Brexit: what is democracy?

Some weeks ago, Brexit celebrated its 5 year anniversary. Because I was distracted, and procrastinating heavily, I ended up going down a rabbit hole of Brexit-related research for the rest of the day instead of doing my actual work. This prompted me to write this short article. I actually felt myself become a bit … hopeless over the course of that day, while getting some new insights on things I thought I’d figured out.

Most people know Brexit as the stupidest thing a country ever did to itself. Here in the Netherlands, at least, there wasn’t even much of a debate. Whenever it was mentioned, people laughed and shook their head. Silly England. They’ll be back in ten years.

Brexit & Consequences

For decades, the United Kingdom blamed everything on the European Union. After several attempts, someone finally had enough and claimed they’d hold a referendum. It was legally non-binding, though they had “promised” to go through with whatever the result was.

In a wave of incredible irony, this ended up being the one and only occasion in which politicians kept their promise.

With attendence figures of ~70%, there was a slim majority (~52%) for “Leave” over “Remain”. And so the UK started four years of negotiations and finally left the EU in 2020. Kind of, mostly, maybe.

At the time, as stated, everyone here called them foolish and gave it no further thought. In fact, I had mostly forgotten Brexit was a thing until I tried to open my own online store. Every platform had unique rules and pricing for the United Kingdom, separate from EU. These prices were always higher, and there were vague comments about “maybe customs will add a fee at the end, too, we don’t know, nobody knows”.

Previously, in the golden pre-Brexit age, this would not have been a thing. No customs, no extra fees, no complications. The United Kingdom would have been a very favorable location for me to print and ship products from.

Now I had to do my best to completely ignore every supplier and platform from the UK. They were just too expensive, too complicated, too uncertain. Reading articles and talking to others, I realized everyone had the same issue, and almost everyone dropped the UK completely. (Only those with a strong foothold there and/or enough funds did not.)

So, congratulations England.

One of the “promises” that convinced people to vote “Leave” was, as usual, the economy. Less red tape, less bureaucracy, lower prices, stronger position for trade, etcetera. After 5 years of Brexit, research convincingly shows that the opposite has happened. The UK lost tons of money, tons of trade, tons of small businesses, while the amount of extra documentation and processes has actually increased.

And now I’ve been on that side of the coin too and can completely understand why this would happen. By removing itself from the EU, the UK has basically become the last option anybody here wants to support or deal with. I have ~100 merchandise products on my web shop, using platforms that could ship and supply from the UK perfectly fine, but only two of those products actually do. Because there was no other option, and the shipping fee to the Netherlands was still somewhat reasonable.

So, congratulations England.

Every advantage that Brexit was supposed to have, has not materialized or has actually gotten worse. On its anniversary, loads of people released stories online about how they left the UK behind because it had become a poor mess of an island. (I heard an interesting quote about that too: “England isn’t a rich country. It’s a poor country attached to a rich London.”) Every disadvantage that experts warned about has come true.

Several family members of mine have had a long-standing wish to visit London, maybe even stay in the UK for a while. Well, guess what happened to that. Haven’t heard about that for quite some time, and now that it will even cost money for us Dutchies to even visit England, having anything to do with that country is off the table.

But this was obvious. Everyone around the world saw this coming, and it’s kind of sad how there’s basically no pity for England at this point.

Even more disheartening is the fact that the UK finally has a more progressive prime minister (with massive support), and they have, in no uncertain terms, completely ruled out going back or improving the situation. Why? Because changing their mind this quickly was “unstable” and “unreliable governing” and would “throw the country into chaos”. In short, the same reason politicians keep sticking to stupid stuff: because they don’t want to lose face. Someone made a decision or promise, and now they somehow feel they’re stuck doing that thing for at least 5–10 years, otherwise people might call them out on “changing their mind”

No! Changing your mind is the best thing! It means you actually look at facts, listen to reason, and update your stance once it’s proven wrong. If there is one thing that every politician should be able to do, it would be to constantly change their mind and update it to the latest of findings and circumstances. It took them one badly managed referendum to throw their entire country into massive turmoil (aka Brexit) … and now they won’t fix proven issues because it would supposedly destabilize the country?

But, again, this was obvious. Stupid, short-sighted, yes, but obvious it would play out this way. It will take a long time before a politician will actually admit Brexit—gosh, so long ago, doesn’t really matter now, does it?—was a mistake. For now, most of them still cling on to, “it was a great idea, but executed poorly! There is a good Brexit in there somewhere!” Nope. You got the best possible Brexit, with EU actually negotiating with you and still allowing you to keep your place in certain areas, and it was just as terrible as everyone said it would be.

Democracy, right?

More interesting, I feel, are the questions this entire process posed of democracy.

Because, well, it was decided in the most democratic way possible, wasn’t it?

