Are there rules for a debate? Because a political debate
must not be polluted by certain stakeholders.
- Are you talking about our debate or are you thinking about...?
- No, not this one.
- In a general sens?
- Yes, on a general basis.
- So in Athens, there was an assembly where all those who wanted
could gather. So they were 30, 40, 50 thousand depending on the historical period.
For example, they had the plague. 200 years is long so population changes and they didn't have population census.
So it's an approximation that we have on the population of Athens. So they gathered
and almost at every gathering, they were 6000. So that's quite an assembly.
6000 with no microphone. 6000 and all keep quiet. Only one talks at a time.
You don't debate. It's not when you are about to vote that you are going to debate. Here, you vote.
It's not when you vote that you debate the laws you're about to vote. It's the preliminary work
of those randomnly drawn. Those randomnly chosen prepared teh laxs. Then, we talked about it on the Agora to know
what were these laws. Then came the moment where you had to go and vote. Spokesmen came
to defend. Some preached in favor, others against, one at a time. And people listened.
So if you wish, in the Athenian Assembly, you didn't have a debate. You had a serie of speaches
one after the other and then you voted. The citizens were autonomous. That is they wrote by themselves,
they votes by themselves the laws to which they consented. That was the "raison d'être", the justification
of democracy. It wasn't to abolish social injustices of Athenians.
I didn't read anything saying so, at least. Simply, after 800 years of tyranny
that had touched their soul, they were fed up with tyrants. They wanted to imagine
a regime of political equality. I haven't forgotten your objections
but let's go through the schematic first. So in the schematic you have as
leaflet, you have two parts: the top and the bottom one.
So I'll project it on the wall in the same way so people can read it (otherwise it'll be too small)
So I'll first talk about the top section, then
the bottom section. It's better when it's large so people have an easier read.
Is it working. Is the projector working? Yes. The center of the schematic is the objective
of the Athenians. So I'll tell you what I read about the Athenians (and I read quite a lot about them).
I'll give you a couple of sources. Amazing and delicious ones,
but that's my opinion. Don't hold a grudge against me
if I'm wrong. We can all make mistakes. Those who say they don't make mistakes
are liars. I'm sincerly searching. If you show me where I'm mistaken, you can
see me change and adapt. I don't care about being right. I'm trying to imagine
with you a system that works, a pragmatic system. I'm not an idealist. Alright, a little,
maybe. I'm not trying to build a dream. I'm searching for something sturdy
that would be possible. If I said "this will never work", I wouldn't even do it.
I wouldn't bother with all these efforts. Yes?
- I've been following your actions over the years and I see an evolution. Since you say
that you are searching, I feel that you are becoming more and more technical
and less and less human. I mean...
Amongst the 99%,
you can be sure that 90% just really don't care.
And even if you give them power, they won't want it.
- I don't want to give them power. They must want it.
- The poster idea, I've tried it. 99% of the people coming home don't read it
or simply don't ask. And the 1% are just to be polite. So it really needs to be pragmatical.
In my eyes, democracy works because it's easy: you go and vote
once every five years and then you can just be mad about it all you want, no one cares.
- You mean the representative government, not democracy?
- Yes, yes, sorry. So it's all good and well to want something good.
I feel like we are heading towards a system
where it just asks too much out of people.
- Yes, that's a real possibility.
- And you'd need a different education than ours...
- Couldn't we work on this... Sorry, what is your name?
- Alexandre.
- Alexandre. Couldn't we work on this as a team, Alex? I understand you clearly.
The more I work on this, the more technical I become. I have so many things
to say that it's just really long to explain. It becomes accessible only to people
who have put themselves to work. And that's just not many. Maybe 10% of the population if you're optimistic.
I agree with you. But at the same time, it's not a lost battle.
But you shouldn't count only on me. I don't feel like I am a the guy
who brings something. I am more the small rock, the small mechanism
in a group. Maybe I have reached a level that I am no longer easy to access
because it's just complicated, it scares people who discover it all. I hear you and understand you.
It must be others than I, like an Alexandre or a Paul. And they are going to simplify it all.
Paul made a website without telling me about it. He told me once it was finished.
When I discovered it, I said: "It's great! It's fabulous what he did!"
