John Macgregor (democracy re-design)

2/2

These guys - the Syrian militia HTS - are being armed by the CIA to attack another Syrian militia.

The second militia is the SDF, which is armed by the Pentagon.

#DemocraticChange #Revolution

1/2

As the transition from democracy to oligarchy nears completion, the state engages in more extreme acts.

And because all safeguards have been dismantled, it cares much less about who knows about them.

#ThirdDraftDemocracy #Democratization #Auspol #USPolitics #UKPolitics #NZPolitics

7/7

*See 'The Mechanics of Changing the World: Political Architecture to Roll Back State & Corporate Power'. (Constitutional structures to eliminate the influence of wealth on government, the economy, science, medicine & war.)

#DemocraticChange #Governance #Polarisation #Civics #CivicEducation

6/7

We could spend the next ten years screaming at each other about Trump/Harris, Left/Right, nationalists/globalists…

(Goliath would find this helpful in the extreme.)

Or we could re-design the political system*—to reveal commonalities, to calm society, & to make government rational again.

5/7

To counter this, we’ll need distributed government that can follow him into the society's nooks & crannies.

Not new policies, & not new leaders:

A new political design.

#Subsidiarity #ProportionalRepresentation #ExtinctionRebellion #DirectDemocracy #Sortition

4/7

We blame each other because we're manipulated - but also because we can’t see ‘Goliath’.

Goliath is distributed. There’s no leader or committee. He’s just an evolving network. (Except the nodes on this one happen to control the world's wealth & information.)

#UKPolitics #DeliberativeDemocracy

3/7

* Blame for what results has been cleverly fragmented (‘The far-left!’ ‘The far-right!’ ‘Immigrants!’ ‘Racists!’…)

#DemocraticReform #Revolution

2/7

There's no coherent resistance to this ever-spreading oligarchy because:

* The transition happened in 'boiling frog' fashion - i.e. imperceptibly.

* As a result of it, the wealthy, not the citizens, now control most governments, & most information.

#Democracy

1/7

Our transition from democracy to oligarchy is the source of our wars, inequality, public health crises, environmental harms, & much more.

They are the 'plagues', & state capture is the Pandora's Box that released them into the world.

#ThirdDraftDemocracy #Politics #Auspol #USPolitics

5/4
"My book of the year."

- Prof Guy Standing, author, 'The Precariat'

#NonFiction
#PoliticalBooks
#BookReview
#TheMechanicsofChangingTheWorld
#BookLovers
#ReadersOfX
#Inspiration
#SocialJusticeBooks
#FixDemocracy
#Politics2025
#DemocracyReform
#PoliticalScience
#SystemChange

4/4
"A formidable effort… It has family resemblances to The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, Yuval Noah Harari's three volumes, and books by Steven Pinker and Jared Diamond."

- Dr Barry Jones, fmr president of the Australian Labor Party, Minister for Science

#Democracy

3/4
Yet we have many tools by which this can be done.

As our issues with war, AI, health, housing & cost of living are not going away, maybe it's time we used them.

"Radical and absolutely seminal. One of the most important books of the decade."

- David Lorimer, chair, Galileo Commission

2/4
The political science of many years is clear: it's the business lobbies who set policy, not us.

In any mainstream forum - government, media, think tanks - the idea of evolving our system of government (of expanding democracy) is surrounded by a cone of silence.

That should tell us something.

1/4
We haven't faced up to the fact that representative democracy doesn't work very well.

It has a built-in elite - a small governing class who are physically & mentally distant from us.

An elite that is eminently, glaringly corruptible.

#ThirdDraftDemocracy #Politics2025

The West has pretty much completed the transition from democracy to oligarchy.

It will never lead the world again.

But if it wants to retain any internal cohesion or economic heft it will need to democratize.

To put the people in charge of the government.

#DeliberativeDemocracy
#DirectDemocracy

My other links (housekeeping):

X: @JohnMMacgregor

LinkedIn: John Macgregor (democracy re-design)

Substack newsletter: substack.com/@johnmacgregor

Rumble (videos): rumble.com/user/JohnMMa...

Retailers worldwide stocking 'The Mechanics of Changing the World': books2read.com/thirddraft

The written history of humankind is the history of opulent aristocracies, toiling masses, and regular rebellions.

‘The Mechanics of Changing the World’ (Chapter 1—Human Egalitarianism.)

Humanity’s hallmark egalitarianism arose from a suite of biological and cultural adaptations—you might call them the ‘democratic instinct’.

So it’s not surprising that the first kings and prelates had to work hard to keep this instinct in check.

Today's video: a simple introduction to Third Draft Democracy.

I outline why our society's recurrent failure to bring our problems under control comes down to addressing them at their own level, rather than at their source: our flawed, captured democratic design.

rumble.com/v6ww7fk-atta...

Yes, pretty bad. And the US taxpayer will be left with the unrepayable debt these guys have racked up.

IMO the only hope for a decent life for Americans, once the US is no longer #1, is to reform the political system root & branch - to democratise.

Democratise or perish The Establishment's multi-decade project of keeping our minds off system change

My latest Substack:

johnmacgregor.substack.com/p/democratis...

3/3

There's no way to beat this problem without changing our political system in radical, people-centric ways.

We democratize or perish.

#Politics #PoliticalReform

2/3

This is merely a dramatic, time-compressed example of what all presidents & legislators do in the modern political environment.

They have no choice: their constituency is their donors, not us.

1/43

If I could summarize what's happening in the US right now, I'd say it's shock & dismay among Trump's voters at how he turned out.

Most of the central promises torn up, & thrown to the wind.

Only combining to democratize the US would pull this out of the fire.

#PoliticalTheory #DeliberativeDemocracy

Divide-and-rule: more successful in the United States than it was in British India.

So there was no force to counter the plan.

As long as the two sides of politics blame each other for the country's dissolution, that will continue.

Thus the raft of measures designed to end the reign of the global hegemon: tariffs, declining infrastructure, permanent war, & the eclipse of popular democracy.

None of this could have been achieved had Left & Right not been so expertly set on each other.

Those investing in the Trump family, & other US political figures, do not trouble themselves with patriotic sentiment. Nothing so quaint as 'the national interest' (or even 'the United States') is in their minds.

Their money is globalized; so is their thinking.

It looks increasingly as if Trump is serving as a kind of liquidator of the United States.

His tariffs & wars - in the face of clearcut national bankruptcy - suggest a nation being asset-stripped in advance of its owners moving on.

We are highly social; we value individual autonomy; we don’t have much time for leaders.

With that distinguished backstory, something like democracy might have been inevitable.

(CHAPTER 2—HUMAN EGALITARIANISM)