Key Points
- democracy = individualism
- central control is abused (power, inequality)
- central control needs checking (mutation and selection)
- locality: work for yourself, local questions to local consensus
- slow and statistical = stability
- direct democracy with minimal law text
- always alternatives, never monopoly
- replace taxes by an economic supply and demand
- country = administrative unit by geographic locality
- the internet is an enabling technology
Introduction
The different meanings of value:
- information: Value of a variable would be a time step or event of the variable. The variable is a time line (Information-time-energy)
- economy: Value is the economic appreciation of a product that is sold.
- ethics: Value of something not sold, but needing protection from society, like good air, friendly people around, fairness, stability, health, life, ...
Sociology studies societies. The topic here is from ethics, which tries to find better ways to live together. Here, ethical value is meant.
There is much awry in society. It goes on for too long. Then suddenly civilization collapses. There is a collapse currently in Ukraine coming form power concentration. How could such power concentration happen? One person deciding over millions: How absurd is that? Why did other countries do economy with a system that is unstable because controlled by one, not statistical? Now it breaks out on Ukraine and Russia and all the countries that have economic links to Russia. History has many such example.
In employment=inequality the topic was that centrally controlled companies lead to inequality. Central control is always abused. A dictator is always a traitor. Power concentration reduces the importance of the individual. Inequality reduces democracy.
Societies are going in the wrong direction because their growth was too fast and is organizationally lagging behind. Every little money, a little power, little CO2 can accumulate to too much. The individual needs to have feedback of its actions. The society needs better information channels, more timely feedback, to allow the individuals to make informed decisions.
The unit of control, of thinking, is a person. Control (coordination) is needed to produce a group action, but all systems have two forces: mutation and selection, which maps to control and checking. You (all) need to check on the coordinator that he acts in your interest. How to do the checking? Start with providing information.
We need to change laws, the programming code of society,
- to avoid accumulation
- to implement transparency and checking
- to follow principles of nature, such as locality and mutation and selection.
Information is the key again. There is the need to think and educate to avoid collapses for the future. The internet is a enabling technology.
Physics
Let's refresh a basic understanding:
- Everything is information (variable consisting of values), even physical matter.
- Information does not exist without time. Actually: time is information.
- There are as many separate time lines as there are independent systems.
- Energy compares two systems: it is information/time or time1/time2.
- The static of the dynamics is the value of the variable. The value has internal dynamics. Systems have subsystems.
- In a system of systems the subsystems develop towards more independent time lines. The interaction between subsystems reduce (T becomes smaller) such that the subsystems have more time for themselves (entropy S rises). For humans that would be more individual freedom.
- High entropy S of a system means that new resources (like energy dQ) gets distributed to all subsystems without much fuss (at low temperature T). For a society, this can be called a fair society.
Psychology
The brain is a dynamic system that reproduces the dynamics of the world around. If we see a car passing by, we can afterwards close the eyes and rerun what we have seen in our brain. This rerun is actually happing in the brain.
What we call information on a system, in the traditional sense, is a copy of the outside system in our brain, or rather, a more or less compressed model or program. To get into existence the program needs to run in our brain. But it is a reality in the brain that runs, not the system it describes.
When we love or get angry about someone or something, we actually get angry about the image in our brain first.
A movie about an actor is not the actor. If we see an actor or blogger every day, it is there in our brain, as if it was a member of the family, but it is a twice indirected image of the person, not the person itself.
A blogger with a million followers in Youtube gets money, e.g. in a live events, as if it was a member of the family. A million thanks, but people: it is not a family member.
Star: I don't know you. Fan: You talk to me every day. Fan: You are part of my family, now. Fan: That's why I give you money for food and gas. Star: Thanks a million times. Fan: I also would fight to protect you.
Our brain is a parallel world and needs regular checkups with the real world. Mass media are an image and if they purportedly describe an actual situation (like news), they need regular checkups via independent channels.
The model in our brain needs constant crosschecks, too, for consistency.
Fans just support a football team or a sports star or a politician and want it to win, although there is no connection whatsoever. It is just an identification with that team or person, as if it was part of the family, because they follow every move and have constructed a parallel image of that team or person.
Politicians among others exploit that people are unable to wrap their head around mass media.
The ethical values of many are foundation of a society, no matter whether good or bad ethical values. A state or dictator controlled TV station can manipulate subtly, e.g. letting a person, the viewer identifies with, say something in the interest of the state. The viewer does not take or is not given the time to access long-term memory for crosscheck. So he just reruns what was just said. He might remember it later and use it for crosschecks, even if it was just an opinion without association to basic principles.
