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A few weeks ago this ten year old article by Fred E Folvary was brought to my attention. I thought I had blogged about it before, but in the light of what I said in 'Revolutionary Liberalism: 5 - The "Sovereign Individual"' the other day and the welter of stories of party funding corruption this week it's worth reprinting today I think:

Democracy Needs Reforming

by Fred E. Foldvary, Senior Editor, The Progress Report

Ever since the 1996 elections, we have had wave after wave of revelations about improper or suspicious political campaign finances. Campaign contributions from Asia, soliciting contributions from government offices, overnight stays at the White House, diversion of "soft" money to political parties -- all this money sloshing and influence peddling points to the corruption of government, whether it was strictly legal or not.

The finance reform bill now being considered may be blocked by Democratic opposition to the "paycheck protection act" that would bar unions from using dues for political contributions without the members' approval. Even if it passes, the problem will remain. We've had campaign finance reforms every few years, and 114 votes on the issue by the Senate during the last ten years, but nothing really changes.

The basic problem is the way we elect our representatives. Our system is mass democracy: a large mass of voters elect a Congressman or Senator, or the President. The voters' don't know the candidate personally, so the candidate relies on advertising in the media to project a favorable image. This costs money, and the special interests are happy to contribute the funds.

No matter what laws are passed, the special interests will find ways around them, because of the tremendous gains they can get. Government financing of campaigns only gives more power to the two major parties, reducing even further the opportunity for smaller political parties to challenge the system and come up with new ideas. The problem is the corrupt incentives built into the system. To solve the problem, the whole voting system has to be changed.

Since the key problem is mass democracy, the only remedy is to change it to small-group democracy. Have every election take place in a small group. That would eliminate the need for mass media, and therefore the need for mass campaign funds, and thus the opportunity for special interests to buy out the election. Also, wealthy candidates would no longer have such an advantage.

But if a Congressional district has several hundred thousand people, how can we elect the representatives with small groups? The solution is multi-level voting. Divide cities and counties into small neighborhood districts. Each district elects a council. Then the council members elect one of their members to a higher- level council made up of a dozen neighborhood districts. These then elect members to the next higher level, and this continues on up to the representatives to the city council, state legislatures and Congress. One of the rules is that a lower-level council may recall a representative at any time if they are not satisfied.

Now you the voter are electing someone from your neighborhood for the neighborhood council, somebody you might know or easily have access to. Instead of mass mailings and TV commercials, the candidates would hold neighborhood meetings. All the higher-level elections would also be personal, since only a dozen or so councils would elect representatives to the next higher level council. The President himself would be elected by Congress, and the House of Representatives would only have, say, some 60 members instead of 435. And let's cut the Senate to 50 members, while we're at it. We want smaller groups, right?

Somebody might object that he or she wants to be able to elect the President directly. But one vote out of tens of millions does not amount to much. One vote in a neighborhood election of about 200 voters does count for something, plus your voice will be heard, and those who want to be representatives don't need to raise money.

This bottom-up multi-level voting system would also profoundly change the incentives for taxation. Power would shift dramatically to the neighborhood councils. Decentralized voting would lead to decentralized government and decentralized taxation. With local funding that gets sent to higher-levels of government, income and sales taxes would not longer be practical. Taxation would shift to real estate, especially to land, which does not flee when taxed.

Small-group democracy would be a radical change, but if we want to eliminate special-interest influence and the corruption of government, campaign-finance laws alone won't do it, because of the incentives built into the system. Either we change the voting system, or we will continue to let the special interests have their way.

ConservativeHome highlights a speech at the LSE in which (despite what I assume to be an error in the first sentence) Cameron today says that whilst they will want to increase environmental behaviour modifying taxes, they will want to use this to cut taxes elsewhere.

Of course they already know that the Lib Dems have specific and costed taxation proposals that use green taxes to cut four pence off the basic rate of income tax and take many low income earners out of income tax completely. We also have a long standing commitment to replace the Council Tax (though of course you know I don't agree personally with our replacement Local Income Tax) which deals nicely with what turns out to be the most hated tax in today's annual Tax Payers Alliance survey, again highlighted yesterday by ConservativeHome. And our "Green Mortgage" proposals will help households deal with their most worrying expense - their fuel bills.

So Cameron, what are you and Osborne going to cook up to beat that? And when? You can't go on just blathering and blustering indefinitely with vague and vacuous platitudes to your CH readership. You're certainly not ready for government if you can't even tell us what you're going to do on taxes.

Speaking at the LSE David Cameron has crushed any idea that the balance of green tax measures under a Conservative government will be cuts to encourage good environmental behaviour rather than tax rises to discourage 'brown behaviours':

"By using green taxes as extra stealth taxes, Gordon Brown has given them a bad name.  I’m determined that the Conservative approach will be different. With my Government, any new green taxes will be replacement taxes, not new stealth taxes.

In a few days, our Quality of Life Policy Group will publish its report. It will contain many recommendations on tackling climate change, at home and abroad, including recommendations on green taxes.  As with all the reports in our Policy Review, we will study its proposals carefully.

But let me be clear.  We will raise green taxes, and use the proceeds to reduce taxes elsewhere.That is the right direction for the environment and it’s the right direction for our economy. It is the best way to deliver the green growth that must be our aim."

...as an enduring political hot potato. From Hezza, to Mandy, to Prezza, it has been, if nothing else, the best investment in screwing politicians of the millennium so far!

Nonetheless, it was *our* investment. And should never have been passed on to rent seekers for nothing. Whoever made that decision and survived deserves hanging from its fancy roof structure.

