The idea of replacing the state with a system of voluntarily funded projects emerged around 2004 and appeared as a note on Vladimir Pankeev’s website, which has since vanished. Of course, ideas float in the air, and the author was not at all surprised when Kickstarter and its successors appeared. Admittedly, everything there differs from the author’s conception, but these systems do illustrate the principle of “a needle from everyone for the hungry—a shirt.” Today the author believes that “democracy 2.0” could be a system of self-governance in which communities adopt and fund their own rules. And the author still doesn’t like the name much.
Tell me, did you personally order the road tax? Its increase? Its decrease? Or perhaps the commission on morals and Comrade Kostytskyi? No? And you didn’t order Judge Zvarych either? Also no? So why do you pay for it?
This is not a “propaganda trick” and not a “distortion”—it is the most ordinary question, as they say, on the merits. Just ten years ago it could not be posed in such a direct form, or rather, anyone who posed it could be told that they were exaggerating somewhat, although correct in essence. Now the times have changed, and questions can be posed in exactly this form without any exaggeration. Why?
Below I will try to explain why this is so. For this I will need several texts. Essentially, “in disassembled form” all this has been floating around the internet, needed by no one; I first published the ideas I intend to share about three or four years ago. Then they were not received, but, thank God, the crisis came and cleared many people’s heads. Now, perhaps, I will find understanding and supporters for the endeavor in which I want to suggest you participate.
Methodology. Do We Copy Experience or Treat Common Ailments?
Today the generally accepted view is that we simply need to “copy the experience” of developed countries. This methodology, despite its obvious unfeasibility, is supported by both “official persons” and all the enthusiasts from, conditionally speaking, the “democratic camp.” It is accepted by default and not even discussed. And that is a mistake.
After all, we are talking about implementing specific institutions in the forms in which they already exist in the West today. These institutions are arranged, to put it mildly, differently in each country, and exist in their unique environments; their crude copying, as a rule, leads to nothing.
The correct question sounds like this: how do we isolate what is truly necessary and universal? The answer may lie in changing the method of analysis—it is very difficult to unequivocally isolate the “good,” but easy and simple to notice the “bad.” Therefore, I suggest we simply look at the matter differently—find out what is wrong with Western democracies, at least in general terms, and then proceed to “constructing” the future Ukrainian reality.
I will say right away that all countries and peoples are, of course, unique. However, people have much in common, and there is far more that is common than different. Such is human nature. Of course, Ukrainians possess oh-what-kind of national peculiarities and their mentality is something else. Worse, I am absolutely convinced that this very mentality lies at the basis of the answer to the question “why nothing works out for us.” However, just as firmly I am convinced that so far no one has been looking for that common and universal that a Ukrainian would gladly accept as their own.
Bad Number One. The Common Pot
So, let us proceed to finding that “bad” that prevents both us and our Western teachers from living. Bad number one can be called the principle of the common pot. Actually, this bad applies to all types of states, regardless of what “system” exists in them. The principle is that the state collects taxes from subjects, which then merge into the common pot and are redistributed from there. States differ from each other only in the degree of efficiency of this process. However, a state of any type suffers from the following deficiencies:
The costs of the taxation principle. Taxes, as such, have a serious impact on the economy and citizens’ trust in the state.
The difficulty of determining the goals for redistributing funds collected in the budget. In any case, the goals to which public funds are redistributed are determined by people specially authorized for this. Of course, there is a great risk of errors, the influence of incompetence, etc.
The methods of implementing public programs, priorities, etc. are also established de facto by special people. There are enormous costs to the bureaucratic procedures themselves.
Any state is free to change the rules of the game. The degree of voluntarism depends on the regime. Under dictatorship it is maximal; in law-limited democracy—it is minimal.
Political responsibility is quite conditionally connected with the effectiveness of activities. Under dictatorship, responsibility is generally practically equal to zero; in democracy, there are obvious deficiencies.
Generalizing these problems, one can say that the modern state needs to collect money from us, deliver it, without spilling, to the “common pot,” correctly divide it, and then correctly invest it, while in no political system, most often, it is unclear who is responsible for what and why in this process.
Let us note that now we are talking about some ideal state; corruption is absent from the list above. As we see, even this ideal state is practically inefficient. What to say about the Ukrainian state, in which corruption is a legitimate and often the only way to achieve something, and which, besides corruption, engages in outright robbery and plunder of its citizens.
Bad Number Two. Control
This “bad” applies already only to democracy.
Periodicity of control. How does the control process occur in the best case? People vote in elections for politicians who, during their term of office, determine the nature of expenditures of funds collected in the budget. For this term, citizens almost lose the ability to control their actions (a form of such control is local elections that take place in the period between national elections). Control occurs after the activity of politicians has ended—at the next elections. Of course, in the West there is both a press and “third sector” organizations that monitor the government, but nothing prevents the government from breaking its promises, and, most importantly—from doing what it did not promise at all. That is, the system is rather imperfect. But what makes it work in those cases when it does work? What makes Western politicians resign in case of scandal? What makes parties account for mistakes in case of defeat? Traditions. And the system as a whole, which, again, is unthinkable without traditions and its own history.
In Ukraine, the problem of periodicity of control is especially evident. Notice how our politicians love to extend their powers (for stability, of course) and hold elections for all bodies of power on the same day (for savings, of course). Just as much they love to blur responsibility for power through manipulations with the Constitution (there is a majority or there isn’t) and electoral law (what is the “Chernovetsky bloc”?).
Voter competence. Of course, the Western voter is much more competent than ours. The author of these lines knows this from personal experience. However, the problem of competence is still common. The problem of competence arises because states have appropriated the broadest scope of powers and the activities corresponding to them. No person can figure out all of this in its entirety.
