Guillaume Apollinaire

            I t is generally believed presidential elections test fortitude. We follow the men we elect without wondering why they endure so much to be perceived as strong. They claim public spirit, but more likely they seek self-aggrandizement, prize of our competitive society. In federal elections, with huge constituencies, voter self-interest is an abstraction. We vote for candidates who promise to make the nation, and, by extension, ourselves, strong. Ironically, the insecure United States spending untold billions for 'defense', is one of the few nations with the technology and tradition to move in a different direction, but we cannot expect Republicans or Democrats to support utopian goals.
            The road to electronic democracy, the first step, begins with television whose talk shows furnish a bully pulpit for new ideas. If networks resist non-traditional ideas, thousands of computer bulletin boards offer an alternative resource. If enough people want a new party, it will happen. Computer assisted political parties hold conventions without anyone leaving home, choosing slates by evaluating position papers left in the computer's memory. Anyone asks questions, and everyone is privy to answers. The necessary technology is installed in millions of homes, schools and offices across the nation.
            Independent political campaigns are viable. John Anderson proved that without electronic technology, but independent campaigns confront enormous obstacles. We like winners and the likelihood independent candidates will lose persuades us to vote for other fellows. In 1980 friends told me a vote for Barry Commoner was a vote for Ronald Reagan. I loathe Ronald Reagan, but had he won by one vote, it would not have been mine. I prefer voting for rather than against. I broke my rule in 1984 to vote for Walter Mondale, who I saw as a lesser evil, the standard choice of representative democracy.
            Present collective perceptions support the status quo. Those who believe in a 'strong' United States will not welcome candidates who risk for peace. We want change, but we want traffic tickets fixed and zoning disputes resolved in our favor. We want the system to work for us, which inclines us to keep things the way they are. The middle class, jealous of its pleasure craft and barbecues, will not see New Age politics as in its interest.
            Since electronic democracy must be ubiquitous, dissemination of electronic technology is the first order of business. A computer based political party must install computers in poor neighborhoods. Party members must teach the electronically disadvantaged to come on line. Computers support equality. They care nothing about the color or gender of the hands pushing their buttons. When I joined MAUG (Microsoft Apple Users Group-computer users love acronyms) the SYSOP (system operator) answered my questions, however elementary, but we never met. Strangers helping each another, the nicest by-product of these machines. Electronic democracy, broadest plank in the new party's platform, implies a fiber optic system to carry the computer's electronic impulses. Since voters need terminals, it falls to government to distribute them. We do not have time for electronic technology to trickle down.
            The decision to use collective resources to solve collective problems will go as far as we like. Since automobiles pollute, an alternative political party may decide government must develop and distribute non-polluting alternatives. Pollution must stop and attrition takes too long, but hierarchical perspectives oppose public poaching on private domains. The urge for private profit ignores vital collective interests, but the poor boys who dream of making it do not want the music to stop before their turn on the dance floor.
            Electronic democracy intimidates those who will benefit most. Immersed in class structure, we do not want 'inferiors' to surpass us. The prospect of lost status terrifies. We want the irresponsibility of assigning collective problems to 'experts', but like citizens of Bridgeport who turned to a socialist roofer in the nineteen thirties, events may drive us off the beaten path. Present practices bring contamination, crime, terrorism, taxes and corruption. Change, however upsetting, may be less unsettling than the way things are. Satellites, dish antennas, and microwave communications may make it unnecessary to wire the country, but if we return to the good sense of our forefathers one telephone company's fiber optic lines will put digital inputs into every home. Digital inputs make it possible to skip high definition television, at the same time opening the door to video telephones and other wonders. However we go, electronic democracy can be installed quickly. It furthers a tradition that bestows political power on an enlightened electorate.
            Electronic democracy breaks with the way things are, and few like the way things are. Pollution disgusts, deficits spiral, crime soars, while vagrants live in affluent doorways. We spend fortunes to destroy peasant huts, but cannot bring ourselves to give peasants with electricity and potable water. It is difficult to impose order on madness of this magnitude, but we must begin. Moving from where we are to a different place requires some doing, but if we assume change is possible (the alternative is despair), our first decision fixes the rate of change.
            Non-standard analysis developed by the late Abraham Robinson of Yale solved Zeno's paradox. Zeno, who lived four hundred years before Christ, proved arrows never reach their targets. They travel half way, then half way again and again, to remain forever shy of their goal. Non-standard analysis suggests that extremes and middles exist independently. Between black and white lie an infinity of grays, but black and white differ in kind, not degree, from gray. It is generally believed extreme solutions are impractical, but they have the advantage of simplicity. What follows is a series of proposals, one extreme, others within present habit, all heading away from where we are. The extreme, immediate transition to a moneyless society, is a good place to begin.
