First published as ‘Don’t write to Congress’ 25 Dec 2023.
This is all about a ‘Peoples Voice’ smartphone App.
Where with one button push you register your ‘vote’, your opinion on any questions of the day.
And we all can know instantly how we are all thinking. What we want. How we feel.
We can ‘think together’, know our own mind, act together with awareness.
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THE BASIC IDEA
Idea: To have an app that tracks how we ‘vote’ that we can easily use.
. To use by the people in parallel with the govt system. Not replacing it. Parallel with it.
An app as secure as your bank account app.
One person per account.
One living true real person and one account per person. Right?
. Examples of possible use:
. The app could throw up a question such as: ‘Are you satisfied with the govt today?’
.Then you can simply press a button: ‘Yes‘ or ‘No‘ and that gets recorded. Anonymously.
. If you change your mind you simply press the button ‘No’ and it reverses your ‘vote’.
. If you don’t want to comment you press the ‘No Comment’ button and it wipes all record.
Get the idea?
We could watch in real time the changing numbers as people ‘cast their vote’ this way or that for the question.
We would know what we think. En masse.
Imagine:
Imagine the news suddenly threw up that the govt was about to declare war on some country. The app could instantly throw up the question: ‘In favour of war or not?’ and millions of people within a few minutes could/would press the button of their choice.
And the nation would have been ‘polled’. And the results of the poll plain for all to see.
That’s the essence. Simple as that. Play with the notion. Think about it. See the possibilities. Questions you could put up. Directions/initiatives you could find.
Imagine business and govt watching these results and knowing what we’re thinking and plotting and planning to stay ahead of the game. They would be steered by us wouldn’t they? We would have knowledge. We would have agency. We would have identity.
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Earlier comment on it:
What is needed is a voice for the people. A venue. Someplace where the people can register their opinion, their voice, their vote if you like, so that the people can know collectively what they all think and so the world and their governments can know without doubt.
And it can be done now easily.
With an app on you smartphone or your computer.
You could have an account on the app. An account as secure as your netbank account.
Every account belonging to a genuine person and only one account per person. A living, real, honest, eligible voter person.
And only that person can operate that account.
And can register with a push of a button their vote on the questions of the day. Any question. ‘Go to war or not?’, ‘Elect this man or not?’ Anything.
That’s the idea. Simple easy genuine ‘voting’ available to every man and woman in the electorate. Running all the time 24/7/52. Register your vote with a press, change it with a press.
That’s the idea. I just wrote that today: 9 April ’25.
Because I finally realised all this below that I wrote a long time ago fails to say upfront what it is all about. Takes too long to get around to it.
So I’ve said it. That’s it.
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The original post – a bit long winded, trying to spell it out:
People generally seem to think they have no hope of effecting change via the democratic machinery. ’What good would it do’ seems to be their invariable response to any suggestion of contacting their elected reps. I had one recently asking me if I thought ‘writing to Congress’ would do any good. I don’t know if it was tongue in cheek or what.
But here’s what I think of the whole thing:
Not you ‘writing letters to Congress’ is the thing to do but directing, supervising, monitoring and demanding of their reps continually on a frequent (daily? weekly? monthly?) basis by all means to hand by EVERY member of the constituency: that’s the ‘thing to do.’
As part of our responsibility as citizens of a democracy: ‘rule of the people BY the people for the people‘.
Clearly a ‘participatory’ scheme.
Our participation is the essence.
By every means available: walk over there and do face to face, write letters, postcards, email, text, fax, phone calls. Broadcast to them publicly on FB, LinkIn, X, tik tok – whatever..
Got it?
The essence of it:
YOU (we) have to govern ourselves. HAVE to.
And they are OUR servants. SERVANTS. They represent us. Those ‘elected reps’ are elected to do as they are told. As they are told ! So they need telling.
Let us be clear about it, very, very, crystal clear: the system has always been up until now and now confessedly imperfect, falling well short of optimum, terribly short.
Every political theorist in the world will admit this regardless of what stripe. When it comes to practicing democracy our current systems fall terribly short.
Why? From evil intent of the evil monsters seeking to bring us all down?
No. From the constraints of the time up until now.
How can we possibly have a continuously working democratic system with every man having a voice in every decision – or even any decision?
The biggest clear barrier has always been communications. We could (since about WWII) broadcast to everyone. But we couldn’t hear from everyone.
Even our broadcasting to all have been imperfect, not really reaching many directly but relying on being passed on by word of mouth at the end.
It was well understood very early that we simply could not have the ‘perfect’ Athenian democracy. No chance.
So we finish up with the admittedly very imperfect model we have now. Which is ‘representative’ democracy.
Where you lose your voice and it gets submerged, subsumed in a mass of ‘voices’ all ‘represented’ by one man. Your local representative.
This was bad enough.
But today and for a long time now, virtually from the start, that representative doesn’t even have a voice. His voice is subsumed together with the voices of all other representatives of his ‘Party’.
