Skip to contentMenu and widgetsA win-win end to the Arab struggleHow to make democracy less corruptableHow seed dispersal drove animal evolutionWhat happens after global warming?ContactDownload movies and full message hereSearch for:How to make democracy less corruptable1) Our democracy’s representation-ratio is much too narrowThe representation ratio is the most important aspect of a democracy’s design. What is the ratio of citizens to leaders? Narrow democracies, with too few elected leaders are essentially the same thing as broad oligarchies.  Thus narrow democracies suffer from many of the same problems that broad oligarchies suffer from.Problem #1 Intelligence: Which democracy will have an expert in every subject? The one with 50 lawmakers, or the one with 50-thousand lawmakers? Which brain is smarter, the one with 50 cells or the one with 50-thousand cells?Problem #2 Isolation: Which democracy is more accessible and can better hear the voice of the people? The one with 50 lawmakers, or the one with 50-thousand?Problem #3 Elitism: Which democracy is less elitist, and more like the common man? The one with 50 lawmakers or the one with 50-thousand?Problem #4 Ease of seizing power: Is it easier to seize power from 50 lawmakers or 50-thousand? Also, broad democracies can be decentralized, meeting in multiple cities— This makes a violent seizure of power much harder to pull off.Problem #5 Vote value: Lawmakers in a 50-man legislature cast very powerful and very valuable votes — votes that are definitely worth buying and selling. But if the legislature has 50,000 men in it instead, each vote is worth 1,000 times less and the cost of corruption rises by 1,000-fold.  Also, the ability to profit from one’s position in a 50-man or 500-man legislature offers a powerful incentive for crooks to fight for election. In fact, such a valuable thing to sell, clearly draws crooks to elected office like bees to honey.Problem #6 Lobbying: It is easy to visit 50 lawmakers. But is hard to visit 50,000 lawmakers — thus the latter democracy is about 1,000 times less vulnerable to lobbyists.Problem #7 Appointees: What a huge error of scale we make. There is no way that 536 elected people (435 representatives +100 senators +1 president) can adequately manage a government for 325 million people. There is no way that a few hundred decision makers (no matter how brilliant) can manage the affairs of a few hundred million people. At one-in-a-million, there simply are not enough democratically elected people to properly run our huge nation.As a result, our democracy is under-staffed with elected decision makers. So, most work is done by non-elected appointees. Today these appointees are our democracy’s, eyes, ears, analysts, and report writers. In fact, these non-elected appointees even undertake the all-important job of writing laws for our legislatures, as well as doing just about everything for our 4-year presidential monarchs.Thus an appointee bureaucracy no