            A pollution free environment seems impossible, but to reach that state of grace we have only to eliminate money. Much depends on money, but looking closely, we see money's sole purpose is hierarchy. Abolishing money will not effect the way we live because most employment has nothing to do with our standard of living. Cash registers, bookkeeping machines, things like gasoline pumps, and the workers who make and operate them, become obsolete when money no longer matters. Other occupations, the manufacture of pesticides, food additives and armaments are harmful, but we persist because people need the money these occupations generate. Comparatively few occupations involve essential work. If the few people we need to maintain collective living standards remain on their jobs, we have time to make more equitable arrangements.
            Without money, welfare checks and caseworkers vanish. Housing improves as superfluous office buildings become apartment houses. Magnanimity of this magnitude is not a hallmark of the well to do, but with money gone, the need for office buildings disappears, there being no non-money related use for the space. Landlords will pay no mortgages, insurance or taxes, but they must surrender the psychological satisfaction they derive from occupied buildings. Eliminating money seems preposterous because collective wisdom decrees that workers resent others living off their labors, but without money inequality quickly disappears. Slum dwellers remain in slums temporarily, but food will be plentiful. When money does not matter, farmers produce as much as they can, there being no prices to support, only stomachs to fill.Those who see moneyless societies as impractical or worse should remember a round planet earth was initially perceived as insane. Moneyless societies are possible, and quickly, but voters, even Russian voters, will reject candidates who disparage money. I propose the idea to begin thinking about it. A classless society is neither preposterous nor beyond immediate reach.
            For the more timid, less extreme alternatives exist within the framework of a moneyed society. We convert all or some defense spending into computers and cable networks, but workers whose livelihoods are defense related must not be damaged. They receive salaries as we retool, just as we must pay automobile workers, idled by the need for non-polluting motor vehicles. Withdrawal from the arms race demonstrates peaceful intent at the same time it frees resources for constructive enterprise, but we fear standing naked before enemies. If conquest is a concern, we have only to remember the lesson taught by the Vietnamese. Defeat is a state of mind. Not even as cruel an enemy as ourselves can defeat a society that will not be defeated. Should we be invaded, our choice is guerrilla war or tyranny. Unending war is honorable, but eastern Europe chose tyranny and life goes on. I admire Vietnam's example because I lack the fortitude to emulate it. I sympathize with the urge to hide behind ballistic missiles and leave the fighting to others. For those discomfited by unilateral disarmament, gradual decreases in defense spending accomplish the end of keeping us in guns until we vote on where we want to go.
            A different world view permits movement in a different direction. We waste because waste generates economic activity. Nuclear plants satisfy our need for electricity, but conservation costs less. Efficient refrigerators with motors on top, disburse heat created by the refrigeration process in summer and warm living space in winter. Refrigerators with motors and coils underneath or behind, re cool rising heat in a never ending cycle of waste. Although conservation costs less than power plants, new construction creates jobs and jobs keep money based economies going. Were jobs irrelevant, we use existing generating capacity as efficiently as we can.
            For present purposes, inefficient refrigerators suit us. Useful lives are shortened, creating a need for replacements, and the additional electricity used enhances cash flows of utilities. Owners of inefficient refrigerators will not purchase efficient replacements because wasted electricity costs less than new machines. Attrition will not work because refrigerator manufacturers will not retool. They, too, have investments to protect. I would have government do it, but government issue refrigerators will not enthrall the electorate. Capitalism provides a plethora of models and sizes. We associate government issue with olive drab. Were abundance our standard, a few models, our best, would be enough.We are reluctant to solve collective problems with collective solutions. Automobile exhaust is appalling, but letting government develop alternative engines or retool existing factories goes against the hierarchical grain. Evaluating future possibility with usual assumptions makes change impossible.
            Technological societies cannot permit unbridled individualism. Ring around the collar is no excuse for non-biodegradable detergents even if some entrepreneur persuades a nation ring less collars justify assaulting nature. Capitalists say economic freedom is the sine qua non of liberty, but the right to speak your mind has nothing to do with the right to pollute or the right to convert open space into office buildings. We can be free. We can be clean, and we can do it without money or hierarchy.
            I make no claim to prescience. Other minds may know better ways to get from where we are to where we want to be. Since the first order of business is electronic democracy, every home needs a computer. Collective munificence of this magnitude may offend computer owners who think everyone should pay because they did. It will be harder acquire the generosity to give computers, television sets and electric generators to foreigners, especially poor, black ones, even though we have no problem spending billions on lethal foreign aid. Technology distinguishes us from them. Since we want to see ourselves as different, we resist diminishing differences.
