Being a nerd, I have learned a lot of modern
literature about the social contract theory (theory of games, cooperation,
egoism/altruism, etc). This conception is revealed, in particular, by modern
biologists, who write that the ancient people lived, in fact, in an ideal
democracy, because they lived in small groups. 10,000 years ago humanity moved
from living in small groups to living in states based on a social contract. The
authorities in these states began to establish laws against the selfish
behavior of members of the states; but the tragedy of humanity was that since
the representatives of power are also selfish individuals, they have begun to
oppress those who do not have power, and then more and more immerse humanity in
their paradigm, in particular, modify moral codes for themselves.
And I came to the conclusion that misanthropy in
society arises as a by-product of the fact that the social contract is not abided
by effectively enough. It may be difficult for me to formulate this exactly,
but I am sure that in principle this is true. Suppose you condemn people for
driving selfishly on the roads. But they also suffer from it, so they will vote
for laws prohibiting such driving. Those, in an ideal democracy, your attitude
towards others will be determined not by how they behave, but by what they vote
for. If in the future ways of forming morality in a person are developed (for
example, methods of upbringing), in a democracy, people will vote for this to
become widespread.
Near-perfect democracy is not so unattainable:
for this it is enough to write in the constitution the rule that any law can be
adopted only through a referendum (with the possible exception of martial law).
At first glance, it may seem that such a system will not work, since an
ordinary citizen is a layman in matters of governing the country. But this will
not be such a big problem, since the referendums will be initiated by the
authorities, i.e. experts, and they only need to convince the population of
their position (by raising the level of education of the population for this).
However,
for this system to work well, one more step is needed: a law on compulsory
post-school education. For example, each citizen will have to spend half an
hour a day studying materials that help understand the government of the
country, and in case of non-compliance, pay an increased tax. I believe that
the principle must be implemented: each citizen can choose what information he
will study, but he must justify why, as he believes this information will help
him vote more correctly, and this explanation should sound reasonable (this
idea develops 20 article of the United Nations Convention against Corruption).
And then a
new problem arises: since the resources of the brain are limited, it is
difficult for a person to be versatile, and if he spends a lot of time studying
the issues of running a country, he will earn less in his main job.
Accordingly, a society in which the state forces everyone to study the issues of
governing the country will be more reasonable and less likely to make erroneous
decisions, but at the same time, it may militarily and economically lose
competition to societies in which such norms do not exist. Therefore, such a
society must export its way of life, perhaps even by military means. This is
similar to the idea of exporting democracy by military means, which I fully
support (“so that the barbarians do not conquer Rome, we must make Rome
everywhere”).
