Deep Democracy

I. Introduction
Since the German book and this piece were conceived there has been much talk of a Deep State. A “Deep Democracy” might be thought of as the antidote to the undercover machinations of any deep state.

The concept of democracy presented in the book, and at this website KlasseV, is one that extends beyond electoral democracy, which is the focus of the sister website fuzzydemocracy.com. There the emphasis is on parliamentary representation and how, in a new century with novel but now familiar technology, it would be possible to abolish political parties, the bane of proper governance.

As was warned — in so many words — at the time of the founding of the USA, a Constitutional Republic requires men of sound character and judgement, which in turn involve commitment to Truth and Human Flourishing. (In this author’s view, a solitary God is optional.)

The book rightly warned of disaster in a laissez-faire world for professional conduct. Societies throughout the West have succumbed to hierarchies which allow the scum to rise to the top.

II. Embed long-term remedies in the professions

It is asserted here that moral maturity is not acquired overnight on reaching the age of adulthood. On the contrary, good character and judgement must be cultivated over long years. This cultivation cannot proceed in isolation. Not least, because ethical conduct cannot be encapsulated logically in obedience to rules & regulations. (See http://www.klasseverantwortung.com/english/Rules.html.) The cultivation occurs in conferring with others, without which there is the peril of blind spots.

As defined here, “Professional Work” is conceived broadly as applying to all decision-makers in corporations, including relatively low-level staff, apart from those in the traditional and emergent professions. All of these should be rewarded with above-average salaries or equivalent pay.

Professions typically involve a period of induction in addition to the expertise which is required.

One error has been to leave out of the induction process a sensitisation to the wider good of society. Together with this, there has been a lack of much-needed checks on the character and judgement of those being inducted.

It must be possible for professionals to be interrogated on the decisions (judgement calls) they have taken, especially those on behalf of a corporate employer. They would be asked about their thinking, i.e. about what aspects they took into consideration when making decisions.

III. Illustrative example

Here an illustrative example: As consumers doing a weekly shop in a supermarket we are often confronted with artificial choices to complicate our lives. In some jurisdictions there may be legal restrictions, which make for alleviation, but mostly there are no bars held. As the satirical cartoon has it, for a woman boasting her new breastline, “It said «Get second one half-price,» so I went for it!”

There has to be an identifiable person, paid above-average, who decides why a product or brand should be on offer this week or month; who decides that buying a second or third of an item should come at a discount; or who sells the bars of soap inseparably in packs of several.

Now there may sometimes be good reasons for these pricing and packaging policies. But it is certain that, often, the reasoning is to manipulate the consumer. Not a thought for the person on vacation who needs only one bar of soap; or those without a car who cannot carry a multiple pack of heavy whatever; or those without much storage space at home. These aggressive sales tactics are seldom for the benefit of those with many children, but instead benefit those who are already prosperous. “To those that have shall be given, and from those who have not shall be taken away.”

Note that the above is only a commonplace and simple example of how supervision of judgement calls might proceed. There are thousands of scenarios of great variety.

IV. Failure of “Business Ethics” and of “Ethics Committees”

The “professional” deciding on what appears to be manipulation (or “nudging”) must be asked about their motivation and reasoning. Their replies will provide a snapshot of their character and judgement. When a pattern of poor behaviour, e.g. of persistent contempt for others, emerges, that is, when the staff member fails to adjust their approach, the culprit could be suspended or lose their professional status and the associated higher salary.

Certainly, for this to happen, there must be appropriate mechanisms in place, “appropriate” here meaning carefully constructed. This author advocates a light-touch by the state, but some empowerment will be needed from those with some say in corporate management. Such would have been a task for “business ethics.” As explained elsewhere, and documented at the website contra-dnwe.com, the business ethics movement was subverted long ago. Much the same is true, sadly, of “ethics” committees and their like: captured by evil-doers and yes-men lacking in any knowledge of moral philosophy, which academically used to go by the name of “ethics.” The rot goes so deep that little short of a civil war can offer remediation.

This said, we press on if only for the sake of what has been learnt not being entirely forgotten and being in place for a rebirth.

One key lesson is that those examining the ethics of conduct in a given profession must themselves come substantially from outside that profession. Otherwise there is the likelihood of group-think: —notoriously, of a Semmelweis being hounded for challenging set habits; or else of undue leniency. (Reminder: Semmelweis outraged his fellow doctors by suggesting they wash their hands between examining corpses and assisting in childbirth.)

This proposal is a departure from current practice in the following ways:

* The primary aim is a mutual learning experience. Both the professional being questioned and those external professionals engaging in the interrogation can learn, or remember, even if all concerned are already, fundamentally, of good character and reasonable judgement.

* Persons of poor character are weeded out long before they can do any real damage. If one waits until a law is infringed, any punishment comes too late, quite apart from the unreliability of legal process.

* This procedure replaces the resort to ever more complicated rules & regulations. See: http://www.klasseverantwortung.com/english/Rules.html

* There is therefore no need to involve either legislature or executive since the checks & balances are self-sustaining, not exactly bottom-up, from emanating from the mid-level of society. The most that is needed from parliament and government is to empower the professions initially such that these can overrule corporate preferences. The employer cannot retain mischief-makers.

* There must always be a uniquely identifiable, flesh & blood individual (not a juridical — fictitious or corporate — person) who is responsible for each corporate decision, minor or major. There must moreover be a human (i.e. practical) limit to the number and scope of responsibilities any such individual can answer for. The idea of, say, a government minister, carrying the can for everything that happens in their department is clearly ridiculous and must end.