In the West the problem is solved through civil society. The voter is interested not only in the “general” positions of those seeking power, like taxes, but also in specifics close to their heart. For this, they always have at hand civil society organizations that monitor the relevant problems and can provide information.
However, again, it is always easier not to figure something out but simply to vote for a familiar brand. This is what the majority does. Those voters in the West who want to be competent simply have more opportunities for this.
In the case of Ukraine such opportunities are almost absent. Everyone knows the quality of our parties’ programs and the fact that “no one reads them.” And indeed—what’s the point of reading them if no one intends to fulfill them? The “third sector” is weak and often politically engaged.
Concentration on the “topical.” Voter incompetence and the very mechanics of plurality voting lead to the fact that only several “hot” issues remain in the voter’s field of vision, the discussion of which election campaigns are usually devoted to. The “topicality” of these issues is often questionable and caused by random coincidences of circumstances.
Ukraine demonstrates how politicians can create fictitious topicality and dance around it with tambourines in anticipation of an eternal and fruitful electoral process. Practically all our “topical questions” in the form of the EU, NATO, the “historical past,” etc., etc. have no significance for the present (if only because no one knows anything about the EU and NATO, but everyone heatedly argues, and besides, no one intends to accept us there). Moreover, Ukraine is simply overflowing with fighters for a bright past, ready to engage in this fight endlessly.
Let us also note the following. In reality, as experience shows, about 90 percent of the harm that the state causes is generated in spheres of everyday activity far from “topical politics.” There you on the forums are fighting about gas and pipes, but if there were an opportunity to calculate, I assure you, it would turn out that some seemingly insignificant patent case or, say, licensing, or some other nonsense causes the country damage like your Gazprom. And no one cares about this and never will.
So, preliminary conclusions. It is clear to everyone that the list of matters that the state oversees will take not one hundred pages, and to figure out all this will take several years. As a result, elections, whose topicality always outweighs the desire to figure out the essence, turn into buying a pig in a poke. The state between elections does whatever it wants, and at elections its entire task reduces to dancing with tambourines before voters and promising to distribute as many benefits as possible. Populism appears for quite objective reasons: first, the voter well realizes their own incompetence and therefore reacts only to populism; second, parties aspiring to power also rarely understand how and what works in the state machine and, most importantly—why it works there. How, in such a situation, to explain to a voter at elections how “we” are better than “they”? Only by waving banknotes before their nose and telling scary stories on “topical” topics. Populism is a systemic property of such a model. With a correction for voter stupidity and laziness and elite greed—we get Ukraine. With a correction for traditions and off-system control—we get the West.
Now attention! We see that the Western “pig in a poke,” which is regularly bought there at elections, differs from the Ukrainian pig only in the conditions under which it is bought and sold. The important thing is this: these conditions—traditions, civic experience, civil society, independent press, etc.—cannot be “introduced.” Elections can be introduced. Traditions—cannot.
Bad Number Three. The Majority. Formation
As is known, modern democracy implies the principle of “one person—one vote.” This principle is quite logical and natural in the case when voters are equal. Actually, the idea of elections initially implies the equality of voters. Almost always, in those cases when people use elections, you will encounter that they choose among equals. Equality is established according to that criterion which is the main one for the functions for the execution of which elections are held.
For elections of political bodies, of course, problems arise with such criteria. However, let us not forget that democracy, as a set of institutions and procedures, formed and strengthened under conditions of suffrage that we would now call “restricted.” These restrictions (franchise requirements) were precisely aimed at creating equality among voters.
The abolition of all requirements (except age, although, following the logic of supporters of voter inequality, this one should also be abolished) led to de facto inequality of participants in elections. Now we see a strange situation when a thug from Borshchahivka and a professor have equal voting rights.
Now the state, more than ever before, is capable of manipulating the will of voters. Moreover, now it itself grows its own voter, distributing doles and making these doles part of regular state policy.
Therefore, politicians in all countries increasingly act not as they should, but as the “arrangements” of the nearest elections require. Those who want to and can act “as they should” have ever fewer chances to obtain power for this.
Bad Number Four. The Majority
This problem is very well known and, in principle, for what I will say in subsequent texts, it would be quite enough if only this one problem existed.
Its essence consists in decision-making by majority. This means, at minimum, three things. First, such decisions can easily infringe upon an unorganized minority. Second, an organized minority, on the contrary, can easily manipulate the majority, for whom the problems of this minority are not critical, that is, to which they don’t much care. This phenomenon is very well demonstrated by the USA with its political correctness, which means that active minorities have more rights than everyone else.
Third, the majority is always less competent and not inclined to change. Change always benefits the minority. This circumstance is not so critical for countries where an insignificant part of national wealth is redistributed in the political market. In other words, where political decisions “at the top” do not strongly influence everyday life, and the main political life proceeds at the level of the local commune. For Ukraine, in which almost the entire national product is redistributed in the political market, such a situation is catastrophic. True, and for the West, where the state has learned to grow its own voter, this situation is becoming ever more relevant. Western states grow at unstoppable rates. I once quoted Milton Friedman, who claimed that during his lifetime the volume of goods redistributed in the political market grew fourfold. And this in the USA, not in some France.
So, general conclusions:
The modern state functions according to the principle of the “common pot.” This means that the state has the opportunity to conduct activities for which no one authorized it at all, as it is financed after funds have arrived in the “common pot.”
Spheres of activity and methods of activity are determined by the state itself.
Real influence on life in the country is exerted not by elected politicians, but by numerous state agents (ministries, etc.), who act at their own discretion.
Elections do not allow effective control of state activity.
All of this can be avoided if one thinks a little.