(Up to: Scalability Society And Control )

Unformulated thoughts...

Freedom

Freedom and democracy, the two great flagstaffs of the civilised world, the twin pillars that stand for what it is to be human - to be able to do and say what one believes in. We are free to vote as we please, and everyone (barring the insane, the criminal, and the criminally insane, and the non-grown-up-yets) has equal say as to how the nation is run.

Democracy

So why are we having such a problem with it? In Britain, voter turn-out rates are at their lowest, and could decrease yet further the way things are going.

Scale

Perhaps something has been lost along the way to unequivocal, unilateral democracy. In Greek times, the democratic populace was considered something of an elite by itself - it excluded women, children and slaves, and put its members into a status above others. But from that, there possibly exists an attitude of importance and duty within the democratic circle. The democracy retains its broad spectrum of peers, but its members feel as though they are a part of the system.

Perhaps in opening up the vote, we have lost this sense of duty. Bigger group, less responsibility - the investment has become diluted. Maybe there is an inverse effect, whereby the network has become too large to be of use, and so the power reverts to a particular number of controlling people, which may be smaller in terms of proportion to the entire affected population.