Surrender of General Burgoyne

The Foundation Is Already Laid

The title of this article may sound auspicious, but the seeds for this revolutionary reification have already been sown with the dawning of the digital age of mass communication. What is only just now coalescing in the crucible of various cultures, is the ability for everyone to finally be heard, and equally importantly – to hear others.

Whether its for political, social, entertainment avenues, the same thing is happening. The world is becoming a much closer, smaller, digestible place, in the human mind. Still massive and incomputable on the micro scale, we can at least envision an entire planet, and quickly learn and communicate with people from anywhere in the world, across cultural and even language boundaries, using the simple tools of the digital revolution.

These same tools that only in the past decade have become widely available, can now be used to bring about the truest, most equitable democracy in history, finally following only a real majority, a significant majority, not a simple majority, but a supermajority of real actual voters voting on issues they themselves submit, into a Twitter/Reddit style WikInitiative Ballot Issue Database.

Balloting Issues and Voting From the Comfort Of Your Home

Imagine sitting in the comfort of your own home, watching television, checking your twitter and Facebook accounts, email, watching videos on Youtube… imagine using that same simplicity, to sit there in your own relaxing environment of your choice, and visiting the WikInitiatives Ballot Issue Database, from your cell phone, from your computer, your Ipad, or whatever device from which you can attain access to the internet.

On the main page will be the most popular initiatives, the ones closest to approaching the supermajority status. Everyone can tune in, in real time and see the status of any balloted issue, whether it’s national, regional or municipally weighted. Everyone can vote on issues at any time. You can even change your vote, because it wouldn’t affect the capacity of the real-time reporting of the public will percentage in support of that issue.

People do change their minds.

And they ought to change their minds, in some instances, as new information becomes available, and they approach an old problem in a new way.

Now these ballotable issues that become popular, are always on the table, eternally – there is no scrapping of any issue, just absolute levels of popularity for that issue measured directly by the number of people who put through enough effort to single out that issue from the sea of others, and support it. And only those people.

The Default Position Ought To Be Erring On The Side Of Liberty

With the system in place now, people who don’t vote, whether out of ignorance, infirmity or indifference, are automatically subtracted from any representation whatsoever, even if their abstention is because they declare they support none of candidates. The system in place, you must vote, and for people, a step removed at least from the issues themselves, if you want to attempt to stop a minority from legislating away our liberty.

So the default position is that you must act, in order to stop all this bad legislation, fostered by minority interests, often wealthy corporate interests writing the legislation themselves and gifting it to the politicians they manipulate.

The default position should be, we create no law in any matter, unless a significant majority agree, a supermajority. We need at least a doublemajority, if we want to err on the side of liberty, rather than tyranny of a simple majority of the fraction of the public that actually votes, literally then, a tyranny of a minority, at all times, when any “party” is in power.

Supermajorites Aren’t A New Idea

Even the United States senate employs supermajorities, but only for whatever they deem matters of special importance, where more than a mere simple majority is absolutely necessary. Some corporations use supermajority procedures as well.

When you have simple majorities that only represent (and poorly represented by politicians) 51% of the… say… 60% that voted (as in the presidential election of 2012), you have half of that 60% of the public that voted, which is 30% of the total public, actually creating laws for the rest of us.

With the default position being that you must mobilize your efforts in order to stop bad legislation, liberty erodes and inefficiencies are created, of misdirected human labour towards fulfilling the needs for manpower created by the government’s unnecessary, unpopular, minority represented legislation, that they levy taxes on all of us to pay for, with strokes of their pens.

The Digital Age Transforms Democracy

Well it’s time to move out of the inefficient vehicle of democracy of the past, from the days of horses and carts, muskets, negro slaves, no female suffrage, mail by pony express, a snail’s pace of existence compared to the inundation realized today, offered by the industrial and now digital revolution.

There is no need for representatives who rarely even represent us, more than their own self interests (naturally), to make these pompous and ritualistic, pretentious, singular vote on an issue not even put forth by a majority, let alone a supermajority, of the public.

The fact that they are representatives of so many people plays on the near universal instinct for love, respect and admiration from other people – a popularity contest of people, rather than the issues they purport to represent.

Voting for people, and hoping that they vote on your behalf, is a redundant, unnecessary complication, that the digital age has at long last precluded, leaving democracy in the hands of the people, as the actual word itself means.