He made a web site called "www.le-message.org". I've put up some screenshots.
It's just 5-6 fabulous pages. It's light, it's "Sugar free". He condensed very simply,
all the conferences and the texts that he read.
He thought hard to condense it. He must have had the same objection as you: "Too much stuff
on the website of Chouard. It's too much, you just get drowned by it."
"So what's important in there?" And he just kept the essential part to bring people
to the root of causes, the constitutional process, the message. We'll be able to change everything if we
gather an assembly. If we make the same representative government as today, but
that we right the rules. Anyone but the professionals of politics. The same things
as today but with counter-powers everywhere. Our initiative
that will block the system when we're unhappy. Even that, Alexander, it's already worth it!
It's an easy thing. And so that, he made it. On his website "www.le-message.org",
you should go and see, there are five short points, each with a paragraph
of a couple lines, really light, and every word counts. The words you need
to understand the logic. Point 1, Point 2, Point 3, so what we need is:
a constitutional process where there are no professional politicians.
And for it to work, we need to be many to want this. And it will solve many problems,
most social injustices will drop in front of our political power
that has not yet been seen. The people have never seen their political power, their capacity
to resist ecological catastrophy, to corruption and so on. Allowing us to obtain
our political power will let us solve the problem. So "le-message" brings you
quickly, with an explanation much easier than mine, to this conclusion.
So could we not work as a team? That is that I continue to dig deeper on the subject,
finding objections to make sure that the system is sturdy and that we haven't
forgotten anything: A loop hole, a latent defect, something we've missed.
What you've brought up, Alexandre, in your objection is:
"I manage to convince 10%, which is slightly more than the 1% doing politics,
but 90% just don't care. That's terrible!" Even when I try
to talk to them, they say: "Talk to me about something else or I'll just leave,
and I won't come back!" Alright, for this, I don't have a solution. But to me,
the answer to this is that it's nothing new. It already existed in Athens. In Athens, at the assembly,
you couldn't find the 30 or 40 thousand citizens. Only 6 thousand came.
The others just didn't care! And still, it worked fine. If you are unhappy about something,
you go to the assembly, you vote, you debate. If you're happy with how things are, you just don't go.
Things will move on without you, but that's fine. What is important
in democracy it that it works town by town. This is the scale of democracy.
Where you were talking about the scale, it should be the scale of a town.
And in every town, come who wants to come. You are right, we won't have
assemblies of 30 thousand people. We won't fill a stadium each time. We'll have small assemblies
of 6 to 10 thousand people if all goes well, if we organise things well. Yes?
- Yes, just to point out that out of the 6000 assembled at the Agora,
they renewed the pool quite often so you had a lot of new comers
so there weren't 6000 who were passionate about the subject...
- You had a lot more than that.
- ... and the rest who just stayed put on the side line.
- Yes, absolutely. To simplify things, I was just saying people didn't care
and on voting day, 6000 were there, but you're correct when you point out
that it wasn't always the same. They came because the subject was important for them.
- But you need the means to analyse because nowadays, with our education,
we don't obviously have the means to analyse.
- You're correct. But here again, the answer is in the solution. That is that, as Tocqueville says,
you can have a randomnly picked jury. That's a school of thought.
It teaches us. As Aristotle used to say, the citizen learns how to be a citizen by practicing.
Sometimes he is governed, sometimes he governs, and so on. That's what makes him fit.
"Practice makes perfect." What's important in democracy is
that since you want true equality, you need amateurism. Amateurism
means not professional. In political philosophy, they consider
that to build a ship, you need a skill,
so they elect people that skill. To lead a war, you need a skill,
so you elect your general who has that skill. To keep the books, you need a skill,
to know how to count, so you elect your finance people. What the Athenians said
and I beleive we could say this too: we shouldn't develop a complex about this point of view,
because there are many experiences out there. In the book of Sintomer (remind me to talk about it later if I forget),
there are many examples of the random draw / common lot that show
that we are competent. The randomnly drawn people are competent.
So what the Athenians said is: "To do politics, all are equal."
You do not need skills, we have skills. We all have, because we are alive
and we have a brain, skills. You just have to filter the insane. Look on your leaflet,
and you see "docimasia". It's an exam you had to take. Not for your skills.