In the end there are only two voices in the nation. This Party or that Party
This is who/what you address when you ‘write a letter to Congress’. Why? What’s the point of that. You are trying to short circuit a system whereby your voice is already represented to them albeit subsumed twice in a row – ‘disappeared’ we could say, to ‘two orders of magnitude’.
Congress is not designed to listen to you.
The design is not that you petition Congress.
The design is not even that you petition your representative.
The design, nominally is that he represents you: that you DIRECT him.
But what have you done? What do we all do?
You accept that you have no voice and must ‘operate’ via the representative.
You accept that the representative charts his own course and you, maybe, sometimes, ‘petition’ but you don’t ‘direct’.
You accept that while he is ‘doing it’ you remain mainly in the dark, ignorant of anything he’s doing, without any control, without any input, without any recognition from him of your existence.
You accept that he will be totally controlled by his Party. i.e. you notionally free him entirely from any need or duty to take any heed of anything you think or say.
Don’t you?
Like betting on racehorses you pick one and then watch it run.. completely free of your influence.
Only it is worse than that because actually your horse doesn’t run, does he?
On the strength of which team he is in a horse runs in his stead in a two horse race.
It is farcical.
But it got this way because no one could think of anything better or fairer given the practical constraints throughout history of people in masses of millions governing with ‘each a voice’.
So: I am saying follow the existing paradigm as much as possible. Don’t run around trying to have violent street protests and parades and massed marches etc… ‘demanding change’.
Follow the existing imperfect paradigm but make it as good as you can/we can.
And we now have something that gives us the ability to make it incredibly better.
We have the internet and the smartphone.
Do you understand? Do you see it?
What are the biggest problems/hurdles/barries between us and successful democratic self governance?
- The will of the people not consulted, not even canvassed.
- The machinations of govt., rich and powerful kept secret.
- As in (2) govts acting without reference to the people (i.e. send us to war against each other)
- Widespread disinformation, deception, generations long indoctrination so’s people don’t know where/what the truth is and don’t really feel they have any right/ability to find/know it.
- A lack of knowledge on the part of the people about who’s really running the country, what’s really going on.
That’s all I can think of at the moment. What do you think? Pretty right?
Well look: how many of them can be cured by the internet and smartphone access given the right apps when required?
I’ll give my answers to those ‘problems/hurdles/barriers’ :
- Will of the people not consulted
Perpetual referenda on any subject at all could be commonplace. Your vote for the govt, the President, or whatever could be registered and changeable by you at any time so that the shifting allegiances of the people could be monitored and seen by the people in simple line charts, bar charts or whatever right there on their cellphones.
That and similar with any topic of the moment.
And all TOTALLY SECURE.
Don’t be fooled by the govt voting machine bullcrap fiasco.
Our programmers today can put up code that will run an app that securely takes one vote and one vote only from a proven living, qualified citizen and registers it anonymously. And gives them the ability to change it at any time.
Such apps not only register the will of the people but let the people see it themselves, so’s they know what they’re thinking/doing. En masse ! By the hundreds of thousands ! By the millions ! Not by rumour, not by MSM report, not by govt propaganda, not days after but immediately ! Got it? - Machinations of govt kept secret.
ALL the machinations of govt could be routinely accessible to us all via modern apps that present the information if attractive and readily digestible form.
Up to now you have to read Hansard or something to see what they’ve been doing/saying.
Or you have to search around and consult ‘academic’ type reports, ‘official’ accounts of what’s doing and what’s been done.
Today we can have AI and purpose built software directed by ‘purpose built’ open source groups show us quickly and easily what’s doing in a way that enables us to quickly find those things that may interest us.
AND then it could provide a ‘drill down’ to fine detail function if we chose to use it.
When ever in the history of mankind did the masses ever have such an ability?
That’s concerning the ‘official’ ‘machinations’.
The same goes in the more ‘unofficial’.
We can track ALL details of the rich and powerful. Every penny they have in the bank. Every penny spent on their credit cards. We all know this is the power of the internet today.
We just haven’t turned it to our own advantage.
We bleat and whine about ‘the govt’ using it against us.
No one seems to understand that first of all it is OURS.
We can use it against them! Against ‘it’, the ‘machine’ that oppresses us.
The PEOPLE know the internet, know how to code, how to put up apps, how to navigate and use the web. Of course. ALL the expertise in the world belongs to the people. How else could it be? The people ARE the world.
The tiny, tiny, handful of people ‘at the top’ generally speaking know nothing at all, do nothing at all, produce nothing at all. What they have going for them is they can trick us into harming each other. Together we stand, divided we fall. - Govts acting without reference to the people
Well clearly once this paradigm is running and accepted no government could plead that they couldn’t tell the people or ask the people for lack of time/the means.
But more – and we need more because they still would plead or claim that something prevented them consulting us, being the unashamed consummate liars that they are – we can STOP them doing things, in real time!.
Monitoring every single activity, every word spoken in their legislatures we would know instantly when anything occurs in the chambers of the government that may presage even that ultimate ‘use’ of the people: declaring they are at war with someone (some other people on the planet also manipulated by their government).
Our software could/would contain functions that watch for such dangers. Now AI explodes on the scene and it becomes even easier.
