Some will remember the past decade as the decade the people started to claw back power from business and government. What with the rapid growth of online consumer activism, whistleblower sites and consumer driven watchdog organisations that has proliferated on the Internet, I have started to wonder if we aren’t nearing a future in which the current shape of government itself is outdated.
This year will undoubtedly be remembered as the year that MPs in Britain were exposed as people who see working in government as the proverbial gravy train. Second homes paid for, when most people in Britain don’t even have a first home. Three months summer holidays, when most people in Britain are lucky to get three weeks. Short working hours, when most people in Britain are working the equivalent of 1.5 full-time jobs. And golden pensions worth millions, when most people retiring in Britain will be retiring in poverty.
Times have changed. We no longer live in the agrarian world that defined the early days of “government by representation”. People no longer have to travel to London from the countryside on horse and buggy in order to have their voice heard in government. We no longer need to rely on “people who know better” about problems inflicting our society, nor should we. For time has proved over and over again, they simply don’t know any better than we do. We no longer need problems “managed” by people who in truth, only know how to pass laws to “manage” problems under the carpet rather than actually solve them.
This is the 21st century. It is not only the Information Age, but also the Age of Empowerment. It is the time when we the people, should have the direct power to influence change in our world. In which we the people, should be able to find solutions to problems rather than new and clever ways to sweep them under the carpet.
If we are to even think about replacing the current system, we need another model to consider. One model presented itself in Charles Leadbeater’s book, “We-Think.” Now, the last time I talked about “We-Think,” I was kind of doing it a bit of disservice by not talking about the fundamental societal change the author refers to. The step-change behind the notion of We-Think, is that collective humanity is better placed to actually solve problems than individuals. The core idea works like this.
You take a problem, break it down into its constituent components, and disseminate each part to different groups of people. Each group is composed of a mix of skill and knowledge sets. So you might have one group let’s say, composed of sociologist, scientists, artists, planners, researchers, writers, or even construction workers. According to Charles Leadbeater, these mixed groups are actually better at solving problems than for instance, a group of specialists who all study in the same or closely related fields. Because we disseminated the problem into smaller chunks to different groups, each problem doesn’t seem all that overwhelming. So when you bring all the different groups together, you can actually solve some very complex problems. This is one reason, for instance, why Nasa has opened up their research problems to the people. And why even die-hard organisations like Proctor and Gamble now allow anybody to invent new products, and earn royalties from their inventions.
We-Think in essence, allows companies to cast a much wider net for its innovations, for far less money than it would cost for them to do it all inhouse using a team of dedicated researchers. Plus you are far more likely to get some truly surprising ideas, which could really never come out of your own organisation. Politicians on the other hand, like to debate problems amongst themselves. Because the majority of them are either lawyers or ex-businessmen, their debates often are very repetitive, typically resulting in a small handful of available solutions: to either pass a new law or privatise, nationalise or re-privatise something.
Nobody stops to think whether these essentially limited basic solution sets are in fact, going to solve the real problem. At best, they are akin to bandaids. They mask the real problems with a skin-colored covering, so you don’t notice the gaping wound that lies underneath, At worst, they make the problem worse, which is what essentially happened with the majority of the PPI (Public Private Initiatives) that the government offered up to outsource the problems to somebody else. The only problem with approach is of course, most of these companies simply Inflated the real problem in order to inflate their profits to solve the artificially inflated problem they were contracted to fix, but which of course, they never did, simply because if they fixed the problem, they wouldn’t be able to milk it for more profit.
At no time, will any of the solutions debated in Parlaiment every involve getting rid of the MPs altogether and letter the people join together online to find the real solution to the problem, We-Think style. More importantly, as citizens would create the laws in this We-Think run society, we would likely have a corporate world that actually works for the people rather than for themselves. After all, when you’re own consumers can pass laws that control how much profit you can make for instance, or even which makes your business illegal altogether, you are likely to make sure they accept what you do and how you go about it. Without the protection of government flunkies, it’s hard to imagine guns and other weapon’s manufacturers existing at all. Likewise, it’s equally hard to imagine any heavy polluting industry lasting long in a We-Think world. It’s easy to corrupt a handful of people to do your bidding or to turn a blind eye, but try corrupting an entire nation of people. May not be impossible, after all, Ceasar was fairly effective at keeping the masses distracted, but in the long run. But in an internet powered We-Think run society where whistleblower sites are common, it’s easy to create a groundswell moment around an eye-opening truth.
Naturally, a We-Think run nation would mean the end of the professional politician. But so what? Reading the headlines nowadays, does anybody really want them? Most consumer research shows that what people really want is to be able to have a say in how things are run, or even to be able to make direct impacts to solve problems. A Vox Pox I did for a Levi’s campaign of young Londoners actually revealed that at the young actually want to solve problems in their local communities, some even in the wider world. But most felt unempowered to do so.
By switching to a model of “direct participatory democracy”, ever citizen could be empowered to make a difference and be part of a collective hunt for solutons to society’s problems. Each problem could be debated online, researched by different groups of mixed specialists and compared and studied with input from other teams. The various solutions could all be analysed by indiviuals actually living those problems and voted on by the public at large. In a true democracy, the people’s vote is supposed to be what decides the direction of government. In a We-Think government, this literally is what happens, every day. People decide thier own futures, together, collectively. If something doesn’t work out. if a solution is proved to be the wrong one, the people can instantly gather, re-analyse and change it to a new solution, creating what is essence, a truly dynamic, flexible way of government that is fully capable of dealing with our quickly changing world.
% of UK households with Internet Access
All of the underlying technologies now exists for this new, fairer and more open type of democracy exists already today. Broadband penetration in the UK is now at 52%, while basic internet penetration is at 68%, and it’s increasing by about 1 million people a year. Mobile penetration is at 78% of the population.
Population by age, UK
Given that 20% of the UK population is under 16 years, this means that pretty much everybody who could own a mobile phone, does. We all have the tools in our hands and at our fingertips every day to participate in a We-Think government. So the burning question is simply, why don’t we?
Statistics: http://www.statistics.gov.uk