They saw this like a bet. Not a bet, an axiom.
We were democrates. So as first basis,
as a central pillar, if you take it away, you take out democracy. So this pillar
said: "We assume we are political equals." Not intellectual equals. Athenians
knew that there were insane people, thieves and so on. So they didn't trust each other.
They knew quite well that you had idiots or crooks.
We are equal, they assumed. There are no "political" skills. You should read
Castoriadis. Castoriadis plainly shows this. So if you will, the skill
that you will need to deal with daily business, does any elected representative have it more than a randonmly drawn person?
I don't think so! I am clearly opposed to that train of thought! If I tried to make a list
of all the stupid things our elected representatives do all around the world, starting with declaring wars
and atomic explosions to test the next awful weapons! And training our military forces
with extravagant weaponry! All this is chosen by our elected representatives under the influence
of our military. So when I make a list of all the awful mistakes that our elected representatives make,
I'm not afraid of what randomnly drawn people will do. We'll have a hard time reaching such a rich prize list
of mistakes! What makes the skill of an elected representative newly in power, a young one?
Nothing, he's worthless! A young lawyer, alright, he might be a good lawyer. But he'll be awful
concerning climate change, or on the topic of geostrategy or of ecology. He knows nothing about it! Nothing!
What is going to give him the skill? And still, he'll become competent. How will he become competent?
His work! He'll tackle a subject and he'll work on it. The randomnly drawn person,
he'll do the same. Randonmly drawn people are not skilled.
It'll scare you if you say: "You need a training".
I recommend you to read Sintomer in a book called "The random draw,"
and now in it's second edition, called "A small story of democratic experimentation".
He explains random draw in Athens.
It's interesting to see
it in it's detailed daily mechanisms.
It's interesting to see how it worked,
and so how we could make it work, today.
And then he explains the experiences of random draw / common lot,
today, everywhere around the world.
And you see that incompetent citizens...
Wait a second, it's our elected representatives that say we are incompetent! That's upsetting!
We aren't that incompetent!
Who are you to say that we are incompetent?
Don't beleive them. Don't beleive them. You'll see what citizen assemblies are capable of,
"assemblies of incompetents"
assemblies of people, in fact honest people
who are randomnly drawn, who know nothing about the topic.
But after having worked on the topic for six months, it's something else.
You have three months, four months, five months to think about genetically modified organism (GMO)
You'll listen to people from Monsanto,
you'll make them come. You have money to do that.
So you invite people from Monsanto and you'll ask them about GMOs
You don't know anything about it at start. OK, that's true.
But you'll ask them:
"Explain to us why... because we've been asked if we are for or against GMOs.
You seem to be for it: explain to us, Monsanto, why you would want GMOs."
And Monsanto sends their experts to explain why.
Then, these same "incompetents" know that the farmer confederation
doesn't agree with GMOs.
So they invite the people of the farmer confederation to come.
And ask: "But why are you against GMOs?"
And people of the farmer confederation explain.
During this time, people listen all around.
Other citizens, who aren't in the assembly, but who can listen.
All these people listen and try to understand.
Then they invite people from Bayer, another group like Monsanto,
and ask: "Those guys told us that GMOs are..."
Then Bayer responds with: "Yes, but they forgot to talk about this and that."
Then you invite the peasants from latin America.
We have money, remember, so we make them come.
We ask: "You didn't have GMOs before. Explain to us why you wanted GMOs.
You installed GMOs? Good. So how did it go?
If you way the pros' and cons',
what do you think about it? It's good? It's bad?"
And the peasants of Latin America will explain.
Then the "incompetents" invite the guys from Monsanto again, because
they are "incompetents", but not insane and rather honest.
So they want to know everything. They want to understand.
So they heard Monsanto once. They heard the peasants once.
They heard the opponents of GMOs once. But you need to be able to answer.
So they invite Monsanto again:
"They told us this and that. What do you say about it?"
And people from Monsanto answer.
After six months, those people are more competent than anybody.
And it's still people like you and me.
You really must read it. It'll give you confidence.