V. Annulment by Jury

U.S. Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, 1941-1946:
“If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant’s natural God-given unalienable or Constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law.”
“That juror must vote Not Guilty regardless of the pressures or abuses that may be heaped on him by any or all members of the jury with whom he may in good conscience disagree. He is voting on the justice of the law according to his own conscience and convictions and not someone else’s. The law itself is on trial quite as much as the case which is to be decided.”

VI. Judges — a law unto themselves
A judge must be a person of good character, meaning here someone who is bound by truth and the rule of reason. But he or she must also be a person of reliable judgement, meaning discernment. An idiot of well-meaning character is useless.

Given as things in most jurisdictions are constituted today, a judge who exhibits bad judgement risks at most not being promoted.

The ultimate check & balance afforded by any electoral democracy worth the name is the option of de-selection of public figures, including not only judges but also public prosecutors and some more.

There would seem to be an enormous number of judges of worthless character. De-selecting them in a national vote would overwhelm the citizenry and become burdensome.

Those identified as suspect (which leaves many of mediocre and some of sound character) would, for continued appointment, have to appeal to a popular vote in their area of residence. To this end, information on their judgement calls would need to be available to all.

The turnout is irrelevant. If of a score of voters, a dozen vote for deselection, the judge is deselected. Lucky to retain their pension.

Applying pressure: There could be a personal invitation to judges to affirm their approval of the above procedure or else to propose an alternative. An alternative might be that they be assessed on their record, i.e. their discernment, competence and common decency, by professionals from outside the legal sphere.

Those failing to respond, or to respond in a conciliatory manner, should be listed publicly so that all know. It would be wishful thinking to demand their home address and photographs.

See also: http://www.fuzzydemocracy.com/fzyenglish/Juries.html

VI. Journalists and their editors
Journalists and editors employed in the mass media have proven to be the most harmful “professionals” of them all. By deliberately suppressing truth, which they have described as disinformation and conspiracy theories, they have, among other crimes, misled more than a billion worldwide into getting injected with bio-weapons. Their “reach” outpaces that of other culpable groups such as medical doctors and dishonest scientists. For more, see: http://www.fuzzydemocracy.com/fzyenglish/infowars.html

Anyone using words such as “disinformation” or “conspiracy theory” other than implicitly as a quote, e.g. in or as if in inverted commas, must be barred from professional society forthwith. If you encounter suchlike, do not be nice to them.

Below is a much earlier version of the above "Deep Democracy," i.e. covering some of the same ground, but much shorter.

The website in German and in English and the book in German present a conception of a “Deep Democracy.” This has various elements. First there is an urgent need for a different way of conducting politics, and in particular to remove the stranglehold of parties. This subject is dealt with at a separate website: www.fuzzydemocracy.com with concrete proposals on the design of a superior parliamentary democracy. But the equally necessary task of rejuvenating business and society, and notably the world of work, cannot be done by even the best politicians and structures without branch and root changes of attitude in the areas directly affected. These changes must and can come from below. But how?

The great virtue of the Anglo-Saxon tradition in governance is that it is not confined to parliamentary conventions. There is, in parallel, the justice system with the principles of juries drawn from the population at large and volunteer magistrates who are not formally educated in law. Granted, the systems work very imperfectly, but they are not yet broken. They can be rescued, and in any case there is nowhere anything quite as good in terms of answerability to a broad base of citizenry.

In a highly anonymised society there is an erosion of the reputational checks which help keep most conduct within certain bounds of fairness and decency. A lot of outrageous conduct fails to meet the high bar needed for pursuit and punishment under the law, and the law itself often falls short of what commonplace morality demands.

“Morality” is of course a much abused word, but it involves two elements which it is important to distinguish. These are character and judgement. A sociopath or their like may have superb judgement, but of course appalling character — they suss people out in order to manipulate them. At the other extreme there are many whose character is fundamentally benevolent, but they are not discerning and robust enough to weather successfully the storms of decision-making. Often, their weakness is due itself to a naive understanding of morality. There is a great deal that can be said about morality to distinguish it from blind righteousness, legalistic thinking and misplaced tolerance, but this is said and propagated too little. It is against this background that there is a wealth of material on this site (and in the German book) discussing the nature of morality and ethics (which are distinguished) in different ways and from various perspectives.

The core message of the site, KlasseVerantwortung in German and rendered into English as “Class with Responsibility,” is a plea for a novel kind of Class Society. Traditionally, the professions have regulated their own members. But there have always been problems with this sometimes informal self-regulation, either because of indulgence and excessive leniency to those of their number who overshoot the mark, or else ganging up on members of the profession who speak out or press for change. Meanwhile we have countless new professions; some formal, some emergent.

What is advocated is that, instead of any given profession regulating itself, it should be co-regulated by representatives from other professions. This principle is one element in what I have called, as an umbrella term, Deep Democracy.

The corollary of professionals being subject to oversight of their proper character and judgement in their professional conduct (but not in their personal conduct outside the world of work!) is that those who fall short, as determined by due process, should be excluded temporarily and possibly permanently from the profession they have exercised. There would then be a class of professionals, which would be distinct from other classes of people, these other classes enjoying different privileges, freedoms and responsibilities.

It has become (or maybe always was) fashionable to denigrate the idea of democracy. The position taken here is that a deep democracy (including, but not confined to fuzzy democracy and the self-regulation of the professions) comes as close as humanly possible to governance by the force of reason. It generates reasonable consensus. Much as science can approximate the realities it seeks to map. The words “fuzzy” and “deep” indicate things fall short of perfection, the single-minded pursuit of which, incidentally, like the pursuit of extreme justice or equality, rapidly proves counter-productive.

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