E.g. "It can't be the wages that companies don't find employees, as 1234 is a high wage." Is it really a high wage? What does the company earn? How is it shared? Are wages the right way to share the profit?
The state TV opinion gets told to millions, but the millions have no way to tell a different story, which is fundamentally undemocratic.
The internet (e.g. Youtube, Tiktok, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, ..) allows everybody to make mass media. The 1-n becomes a n-m relation, which makes it harder to control the majority opinion. But those with a lot of money can still gain influence by buying n influencers to spread an opinion. Still the many alternative views make individuals compare and think and come to their own conclusion.
The internet allows so many more possibilities, away from centralization towards more democracy: collaboration (Wikipedia, Gitlab, Github, Google Docs, ...), shared consensus and control, cryptocurrencies, ... The internet allow the information channels that are still lagging behind the fast population growth.
Politics for Democracy
A dictator is the result of a political attitude of many. People brainwashed from dictatorships understand politics as "following someone" and not so much as defending one's interest in a consensus mechanism.
I once had an interview where he said: "I expect you to be proud to work in this company." What? Do you see the dictator's tactic to instill valuation to his advantage? Compare this to patriotism. If people are proud to make someone super-rich or super-powerful, they are not being democratic.
Democracy is more than a system, it is an attitude. Democracy is something an individual does. A democrat is an individualist that does not follow anybody, but supports and defends its own interest.
The attitude starts with education. The majority must understand their responsibility.
- the danger in any tendency to following. It just produces factions fighting each other.
- the danger to political monopoly.
- the value in alternatives.
- the value of transparency, of information.
History has shown that any centralization has been abused, be it in politics, be it in economy.
The individual must be important, nothing else.
Individualism = Democracy.
Individualism = Democracy
Ethical values are values that secure more tangible values in the society.
Ethical valuation happens by living a time line. Life can only be valuated by the one living it, the individual. Economic and ethical values can only be appreciated by individuals, directly or indirectly. So all values hinge on one value: Individual freedom within the society.
Democracy = Individualism = I AM IMPORTANT = YOU ARE IMPORTANT.
A society's purpose is the individual.
- The individual lives in the society, because it has individual advantages.
- The individual leaves the society (makes crimes, does not follow rules, leaves a company, ...), if the society misses its aim to improve the life of the individual.
- To fulfill the aim of the society, the individual must understand, what is good for the society and act accordingly.
The society is the sum of all interactions. Every local interaction must aim for fairness. For every single interaction this means:
- If I renounce on my fair share, I do no good to society.
- If I keep more to myself, I do no good to society.
One starts with one's own individual value. This individual value is important to ourselves, because we planned it, worked on it, we safeguarded it, we depend on it. We want the society around us to protect it, too.
Aggression would secure individual value for a lone predator, but for individuals living together in a society, aggression exposes the individual to the aggression from others. Aggression is therefore not an ethical value. In humans, rage evolved to counter aggression.
Aggression must not be confused with anger. Anger is rather the response to aggression. Aggression is disrespect for the other in case of conflict. It is a stupid direct way to solve a problem, but it was successful until population density became two high.
There is a difference between in-group conflict and out-of-group conflict. The group as a whole attacking and conquering the resources of another group (aggression), was part of our evolution. In-group aggression would be sanctioned while conquering other territory would be supported.
The global disadvantageous consequences of Putin's invasion in Ukraine shows that on our planet humans are all in-group already. The global community needs to sanction such behavior.
It is not enough to unite to be stronger against the other. If the majority decides against the minority it is also wrong. The dictatorship of the majority is still dictatorship. Rules must be based on abstract thinking, that leaves the locality of one's own interest, that sees the perspective of all parties.
Alternatives to fighting and loosing on both sides, could be sharing, finding more resources together, creating an economy.
Inability to respect the individual interest in a conflict between parties meant war, deaths and thus an evolutionary disadvantage. Thinking abstractly, producing an inclusive ethics, was necessary due to the population explosion. But this population explosion was so fast, that some still have the small tribe behavior.
Following someone instead of representing one's interests, inability to see the propaganda, giving in to repression, inability to think of alternatives, the lack of initiative, ... all this stifles the development of a society, its economy.
If a dictator demands patriotism, which is just a thought, it is like religion demanding faith in god. Repression of "traitors" is like inquisition in the middle ages. We know that society was not very creative in the middle ages. The middle ages lasted so long because very few individuals opposed the religious repressions.