With an easily accessible online WikInitiative Ballot Issue Database, that anyone can log into (using multi-point biometric anonymous encrypted identification system, discussed also on this website) what is actually important to real people can finally be voted on by real people, far better than these teams of bureaucracies, layers of inefficiency, would ever be able to do.

Easy as Twitter and Facebook. Like that Law, up it goes.

Abstaning Is An Opinion

A key component is that the default position is abstention. You don’t have to log in and use your time and effort to ever vote “no” on any issue, because your starting position is no, naturally. In this manner, no minorities would ever be able to pass any legislation that a supermajority didn’t also agree to, and go out of their way to say that they agreed to it.

Erring on the side of liberty, with respect to law creation.

Using supermajorities to buffer against any tyrannies of minorites, especially moneyed interests as we have now, will propagate a new era of liberty, as less new laws are passed by the supermajority and old laws stricken down, that don’t meet the new supermajority test. Old laws too, the ones already created vastly by minority moneyed interests, will begin the re-ratification process like any other balloted issue, in that the default position from everyone on that issue, is “no” unless they mobilize their efforts to support it.

The Marketplace of Ballot Initiatives

With this WikInitiative Ballot Issue Database, everyone could have access to every law, every balloted issue, and view their real time support by the public, and enter their own issues, hash tag them for classification purposes, and add their voice directly into the Marketplace of Supermajority Plebiscitary Initiatives.

And don’t fall prey to the calls from those who stand to lose their power and influence, that there is any kind of tyranny of a supermajority. The only real tyranny in democracy, is rule by simple majority, of a fraction of the public, which is always a minority. And always a tyranny.

Every law must withstand the supreme scrutiny of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that grants all citizens inalienable rights that no law created could successfully deprive them of. The very reason that the Constitutions and Bills of Rights are ratified is to protect minorities from any tyrannical majority.

They are agreed upon axioms of what society consists of, what the limits on the powers of government are, even a supermajority plebiscitary democracy.

The Real Tyranny is Rule By Simple Majority

The only real tyranny is governing by inefficient representation, using simple majorities that are actually minorities, because they don’t include abstentions, through a ballot system that is prohibitively accessible to most people.

Real time, instantaneous democracy can now be had, where problems are solved collectively, drawing from the vast pool of visionary and creative people from all corners, regardless of their perceived cultural status, and a new equality of access to the government process, can finally be afforded for the first time in history, with the digital revolution.

The questions about how to solve society’s ills, in the mainstream media today, always swirl within the context of which leaders have screwed up, and which leaders we need to vote in, to better reflect and effect the public will.

What you never see discussion about is why we feel we should need leaders at all, to attempt to divine the public’s will and act upon it. The entrenched elites who control the mainstream media are content to keep the public distracted by voting for people in a system that the elites are too easily exploiting and manipulating for their own benefit, and to the detriment of the average, hard working citizens.

You won’t see the mainstream media questioning why we need leaders at all.

Neither will you see them questioning why corporate, capital gains, and high income tax rates have plummeted to fractions of what they were since the 1950s while low income tax rates haven’t dropped at all, transferring the tax burden from corporations, wealth and high income earners, to the average middle and low income earners.

You won’t see the mainstream media questioning why we continue to let simple majorities run the country and impose legislation to which we all must then adhere. And when abstentions are factored in, it’s not even an actual simple majority, but a minority, imposing on the majority.

You won’t see the mainstream media calling for an overhaul of the ballot initiative system, to expand ease of access for all citizens to take part in legislation creation, nor will you see them ever suggest we move in the direction of direct democracy, because then the elites would lose their ability to set legislation that maintains their power and control of the wealth, wealth created by the citizens of the country.

You’ll never see the mainstream media asking why there is no public input on the setting of tax rates for corporations, capital gains or income taxes. You’ll never see them floating the idea of a wealth tax.

The reason you’ll never see the mainstream media question any of these scenarios, is because it doesn’t serve the keepers of the wealth that own the mainstream media, to make any move towards letting the people actually rule themselves.

The mainstream media, a reflection of the elites that own it, are content to insist that we need to work within the current system which has hamstrung the public will. They will report ad nauseam on every facet of every election, and in so doing, perpetuate the myth that we need leaders to solve society’s ills at all.