• Politicians listened to what the people were talking about.
• They held a vote and kept a promise.
• Everyone was able to vote, a majority of them did.
• And the side with the most votes won!

If they’d decided to ignore the outcome, it would be breaking a promise and going against what the majority wished for.

If they’d decided on some other rule, like “we need a 2/3 majority”, then it wouldn’t necessarily mean the majority would win.

If they had never held a vote, it would be refusing to listen to your people or act on situations in your country.

If they had left the issue until elections, it would be delayed and bundled with a load of other promises or changes, heavily reducing the immediacy of people’s votes.

This is democracy! In its purest form! So why is it terrible? Why should it never have played out this way?

Some people will point out that famous quote by Churchill,

“Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried.”

It’s bad, it’s flawed, but democracy is at least better than other forms of government.

And I would have mostly agreed with this, until a few years ago. Then my mind opened up, so to speak.

I realized how incredibly narrow my thinking (and that of others) was when it came to forms of government. When talking about this, everyone makes loads of assumptions, such as “well obviously there should be one leader for the country” or “well obviously everyone gets a vote, and only one vote”. Maybe we’re afraid to think outside of those lines, worrying people might call us silly or discriminatory. Maybe most people simply can’t imagine it.

Since that day, several years ago, I had new ideas for governmental systems on a weekly basis. Being a writer, I invented a possible narrative (a fantasy world, a set of stories) that might explore all these different ways of ruling and their advantages and disadvantages. At time of writing, I have over 60 concrete ideas for this writing project, making it almost too daunting to ever start with in the first place.

My point is that democracy can be implemented in many ways.

And we know that. The UK’s system is very different from that in the Netherlands, which is different from the United States, and so forth. But even for their massive differences, they’re still mostly the same. The same flawed implementation of democracy.

So let me talk about the flaws that led to Brexit being a thing (and unlikely to be undone in the coming decade), and end on my general thoughts and why it made me feel so hopeless.

Democracy, reimagined

“The People Demand It”

A common argument against referenda is that most people don’t have enough knowledge to vote sensibly. (Often followed by the argument that people are too fickle. If the Brexit vote had been a month earlier or later, for example, it’s quite likely it would have swung the other way.)

It’s a very valid argument. I simply find it funny that it’s applied to voters, and never to politicians. Because they sure as heck don’t have the knowledge on all those topics either ;) It’s almost as if … we should listen … to experts on the specific topics.

After all these years, I strongly feel we should step away from the person-based focus in any government. We should step away from telling a person that they’re now the most powerful person in the country and they decide on all topics. Because it’s stupid! They don’t have knowledge on all those topics. They are one person, which inherently means they will not have the same opinions or bias as large swaths of their populace. If the average of a massive population can be fickle, then one person (or a small cabinet/senate/parliament) is even more fickle and emotional.

Just as I apply this to the politicians, though, it also applies to voters. We should step away from the idea that it’s one vote per person, whatever they’re voting about, whatever the situation. Yes, I’m saying that democracy perhaps needs to be narrowed to “everyone who actually knows what they’re doing can vote”.

In any topic, we should collect as much evidence as possible, collect as many logical arguments as possible, and then make a decision based on that. The idea of domain experts would be crucial here. Doesn’t it make more sense to give only people who actually understand the vote and their consequences their say?

I’m not even that old (27), but I’ve seen it happen time and time again, and it just never changes. Most voters have no clue what they’re voting and why. They refuse to see they’ve been lied to, manipulated, or listening to their own wild and false assumptions. They refuse to think ahead, about what their vote would mean, and then start complaining later when the bad consequences of their own vote become apparent. With sayings like: “this is not the Brexit I voted for!”

So yes, maybe not everyone should have a vote on all topics. Maybe you need to prove your knowledge first. Maybe only a council of proven experts in that domain, with a long track record and a check for bias, can vote. It’s basically what we’re already doing—you vote once in a while for a person, then that group of people decides everything without your further input. But better! Because we’d have a unique council per topic, and they are chosen through a more rigorous process.

Note that this, again, applies to voters (not everyone can vote on everything) and politicians (they don’t get the same power over everything).

Skin in the game

Brexit voter data also shows that the majority of “Leave” votes came from the elderly and the rich. Many don’t even (permanently) live in the country anymore. Some of them might already be dead. The biggest gap in attendance came from young and poor people, who most likely were too busy scraping by and working their ass off to place their vote.

Again, I’m sounding a bit cynical here, but it’s the same thing every single time.

Those least affected get equal say, if not more say, in democratic votes. Because they actually have time to do research and vote, they have money to spread propaganda or convince others to vote what they want, they can be absolutely careless about consequences because they’re already 70 years old.

Those impacted by Brexit are, as usual, those who were already struggling. Younger people who have seen their future evaporate, while they don’t have the funds, network or security to do anything about it. Poor people driving the trucks importing and exporting goods, who now have to deal with mountains of extra paperwork and delays.

