How to Create an Authentic Democracy

6 June 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Creating an authentic democracy is a concern in any country, but the example focused upon here is the one country that has had the most extensive amount of empirical scientific studies published regarding whether, and the extent to which, it is a democracy, or instead a dictatorship: the U.S. Consequently, this article won’t be philosophical and speculative (as one might expect on such a topic), but scientific and empirical:

We start by discussing the Legislature, not the Executive, branch of government, because in any putative democracy, the legislature is the source of the laws, and the Executive executes (carries out) those laws. Furthermore, in a parliamentary system, the head-of-state, or Executive, is chosen BY the legislature; and, so, in that type of Government, there is no other option THAN to start with the Legislative branch of government.

For a population of around 340,000,000, which America’s is, a random sample of 500 people would be plus or minus 4.38%, of accurately representing that 340 million people, such that there is at least a 95% certainty that that 500 randomly sampled people constitute (plus or minus 4.38%) “the typical American.” Right now, the U.S. Government’s legislators are its 100 Senators and 435 Representatives. So: if the goal is to replace those 535 U.S. legislators with 500 randomly selected Americans, then this number of randomly sampled people (500) would be plus or minus 4.38% of accurately representing that 340 million people, such that there is at least a 95% certainty that those 500 randomly sampled people (plus or minus 4.38%) represent the policy-priorities of “the typical American.”

What would be representative about these 500 people is that the average or “typical” policy-priorities of these 500 would REPRESENT (within those stated parameters) the average policy-priorities of the 340 million Americans. This is a mathematical fact (within the bounds that I’ve specified).

Currently, the best evidence of the extent to which the existing 535 U.S. legislators do or don’t REPRESENT the average policy-priorities of the 340 million Americans, is the following body of data:

On February 14th, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling”, and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (those latter five being the functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut — but those 5 were the most-favored by the American public). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds. Furthermore, the U.S. Defense Department is the only Department of the federal Government so corrupt, so intensely corrupt, that it has never been audited.

Trump is increasing the military and border security, and decreasing education, assistance to the poor, Medicaid, federal law enforcement, and even Social Security and Medicare (the latter two by laying off many of the people who staff those bureaucracies). This Government’s policy-priorities are like the public’s turned upside-down — in other words: are the REVERSE of the public’s — and therefore the U.S. Government right now is a perfect example of a dictatorship. One might say that this is so in only the Executive branch, but it’s not necessarily true: As always when one political faction (regardless whether it it is one Party or a coalition of Parties) has control over both the Executive and the Legislative branches of the Government — as now the case in the U.S. — these two branches (Executive and Legislative) function as one, and there then will even be a totalitarian dictatorship if they can get the Judicial branch or Supreme Court to call it “Constitutional.” Currently, the U.S. is slipping from a dictatorship towards a totalitarian dictatorship; but America has been a dictatorship ever since at least 1980. And that is a dictatorship by the super-rich.

As the liberal (Democratic Party) wing of America’s aristocracy said, in the person of its Warren Buffett, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” (He told this to the conservative Ben Stein, reporting in the aristocracy’s New York Times, under the headline “In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning”.)

To see the empirical evidence proving that there IS class-warfare in America and that the billionaire-class is ruling this country and writing and executing its laws, click here. That’s the situation as it had been since at least 1980, but the current trend away from that is toward even more of a dictatorship.

Every national Government that includes public elections between competing politicians has degenerated into control by the richest, because the richest donate more than half of all of the money that is donated to political campaigns, and they can and do aways spend enough on politics to deceive enough voters to vote against any candidate who refuses to be bought, so that only the candidates who are willing to do what their megadonors say — obedient candidates (obedient to the billionaires especially) — will have any real chance to win a major public office. So, if a democracy is to be defined as ONLY a system that includes public elections between competing politicians, then it will always degenerate into an aristocracy of the super-rich, which is a type of dictatorship (sometimes called by such names as “aristocracy,” “oligarchy,” “plutocracy,” etc.), NOT a democracy.

