikingly resembles the USA's old system. While the USA was thoroughly decentralized, these same complexity arguments were, for hundreds of years in a row, in other vast territorial systems who said they had to be like that, but the USA wasnt, its just design differences
Good news! People have already been pursuing actionable reforms in the direction I'm talking about and some, with increasing frequency, have actually been having success! Around the country there are examples of local areas have been clawing back rights. And people are starting remember the knowledge of the workings of capital structures again!
The USA’s political economy actually still contains quite large degrees of heterogeneity and diffusion; its just sort of nullified. And I’m increasingly seeing/hearing discourse on the ground level reminiscent of 1830s gen 1.0 Democratic Party’s commentary and the domestic set up we have now is deeply enabled by the planetary economic central planning structures of capital “G” Globalization which very well may be on its way out the door…
This is a most helpful collection of alternative models to the dysfunction‑by‑design form of democracy we struggle with in the United States—one shaped by wealth supremacy and white male supremacy. Grassroots, neighborhood collaboration on real problem solving fosters group cohesion and group cognitive sovereignty. It reflects the subsidiarity dimension of what Blake and Gilman describe, in conjunction with planetarity, in Children of a Modest Star: decision‑making and problem‑solving happening at the most local, competent level, with higher levels supporting rather than overriding. That’s a natural and necessary component of regenerative, planetarity‑based approaches to democracy and economics.
Thanks for this great public service, Jeremy.
I think Children of a Modest Star is an excellent book, one which I reference in my Ecocivilization book chapter on planetary governance
I thought the introduction was worth the $ of the book; a masterful summary & similar in effective scope as Pope Francis’ executive summary of Querida Amazonia; both intros stand-alone gems.
Is this white supremacy in the room with us right now? You people are such delusional faggots
To the extent that democracy ill can be fixed through structural change this is a brilliant and useful piece. Thank you for writing it, Jeremy.
What remains to be written however, is a companion piece, that addresses the affect, attitudes, and ideals that citizens need to bring to any restructuring efforts in order for them to work. It's the same problem realized by those Swedish intellectuals when they discovered that the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals would be unreachable without what they subsequently developed and call the Inner Development Goals.https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/
That’s a key point. You need both the right kind of system AND it populated with the right kind of humans. Neither by itself is gonna do it.
Luke Kemp: "One thing to bear in mind is that we put absolutely no money into the sphere of creating innovations in democracy, to improving how we represent people at scale. If we actually rewarded this like we reward startups in the space of AI, imagine what we could do." [1]
Roman Krznaric: "There’s a new wave of deliberative democracy, direct participation through random selection. Anyone can set up a citizens assembly in their own town. They tend to come up with much more radical and transformative policy proposals than regular politicians, and tend to take a longer view than the politicians caught up in short term cycles. They are sowing the seeds of asabiyyah, of social trust, helping to build a new society in the shell of the old, so that in a moment of crisis we are ready." [2]
This is certainly one of your best posts to date Jeremy!
[1] https://youtu.be/W7JsDrHrRsI
[2] https://youtu.be/fXTbcDgg9ek
I'm glad to see you mention two authors both of whom I think are brilliant pathbreakers in their ideas
I think you hit the nail on the head by naming sortition as the preferable solution when it comes to governance. A close second to sortition would have to be some other radical change, such as ranked choice voting, which has been gaining in popularity (however has continually been challenged by status quo interests). Ranked choice does allow better representation of voter preference, however it still retains some bias in favor of "charisma, wealth, ambition, and connection,” whereas sortition lacks any regard whatsoever for those attributes.
I want to name a few more thinkers in this space, as there has been a lot of speculation regarding how one might separate these left hemisphere attributes (though in other ways perhaps good and necessary) from the more altruistic telos of a right hemisphere disposition. Zak Stein has written about "values-guiding-technology" (see axiological design) [1] and Daniel Schmachtenberger has spoken at length on "wisdom-binding-power." [2] There was also a paper by Harold Hutchinson and George Yarrow concerning the possibility of "lateralisation in the governance system." [3] They wrote:
“[Our governance systems today] attend far too much to activities concerned with power, control and coercion, to ‘grasping’ actions that are the focus of the left hemispheres of human brains… Without right hemisphere input, governments have become easy meat for the partisan lobbyists importuning Leviathan to use its monopoly power in ways that further their own narrow interests, without adequate consideration of their system-wide implications.”
But I think sortition is the best way to achieve the desired separation. Because if we did have sortition, such a governing body could in fact freely deliberate on the important qualitative issues facing society, drawing upon expert testimony as needed, with only their unencumbered “valueception” guiding them. In this way, perhaps we could make some real progress addressing those most complex issues facing us today. If there were ever a moment in history that should wake us up to the need for a radical change of just this sort, that moment is now.