The unit of thinking in society is the human brain, the individual. Parallel independent thinking is a faster trial-and-error for the evolution of the society. Error in trial-and-error does not mean "I kill you because your opinion differs from mine", because that is evolutionary bad as it reduces the population of people trying and thinking by their own. Error is rather wrong by disproof via counterexample. The second trial-and-error method allows some to learn from the mistakes of others without dying.
A society with tendencies to control (the thinking of) many (religion, dogmas, propaganda, ...) is basically an evolutionary selection to stupidity. More so, any social structure based on central control is selection to stupidity, because the individual does not choose and so there is no evolutionary feedback, no selection, based on the choices people make.
A final consensus on ethics for our entire planet can only be based on abstract principles that value the individual: democracy = individualism.
Human's have started a new kind of evolution, that of science and technology. This development needs stability to flourish, not wars. Individuals depend on technology and technology depends on livelong stable interest and learning of individuals. Also geographical regions, countries, depend on technology. A region can prosper technologically only if it adopts democracy.
Democracy is something individuals do. If the individual does not care, there is no democracy. If the majority does not do democracy, there is no democracy.
Once a dictator could establish itself, and the individual realizes the repression too late, uncoordinated individual smart resistance, using the same weapons of the dictator, propaganda and violence, can also end the dictatorship again.
The power lies with the majority, not so much by uniting, but by shared a common ethics that is good for all: basically individualism.
Individuals need to use their power of shared values to collapse a society that does not protect them anyway, but subjugates them.
One can stay unpolitical only as long as individualism is common consensus, else one must act to reestablish democracy again (individualism = democracy).
In a dictatorship the total population is always larger than the police or other troops sent out to crush any acts of protest. It is a question of speed: make more protests per time than the system can handle in that time.
What is needed is initiative from everybody who sees its own interests in danger. In a society of individualists, of democrats, dictatorship has no chance.
It all starts with education.
Locality
Individual freedom is the ethical equivalent of a more general principle: Locality. A system moving towards higher entropy is moving towards more locality (to less central control). A system in equilibrium has maximal local freedom and maximal total information (energy), the sum of all independent time lines.
For a society to reach more individual freedom, individuals must strive for it. It is not automatic, because human interactions are not automatic. This "pursuit of happiness" strive is not the same in all. Those who strive will live better.
Fairness distribution cannot be dictated. That would be dictatorship. Communism was dictatorship. Companies where the wages are decided centrally is dictatorship.
How much a person earns should be decided by the individual economic links, according supply and demand.
Even if these deals were all fair, and even if all had the same strive, not all people would earn the same, because they work in different unlinked sectors. Fairness is a local concept. But overall differences will be far less than in societies that don't care about fairness.
Locally fair cooperation (organization) has an advantage for the individual: less individual effort means more individual freedom. Cooperation restricts freedom by choice, by own control, because it restricts freedom less than without cooperation. But to judge what is a fair cooperation, information about the profit is essential. Economic thinking must go beyond personal economics, it must look at the full picture.
The economic advantage is the reason why some animals developed group behavior. Behavior good for the group was encoded via emotional information processing:
- envy if someone got more than was healthy for the group,
- rage to protect the things one depended on
- happiness in sharing and helping, and the like
Much of the programming of humans by evolution happened already before humans. Animal emotions control the interaction in group animals. The human is still animal, just the rational layer has grown.
The prehistory tribes where little companies.
The participation in the control of the cooperation secures the individual interest. The individual effort invested in the cooperation is at stake, if someone tries to gain more return of investment (ROI) than the rest. Equal access to information (symmetric information), ensures that members can sanction unfair behavior.
Economy
Democracy needs economically thinking individuals.
Information processing creates a time line, first in the head, then in reality.
- simulate: plan, do, test in the head
- actuate: map to reality
Time is information. Time is value. Information is value.
To harvest the profit, bookkeeping is central. It allows to compare the result with the original goal, the simulation with the reality.
All economy is based on individual valuation. The collective value is the sum of individual values. The individual interest is central and must be demanded in the collective bookkeeping. The economic approach records numbers and compares them. There is no allegiance or patriotism.
The political system is an economic system. They are intimately linked. Democracy requires good distribution of resources and vice versa, a demand for a fair share in all cooperations preserves democracy, i.e. individual freedom.