There are many stories of randomnly picked assemblies of so called "incompetents"
who, through their work, become very competent
and most of all, uninterested,
honest, very hard to influence by the lobbies because they owe nothing to no one.
Why is an elected representative corruptible?
He has debts.
He has power because someone financed his election campaign.
I'm not talking about small representatives.
Small ones can be elected because in a town, you are elected
because people know you. They know you for being someone good.
And you won't win much anyhow.
You often see a lot of loyalty & devotion in the elected representatives of small towns.
I'm not saying they are all rotten,
not at all. But when you change the size and you put at nation level
or more so, European level, and worse, world level,
when you need to finance an election campaign
to win an election of that level,
all the elected representatives are in debt towards those who financed their campaign.
Those who financed elections aren't philanthropists.
That's just untrue. Completly untrue.
They do it because they want favors in return.
So when elected representatives talk about GMOs,
they are very dependent of those who financed his election.
If amongst those who financed the election, you have Monsanto,
pharmaceutical labs, like Big Pharma, your elected representatives
might be competent, well it's worst
because they are dishonest.
If you have competence and dishonesty...
- They are in conflict of interest.
- They are in conflict of interest and it's a catastrophy.
So concerning your objection on skill,
and I have other arguments to refute it, but you can see that it doesn't resist analysis. Yes?
- Concerning what you've been saying,
the guy who's picked at random
can also be bought out by Monsanto
or bought out by the farmer confederation.
- I really must answer that objection since it keeps coming back.
- It's not that but...
- Let us imagine that the random guy picked is you.
- Yes.
- Or me... I don't owe anything to anyone.
I've been picked. Monsanto comes along to try and corrupt me.
Just see the ruckus that I'll raise at the assembly
when I say: "Hey! Monsanto is trying to corrupt me!"
Because if I don't owe anything to anyone,
it's a lot harder to corrupt me.
It's a lot harder to corrupt someone who doesn't owe anything.
Let us say it the other way around:
it's a lot easier to corrupt someone who owes you something.
And with an election on a large scale
that mecanically puts the elected representative and the candidate for the next election
on a corruptible level. He's drugged with power, he'll ask for it again.
You put him in a dependency situation
towards his sponsors
and towards his political party
who also has the same financial sponsors.
You must understand that those people
are absolutely not independent intellectually.
They can be friendly and nice at start.
The mechanism of the election will corrupt them.
I don't hold a grudge against them for it.
I'm just saying it's not the right system.
I need to answer
to the two, three strong objections you've made
when you say:
"He may well be randomnly picked but he's corruptible."
He's corruptible, but of course he is!
Athenians knew he was.
I'm not saying he's incorruptible, I'm saying he's harder to corrupt.
But most of all... Wait, let me move forward.
Tac! That's really great!
It's modern and all.
Here I go up, and here down. OK.
Down again... Day, Night. Like in "Mr. Bean".
All you see hear are controls.
That's to show how randomnly picked people weren't trusted!
They were pragmatic about it.
They weren't utopists or idealists.
They knew well enough that amongst random people
you could have awful people.
So they put a lot of control measures.
You had controls before the mandate,
after the mandate and even during the mandate.
Our elected representatives today have no controlling measures.
There: Zero.
Zero.
The small control
that is present with elected representatives is:
maybe you won't be reelected.
But if you're not reelected...
You know what they did?
They voted an income,
an unemployment income.
When you're fired, you're paid (as elected representative). How long?
Just guess.
- Five years. -Five years! Yes ! It's true.
Do you realise why we can't let them write such things?
Parlementarians wrote the rules
that let them be payed when they are elected,
and when they are rejected because they betrayed their promises
and they are not reelected,
they still get payed until the next election!
Because the current elected one is going to lie as well.
So they thought of a system to keep on living on our behalf.
It's really on our behalf because they don't work for us anymore.
And when the current one gets kicked because he betrayed us,
and we have the choice between two, that's it.
Left and right wing. Both are the same in that matter.
In England, you also have two parties. In the USA, you have two parties.
It's a mafia system that is taking over all around the world.
As if it were perfectly natural for them to be there.
What could you possible do smarter?
When this one gets fired, he still gets paid
and he'll come back in office at the next go. That's a part time job on average!
But with this unemployment income, they're paid full time.