So, that is a phony definition of “democracy” (though it’s the normal way that “democracy” is defined), because a democracy is instead a Government by representatives of each citizen equally, without regard for wealth, religon, ethnicity, or any other attribute — it is (and the term “democracy” can realistically be applied ONLY to) “Equal Justice Under Law” — and it CAN exist but never yet HAS existed (because of that false common definition for it*). An authentic democracy would be based upon replacing all public competitive elections (which inevitably will be corrupted) between competing politicians, by, instead, random assignment of members of the public, to the legislature; and, then, if that person is willing to serve as a legislator, be paid by the Government so to serve; and, then, voting BY those legislators, in the legislature. Those lottery-appointed legislators would then select from amongst themselves a head-of-state, the Government’s executive power, likewise paid by the Government. Randomly selected bar-certified lawyers would also be paid by the Government, to interview and select all judges; and all trials would be jury trials; and only pre-certified experts would be able to be paid by the court to testify on expert matters in trials. Certification of such experts would be based upon scores on purely multiple-choice specialized tests for evaluating a person’s competency in that field of expertise, so as to eliminate subjective factors and any influences by the rich (who normally select and sponsor ‘experts’). Any legislator or other Government-employee will be paid ONLY by the Government and annually audited, and any effort by any such person to derive income from any other source THAN the Government would be subject to trial and automatic firing from that Government-office if found guilty.

This would be a Governmental system that is designed so as to prevent corruption of the Government. Corruption comes almost always from the aristocracy, the super-rich, who own control over the large corporations, including the news-media and the think tanks and the most prestigious educational institutions, which they donate to and so the billionaires also fund the ‘experts’ that their ‘news’-media interview who likewise shape public opinions. The purpose would be to eliminate corruption from the Government. The common view, that the basic problem with elected Governmental officials is their incompetency instead of their corruptness, is disproven, in the relevant data.

Furthermore, in this system, there would be no term-limits (such as, for example, would have required FDR — perhaps our greatest President — to quit in 1941), and so whenever a legislator chooses to quit or else becomes expelled by a two-thirds vote of his/her colleagues, and that person’s seat then becomes filled likewise by lottery, the collective legislature will tend to become and be long-termers, and so to be exceptionally well-acquainted with one-another, and — because there will be no Parties — legislative debates on issues will then be real debates (in which the legislators help and learn from each other) and NOT win-lose contests between power-craving professional politicians. It would be a legislature composed of normal people. It would be a very different kind of legislature.

I have also described some other features of this proposed new Governmental design system, in a prior article, which was titled “To achieve democracy, we must have no elections.” It also discussed objections that some readers had presented to my proposal. All of those objections assumed that the legislators and head-of-state in existing ‘democratic’ nations are more competent persons than the average person is, but not competent “enough’ (as-if the experts are the elected officials — NOT the staff the given official hires and consults); that some ‘elite’ should therefore (since incompetency instead of corruptness is being assumed to be the problem) control the Government — the public should not. All of those objections despised the public, and started with the false assumption that the fundamental problem is NOT the corruptness of Government officials due to their corruption by the billionaires, but IS instead the incompetency of the public (to have voted for those officials). That IS — and I keep needing to repeat this — a FALSE assumption, but it is the virtually universal assumption. Though I headlined on April 16th “The public lack the intellectual ability that’s needed in order for an electoral democracy to work.”, I argued there that the deficiency is not in the public, that they are insufficiently intelligent, but instead in the billionaires-s‘elected’ politicians, that they are insufficiently decent (made so by their megadonors, the s‘elected’ politicians’ virtual — but certainly not virtuous — owners).

On June 6th, Graham Summers headlined “Will This Be What Finally Kicks The $USD Off a Cliff?”, and he reported that America’s biggest billionaire Elon Musk and that client Musk’s mere billionaire former agent and current U.S. President Trump, are now openly threatening each other. Both men pretend to represent the American public. (Musk alleges that the solution must be “a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle”, which Party he will form.) Finally, the lies must all be rejected (that Party-politics don’t inevitably degenerate into control over a nation by its billionaires, such as in the U.S.), and the reality faced, that this is a dictatorship, and not really, in any honest sense, a Government that represents its public (instead of its megadonors).

Practically everyone is disgusted with the existing Governments, but I believe that my proposal is the only one, till now, that addresses this enormous problem at its fundamental level to actually address it, instead of at the merely symptomatic levels, which cannot (and have not) address(ed) it.

I welcome any inputs regarding my proposal, and you can reach me about this via email by clicking here.

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* Documentation of the falsity of the common definition of “democracy” can be found here. Given that the common definition (the one that necessitates public elections by competing politicians) for it is empirically false, the need exists for a true definition of democracy. I have provided in this article what I believe that to be: a Government whose policy-priorities are the same as the public’s policy-priorities are. And I have described here how that could be instituted.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.