There are economic laws against monopoly, but still today, law grants employers control over employees, instead of vice-versa. Ownership on the means of production should not lead to ownership on people. To avoid a local monopoly or a natural monopoly the "owner" must become a service provider. Employees become self-employed or partnerships and rent. The illegality of a monopoly demands such a shift of control to the workers. The cost for the rent needs to be regulated. So basically the "owner" looses control to the benefit of more people. The spreading of control produces more overall economy. This is done for the electric grid or the railway lines and similar natural monopolies, but just recently and not yet everywhere.
Economies are political relationships between people and as manifold as the latter. An economy where the individual is important is ethically good and an economy that is centrally controlled is ethically bad. A company that is centrally controlled by so-called "owners" leads to wealth concentration that the "owners" cannot use and therefore is lost.
Work produces wealth, but work for someone burns a part of it for every individual, because it concentrates it and then gets unused and finally looses its value.
Work that does not have a local aim is lost.
Individuals can preserve their wealth, and thus freedom, only by a cooperation, where they can demand a fair share of profit. Access to information to all members of the venture is essential to fairness.
Educating individuals to hold individual freedom high, and to keep a ledger to secure fairness, is the only way a society can keep democracy.
If wealth concentrates, the system, the economy, as a whole slows down, because less and less can take part in the economy. The entropy of the economy decrease, the locality decreases.
In a democracy, individuals have enough resources to make decisions of relevance to them, to build a house, to buy food, clothes,..., a car. To go on holiday. To build relations. To have a good living standard. Because they know their own needs and can care for them.
Locality means that decisions can be made individually, or, in small groups on consensus.
Stability
Let's call democracy the consensus mechanism, where the individual is important.
Groups of groups also act on consensus. The higher the level the slower a consensus is reached. But the topics of higher level groupings is basically only to secure the freedom of smaller groups and eventually individuals. Fast decision in higher levels are not needed and not wanted, because the many groups and many individuals in lower levels need stability.
The slow process in higher levels needs to be protected against faster decision.
Giving individuals the power of higher levels is always disruptive. An individual thinks faster then the consensus mechanism and therefore decides in a way disruptive to many individuals.
Let's call an individual with power in a higher level a dictator. A dictator has one brain, which cannot grasp the valuation of the many individuals it decides upon. The living condition of an individual is the result of a lot of studying, planning and working, like building a house, raising children, working on relationships, ... This life can only be appreciated and valued by the individual living it. A dictator does not see those values. Allowing a dictator is giving up stability and putting one's own values in jeopardy.
Dictators are not bad people, but a bad system. To keep power, dictators do become real monsters very often, though.
Dictatorship and democracy are opposite.
- Dictatorship is decision by one person over others, fast, for personal profit to the dictator or on a whim, disregarding individuals and entailing instability on the individual level.
- Democracy is slow decision via consensus of many, i.e. stability on the individual level.
If the power is with the individual, the many individual decisions make the society statistical. A statistical society is a stable society. This needs to be extended to sources and reserves of energy. There must be no single point of failure. That is also why many small businesses are much better than a few large ones.
It can happen that in one level we have a dictatorship (e.g. a company) and in the next level we have a democracy (a country), or that they are side by side, like democratic country neighboring a dictatorship. Such adjacent groupings are in conflict, i.e. approach each other.
Only the ethical values and self-esteem of individuals can save freedom against the influence of a neighboring dictatorship. By physical laws more locality should result in the long run, i.e. democracy, because the entropy of a closed system rises. But non-closed systems can change temporarily from democracy to dictatorship, e.g. if a dictator attacks and takes over a democracy.
Law: The Program of Society
Before writing, the memory and the processing was in the head of a person only, which required that person as coordinator for a group action. This explains the human behavior to follow someone, when a group action is required. The coordinator is voted down or up depending on the advantages s/he brings to the members. This kind of representative democracy worked for small groups, but communication failed for larger groups.
With larger societies, where the individual counts, there cannot be any central coordinator any more, there cannot be any super important person, whose ethical values are more important. A large society just needs some minimal guidelines that does not bias, but makes every individual equally important.
Democracies operate according written rules, the law:
- create the law text (legislature): parliament or congress (elected)
- act according law (executive): administration (nominated by parliament or president)
- check abidance to law (judiciary): judges (nominated or elected), prosecutors (nominated or elected), lawyers
Values lead to laws. This means, values are encoded in the law. There is no additional judging, as that would allow arbitrariness. For example: When you apply for unemployment money, there are certain rules, that you have the right to use and there is no additional judging, how much you use it and the like, because that is already encoded in the rules.