Today, we don't have any control concerning our elected representatives.
No control at all.
Here you had only the volunteers. So it's a filter.
Those who didn't beleive they were capable didn't come.
That's a reassuring filter.
The guy who knows he can't or who doesn't care
or he gets angry for nothing or which ever reason: he's filtering himself out.
I'm going quickly but it would be worth spending time on this issue.
But I'm going quickly so I can respond to all your objections.
You had the docimasia which was an exam to filter out the insane.
Real insanity. And then you had criterias.
We should also think about criterias
to know who would be allowed for random picking, who we accept as representative.
Remember that these representatives don't vote the laws.
The goal is not: "They'll vote my laws!". Not at all, you will vote your laws.
Simply because you have randomnly picked representatives.
They will be weakened by this random draw. They will be controlled at every stage.
Because of this random draw and weakening, you will decide.
Don't be afraid of the awful guy! He might still do his job badly here and there
but he'll have very little power. Representatives will be controlled.
They won't have much power, not for a long period and never twice in a row!
And they'll be controlled, again and again and again.
There is nothing to fear in the random draw/common lot, if you think it through.
When you discover it, you don't know how it works.
You think: "Randomly picking someone!" and you imagine the same awful people as we have today.
"The little control we do have, we'll lose it
to just any random guy!" That's just a misunderstanding.
That's not it. Democracy, it's not the same system than what we have today,
plus random draw/common lot. That's not it.
Democracy is we vote our laws ourselves.
There are things we can't do:
we can't prepare the laws because we're just too many.
So we let a Counsel of Five Hundred randomnly picked prepare the laws.
They had a Counsel of Five Hundred randomnly picked who prepared the laws, discussed them.
Mind you, nothing stopped us from participating as well. Then we voted the laws.
So we need a Counsel of Five Hundred.
Randomnly picked people to prepare the laws.
Then you need other randomnly picked people to apply the law.
Judges were randomnly picked. Policemen were randomnly picked.
Policemen were randomnly picked. Not a bad idea ey?
Judges randomnly picked. They don't form a corp, a body, as Robespierre said.
That is: it's not always the same people who are armed, who could fire,
who were unpunished, who were protected. Not always the same ones.
You're a judge then a year later, you're no longer a judge.
At the end of your judge mandate, you are held accountable and you might well be punished. Punished!
Severly punished. How will you be held accountable?
You will show what you did in front of a tribunal of 200 randomnly drawn people.
This surrender was part of taking care of democracy.
You had to show your results. You were a volunteer, randomnly picked,
and the job wasn't sleeping in the shade. You weren't paid 60 000€ / month even
if you never came to the assembly.
You had to work, to show results and if you did a bad job, you might be put to death at the end.
So you had to be careful. So why did they volunteer? Because people knew what the greater good was.
It worked that way and you had the approval of others,
you had "verēcundia", shame. The one who served well his city,
he got a pantheon built for him. He received an arc of triomph.
He received all the honors, he was treated much better. People can be driven by appraisal
and we always will. Only insane people are driven by money
and only money. So they take care of the greater good and are capable
of doing things well just because they get 1 million euro per year?
Very few people work with that as incentive.
- You were talking about anachronism before, so when you say
random draw / common lot, it was in a certain context at a certain time period.
Maybe, for our age, we should talk of something else than the random draw.
- Maybe...
- It's ethics. Random draw, nowadays, it's a bit like a going to a casino...
- It'll ask quite a lot of effort, I know that it's a big effort.
- In a court room, it's not the same scale, but
people are randomnly picked.
- Today, in some courts, juries are randomnly picked and they can send people to jail for life.
And it works fine. It's something very important.
It changes people.
- Theoretically it works fine but even without considering awful people being
randmonly picked, as you say, each of us can be influenced
by financial pressures, social pressure, professional, etc.
Each of us, we know this, has pressure points. Sometimes, in the court room
you get juries out of the population who are random, yes, but with no skills...
- Absolutly
- ...and without the means to defend against these kind of pressures.
It's a bit sad to think that we have to pay our representatives
but you know we started paying our representatives, our MPs
our mayors, to avoid the fact that they become subject to those kind of pressures.
- Corrupt.
