Democracy
by Average
Definition
Democracy by Average is a democratic decision-making process in which the decisions of citizens are averaged to obtain the midpoint of society. This average is what all members of society have in common, or where their opposing views, ideas, and desires converge and therefore becomes the decision of the society.
The Problem
Right now there are 3 main types of democratic decision-making processes:
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Democracy by majority
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Democracy by consensus
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Democracy by sortition
In democracy by the majority, usually, the citizens have to choose from among two or more options, and the option that has more votes wins. This is a very simple democratic decision-making process however, it has some drawbacks. Among them that the people that voted for the losing options are completely discarded. They voted they lost, they, and what they want won't matter anymore. This generates more problems because the losing side might feel oppressed by the winning side, therefore they might view the winning side as enemies, generating a polarizing effect on society. People recognize that if the opposition wins they will not be taken into account, they will lose and be ruled by the side that won, therefore they view their opposition as enemies, fracturing social cohesion. This type of democratic process is sometimes described as the rule of the majority over the minority.
For example, If citizens have to decide on fiscal policy, there might be a political party that wants to lower taxes, and maybe proposes a 10% tax on everything; and there might be another political party that wants more taxes and they propose a 30% tax. Now the population will be divided into two opposing sides, and the loser might feel that the winners are imposing laws over them and oppressing them.
If you want to read more about different types of democracies, you can read the book: Democratic Objectivecracy here.
Democracy by consensus is a truly fully democratic process, however, it is not very efficient and only works in very small scale societies. This is a process in which every member of society has to be in agreement. To achieve this all the members of the society get together, discuss, debate, and negotiate to reach a consensus on what to do. This process is evidently only possible in very small societies, it takes a lot of time, and it favors inaction, because the process takes time and because if a minority is opposed to change, the status quo will remain.
Democracy by sortition was used in ancient Athenian democracy to choose government officials and jurors. It is a process that might work for somethings but it is not really a decision-making process, because it is a system that selects representatives from among the citizens by lottery, and then these representatives might use direct democracy by majority or direct democracy by consensus to arrive at a decision. To use this process to legislate would be a misrepresentation and misunderstanding of what the ancient Athenians intended democracy by lot to be. Ancient Athenians proposed and voted for legislation themselves through direct democracy by a simple majority and then people were selected by lot to execute those decisions. If you want to know more about the strengths and downsides of democracy by sortition you can click here to read the book: Democratic Objectivecracy.
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It should be noted that even though these democratic processes exist, the current electoral representative system is not truly democratic. If you want to know more about this, click here.
The Solution
Democracy by average is a democratic process in which each person has the same amount of value, everyone can decide for themselves what they believe to be just and fair, not just decide from the options given to them by the politicians; it is a process that generates a midpoint of society's decisions, this midpoint more accurately portrays what people want than having winners and losers; through this process, every single person is taken into account in the final decision and every single person can see their contribution to the final decision.
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For example, if I say we should invest 30% of our national budget on education, you say it should be 20%, that other person says it should be 10%, and another person says it should be 40%, we don’t need to convince every citizen to join a team and fight the others, every citizen will be able to have their own individual proposal of how much of the budget should be invested in education, and every single person's proposals weight the same, and is averaged to get the answer of the whole of society. In this case, if a person proposes 30%, another 20, another 10, and another 40, the average will be 25%. This way, we all contribute equally, and are all taken into account, there is no sole winner, no complete losers, and we can all see how our number affected the final result.
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In this system there are no winners or losers, the majority does not win, the minority does not win, the winner does not rule over the loser. In this system, the responses of all citizens are averaged to obtain the average, the midpoint, the point of convergence, of what all the citizens want for their society.
Learn more
If you want to learn more about Democracy by average, why it is important and how to implement it, you can read the book: Democratic Objectivecracy, here
Join, volunteer
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You can also donate to help us produce more and better didactical material and tools to spread this knowledge and to make the democratic process easy and time-efficient.
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If you want to know more about the Democratic Economy theory, click here.