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Of representative democracy 2
The worship of personality
In France (and in many other countries), the presidential elections mobilize the most voters: when one votes for a person, the programme takes second place. The point is then to seduce the voters more than to convince them. The tragedy of the struggle between reason and sentiment often sees (unfortunately or not) the latter prevail.
The elected are humans
Like Sauron’s ring, which gradually weakened its wearer (cf. The Lord of the Rings), power eventually corrupts the individual. Whatever the initial intentions of the elected official, staying in power soon becomes a priority, sometimes at the expense of the public interest he’ s supposed to defend.
Except in cases of serious misconduct, an elected official will remain in office until the end of his or her mandate. Failure to comply with its commitments is not grounds for revocation. Then, as stability is reassuring, a bad candidate we know is often preferred to a new one we still don’t know anything about.
The mandate as a fixed-term contract
To be re-elected, it is necessary, during the term of office, to take popular decisions, i.e. favouring the short term: sacrifice the future to improve the present. As a result, debts are increasing at all levels: economic, social, ecological. How then can one pursue responsible policies in the long term?
What if we return to the fundamental reason for this delegation of power in the light of developments in AI?