- to financial pressures first but also to avoid the fact
that those who could play that role were already ones with a large income.
- Of course. What is your name?
- It's Alain.
- Alain, I completly agree with you. We should pay our MPs.
If it's a democracy, it won't be our MPs anymore because it will be us instead
who'll vote the laws. It will be our policemen, our judges, our civil workers.
It's the people we need, tha the assembly needs
to do the things it can't do. But Alain, I know it won't be perfect.
Yes, there will be possibility for corruption, but drasticly reduced.
Don't give up on a system where we would be much more protected
against abuse of power and injustice, just because it won't be perfect.
Yes, risks of corruption will remain, but you'll have less of it.
Do realise that right now, those who took the power after the French Revolution...
For me, this has been going on for a long time. You keep on finding them. Since 1789, you find
the ultra-rich, the 1%, who decide if it will rain or shine, who decide wars, injustice,
who have made this unfair right called capitalism. Because it is a right.
It's the right of the owner on the workers. And this is made possible
only because the rich have succeeded. Never before had they been able to in human history.
You must understant that before, it wasn't grand, you still had abuse of power, but the rich
had to share power before 1789. The rich had to share power with the nobles,
with the clergy, with the king.
- You're idealising a bit, I beleive, what was going on before the French Revolution.
- Not at all!
- That is that a royalty, that you pointed out earlier, could be a solution.
I don't regret royalty.
- Me neither, me neither. It was a provocation to show you that I am open.
- In the same maner, you have taken as example
the swiss peoples' initiative referendum. For me, the swiss system, the way the Swiss live,
for the majority of the Swiss, with the power of the actual banks, the role of the banks
in the 30's and 40's with Germany...
- Wasn't honorable.
- I don't regret that.
- I don't want to take it as example. Yes, I agree with you.
- But you talked about Switzerland.
- Yes, but I never finished my example. I talked about Switzerland because...
I forgot to tell you that while the French were being destroyed, Alain,
and you do well to remind me in this, because I forgot
and it's important so that you understand why I was talking about Switzerland.
While the French were getting their pensions destroyed without any mean to resist it,
during that time, the same year, last year, the Swiss parlementarians also
voted to degrade the Swiss pensions. In the weeks that followed, the Swiss started
a peoples' initiative referendum that succeeded and they abrogated those laws.
Pay attention to this, please. I'm not saying that the Swiss are a model, that's not it.
It's like athenian democracy, it's not a model. I say like Castoriadis
that in the athenian democracy, there is a seed, there is something interesting. I won't take it all.
You see what I mean? In the case of Switzerland, there are things that disgust me.
But there are also interesting things. I have discernment, that is
that I don't throw away the whole swiss example because there are some things I don't appreciate. I sort things,
I distinguist and say: "Hey, that's good! This I want!" And there I say: "Slavery I don't like,
Phallocracy, I'm not interested, brutality, death penalty, I don't want it." However,
desynchronising economical power from political power, Alain, that should
still interest you! Even if you take marxist ideas, or experiences on ideas that Marx had,
no one ever succeeded to desynchronise political power
from economical power. Here, they managed it for over 200 years. That's just sexy! At least attractive.
Well sexy, attractive, I mean...no ? It's not ? You don't think it is?
- It's more sexy than the power of the banks over us at least.
- Yes!
- It's still the same families that held the power for 200 years.
- Not at all! On this, you are wrong.
- I'm not talking about political power, I'm talking about economical persons and finance people.
- You should let other people talk...
- In Athens, Alain, I insist on this, and maybe I'm wrong, but here
is a point that is a fact. We don't have to quibble over this.
This is a fact. Plato, Aristotle and the others complained
all their lives about this government led by the poor. Don't tell me the rich ruled.
It's not true, I won't beleive it. This is stricly facts.
- What I'm saying is that you're not questioning the wealth of certain (very few) people
and the poverty of the vast majority.
- Wait. Wealth isn't happiness.
- That's what the rich say. Be poor! Wealth isn't happiness.
To me it is.
- That's total dogmatism. It's a closed point of view.
- Alain, I'm sure that...
- We're not being emphatical here. It's a pure conflict.
- Just one second, some has been very patient there, sitting in the middle.