Under any rational democratic system, an issue of this importance would be subject to a series of citizen deliberations to establish the facts, followed by a national referendum for a Yes/No from the people.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/block-sunlight-british-scientists-global-warming-b2740295.html

Israelis pause to remember the Holocaust last week - in the middle of perpetrating one.

Believed to be a world first.

https://www.beeyou.tv/seanstone/watch/WAGpqkCP2POjJIh15th22

My interview yesterday with US podcaster Sean Stone (son of Oliver), on remaking democracy for our era.

My idea is that our democracies have been 'gamed' by tricks our 18th & 19th Century constitutions couldn't have foreseen.

And that we need new architecture to reverse this.

I've reached the reluctant conclusion that because Organized Money controls ~100% of the channels of communication - media, social media, education, think tanks... - it can persuade 80 to 90% of the population of anything it likes.

(E.g. that a Gaza genocide is regrettable but unavoidable. Or that a Russo-Ukraine war will be won by Ukraine.)

The 10 to 20% who have the time to do their own reading can be algorithmically nudged aside.

Democratic reform will need to include information reform.

I'm not getting any traction here these days, so have decamped to Bluesky:

@johnmacgregor.bsky.social

And X: @JohnMMacgregor

My Kim Iversen interview from last week is here:

https://rumble.com/v6fhwem-revolutions-are-coming-to-the-west-fixing-the-fatal-flaws-that-cause-inevit.html?e9s=src_v1_mfp

Thanks!

#Politics #USPolitics #Auspol #PoliticalScience #Democracy #Constitution #alp #lnp #DeliberativeDemocracy #DirectDemocracy #CampaignFinance #Lobbying #Plutocracy

Our crises - social, environmental, economic - are crises of over-concentrated power.

@Politics #USPolitics #Auspol #PoliticalScience #Democracy

We don't get to a safe world without architecture.

#Politics #USPolitics #Auspol #Democracy #PoliticalScience #Alp #Lnp

Illinois' 4th Congressional District in 2004 - fondly remembered as 'earmuffs'.

Gerrymandering can be banished by deliberative democracy: citizens are randomly selected from the voter roll to hammer out a new map. They can call experts, & deliberate for as long as it takes.

Deliberative democracy has been trialed extensively. It works way better than representative democracy.

We should bring it centre stage.

#Politics #PoliticalScience #Auspol #USPolitics #Democracy #DeliberativeDemocracy

Switzerland didn't become prosperous & peaceful by good luck.

It has multiple ethnicities, & there was civil war in 1847.

Its 150 years of peace & prosperity began with:

- Political power devolving down to the cantons

- Direct democracy (big decisions made by popular vote)

The rest of us spend a lot of time lamenting our bad leaders & their bad decisions - but little time examining the flawed political infrastructure that brings them about.

#Politics #DirectDemocracy #Auspol