Technorati Tags: politics, sleaze, scandals

Sir,

As a former and in a few days hopefully future local councillor my heart leapt as I read Danny Kruger today (Telegraph | Opinion | If councils had real power, people wouldn't dream of voting BNP) accurately diagnose the problem with local government and accountability. But I'm afraid it sank again when he listed his tax options. He recognized Local Income Tax as a tax on an economic good - work, but his preferred option, Local Sales Tax is similarly a tax on an economic good - trade. Being fair, he does propose LST should replace an existing bad tax on trade - VAT, but it doesn't improve it just because it is local. But he neglected a most obvious possibility, a tax not on homes or buildings, but on land values.

Land Value Tax (usually known as Site Value Rating when in a local context) taxes an economic bad - the underuse of our most precious resource, land, within the planning framework. In 1909 Churchill spoke about those who hold land at below its best permitted use knowing that one day the social and commercial interactions around it would increase its value with no effort at all on their part.

SVR recaptures and recycles the value of investment, both public and private sector, that goes into making a site valuable. It would help stabilize land values and take the speculative hype out of the market that excludes so many from basics such as home ownership. The Institute of Economic Affairs has recently promoted LVT for transport infrastructure funding in "Wheels of Fortune" by Fred Harrison, and Conservative MP David Curry is a supporter. It taxes a monopoly - every site is a monopoly of different factors affecting its value - from being in a good school's catchment area to being next to the new Jubilee Line extension station or Olympic investment.

If Mr Cameron wants verdant sustainability, LVT/SVR is the obvious choice, and indeed is a must in an era of "eco-taxation" to provide people with real choices and control their tax liabilities. Whether local or national, it would automatically create a movement of economic activity from overheated areas, with high land values and therefore high taxes, to underperforming areas of low value and tax, allowing significant cuts in government redistribution mechanisms as the "market" in tax takes over those functions.

Sincerely,

Jock Coats

Apparently the Data Protection Act turned ten years old on Wednesday, according to El Reg. But you'd be forgiven for thinking it never existed, or has been repealed, given all the recent stories of data loss by, of all organizations, the government, and the newer suggestions that all our DNA, phone and internet communications records, should be in a database, forever, and instantly accessible to any accredited official (I won't say "qualified" because I suspect they won't be) with an easily contrived excuse.

Fortunately, the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, stands between the state and its ambition to know everything there is to know about its citizens and what they do, consume, learn and who they associate with. But with such a lax attitude to their own obligations under their own Data Protection laws somehow I doubt Mr Thomas will be heard, let alone listened to.

My attachment to a few home comforts prevents me from becoming a survivalist type, and I am too much of a coward to be a martyr. But I do seriously consider at times whether there is a way to opt out of this inexorable creep of the surveillance state. Emigration? Where would be any better though I wonder? Switzerland maybe, but I doubt they'd have me.

And I just do not understand why so many people, it seems from my view anyway, are able passively to accept this state encroachment into our lives. I know plenty who do not even see it going on. Why on earth is it any more acceptable say, for the state to know about all your telephone calls or emails than it would be, say, to open every posted letter somewhere in the postal system, or, creepier still, have someone follow you so they can check out who you talk to in the street or who you visit? I'm sure there have been times when this ability is exactly the reason why the Royal Mail existed - for intelligence purposes - and with a monopoly too, mind you, though in the popular conscience the Royal Mail, USPS and other national mail services are actually supposed to be trusted guarantors that nobody should tinker with private correspondence with impunity.

Of course, such surveillance of physical media communications or personal movements would be impractical on a mass scale whereas electronic communications tend to leave tracks for all sorts of (usually business) reasons. But "just because we can", just because massive scale monitoring is now feasible and manageable with electronic communications does not mean we should. I have a contract with a phone company, and the data even they keep should be limited to as little, and for as short a time as necessary, as needed to deliver me the service they promised. And indeed, that is core to the principles behind the Data Protection Act.

No doubt they will all say that you can breach those principles "in the national interest" or whatever. But at the very worst, such a situation should be the exception and not the rule, and should be subject at all times to proof of probable cause via judicial oversight. After all, the "national interest" could, and usually will be, what the government of the day decide it is if it is left up to them and their agents. I always have a rueful smile when I recall that for years each part of your annual tax return would be dealt with by a different Inland Revenue clerk so that no one government official would actually know what you earned in total. Can we ever hope to resurrect such a level of government respect for our privacy?

I'm not sure I believe any longer that grand government database and surveillance projects do originate in a genuine desire to do something good. I just think it is an innate trait of government and power to want to have as much information about those over whom they wield power or those on whom they are dependent for power as they possibly can. Acton's dictum is writ large in the creep of the surveillance state: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Information brings, and sustains power.

I linked to this post at the Libertarian Party blog the other day, but if you didn't read it then, please go have a look now. It's a light-hearted look at the inconveniences that could beset the most minor activities in your daily lives if all these supposedly beneficial systems actually come to pass. Forget that "if you've nothing to hide" crap, I challenge anyone to say they would not be severely pissed off with this level of "helpful" surveillance.

Yet all of this need not be the end game, just as I am sure today there are thousands of people trying to find new ways of evading the Chinese national firewall, or make a few phone calls without being billed for them, people will continue to develop ways of keeping one step ahead of the voracious information state. Ultimately, I don't believe that the state can win against the advance of the technology. But there is a danger, if we do not start constitutionally protecting our privacy now, that the state will keep trying on any pretext they can muster, and turn truly tyrannical in their desire to control information flows.