Supposedly, Iceland is incorporating various suggestions certain Icelanders, who use social media, suggest into their new constitution. A brief perusal of one's Facebook chatter or Twitter feed should be enough for one to immediately see one doesn't want the average social media user making decisions at such a scale. It turns out politicians don't want them to either; rather this is a way to hijack language, under the cover of which, they can maximize their power. A great example of using democratic language in an attempt to seize power is the U.N.s recent proclamation that access to the internet should be a human right. Sounds great to the great unwashed, but it ignores the property rights of those who actually own the infrastructure and sets up a convenient excuse via which the U.N. can claim the right to interfere. So, somewhere down the road we get broken infrastructure and an international body regulating whatever access we do have.
If the internet is going to provide us with any great new insights to governance, I suggest it won't be democratic. It must be remembered that we attempt various means of governance to improve governance. We know not everyone can make these grand sweeping decisions governments like to make; indeed, I am quite unsure that there is any good call for most of these decisions being made at such a level. Most folks lives, and their whole decision making process takes place in a sub-150 group.
But, for the purposes of this post, let's suppose decisions that touch the lives of several million Americans actually need to be made. The Republic was an attempt at an improvement over the Imperial Parliament (anti-monarchical propaganda was tacked on after). Attempts to 'democratize' the republic appear to directly damage good governance. Indeed, one could assume the entire purpose of progressive innovations is to destroy, but I digress.
Should grand, sweeping decisions need to be made, then we'd be far better off finding the person or persons actually capable of making them. A person, most likely, because we all know a committee of even the smartest people can be profoundly dumb, but we'd not necessarily need the same person for all decisions. We want the best decision, not a particular mode of making decisions, so all else being equal, why can't the internet help us get to the best decisions rather than prop up a failed egalitarianism?
Now, most folks are apparently ill equipped to evaluate arguments at all, nor do I have a clue how those in power now could be induced to cede power to people who would be sensible enough not to use it (or, if we continue to suppose for the purposes of this post, use it properly), so the more realistic theory is that we continue along until they've completely self-destructed. Still, I think the influence of the internet does not trend towards democracy, at least not as progressively defined.
People have found, for instance, that prediction markets seem to have some decent purpose. The participant in a prediction market bets on what he thinks he will happen, so he has some incentive to get it right. A voter, however, votes for whatever idiosyncratic mysteries he has in his mind. He has no incentive to get it right. So there are limited arenas in which the many might provide a clear signal, but the incentives must be lines up right, and they are most certainly not lined up properly under the current system.
The buzz around crowd-sourcing decisions has, at least to my ears, fizzled out. So, in the absence of any new clever schemes, couldn't we just look for a good employee? Someone who has the intelligence, a framework of ideas (freedom being prominent among them), and perhaps that sort of eccentricity which keeps him involved with family, church, and hobbies rather than trying to impose his will on everyone.
Sadly, folks are already planning those abominable election campaigns...
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