In the early days, only (male) land owners could vote. I’m not saying that was an amazing system, but many sensible and fair laws were passed in those times, which provided the bedrock of welfare and progress that UK was built on. Because those who voted cared a lot about the result. They had “skin in the game”. Changes in tax, changes in regulation, changes in economy, it all impacted them directly and they were often responsible for enacting those changes.

So yes, I’m saying another radical thing. Perhaps democracy needs to be narrowed further to “only those with skin in the game can actually vote on that topic”.

Take Brexit. Leading up to the vote, experts pointed out the many areas that would be (negatively) affected by leaving. Anybody impacted by that would get a vote. Anybody whose livelihood doesn’t depend on this vote in any way (whatever the outcome), would not.

I don’t know what the exact rules would be. I don’t know when you’re rich enough that the proposed changes don’t really matter for you, or when you’re connected to the EU enough to have Brexit be a massive deal for you. I really don’t know when you’re too old to be allowed a vote on the long-term future of your country.

But I feel it would be a step towards a better system.

Especially because the general trend is also the same every damn time. Young people fight for their futures; older people have enjoyed all these benefits when young, but are now too old to enjoy them, so they fight to remove everything they deem unnecessary. The United Kingdom has generations of students who could enjoy travel and studying abroad, through all of the EU, with no extra cost or complication. Those have lived nice and comfortable lives, but now they’re 50 and not traveling or studying anymore, so they vote to Leave the EU because now they don’t see its use anymore.

Same with climate change. Older people have enjoyed living carelessly and abusing the climate. Now it’s going to shit. But they already earned their wealth and bought their home, and they might die soon anyway, so all those extra rules and restrictions about climate are all just annoying to them!

And yes, from their point of view, that makes sense. Why would they vote against their own interests? Why would they vote for the good of the country (or even world), instead of the good of themselves?

That’s what happens when your form of government is so focused on people and their wants. Instead of problems and their solutions. As long as everyone has an equal vote on everything, and the vote is nothing more than being egotistical and claiming the thing you want, then yes, the result will always be split, and one side will just “happen” to win by some small margin that day.

Which brings me to my last point …

Constant updates

I’ve given several reasons for why our current democratic votes are very fickle, unpredictable, somewhat meaningless for making sweeping decisions. One day side A wins, the other day side B. A nice propaganda campaign by Vote Leave swings the vote a certain way at just the right time. And now the UK has Brexited (?), even though at least 48% of people at that time really did not want this.

Nowadays at least 2/3 of Brits wants to go back to the EU, but are they holding another referendum? Of course not! Because now the politicians in power are pretty sure that will have an unfavorable outcome for them. By simply timing votes/referenda, or simply not doing them, the entire democratic process is sidestepped anyway.

Is that democracy? More importantly, does that make sense?

One solution would be to guard against small margins or changes. To realize votes are not really about adding some new law, but changing the status quo. In reality, people often vote on “do we want to keep it the same, or do we want to change it?” And so you might say that, to change something, you need a large majority. Such as 2/3. Perhaps you even hold several votes, spread out, and it has to pass every single one.

Similarly, this means the time when you call for a vote matters. But it shouldn’t. This has been abused time and time again, with people calling for votes only when they are sure they’ll win (or get something good out of it). Calling for a vote or referendum when there are distracting factors, such as holiday or even a soccer world championship. Instead, it seems more sensible to me to hold votes at specific, predefined, predictable moments.

But if you’re doing all that, well, I’d suggest going one step further and just using constant updates and revisions to government and law.

Our current system relies on capturing the majority of the population (usually through lies, fearmongering, social media, etcetera) at the right time, and then using that to enact some major change that will take years to implement. And, in many cases, years to undo immediately when everyone realizes what a terrible idea it was.

It’s completely stupid.

Instead, votes and elections should be constantly held. Not for major things, no. For small incremental updates. Revisions.

For example, you might have a vote to take the first step towards leaving the EU. Fine, let’s say this is won by a significant majority. The UK changes a few rules, gets into talks with the EU, etcetera.

Now people get a month to experience the consequences of that. Some realize it’s a bad idea to leave. When the vote comes around to take the second step towards leaving the EU, it doesn’t pass anymore. (Or if that one is won by Leave, then maybe the third one is lost, because so many people have already experienced tiny disadvantages from these steps.)

Barely any damage done. Taking those few steps back is easy too. But everyone actually has an informed vote. Most of the downsides described fall away at this system. It aligns much more with how humans think, and how we learn, and how civilizations organically grow and solve problems.

Again, I don’t have a specific, final plan that any government can just implement ;)

I don’t know how quick those updates should be—that would need to be tested too. They should be quick enough to be flexible and iterate, but not so quickly that you can’t observe results and/or politicians are overwhelmed.