The mainstream media, in reflecting the needs of the elites that own them, are much more inclined to manipulate minority groups into getting legislation passed that benefits the elites.

To take just one of innumerable examples, no president of the united states in the past century, was ever voted in by even a simple majority (51%) of the total voting public. Because voter turn out rates (which they rely heavily upon) bounce between about 50 and 60 percent of the total public, only 51% of that lesser total is ever needed to put in place a politician. In 2012, President Obama was voted in with 51% of the 57.5% of the total that actually voted. And 51% of of 57.5% of the population, is then in actuality a minority of only 29% of the public, a minority, voting into power the President of the United States.

The mainstream media won’t report any of this to you, but The Plebiscitary shall!

The real mockery of democracy is that it isn’t even democratic at all. Minorities are determining and passing legislation, one massive omnibus bill after another, legislation that restricts everyone’s freedom.

It’s time that democracy finally lived up to its name, and delivered actual rule by the people, for the people by removing the flaws brought on by representation from the equation altogether, by moving from simple majorities to supermajorities and by overhauling the ballot access system, making it easily available to all citizens.

What is Direct Democracy?

Direct Democracy means democratic rule directly by the people themselves, rather than attempting to rely on a representative to advocate your position on each initiative.

Different forms of Direct Democracy have existed for millennia, with varying degrees of exposure.

Modern examples of Direct Democracy include plebiscites and/or referenda voted on by the entire public, on specific ballot issues, usually gaining acceptance by Simple Majority (50+1 percent). Simple Majorities ought to be avoided when attempting to enact any legislation.

The plebiscites or referenda may be regional, national and theoretically, universal.

Plebiscites have been used to ratify constitutions and bills of rights.

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pleb·i·scite (plĕb′ĭ-sīt′, -sĭt)

— noun
1. a direct vote by the electorate of a state, region, etc, on some question of usually national importance, such as union with another state or acceptance of a government programme
2. any expression or determination of public opinion on some matter

1. A direct vote in which the entire electorate is invited to accept or refuse a proposal: The new constitution was ratified in a plebiscite.
2. A vote in which a population exercises the right of national self-determination.

[French plébiscite, from Latin plēbiscītum : plēbis, genitive of plēbs, the people; Indo-European roots + scītum, decree, from neuter past participle of scīscere, to vote for, inchoative of scīre, to know; see skei- in Indo-European roots.]

[Latin plebiscitum “a decree or resolution of the people,” from plebs (genitive plebis) “the common people” + scitum “decree,” noun use of neuter past participle of sciscere “to assent, vote for, approve,” inchoative of scire “to know”]

mid 16th century (referring to Roman history): from French plébiscite, from Latin plebiscitum, from plebs, pleb- ‘the common people’ + scitum ‘decree’ (from sciscere ‘vote for’). The sense ‘direct vote of the whole electorate’ dates from the mid 19th century.

“direct vote of the people,” 1860 (originally in reference to Italian unification), from French plébiscite (1776 in modern sense, originally with reference to Switzerland)

— adjective
ple·bis′ci·tar′y (plə-bĭs′ĭ-tĕr′ē, plĕb′ĭ-sĭt′ə-rē) adj.

su·per·ma·jor·i·ty [soo-per-muh-jawr-i-tee, jor]
noun, plural su·per·ma·jor·i·ties.

1. a majority that must represent some percentage more than a simple majority.
2. a majority greater than a specified number, as 60%, of the total: required to pass certain types of legislation, override vetos, etc.

Supermajorities are sometimes utilized by legislative bodies when issues are of national importance, and for constitutional ratification and amendment.

ref·er·en·dum [ref-uh-ren-duhm]

noun, plural ref·er·en·dums, ref·er·en·da [ref-uh-ren-duh]

1. the principle or practice of referring measures proposed or passed by a legislative body to the vote of the electorate for approval or rejection.
2. a measure thus referred.
3. a vote on such a measure.

[1847, “a submitting of a question to the voters as a whole” (originally chiefly in reference to Switzerland), from French or German, from Latin referendum “that which must be referred,” literally “thing brought back,” neuter gerundive of referre “to bring or take back”. As a gerundive, it has no plural in Latin; referendums is preferred in English.]

