'We thought it was a great idea: we would have democracy in the companies and therefore we would be richer, Jos said so ! If we find him, we'll hang him until he is cold, because we have a literally murderous competition between all the companies now. Before nobody really cared what the backery made, or however many backeries there where in town: the unions would enforce a reasonable pay wage, and if not we would protest and ultimately riot. It was an ok system, not perfect but we had it under control. But now every week there is small businesses going down in flames and every day people are shouting at each other, because they don't want to deal with all the new competition everywhere.' 2)
'We where supposed to get richer under this (I didn't really say that, but people could still say I did of course). We had a great countryside, however ever since everyone has their little spot things have turned from lush and cute, into a catastrophy of garbage, ugly make-shift dwellings, in some places the contamination of the soil is so bad you can't safely grow gardens even in neighboring plots. It's a catastrophe, we wish we never even tried.' 3)
'In the old days we all knew what was going on (no you didn't, but you could pretend that you did). Nowadays nobody has a clue, there are so many councils and groups, its such a seething mas of activity, most of the people feel scared because they don't know who is what, what will be decided by whom the next day and who exactly has jurisdiction over any place, anyone, anything ... It's a disaster, everyone points fingers at each other while the infrastructure deteriorates by the year.' 4)
'We thought we would end up less corrupt if we ended our large nation, so we cut it up into several. Unfortunately we couldn't agree on who should control the river. When drought came, this became a matter of life or death. It began with a food poisening, that one side blamed on terrorism of the other, while the accused side saw a fabricated excuse for war in it. Then the real terrorism started, we mobilized and produced weapons like mad, but the other side was quicker. They killed off 50% of us, most say because they didn't want to feed the hungry mouths or deal with famine riots, so they had more for themselves. This place has been a tyranny since then, under their King who took over when the councils where in chaos. Most people fled the area.' 5)
'Jos said: use a fiat currency. Obviously that guy is totally bonkes, the minute we did that it was 15% inflation in the first few years, while our bosses for some reason migrated to far off tropical islands. Then it became worse, 30%, our infrastructure crumbled. Whatever we did we could not get the country council to conform to what we wanted. We send in new delegates but it did nothing. We even held a referendum, and won it, nothing changed. At some point a high court judge was killed. We decided to go back to parliament soon after that, and since nobody trusts paper money anymore most people trade in gold, silver and even in rice - or direct barter. It will be decades before we have any order in this nation.' 6)
'Under parliament, we knew our politicians where corrupt, but at least we could vote in secret. But now everyone knows what we voted, and people have been pressured on threat of murder to comply with the mafia families in the area. They have used threats of violence to such an effect that they now have more control over society then they had before ! Some say that is because things are diffuse in this system, highly localized, so there is not many reason to keep up the pretence of order for the outside world to make sure we can trade and have enough tourists coming in. We keep up the pretences at the country council and King of course, but at the local level it is all crime that rules the day. It was bad before, but not this bad !' 7)
'We thought that it would be great, everyone barbequeing with each other, talking and having fun. Then nobody showed up. However we had a parliament infested with DAVID-ist parties, I guess because people just hoped it would be something just because it was different. Try something else. So they decided to make the change official and hoped that the voter-groups and councils would flood in with people. Then when things deteriorated because there was barely one council for a hundred thousand people - and that is a lot of issues to deal with believe you me, and it barely got any mandate because it was just a few thousand of voters - and so the quality of Government really deteriorated. Government services became worse, corruption by civil servants increased. Then they thought that it was going to be corrected once people saw the opportunity they had through the voter groups. But that never happened. People started to get upset though, but they never wanted to actively engage to form voter groups. Some did however do that, but it was a certain kind of person. Frankly it was the racists and petty criminals together with old big money, they started a concerted effort to take over the councils. After some time they started a school where you could learn how to be a delegate and a voter. A few years further and you could not be a voter or delegate without an aproval stamp by the Government. They passed a statute saying only people of sufficient mental capabilities could engage in voting. This was pitched to the people as being about keeping mentally retarded people out of the system, so the public who already didn't care, didn't care. Eventually we found we had the same class of scoundrels in power as we did ever before, it didn't make it worse but it didn't help either.' 8)
'People are always shouting and yelling at each other in the voter groups, and we had many riots between competing voter groups who stood behind delegates who where polemic in the defense of the interests they stood for. That fired up the blood around here. It's practically been a return to civil war, so much for democracy being one soldier one vote, it was more like one kill one vote.' 9)
The proposed DAVID239+ system will mainly cause improvements for nations that have reached the social limits of parliament / capitalism. This DAVID239+ system is true democracy, it will therefore bring out the character of a people quite directly, almost like a confrontation of a nation with itself. That can be wonderful or not so wonderful. Don't accuse me of promising golden mountains and a life of leisurly luxuries. It is up to you what it will be. In case of catastrophe: get together with good people, try to set up a better nation ?
Notes:
Possible solution scenario's:
1) Go elsewhere.
2) Don't be too greedy, try to use your land for direct consumption more (takes heat out of the market), install a somewhat generous social safety net, direct more of your income to first life needs and enlarge personal buffers to deal with this, promote savings, engage in charity.
3) The Government has jurisdiction to restrict such thing in this system, maybe they should start to use it or be forced to use it by the people. If you fail, maybe can now learn to do it differently witnessing a bad result ?
4) Focus more on larger councils. Keep debates more to the point, make decisions shorter, laws shorter (shorter means more clarity). For example pass a law that no decision can be longer then 2 pages of A4 (etc). Put more effort into harmonizing the ways different localities do things, for example by Academic studies into the best ways and making convincing reccomendations to councils. In cases of emergency on this you might get the King - who can know everything about Government at his/her whim - to install some sort of agents which take notice off what happens with the councils and publish what they find. The standing of the King/Queen in this system is such that it can give such an information system official merit, providing the people with more clarity. Alternatively such an agency could be installed by the Provincial (regional issue?) or Country council. The media can also have a roll in this, the councils can (should) of course publish their own works as well.
5) It is a hard decision to make about a precious resource. One solution is to ask help from one or a collection of far away nations who do not have an interest either way (until they where bribed of course.)
6) Such a nation may be too easily corrupt perhaps, maybe it is not a bad idea to use a commodity money then, and start with that before things deteriorate.
7) Wage bloody war against the mafia, and punish people who do not report being threatened by the mafia as well. It's a tough system maybe, but you got to get those assholes under control ... or just dead.
8) Difficult to deal with something like this, go elsewhere with a more interested people ?
9) Maybe such a people need a form of tyranny, not an absolute Constitutional democracy.