The tidal flow of what might be described as ‘gross human contentment’ in OECD
nations is ebbing toward a condition of smugness. From the perspective of
Galbraith (1992: 6): ‘The fortunate and the favoured, it is more than evident, do
not contemplate and respond to their own longer-run wellbeing. Rather, they
respond, and powerfully, to immediate comfort and contentment. This is the
controlling mood.’ For most wealthy nations there is also an entrenched cadre of
lifetime unemployed to contend with, along with resource ravages and waste dis-
cards. There is also the curdling Californian dream to contemplate, driven by an
acerbic yet democratic legal process which predicates almost the reverse of this
book’s advocacy for a tolerable harmony. Individualization of life – an example
being a rate of solo household formation in urban California which exceeds the
rate of binary family household formation – is related for that State to the 1978
ballot initiative, Proposition 13for halving property taxes, later reflected in a
reduced education vote. In this manner the Dream State lost its lustre. Worse,
ballot box envy – or is it spite ‘If I don’t have children at school I’ll vote against
education taxes’ – has fanned outwards across America, the Pacific and the
Atlantic. The self-interestedness of individuals, pinpointed in the seventeenth
century by Thomas Hobbs, lives on in the Californian heartland.
Passing power down to those who deliverthe outcomes, sub-
sidiarity, is very democratic. But putting the ‘switches and levers’
of power on the ballot box, away from prying eyes, is a nonsense
because none of us has the capacity to see beyond our prejudices
and pocketbooks or our personal sliver of formal education.^11
Clearly the ballot box is the place to elect ‘representatives’ and it
is they – rather than the use of referenda – who must research,
debate and decide, on balance, for their constituency. Simply put,
if elected representatives get it too wrong too often, another elec-
tion will roll around and out comes the ballot box again!
Levers and switches on the ballot box (and referenda) is clearly
an unworthy way to decide specific action for any grouping
in excess of a few thousand voters. Indeed because voting is
anonymous via the ballot box and the secret slip, the voter is
encouraged to avoid committing with their head or heart, and to
vote with their wallet. On the other hand, with display voting at
open meeting within smaller jurisdictions – New England Town
Meetings and the Swiss Landsgemeinde– the democratic proce-
dure is palpable; and the smaller the constituency the more heightened that
palpability. Kirkpatrick Sale (1998) puts the matter this way: ‘In smaller units
people are more politically active, can understand the issues and personalities far
more clearly, participate in all aspects of government and regard themselves as
having some effective control over the decisions of their lives.’ Subsidiarity, the
passing down of decision-taking power, involves more than merely passing over
the reins; it involves careful consideration of the plebisitary.
On a global scale, most of us feel comfortable about the United Nations, but
less so with the World Trade Organization. And at the local scale personally (in
Charter for Conservation with Development 83A difficulty with the
rational, modern and
essentially democratic
ballot-box process is
that it exalts
consumption without a
thought for tomorrow
or anybody else. Most
of us, to varying
degrees, rail against the
purposeless depletion of
non-renewable
resources. What the
Californian ‘propositions’
and Anglo ‘referenda’
show is the damage
which atomized mobility,
soft living and secret
voting can track into
our lives.