Council-based political system and ideas on how to run economy

In one of my previous posts and its expansion I proposed a novel form of government. Those previous works were multi-topic and personal, so I decided to write a new article that will detail political system that is imagined by me. Some modifications to the initial proposition were made.

Councils of independent experts

In a typical country we find a parliament, which consists of politicians that belong to the political parties. There are multiple problems with this kind of a system. While citizens vote for individual politicians, those politicians have to vote on legislation as party leadership prescribes. It is semi-essential, as legislation on broad variety of topics is being passed, and members of parliament can not be experts in all of them.

In my opinion better approach would be to form a series of small councils. Each council would control particular sphere of society, economy or government. Councilors would be experts in the area of competence of a given council.

I propose that 12 councils should be formed. That number of them should suffice to run a country. Bellow I will describe roles of proposed councils:

• Resources Council (controls mines, lumber mills, steelworks, agriculture, etc.)
• Manufacturing Council (controls factories, shipyards, distribution of final goods, etc.)
• Basic Infrastructure Council (controls roads, energy production, waterworks, etc.)
• Culture Council (controls production of high budget movies, series and video games, as well as TV stations an other large media outlets)
• Research Council (controls research institutes, universities and education)
• Social Council (controls welfare, punishments for crimes, legality of drugs, status of same-sex marriage, etc.)
• Emergency Council (controls healthcare, fire departments and military)
• Policing Council (controls courts and police)
• Foreign Affairs Council (controls country’s trade agreements, military alliances, distributes foreign aid, etc.)
• Finance Council (controls central bank and assigns budgets for remaining councils)
• Government Supervision Council (checks if councilors adhere to standards of the current form of government, basically a constitutional court)
• Government Transformation Council (changes form of government, so that any existing inefficiencies can be addressed)

Each council would consist of 10 councilors. They would be directly elected by citizens form a pool of 50 candidates. Those candidates would be randomly selected from all the people signaling willingness to become councilors. Each voter will be selecting 10 candidates that seem most capable to them (assigning +1 points), and 10 that seem not suited for the task (-1 points).

Candidates in the first phase of election would publish short manifests (10 000 characters limit, max 2 images and 5 links), plus some basic biographical info and their photographs. It would be best if manifests wold be ready before random selection of candidates, preventing unprepared people from taking part in elections. In the second phase another document (with similar limitations) would be prepared by candidates, detailing their view on other candidates manifests. After this phase is complete voters have 3 months to decide on whom to vote for.

Two weeks after the election, candidates for the next council are selected, and two weeks later they publish their opinions on other candidates. Then 3 months long period of voters reading manifestos and opinions commences. In total elections for one of the councils take 4 months to complete. There are 12 councils so full elections cycle takes 48 months. During that time voters have to acquaint themselves with 600 candidates (150 per year). The amount of candidates might be a bit overwhelming but in the last Polish parliamentary election I had to choose from 184 candidates. Most of then did not post any info about themselves online. In the system proposed by me all candidates will have equal chance to spread their political positions via government channels, without the need to have anything to do with political parties. Independent experts should work much better than party politicians.

I propose that decision by each council should be made only after at least 70% of the councilors agree upon it, forcing the councilors to reach consensus that would be satisfactory for the majority of voters.

Centrally planned economy that uses modern computing resources

I am under great influence of 2019 book The People's Republic of Walmart: How the World's Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski. In this book it is stated that large corporations, such as Amazon and Walmart, are internally planed economies, with algorithms that optimally allocate various resources.

There is a chapter dedicated to Project Cybersyn, an early seventies Chilean computer system designed to provide communication between nationalized enterprises and central government, as well as to perform economic simulations. This project was short-lived due to 1973 military overthrow of the democratic socialist president Salvador Allende. While this project was not fully developed (workers participation in this system was not high for instance), it is important to note that over 50 years ago it was feasible to to use computers to run socialist economy.

In the ideal world technocratic vision of resource-based economy could be realized. Price-system is abolished and engineers in charge operate only using units such as joule and kilogram. I do not think that world is 100% ready for this. I propose that councils operate with budgets and spend money, which can be viewed as points of relative influence. Nevertheless it would be good to perform input-output analysis (how the output of one sector can serve as an input for another) whenever possible, as well as do other optimization task (deciding which parcel goes onto which truck for instance) without taking money into consideration.

Computer system that controls the economy should be an entity that is separate from councils. Councils mostly define codes of behavior for people that are parts of different spheres of society, as well as decide on general direction in witch a given sphere should progress. Each of the 12 councils would delegate a representative, that would be a part of management of the computer system that runs the economy. Management would oversee teams of programmers and other computer experts. This management could possibly be another directly-elected council, but I think that technocratic experts that manage this computer system should by selected by other experts.

I recommend making enterprises state owned. That way every citizen can be an co-owner of the economy. Financially companies operate just as foundations. They are allowed to keep amount of founds that would cover a year of operations on the main bank account. Secondary bank account with limited withdraw capability could store overflow of founds from the main account. After this bank account is filled (six months worth of founds), additional money goes directly to the government budget. This overflow from the secondary account is basically only form of taxation in the country, so successful enterprises should be heavily encouraged to not spend too much money and to allow overflows to happen. Struggling organizations could receive help from government.

Workplaces should be democratic institutions, with management elected by the workers. It is also important to make hierarchical organization limited as possible, allowing horizontal flow of communication/command to become much more prominent.

I believe that digital goods should be free and open. Companies that make them should be nonprofits financed from the government. Computer programs, video games, movies, and novels would be distributed free of charge. If only one country would do it, it would be at disadvantage, reducing its export revenue. But if many countries would embrace this system, and all of them would be at similar stage of development, then number of produced digital goods should be proportional to their population. Each country would be producing according to its ability, each could consume according to its needs. Physical copies of things that can be distributed over the Internet would still cost money, and donations for companies producing digital goods would be allowed.

While I think that we should be striving to achieve moneyless society, prices of physical goods initially would be dictated by familiar supply and demand. Products that require little labor to produce but can not be produced in large quantities, for example because of limited amount of essential resource, would produce most of the tax income.

In the proposed system every citizen would be equal shareholder of nationalized economy. This would entitle citizens to receive portion of the profits in the form of universal basic income. I suggest that maximum wage should be equal to the amount of basic income, making richest person in the society having only twice the income of the poorest person. Citizen’s main bank account would hold at most amount of funds that is required to buy large car or small apartment. Buying large house would require storing money on the secondary account with limited ability to withdraw (similar system with small main bank account and secondary account that can be sporadically used for larger investments could also be employed by companies). Multiple people could join their funds together in order to buy real estate or other expensive goods. Overflows of funds from bank accounts would go directly to the government budget.

Universal basic income may reduce peoples incentive to work, but this is not necessary a bad thing. Citizens will be able to allocate more time to education and betterment of themselves. Highly skilled people will be required in a civilization that is going to colonize space. There will be much more demand for automation that can take care of work that people do not want to do. I think that it is a good thing, because necessity is the mother of invention.