Macron: Enable the RIC (Referendum Initiative Citizen) It Will Enrich Us, Make the World Go Non Aristotelian

France used to lead Europe, thus much if not most of civilization. Recently civilization degenerated, so did France… The latter best illustrated by the burning of Notre Dame, an event unimaginable for 856 years (and which did not happen accidentally, one way, or another…).

France is now a shadow of her former self. One first thing to do: cancel the ENA, the National Administration School, a sort of MBA gone Stalinist. The very idea of an MBA is bad, mix it with statism a la Stalin, and you get the tax Gulag, minus the efficiency. All those Enarques know is tax people, augment their own power, and chuckle at their own superiority, while they couldn’t even be janitors.

Once that ENA madness is out-of-the-way, hopefully maybe lots of other MBAs will follow, worldwide.

Next, the RIC, which will make us RICH. Macon should want to be the RIC RICH president.

In a RIC, the signatures of, say, 900,000 citizens (this is proportional to the Swiss system) support a proposition, it should come to a vote, what the Romans under the Republic, called a Plebiscite (as the Plebs voted)

The Roman Republican system was very complex, but it had many elements of Direct Democracy, more than any powers of Antiquity, but for Athens (Athens was democratic for two centuries, but Rome for a much longer five, and thus had plenty of time to grow). This near Direct Democracy is no doubt why Rome became a superpower.

Delphi, Temple of Athena. Motto: “Know Thyself!”… However, dear Delphi, If you want to know thyself, debate.

France must be at least as democratic as Switzerland: so let’s COPY the Swiss referendums system. This direct democracy does not have to be mislead us into madness, Brexit style. Switzerland has plenty of safeguards. After initial mistakes, like forbidding more minarets, the Swiss have been learning to use referendums smartly. So they use them ever more.

If a great power like France, nine times larger than Switzerland, adopts RIC, the world will change for the better. This will honor your presidency, by making it arguably as so historically significant as to enable the core of what 1789 tried to achieve.

Right now, worldwide, no more than 10,000 individuals take all the decisions. This is not just dictatorial and oligarchic, it’s stupid.Most of these 10,000 are professional politicians, a profession which should not exist. It is as if they were professional humans. The Polis, the City is ours, it should be ours. Instead, it becomes, theirs, the ownership, the rent, of a few, the politicians. In the USA, where who earns what is a bit clearer, many politicians have become extravagantly wealthy (up to above a billion dollars)… from influence trafficking, obviously (although of course they play on words and claim it’s not exactly what it looks like). Others used immense inherited wealth to reach the top (the two Roosevelts, JFK, the two Bushes, Trump).

The oligarchic system we have, electing a few individuals each “representing” hundreds of thousands of constituents, is infantilizing, eschew debates, and the built up of smarter ideas. It also makes politics uninteresting. Unsurprisingly it is counterbalanced by Direct Democracy in the USA, explaining much superiority thereof…

In green, the US states were initiatives and referenda are both allowed. As one can see, mostly in the economically highly performing, tech advanced and more liberal West, plus Maine, business savvy Illinois, and intellectual Massachusetts… Get the message?

The oligarchic representative system has to be completed by DIRECT DEMOCRACY, where people vote themselves, and think by themselves as if they were in charge, because, in democracy, they are. During the campaign on a particular issue, the example of California and Switzerland show that people debate.And they debate so much that, quite often, public opinion flips from a well admitted position at the beginning of the campaign, to its exact opposite.

Referendums will have to satisfy the Constitution, and even Court challenges: in 2018 in Switzerland, out of 10 propositions which passed, 5 were challenged in court. Then, of course Parliament has to make the referendum into law by implementing the details.

Another system used in Antiquity was to draw some commissions by lot: this way one could make it harder for vested interest to influence political oversight. The state of Oregon presently uses such a system to overview the referendum system there.  

Direct Democracy makes states wealthy and promotes a fairer society (Switzerland has some of the most egalitarian laws, passed by referendum; California passed a surtax on the wealthiest, by referendum, too)

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Direct Democracy was killed in Athens after Macedonian dictator Antipater defeated democracy in battle twice, took control, and replaced democracy by plutocracy (only a few wealthy citizens voted, a bit what we have in practice now; from the brainwashing of Pluto media, the Sheeple votes as it is told, consider Brexit).

The disease is deep: Antipater was Aristotle’s Will Executor. Aristotle hated democracy. Just as his mentors and colleagues and predecessors Plato and Socrates, Aristotle was from the very top of society, and he preferred dictatorship, dictators, and monarchs as his student, Alexander.

ARISTOTLE DESTROYED DEMOCRACY

So Aristotle was popular with potentates, for 24 centuries.

The time has come for Macron to do to Aristotle in politics, as Buridan did to Aristotle in physics: Buridan, seven centuries ago, introduced impetus: if no force acted on an object, it would go as before indefinitely: the opposite of what Aristotle stupidly believed.  

Aristotle stupidly believed that the mind of one was better than the minds of the many. That was obviously petty and extraordinarily stupid, thus extremely seductive to potentates, who are always looking for idiocies the Sheeple can learn by rote, so they will be unable to think of anything else….

Athens demonstrated the opposite of what Aristotle promoted: in a few decades, during total democracy, Athens, with a tiny population, had defeated the enormous fascist imperial plutocracy of Persia, freed Egypt, and left many great works.

Athens knew very well that Aristotle was a dangerous snake: he had to flee for his life, chuckling all the way as an evil character from a cartoon for children.

France can show the way by going beyond Aristotle.

The rest of the world will follow.

Macron should take a bold step forward, forge civilization back into the shape of democratic humanity… As it was during the evolution of our species: in families, or small human groups, there is debate, not fascism. Fascism is something civilization invented on a massive scale, like CO2. It is something there is too much of, right now. We need all the smarts we can gather, thus plug all brains in parallel, return to our debating roots.

RIC! Enrich minds, debates and hopes!

Patrice Ayme

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Note on the timing of the preceding: French President Macron will make an important discourse on measures he proposes to address Gilets Jaunes’ grievances, 4/25/2019.  I have pushed for Direct Democracy forever. If france adopted it, Swiss or California style, it would change the world. The USA has already partly such a system

Tags: Macron, RIC