The society is a parallel computer like our brain, just bigger, and thus slower. The law is a program that guides the much faster individual interactions.
Written laws are important, because to trust by word is possible only within closely tied communities, like tribes or families, where all members lose, if the community breaks apart in case someone does not hold its word.
Law can only work well
- if it avoids too many indirections
- if it can be understood and applied by individuals
- if it does not have bottlenecks
There is a deficiency in that regard in most current democracies.
The biggest deficiency, though, is that democracy does not yet permeated all levels of society. All levels need democracy.
For democracy to work the people must know the laws. The laws must be minimal. The law education must fit into compulsory school.
The idea of representative democracies is that some are entrusted by election to make laws in the interest of the voters. But since the voters do not know the laws it ends up to be an election for sympathy. What makes it still operable:
- there are many representatives that need to fight with each other
- there are proposals, discussions and finally and selection via voting
- if things go worse, one can change representative
Representative democracy has shown to misrepresent the individual freedom, because too much controlled by people that could accumulate wealth and power.
Political representatives are also just individual brains, which make decisions without consensus, basically dictators on time.
Can they be held responsible at the next election, if they hide information? A democracy, where parties can hide information, is a bit a façade democracy.
The answer: more direct democracy.
An important prerequisite for direct democracy is to make the law smaller.
The internet and the methods from open source development can help to crowd-develop law texts.
Laws need to be stable. The consensus mechanism, the testing, should take a long time. It needs to be proven that certain changes in the law produces a better situation for individuals. Votes from the majority for a change is kind of a prove, but might not look ahead into the future far enough. So argumentations, computer-simulations, a public discussion are tools towards consensus.
If the law is small and knowable by anybody, the roles of legislative, executive and jurisdiction can be take over by anybody. The system has bottlenecks if experts are needed to fulfill the law. To take legal action via experts, lawyers and judges, should be needed only in corner cases.
To have too much law text makes it unusable to the individual and therefore is counter-democratic.
Economy Instead of Taxes
Taxes are bad.
Taxes mean concentration of wealth and thus power, especially if the country is still a dictatorship. The current invasion in Ukraine of Russian dictator Putin shows, that taxes are dangerous.
In a representative democracy there is at least some control over the use of tax money, but it is nevertheless not according the principle of evolution: Alternatives and choice or supply and demand.
Countries have historically become too large, beyond the principle of locality. Due to non-locality and lack of transparency of tax usage there is no way individuals can check on their ROI.
Historically taxes grew out of extortion by a feudal system.
Later, with democracies, one can understand taxes as a way to reduce communication effort and still have things cared for.
With the internet one has means to create more democracy again.
- Automatic paying systems allows financing of infrastructure via pay per usage without hassle.
- Local social services like schools, health system, roads, allow more individual control.
- Local transparent public bookkeeping and consensus on pricing can avoid overpricing whenever it is not possible to provide alternative offers.
- The individual can decide by its own economy whether to support a road or a hospital.
- With direct democracy, permeating economy, wealth distribution becomes better, thus not needing taxes for wealth re-distribution any more. Insurance services can handle that, anyway.
This is just to show that there is still much to do to improve the life of individuals, to improve democracy. Initiative starts by giving individuals the understanding that they have possibilities to make their life better, that they have ways to influence things they are not happy with.
Taxes can be replaced by normal economy, by alternative products and customers. But for that the economy must become fair first and must be checked to be fair: basically employment must be replaced with partnerships and cooperations.
The state is basically a monopoly.
Local monopolies sometimes cannot be avoided and are OK if they
- are local
- have transparent bookkeeping
- are controlled by direct consensus
A monopoly is like taxes, if you depend on the product. Vice versa: Taxes are a monopoly. A state is too large for general taxes, too large a monopoly. A monopoly is a single point of failure. A state is a single point of failure for too many people.
A larger organization can still be needed to provide services, that need support from a larger population:
- Military protection (given that there are still dictatorships around)
- Rules against environmental pollution
- Standardizations of laws across administrative regions (schooling, traffic, units, ...)
But then again states are too small for really global questions. So they are basically historical intermediates to publicly supported international organizations for specific purposes, like NATO for military, WHO for health, UN, ... Also non-governmental organizations like WWF, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty international, ... are publicly supported.
Why the monopoly taxes in between?
Country
I would have thought that countries are administrative entities, by historical chance, out of historical kingdoms, but that these kingdoms, i.e. that these dictatorships have been overcome. They have in my mind, but not in all minds, not even in the western world.