Direct Democracy by SuperMajority – Effecting Liberty and True Democracy by Plebiscitary

“The Friends of the People”, Isaac Cruikshank (1764–1811)

Democracy. Liberty. Freedom. Equality.

We’ve all heard these terms bandied about, touted and championed by poignant leaders, peppered through history. How often do we as average citizens, though, really consider them?

Are things really democratic?

Democracy literally means rule by the people, so at its core, a democracy is intended to be people ruling themselves. By using common agreement to form policies and enacting the public will, by creating institutions to administer their policies, democracies are instruments of the public will.

But just how well does the current representational government reflect the public will? Is it even possible for 500 congressmen to divine the public will of 300 million people on a variety of issues and hope to accurately reflect them? Are the peoples’ support for each issue so homogenuous that a single politician can accurately assess and reflect all of the people in his district?

The public votes in to office representatives who then spend much of their time attempting to divine the public will on specific issues… issues that people in this digital age are easily able to express their opinion on directly, and eliminate any ambiguity whatsoever.

So why do we need elected officials at all then?

We don’t.

When representative democracies first became popular centuries ago, the fact of representation was an absolute necessity, in being able to bring people together under any common agreement at all, because of limits on information flow, transportation, and communication. Back then, before the rise of the industrial revolution, when this system was devised, it was the only way to effect any sort of democratic government at all. The barriers to everyone participating in the manifest destiny of their agreed upon republic, were too high to overcome.

All that has changed.

For the first time in history, we can have a truly democratic government, not the pretension we suffer to frustration in today’s world, in the form of representatives who never seem to listen to what the people want, no matter which party they represent. It’s just a steady parade of fools, manipulated by moneyed interests and their own lust for admiration and power.

It’s no suprise that you never see politicians advocating for direct democracy – it would eliminate their raison d’être. So not only would it eliminate their jobs, their lofty positions and titles, it would suggest that they’ve spent their years performing a flawed, approximated redundancy of the public will, which could more efficiently and cheaplier be obtained directly from the people themselves, in this new digital age of mass communication. For politicians already entrenched and loyal to the status quo that acknowledges their value, to question their own importance may be their highest hurdle.

Moving to direct democracy eliminates redundancies in government, and eliminating those redundant elected officials would save substantial amounts of money, reducing the necessity for taxes to support them and their entourages and gold plated pensions.

We don’t need leaders.

The best way to coexist is by collaboration, not by electing leaders to try and divine and reflect our common will. Collaboration is at the heart of the idea of democracy. Democracy is not leaders imposing their will, oftentimes against their electorate’s outspoken wishes, or by representing some minority within it.

Each and every law created inhibits liberty, restricts freedom. The purpose of law creation is to effect restrictions on liberty, by common agreement. Even a law created with the intent to force equality, inhibits freedom. And with the legalese casuistry employed by these wizards of wordsmithing, the actual semantics of any law, once created, can be further and further complicated and applied in different ways, that weren’t first considered. This is caused by the evolution of semantic components of words themselves, and the new dynamic environment the old law is now attempting to be applied within. Both scenarios lead to further loss of liberty with each new application of an old law on a new reality.

So to maintain liberty as primary, with all ideas flowing from that, any laws passed by a minority, is a move towards dictatorship. To truly be democratic and err on the side of liberty, every single freedom restricting law that is passed would need more than a tepid simple majority. To create laws that affect us all and restrict our freedom is a powerful and dangerous tool that should only be exercised with extreme caution. Simple majorities where 51% decide for the other 49%, are tyrannies to be avoided. A supermajority is a sober majority. Simple majorities are rule by Siamese twin.

Supermajorities, at least a double majority of 2:1, 66% of the people would pass far less laws than the current 51% necessary to impose a law.

That double majority would not have entered the Korean, the Vietnam or the Persian Gulf wars, saving over a trillion dollars and two million lives lost on both sides as a result of American intervention.

That double majority would never have made illegal a simple, effective, therapeutic, medicinal, time tested plant like marijuana which is taking Herculean efforts by the public to have it declared both medicinal and move to decriminalize or outright legalize it.

