Democracy can only be created, not consumed

Citizens are NOT consumers of Democracy. The FCC's last two chairmen have referred to we the people as being mere one dimensional consumers. For a recent example, see David Isenberg's comments on FCC Chairman Martin's new The Four Internet Freedoms.

The essential and fundamental objection to the Martin's suggestion that we are not citizens, but only mere consumers, is that it is totally anti-democratic and contrary to the spirit of America's founding principles.

Democracy is a process of continuous creation by citizens practicing self government. It is not a product from a 3rd party to be consumed. Thus, to relegate citizens to the status of simple consumers, is to attack the very foundation of our experiment in democracy. Democracy can only be kept alive if we citizens are engaged daily in its production.

I suspect, also, that the citizens who work daily to create and share democracy function as what we might today call a distributed peer to peer network that is subject to both Reed's and Metcalf's laws: The more who participate, the greater the value of the network.

I am first and fore most a citizen who is actively engaged in the creation and distribution of democracy. I am a consumer of commodities and celebrity last and least. To this end, I recommend that we all reconsider Benj. Franklin's Junto Club of 1727 as a model within which the commons and the market work together so that each may thrive. Note that Franklin, in order to support the commons, did NOT patent his lightening rod, his invention of bifocals, nor his metal stove.

Humbug to the small minds at the FCC who pursue a goal to impose upon us citizens, in all of our many dimensions, the corporate view of the world as created and delimited by unregulated free market capitalism, driven principally by consumerism and celebrity.

Consider, if you will, that the principles of democracy, as spelled out by the Founders, create a goal seeking, or heuristic, operating system which supports the various applications of our society. Sample applications running on top to the Founding OS might be: market capitalism, the commons, education, social safety net, environmental stewardship, religion and so forth.

Martin's mistake, and the mistake made by the far right ideologues, is to suggest that unregulated free market capitalism is the Operation System, rather than but one of many applications. Capitalism, like Java, needs to operate in a carefully bounded sand box. In Adam Smith's view, this sandbox was defined and controlled by the norms and values of middle class Victorian society. Smith never intended his vision to exist in the wild outside of the sandbox, unregulated and unfettered. Such a condition would be pathological, as we are seeing for ourselves today.

The question today, then, is what is a modern re-statement of the Founding OS and the role of we the people in re-creating democracy every day? What is the 21st century vision that yields this re-statement of the principals of democracy? Such a statement would starkly reveal the poverty of the misguided notion that market capitalism is more than an application. It is not, and never can be, the primary and superior operating principle for an experiment in democratic self governance.

Democrats, where are you?

Posted by Jock Gill at August 8, 2005 8:44 PM | TrackBack