A dictator declared his subjects "his people". And "his people" took over this thought, his propaganda, against their own interest. It is this idea that made a nation. To continue with such an idea would be like having as many nations as there are political leaders or parties. Every football team would have its own nation.
Such ideas should be history. People (as plural to person) should be regarded as important individuals, as members of the human species, indiscriminate of place of birth. Everything else is anti-individual, anti-democratic, or just plain alienation.
But why is there still the nation printed in the passport? Why is voting or active political engagement linked to the passport and not to the place of residence?
Current democratic countries historically were dictatorships. They have not yet developed the full extend of democracy, of individualism and they don't protect the individual enough. There is still some way to go. Technology can help to make democracy more democratic.
The first civilizations emerged because people changed from hunter gatherers to farmers. Before that, in small tribes, information exchange and ensuing trust was possible.
With civilization the information flow could not keep up. Central decision without consensus was the result. With an army and scheming, like allegiance, and divide and conquer, individuals (dictators, emperors or imperialists) could control vast regions (empires) and extort the farmers.
The big empires tells a story of peaceful farmers living in abundance due to the new technique of agriculture. There was little resistance against ransacking and stealing. Finally they basically consented to be dominated. An alternative would have been to build their own protection, so protection money would have to be payed either way. This protection money became taxes later on.
Scheming for control also included propaganda and religion. Control the action by controlling thoughts and values.
A dictator would make propaganda to instill bride on its subjects, not to the advantage of the subjects, but as means to secure its own power. Subjects acting according his interests are good people, patriots. The others are enemies or traitors or simply bad people that deserve to be hated. The dictator does actually not know any of the judged people. This judging is propaganda meant to control its subjects. The actual traitor is the dictator. The propaganda jargon is completely misleading.
The traitor is the dictator.
Religion with one god that controls everything, just like the dictator, came very handy. The one god has unbelievable power and sees everything. No escape.
Exploitation via warfare can be seen as a technique. With all the prosperity that came from the new agriculture, raiders had immense resources basically at their disposal, because the effort to conquer was low. Given the little resistance some individuals could harvest large regions (Alexander the Great, Roman emperors, ...).
For emperors to have more language zones under their control was normal. More ethnically confined nationalism can be understood as counter-movement to imperialism. But it did not solve concentration of power and wealth. Capitalism had communism as counter-movement, but it did not solve concentration of power and wealth. These movements just show that people did not live well, that they tried to find alternatives, but were misguided by populists that promised a better life, but actually just wanted more control for themselves.
Unbiased education and own thinking would have helped. Education was what lead societies out of the middle ages. It produced alternative ideas and finally resistance (e.g. French revolution) and after too many wars finally also democracies.
But the world has many time lines. Not all developments are at the same stage. Some countries still follow imperialistic ideas. Some countries are still centrally controlled.
Technical advancement, air traffic, internet, container ships, and a Lingua Franca (English) made the world a village, with economic ties all over.
Every economic tie is also a dependency. Economic ties with a dictatorship is an investment with high risk, at the mercy of a dictators whims. Democracy therefore needs to be part of the consensus rules of trading entities. Ultimately not just the country, one trades with, should be democratic, but also the company.
Citizenship means participation in the consensus. Otherwise countries are just an arbitrary tagging of people, which leads to mistakes in thought. Some say this or that country acts or acted this or that way. That is a mistake of thought. A country does not act. People act. A country is many people brought together by historical coincidence, with different characters, different opinions. A dictator of a country and also an administration of a country acts. The people in a country often have no influence on that action, because the decisions are not done in consensus. Few countries have direct democracies, few have installed means to stop the administration in consensus. The major reason is that countries are the result of historical dictatorships (kingdoms), too big for direct consensus. They would need to be split into more levels of consensus regions.
But the shift is towards locality not just by geography.
Local has kind of a mathematical meaning: We have many dimensions. The same people can be local in one subspace, but far away in another. A locality is a grouping of people regarding a certain aspect (subspace). A country is a grouping by geography, a company is a grouping by product, a democrat is a grouping by value.
The questions of local interest must be decided via local consensus, or just individually. Local means by those concerned by the question, and not necessarily geographically local.
It would be wrong to force minorities into the majority decision, if more alternatives allow coexistence.
There are global problems, too. The internet allows to tackle them by a global consensus, beyond countries. One could allow the whole world to vote on the use of coal all over the world, because the whole world breaths the same air and the climate is linked across the globe. Administrative units (countries) would need to comply with such global consensus.
It is time to build political infrastructure for the whole planet earth.