[1] https://consilienceproject.org/technology-is-not-values-neutral-ending-the-reign-of-nihilistic-design-2/
[2] https://jonathanrowson.substack.com/p/three-wise-men-talk-about-wisdom
[3] https://rpieurope.org/to-see-or-not-to-see-that-is-the-question-moving-on-from-a-half-brained-system-of-economic-governance/
This is a lens that makes the wave of AI layoffs look like an opportunity to participate in real governance. The key, it seems to me, is that bit you mentioned about "significant renumeration."
This is a really optimistic piece much appreciated. For me, it shines a bright spotlight on the difficult and problematic relationship between modern fiat money which PAYS for the things we need to collectively achieve—and which is something that can only be CREATED by the sovereign government—and the movement/need to find ways to operate outside and independent of that sovereignty when it becomes oppressive. It’s a “Catch-22” we have yet to resolve.
Thanks Jeremy. I think we have to zoom out one more level. When the territorial nation-states of today were formed, the main difference was the uniformity of rule. The royals suddenly had absolute power to impose one rule for all. The State was theirs. "L'État, c'est moi" as King Louis XIV put it, just after the elites had agreed to stop fighting the 30-years war and split up the continent between themselves.
When governments were set up, they were set up not to represent the people, but the State. The citizens are the subject of the State. To maintain some kind of facade, they allowed people to cast a vote once in a while about who was to represent the State.
But the fact remains that someone still controlled the State. I have never seen a document saying that it was handed over to the people. Wouldn’t I have a certificate saying so? No, instead I get a birth certificate indicating I’m a subject of the State. When I had my first child, the bureaucracy threatened to name my child if I didn’t register an official name.
I like to draw parallels to how a mafia works. They have their turf, small bosses and big bosses. They meet occasionally to collude on what works best for them, but never hesitate to backstab each other when they get the chance. And they see the residents as their cash cows. The more land and residents, the more money they can extract. When they get big enough, they set up a council to help them run the show.
So what if they want to be nice and let the residents cast a vote about who their preferred boss would be? Wouldn’t that reflect poorly on the residents if they accepted that? Realistically, they would be offered a few rotten eggs to choose from, and maybe it would make sense to vote for the least bad one. But to keep voting for these selected rotten eggs would not change much, because they still represent the mafia. And the local mafia still pulls the strings, until overrun by a bigger or neighbouring boss.
I’m not sure who the big bosses are in the countries I have lived in. But I’m under no illusion that the government is there to represent me.
And until we attempt to break the foundations of the territorial and absolute nation-state, the imposed uniformity of rule, we are its biggest supporters. Ordinary people being angry at our elected leaders is just projecting.
Yes, I have a chapter dedicated to planetary governance in my Ecocivilization book, too!
the only way to avoid choosing between such set of elite will rule over you is to ensure that elite are dismantled and prevented from being created. without that preventative measure, we're going to run into this over and over again. that weed removal is essential.
President Jimmy Carter has been an open book concerning the country’s oligarchy problem. If you’re unfamiliar, its worth a search.
Excellent work too. 👊🏼👊🏼
OMG, thank you for one of the best, most helpful things I’ve read in a long time.
Thank you Jeremy. This so resonates with my belief in local decision making over one's place. The fact that most localities can now also generate their own energy, at least in theory, makes such a transition even more possible. We just have to believe that we can do this. That another way of doing things is possible. That the Nation State is a 19th century invention suited to western European conditions at that time and that other ways of organising ourselves are possible.
Really compelling argument. Thank you.
That was interesting. I've always had an issue with democracy because as I understand it, women and slaves were excluded from the process. I can't help but feel that somewhat scuppers the whole "for, by and of the people" premise.
I definitely think picking folk at random makes sense, that way you are going to get a more representative sample of the population.
I look forward to the book.
“POVERTY OF PARTICIPATION is related to the fact that most people of the world do not participate in the decisions which affect them and that very frequently when they do participate they have no autonomy to do so, which is the requisite for making it meaningful. This is particularly true for women who are marginalized, just as men, by the authoritarian structure of society. Women are, in addition, marginalized by men due to the parternalistic structure of the family and society. All kinds of social inequities within societies are rooted in this kind of poverty. Distribution of satisfiers tend to be more equitable when defend their interests. This kind of poverty has not been analyzed and discussed enough.” - Carlos Mallmann (Maldevelopment… 1983)
Without participation, there is no creation (with autonomous agency), but someone else creates for us.
Without Participation, there is no Love, but control and order.
Without Participation, there is no Synergy/Maintenance, but alienation that erodes other human needs.
Participation is the most underrated human need and at the core of what we can call 'pseudo-democracy' and maldevelopment.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/november-2025-participation-current-most-underrated-mart%25C3%25ADn-gonz%25C3%25A1lez-1xyie