Still, we must acknowledge that the idea of creating a global democracy is barely on the general public’s radar. Despite the support indicated by the polling above, very few people are aware of the idea.
We’re a long way from readiness to begin phasing in a global democracy. Getting there will require significant shifts.
Two key vectors will drive the necessary change in public readiness.
First, adoption of blockchain-based voting. As user-friendly blockchain voting tools become publicly available in the coming months, we can actively support their adoption. We can begin with testing in low-stakes elections, such as for undergraduate student government and university alumni boards, and in various volunteer groups. Highlighting the cost advantages and security benefits, we can encourage small municipalities to try blockchain-based elections. As the technology proves itself, we can level up to hold larger city, state/province, and national elections on blockchains.
These initial blockchain-based elections need not have a liquid design to serve our strategic purpose. Conventional, binary or multiple-choice votes will be a more palatable entry point. Then, as people become comfortable conducting elections (along with an increasing share of other business) securely on blockchains, it will be easier to introduce the new voting logic of liquid democracy.
Blockchain voting will also make it easier to extend the vote across borders:
International trade agreements present a game-changing opportunity to prove this concept, through a grand bargain between business and public interests.
Recently, proposed trade agreements have been blocked by opposition across the political spectrum, despite their potential to bring humanity together, facilitate peaceful allocation of resources, and provide businesses with stability and predictability needed for cross-border investment. This is because they’re typically negotiated in secret, among insiders, and consequently loaded with provisions that benefit only narrow interests, such as pharmaceutical companies, at the expense of public interests including robust health, safety, labor and environmental standards. This triggers widespread opposition.
However, once national populations are accustomed to blockchain voting and deliberation, we can use these tools both to crowdsource the text of new draft agreements and to include whole populations in ratifying them. The likely outcome will be agreements that both provide the predictability that businesses need and that elevate, rather than undermine, public-interest health, labor, and environmental standards. These crowd-sourced agreements will pass, and everyone will be better off.
That will be a sea-change moment, proving the feasibility of trans-border democracy.
More and more crowd-sourced, popularly ratified international agreements will follow.
Eventually, once we build enough momentum and public support, similarly generated agreements will call for and enact a global democracy.
Second, we must build a new social-change movement with a global democracy as its stated goal.
Social change movements have accomplished remarkable results throughout history, even when things looked impossible at first. In the US, we’ve ended slavery, extended voting rights to women, and recently turned marriage equality from a fringe issue into law-of-the-land in just 15 years. Former colonies throughout the world have won their independence from imperial powers. South Africa abolished apartheid. The Berlin Wall fell.
All of these huge shifts began as ideas, which generated conversations, then blossomed into movements, and ultimately overcame opposition to win monumental changes.
We will do the same thing here.
We’ll begin by telling a new story of how humanity can transcend the artificial borders that divide us. This uplifting story will bring a much-needed ray of hope to today’s public dialogue, in bright contrast to the prevailing gloom-and-doom narrative.
We’ll set the audacious goal of achieving a global democracy within our lifetimes, providing a positive rallying point for people everywhere who know we can do better, but have grown demoralized and afraid.
To advance the conversation, we’ll create media, such as films, articles, discussion guides, and classroom curricula, and organize gatherings, examining the feasibility and benefits of a global democracy. We’ll draw connections to current news stories, and highlight the numerous leading public figures who have responded to recent darkness with calls for various forms of improved global cooperation.
The present competition launched by the Global Challenges Foundation is an important contribution to this conversation. We are grateful for its existence and honored to participate.
Combined with advances in blockchain voting, our conscious movement-building strategy will begin to create the conditions for enactment of a global democracy, positioning us to leverage future opportunities for advancement as they arise.
Our world community faces ominous threats on many fronts. Fortunately, people have woken up, and are ready to aim higher, together.
The time for the bold idea of a global democracy has come.