The Problem
Our society faces a crisis of trust in public institutions. Daily headlines reveal law enforcement officers abusing their power rather than serving the public. Corruption among elected and appointed officials worldwide erodes faith in governance systems. This breakdown of trust creates fertile ground for reactionary ideologies that promise alternatives to dysfunctional systems.
For a healthy society, we need institutions that citizens trust to operate in the public interest. The current paradigm of centralized decision-making about public funds has led to widespread dissatisfaction and distrust.
A Democratic Solution to Public Spending
What if we adopted a new approach that puts spending decisions directly in the hands of citizens? We can create a system that uses comparative evaluation to produce a gradient map of public spending preferences, allowing taxpayers more control over how their contributions are used.
How It Would Work
- Creating Representative Content: Citizens could create mini-documentaries showcasing various public services and programs. These would undergo preliminary A/B testing to ensure accuracy and quality in representing each type of public benefit.
- Comparative Evaluation: Through millions of survey iterations, citizens would be presented with random pairs of these mini-documentaries and asked to indicate which shows a better use of public funds.
- Gradient Mapping: These evaluations would generate a comprehensive gradient map showing the relative perceived value of different public services according to citizen preferences.
- Taxpayer Direction: If taxpayers find a particular congressionally-approved use of funds objectionable, they could redirect their contribution along this gradient map toward alternatives that most people agree represent better uses of public money.
- Proportional Allocation: Citizens might allocate a majority of their tax share (perhaps 80%) to widely-supported programs, while having freedom to direct the remainder toward more experimental or controversial initiatives that have at least modest public support.
Benefits of This Approach
- Increased Tax Compliance: When people believe their money is being well-used for purposes they support, willingness to pay taxes would likely increase.
- No Hard Cutoffs: Programs wouldn't suddenly lose all funding by falling below an arbitrary threshold. Instead, funding would gradually increase or decrease based on public perception of value.
- Continuous Improvement Incentive: All public service providers would have ongoing motivation to improve their efficiency and effectiveness to attract more citizen-directed funding.
- Broad Consensus Support: Essential services that most citizens value—like secular education, public parks, libraries, scientific research, public health, and responsible law enforcement—would likely receive robust funding.
- Environmental Management: This approach could extend to environmental policy, with emission permits or extraction quotas set according to democratically determined acceptable levels.
Practical Applications
In education, this system might allow students some budgetary control over their learning experiences, creating flexibility between lectures, hands-on activities, arts, and field experiences.
Secular public institutions funded through this democratic process would likely emphasize our shared identity as global citizens rather than divisive tribalism, promoting cooperation on our greatest challenges.
This participatory approach to public spending would strengthen democratic principles by creating a direct connection between citizens' values and government actions, rebuilding the trust necessary for a functioning civil society.
Based on an earlier essay: Who should decide how to spend public funds?
