Meritocratic governance

From Sustain

Our political system is hopelessly ill-equipped to cope with the challenges of the coming decades. The means and methods of modern politics have hardly progressed in sophistication over the past century, weighed down by the prevalence of liberty and archaic norms. The pathetic fumblings of our national governments in the face of a global resource crisis have demonstrated the impotence of our current governance.

The necessary switch to global governance grants the opportunity to reconfigure the lines of power and influence; to rewrite the rules of the game. In the nascent information developments – open source, deliberative methods, reputational systems – we have new powers to capture the vanguard of our collective understanding. New possibilities abound in both the design of governance, and its ongoing dynamic operation.

If these techniques are mastered, the substantive decisions we take to steer our way through the gathering storm could be formed: on an impartial and egalitarian basis; via consensus of the best equipped minds; based upon the best available evidence; for the long term good of all.

Contrast this with the decisions of our deficient democracies: parochial, power biased; election distorted; self-interested; short term; hamstrung by the dominance of the individual over the collective.

Any road we choose will be neither smooth nor speedy. Any solutions will necessarily involve more intervention into our currently unencumbered consumption. To attain this step change in our mode of being will require a novel means of fostering genuine majority support.

Perfecting meritocratic methods will open the way to define our shared strategy. There will be no source of instruction with more legitimacy, transparency or authority than a broad concord of our most able, ever guided by agreed benevolent axioms and checked by democratic mechanisms.

Meritocratic governance detail

We have one world, with one set of resources. We need to do this globally. Hence the next chapter Global governance.