That double majority would have declared war on Afghanistan and then Iraq, but that double majority would also have undeclared those wars sooner, based on public opinion polls at that time, and it would have been over long ago. Not to mention that the pretext for those wars declared on Arab nations, the 911 disaster, may never have happened to begin with, if supermajorities had kept America soberly out of wars. These wars have massive economic and moral costs to society that don’t end when the outward hostilities end, but continue to fester for decades, until they are out of living memory at least, perhaps for much longer.

Some may know of the historically applicable pejorative term, applicable tangentially here, called “the tyranny of the majority” used by several great thinkers, who warned of a real threat, whereby a majority oppresses a minority by creating laws that discriminate against them. These rare problems were and are still solved by testing laws against a constitutional framework, and any law that is passed, still must hold up to the scrutiny of the supreme court. Constitutional amendments provide inalienable rights to individuals equally, across the board. This relieves any fear that some majority may attempt to pass a law that deprives any minority of their already inalienable rights.

But even with direct democracy installed and supermajority being the new deciding measure for law creation, without a ballot initiative system access overhaul, the process of law making is still highly corruptible, and too far removed from the pulse of the public will.

The Ballot Initiative system is undemocratic.

There are few methods currently to advance an initiative to a ballot: by petition from the electorate by collecting a specific number of signatures, or by state congresses themselves. Only just over half of the states in the United States allow direct democracy, and have it enshrined in their state constitutions. There is no direct democracy functionality whatsoever at the federal level. Ballot initiative processes in the states that allow them are prone to the same lack of statistically valid public will representation in the balloting process, and corruption by moneyed interests.

So any system that hopes to transition to a fairer one, never controlled by minorities or even simple majorities, would need to bring ballot initiation into the 21st century, capitalizing on the capabilities of mass communications. This revolutionary new ballot initiation system outlined in further detail on this site, brings three fundamental changes to the ballot initiation system.

Firstly, and most importantly – anyone, from the comfort of their own home, or using their cell phone anywhere, could log into the Ballot WikInitiave Database and suggest their own proposal for a ballot, hash-tag it twitter style, and enter it into the Marketplace of Initiatives – full, equal, easy access to the process of governing, by all.

Secondarily, to further improve the responsiveness and efficiency of voteable ballot initiatives, all initiatives remain voteable at all times, in the Ballot WikInitiative Database, and continually, in real time, are voted up or down by the electorate, using a reddit-style popular voting system.

And thirdly, also revolutionary and brought about by the ease of mass communications and the digital revolution, is that voters could even change their minds on any ballot initiative they’ve voted on, as they receive more information about it, or as other extenuating circumstances affect it. The Ballot WikInitiative Database system can keep track, in real time, the voter support for each and every suggested ballot initiative, effecting instantaneous direct democracy.

To become law in this improved system then, ballot initiatives are voted higher in popularity by the general public, until they reach the supermajority level, for instance a double majority of 66%, and remain a law until they drop to some lower threshold, perhaps 60%. This would guard against slight vacillations about the double majority demarcation point.

Another improvement to inhibit fraudulent voting is to use an anonymously encrypted multi-point biometric voter identification system, which relies on multiple biometrics to identify that person as a singular entity, such as fingerprint and eye scan.

Summarily speaking then, to effect greater liberty, to effect an accurate representation of the public’s will, to effect a democracy that is truly democratic, reform is necessary to replace statistically invalid samples of the public will, namely elected officials, with direct democracy by real time plebiscites on all issues at all times by all people. Reform is necessary to move past the simple majority tyrannies that Thomas Jefferson himself has described as

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

Simple majorities are exactly that tyranny, and supermajorities, at least a double majority, is necessary to protect against the whims of Siamese twin against the other. The constitutional framework with inalienable rights afforded citizens, already protects minorities from any tyranny of a majority passing discriminatory laws against them. There is no tyranny with a supermajority.

A tandem process of re-examining all current legislation, and re-testing them against the new direct democracy by supermajority, would also be in order, so that any laws already passed by minority interests in the past, can be undone by a supermajority who do not support it.

Effecting liberty through direct democracy is best achieved by deferring law creation to a sober supermajority of the entire electorate, by equalizing access to ballot initiation, and by securely linking voter identification to multi-point biometric encrypted anonymous voting system.

Collectively, through collaboration, we can solve our problems more efficiently than by any statistically invalid representational government using simple majorities to force legislation on the entire population, with no public ease of access to balloting initiation.