Though typically an executive decision which can be made, truly (surprised?) without reference to the people it would always be presaged by various signs of one sort or other.
(note: the above written before the accession of Trump to his second term and his adoption to the extreme of Biden’s strategy of rule by Executive Order to the exclusion of any other mode. Autocracy in fact. Dictatorship in fact. We all see this now. Back when I wrote perhaps most of us would have hotly denied the country could be run that way. Now we see it clearly, very clearly is run that way.)
Signs that knowledgeable watchers and perhaps even trained AI would detect and flag and tell us all about.
But the main thing is recovery of control. For us to get control of our own country, our own government.
In a modern ‘internet app’ democracy ( One where the govt structure is paralleled and aided by the presence of this kind of ‘shadow govt’ of the people’s internet app ) there would be constant very strong pressure on each and every representative in govt.
With clear unambiguous knowledge of what his electorate wants and knowing his electorate is watching and aware of his every action he would want to get up in the chamber and make announcements his electorate would approve of.
Even if his Party didn’t approve of it.
He might have to couch it in mealy mouthed language to make it acceptable to his Party (and it’s powerful ‘owners’ ) but self interest would make him declare his truths.
That his whole constituency is besieging him to have such and such a decision made or reversed.
And his Party bosses, of course, would know the truth of what he was saying. For the truths expressed in the People’s App would be available to them as to everyone just as to everyone else.
And, of course, the aforementioned ‘charts’ and graphs apps showing the feelings of the people would indicate immediately how they felt in depth and detail.
So ‘control’ is immediately exerted and continually exerted. - Widespread disinformation, deception
Despite what the current state of the information space would seem to indicate truth is not all that hard to find.
The truth about Covid was known and told by Prof Ioannidis way, way back and the truth of the mortalities and the effectiveness of treatments was well disseminated by Dr Cory and his FLCCC. Just by way of a couple of quick examples.
The truth of America’s actions throughout the world has been right out there for anyone to find all the time once people tear themselves away from their trance state vis a vis MSM
Modern apps could pretty quickly come up data/information/checkers/collators that subject the data/information to various checks, verifications, objective evaluations and present the results to us. Available on our app.
We have no such thing existent at the moment. Only special interest groups each banging its own drum.
( note: the above written at a time before AI when only ‘fact checkers’ existed and we all learned that fact checkers themselves needed checking for they often merely represented vested interests and they ‘checked’ only in order to present a verdict they wanted to promulgate. They were useless or worse. Today we have AI and though it certainly is not perfect an AI can be trained to ascertain facts with a high degree of probability and produce evidence to support its contentions. A very hopeful thing. )
Special interest groups will always exist and nothing wrong with that. The problem being they tend to invent ‘facts‘ and provide spurious ‘interpretations’ or ‘significances’ and deliberately mislead to suit their own ends.
Given purpose driven apps truths can be found and presented, tabulated, documented, complete with evidences. - Lack of knowledge on the part of the people
Well it’s all there for the getting; the knowledge, any that we might want/need in order the better to manage our own country.
Personal details such as we might like to have on politicians/oligarchs:
Smartphone tracking. Bank account ‘hacking’ to reveal transactions even if (thankfully) not able to influence them. Private details of all kinds.
What cars, properties, shares, mortgages you own. Business interests, friends and acquaintances.
Habitual movements, places you frequent and what you do there.
We are all exposed today. If the hackers want to home in on us we’re an open book.
We know this now.
Well what can be done to us we can do to ‘them’. Is the fact.
Always the technology and the ‘power’ of intrusion, breaking into your privacy, seeing your intimate details, was retained only by the govt. for only they had access to the data and the abilities to manipulate the data.
But today, for the first time in history the people have this power and they can turn it back onto ‘the govt’, whoever that might be.
No longer do we need depend upon dubious ‘investigative journalists’. Simple apps can be written that will discover anything we want to know about those who hold the power and use the power.
Domestic and international facts/truths.
Now like never ever before facts can be found and put before us. But our govts will not do it. Given our own app when it gets big enough and sophisticated enough it could and would do it. Protecting us from being steered into paranoia and hatred of some other peoples, some other nation by spurious tales of how wicked they are and what they planning or doing.
Misdirections, downright lies leading directly to human deaths like Nordstream, Bucha, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Gulf of Tonking etc. etc.. ad nauseum could be swiftly exposed. That’s internation but also domestically claims of insufficient funds for public works or ‘necessary expenditures’ and so on could and would all be revealed for what they truly were.
For further reading, more information on the idea:
This example is still not the way suggested above because here it is a govt. controlled, owned and operated thing. And used for the standard system only. i.e it helps elect a ‘robot’ to the ‘Party’ as is usual and doesn’t help at all with the emancipation of the people nor (same thing) the institution of a more comprehensive ‘real’ democracy.
But it does demonstrate the truth that secure apps do exist that can be used to implement that which is proposed above:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_voting_system
a little more in depth:
https://abrogard.com/blog/2024/10/14/how-about-this-to-bring-truth-to-the-elections/