            The cost of disseminating electronic technology is considerable (if we use money). Should we reject a sharp break with the past, we can add to mammoth deficits on the theory that more debt does not matter. We can raise taxes, (taxing the rich has long been an egalitarian concept), reduce collective expenditures or funnel profits from private businesses into public coffers, that is nationalize something. For those preferring nationalization, automobile related injuries, and the insurance industry, provide a fertile field for change.
            Automobile accidents are a national tragedy. Thousands are killed, and more thousands injured. We compensate victims with a combination of private insurance and state and federal court systems. Courts are necessary because the system allocates blame. The negligent, unless they live in a comparative negligence state, cannot recover no matter how serious their injury. The system satisfies no one. Insurance companies complain that judgments awarded by generous juries exceed the premiums they collect. Claimants complain the process takes too long and lawyers take too large a portion of the award. Taxpayers complain because more and more judges and courthouses are needed to accommodate the flood of cases.
            As with most everything, present practice is rooted in the past. In the early eighteen hundreds when English courts ordered negligent coachmen to pay damages, a public policy of careful carriage driving was promoted by making careless horsemen pay. The underlying premise was fault, it being reasonable to guilt ridden Victorian minds to make careless people suffer. With liability insurance not yet a gleam in the entrepreneurial eye, there was reason to believe the prospect of an adverse court judgment would influence behavior. When insurance companies pay claims, they remove the incentive to be careful. Insurance companies make considerable profit betting we will be careful anyhow. Were we to compensate accident victims regardless of fault, society would be better served, but lawyers oppose no fault systems. A violinist's hand is worth more than a janitor's which makes systems that ignore difference unfair. In equality based societies every hand is equal. For the present, when money matters, possessors of valuable hands may prefer immediate payment to delay, just as they may prefer keeping all of a smaller award than pay large attorney's fees.
            Opponents of no-fault plans do not address the plight of negligent violinists who, under present arrangements, get less if they can recover at all. Were we to compensate traffic injuries the way we compensate industrial accidents, we eliminate the need for judges and courthouses. If we create public insurance companies, we increase public revenue, decrease public expense, provide better service and touch comparatively few lives. Another possibility has automobile owners insuring themselves the way they insure their houses. In the event of accident the insurance company pays its insureds damages, not the damages of the other party. Individuals without insurance recover nothing. This eliminates the need for trials, automobile accidents being adjusted like other losses.
            There is, in a capitalist setting, an inherent contradiction between individual profit and insurance whose purpose is socializing a risk. Insurance companies redline districts, usually poor, black ones, and charge exorbitant premiums for young male drivers. It may be that young male drivers are accident prone, but that is no reason to segregate them. It is unfair to make those unfortunate enough to be at risk pay higher premiums. When risk is great, as with floods, insurance companies refuse to write insurance, leaving it to the government. Insurance companies are easily nationalized. Policies expire annually and insurance companies have no assets the government needs. We, collectively, issue new policies as private contracts expire. I mention this possibility to demonstrate to opponents of radical change, that moderate change is available. We can be as courageous or as cautious as we wish.
            Candidates who promise power to the people can succeed. I cast this bread on our political waters in the hope someone sees it as a step in the right direction. It did me no good in 1968, and although times have changed, it is by no means certain they have changed enough. "Greater than the tread of mighty armies," wrote Victor Hugo, "is an idea whose time has come." Perhaps electronic democracy's time has come. If not, the desperation level rises. Our banking system staggers under the burden of bad loans. Trade deficits tax the patience of trading partners, but we leave these problems to authorities and complain when things go wrong. We resist individual responsibility. We think competition spices life and inspires accomplishment. We fret about a reality that does not promise life after death.
            There is no guarantee we will collectively grasp hope anymore than the suicidal are invariably persuaded life is preferable to death. Just as individuals have psychic investments in neuroses, we, collectively, need the hierarchical state of mind. Ironically, more dangerous risks do not deter us. We splice genes and permit entrepreneurs to profit from newly engineered life forms. Doctoral candidates dabble in primal ooze and wash disappointment down the drain. Were we to limit genetic experiments to secure laboratories such as Michael Crichton described in The Andromeda Strain, risk remains high. Genetic splicing is a gamble because environmental complexity makes testing impossible. The sun warms and cools, natural life forms come and go. We face an infinity of possibilities, but we invent new bacteria and take our chances. The strategic defense initiative proposes laser beams of incredible power. We will not know their full potential until we throw the switch. Few doubt that when the time comes, we will throw that switch. We are ready to gamble on everything but ourselves.