Should We Send All the Politicians to Azkaban? Rethinking Democracy

The funniest tweet I’ve seen all week comes from a Hispanic fellow in the wake of Trump’s inauguration. Paraphrasing a bit here, he goes- “I voted for Trump, but no one told me he hated Mexicans. All he’s talking about is deporting Mexicans wt*"? Moving beyond the obvious comedic implications of a person directly voting against their own interests because of a lack of information, we can get to a broader idea here: voters often prioritize one issue while inadvertently supporting policies against their own interests. Who can we blame for this? Politicians. There were dozens of issues that mattered to voters ahead of the election- ranging from the economy to immigration to abortion, each mattering to varying degrees. The problem is that a politician has a position on all of these issues.? So what happens if you agree with them on some but not others? Back to our Mexican voter, he probably cared a lot about how bad the economy seemed (emphasis on the seemed here) and thus voted for the Candidate promising to fix that. But in doing so, he also voted for stricter border controls, mass deportations, and an end to birthright citizenship- all policies presumably against his interests.?

In the latest episode of Trevor Noah’s podcast, he suggests something that I think goes a long way to fixing this issue. Get rid of the politicians entirely- they’re middlemen who were necessary in a bygone era but seem to have outlived their usefulness. What he proposes is a true government of the people, which is shockingly possible with today’s technology. Think about smart, encrypted devices issued to each citizen on their majority that allowed them to vote for whatever issue they wanted. That’s it. That’s the idea. It’s actually that simple.?

It's as easy as pressing a button because it never needs to be harder than that. You get home from work, pick up your votingthingymajig (we’re working on the name) and decide whether the minimum wage should be higher. Or whether we should pay more in taxes. Or whether we should invade Cameroon to reclaim the Bakkassi peninsula.?

Back to our Hispanic tweeter, he could vote for ‘better’ economic policy on his votingthingymajig (still working on it) while voting against mass deportations and all the other stuff he doesn’t want. He doesn’t get held hostage by the fact that voting for what seems like a better economy also means voting for anti-LGBTQ policy. He’d actually get a choice, which is what democracy seems to promise.?

Now, I can already hear you screaming about all the ways this could go wrong, so I’ll counter some of the ones I’ve thought of, and you can tell me all about the ones I miss down in the comments.?

1. “Russia or the US or China or North Korea are going to hack this into oblivion”: We managed to land a man on the moon with a computer exponentially less powerful than the fridge in my kitchen. Put the brightest minds in the world on it, and they’ll create a device with all the right security to make it possible. There’s already massive strides being made to make online voting a thing and this is only a step downstream of that.?

2. “What happens when the country needs tough medicine?”: This is an even harder one. Sometimes, the only way to make things better is to go through some hardship in the short term. A good example comes from the removal of the fuel subsidy in my home country last year. It was expensive and wasteful, and the government literally could not afford to pay it anymore. In that case, one can argue that we needed a President to make the decision and weather the protests that came about. If you let the child decide what to eat all the time, he’ll never eat his vegetables. My counterargument here is that we aren’t children. We can vote for our long-term interests over short-term benefits if it gets explained in the right way- we do it all the time when we do things like go to the gym or eat a healthy breakfast. Entire nations have managed to come out in support of rationing during wartimes and famines, understanding that sacrifices must be made in the present to secure a better future.?

3. “Who’s going to run the country if we get rid of the politicians?”: The people who already run the country. Civil servants (or bureaucrats) do all the day-to-day legwork. You can think of the politicians as Captains who decide the vision, but the people who actually get the ship moving and keep it moving are the civil servants. They don’t get elected and are (ideally) selected based on merit. We, the people, could take the role of the captain, and the civil servants could keep the ship going.

4. “What happens in an emergency?”: Let’s say things change at the drop of a hat, and Cameroon suddenly invades us. Don’t we need a politician there to make real-time decisions? I say no. How often do they make these decisions in the moment even? This question underestimates just how quickly a group of people can decide on a course of action, and in most emergencies,? the right choice is obvious; it’s just a matter of saying yes.?

5. “Everyone would get tired”: The truth is people are already tired. 70% of eligible Nigerians didn’t vote at all in the most recent elections. A whole third of the US eligible voters didn’t vote in theirs. It’s impossible to say that decision fatigue won’t be a factor, but the goal is to keep as many people on the ship as possible, and the easier it is to vote, the more people will do so. Besides, who says that the chance to vote on individual issues isn’t the thing that will get the voters back in the game? Besides, not every single person needs to vote on every single issue.?

With this idea, we’d create the kind of society where people get to vote for what they really want on every issue instead of being forced to decide which of the babies to save in the burning building. We move closer to a democracy that truly reflects the will of the people—a world where every vote counts, not for a person, but for the issues that shape our lives.