I don’t know how “constant elections” would work exactly. You might simply have a single running vote, and once a week (or something) you can change your vote to something else, at any time. Or maybe those constant elections only matter for the experts, who need to keep showing they’re up to date on their expertise and still haven’t shown any bias.

But those were my general thoughts.

Conclusion

I’ve just given three ideas here. Three possible improvements to “democracy” out of many, many, many possibilities. (Seriously, these are my least wild and most certain ideas about how to govern effectively.) They would have prevented the Brexit disaster and all the obvious terrible ideas that led to it (and its consequences).

Give power to those who actually did the work and the research, give power to those to whom proposed changes actually matter and apply, and do this in a cycle of constant small updates and iterations. Life is fickle, people are fickle, so steps in weird directions are almost guaranteed, but because you’re constantly revising, it’s only a tiny wrong step and can be fixed next month.

In my experience, most people have never even thought of this. This seems ridiculous to them. Not giving everyone an equal vote on all things, or not giving one party/set of politicians full reign of an entire country, immediately brands you as some sort of anarchist or rebel.

Fine, call me that. Then implement my changes and see how politics flourishes.

They ask me “oh so you would like to NOT have a vote, would you!?” Or say “And of course you think you should get a vote, but not women/elderly/rich/poor/whomever!?”

And it’s funny to me, because the answer is obviously “Yes, I would be fine with not having a vote when it doesn’t make sense for me to have a vote, didn’t you hear everything I just said?” I don’t mind. I’ve seen the shit that happens and can happen every day when you have a supposedly “great” democracy like in the UK (or the Netherlands, where I’ve always lived). I don’t mind less voting power in return for massive improvements to the country.

The goal here is to have the best possible country. The best possible living circumstances for all under this one government. For many years now, I’ve just been exploring many ideas to accomplish that, and nothing is off the table. If you insist on everyone keeping (equal) voting rights, then there are many other avenues to explore.

What has become clear to me, though, is that this shit isn’t working and it never will. It’s the same every single time. Democracy as implemented by the UK, for example, is a thin layer, an excuse, for rich and powerful people to keep doing whatever they want and for everyone else to suffer while feeling it’s their own fault. Basically, they throw you a bone. They give you a single vote once a year and pretend their country is oh so democratic. And you chose for all these laws, didn’t you?

But you didn’t. You have far, far too little control over anything to call it a democracy. At the very least, democracy seems to me that you get constant votes, all the time, with more direct say. At the very least, it means only informed votes count. Without that, I don’t even think you can call it a democracy.

All of that combined just made me … hopeless. Sad. Deflated. I wasn’t able to get anything done that day when Brexit had its anniversary.

I just don’t see it changing. I don’t see my government ever actually doing something sensible and good. Even our relatively democratic and fair system, here in the Netherlands, will probably not change again. Even though, as I’ve shown, it’s far from optimal and one might say not even democratic at all.

And so I grow a sliver of understanding for our friends in the United States. For Donald Trump. Which I never imagined I’d say. He’s actually changing stuff. He’s grabbing power for himself, making the role of president a little more like that of a king or emperor. Words that originate from the exact same thing happening many times in our history. And often with good consequences, at least short-term.

I don’t know if that’s going to do any good. But the fact that the majority voted for Trump, means many people are just as fed up with the terrible systems and constant manipulation as I am. Something should change, it’s just unfortunate that people lack the tools and so they keep electing the most populist leaders in recent years. They are replacing bad system with another bad system.

Unfortunately, nowhere in this entire process are actual arguments, science, facts, and sound reasoning involved.

I don’t know anymore. Should we return to monarchies? Should we even have central governments? I’ve been asking myself that question for years, in which time I haven’t voted in Dutch elections either. What’s a stronger statement, not voting at all, or voting for some radical party that really won’t get more than one seat? Writing articles like these?

In the end, I can only return to our roots. Our human history is full of examples of civilizations that prospered without any sort of central government or leadership. They were healthier than us, they were richer and more egalitarian than us, they had better public services and maybe even prettier cities.

Their trick? Just stay small. We evolved to live in groups of maybe 30 people at most. To be somewhat homebound, but also traveling. To live simply, in nature, spending some time every day to gather food and then having the rest of the day off.

So, in the end, I have to state my most controversial idea yet. Maybe, just maybe, we should not have massive countries at all. We shouldn’t try to globalize, to unify people all over the world, to make more and more complicated hierarchies leading to one person at the top responsible for billions across a massive swath of the earth.

No matter how good our system, no matter how much we improve our democracy, I think that is never going to work out. Not a single vote or change will ever make sense if it is to be applied to such a large group of people. Half of us will always get the bad end of the stick, which causes us to vote differently in the next election, and so most democratic countries are really just on a 4-year cycle between two extremes, never actually progressing.

And so I go back to my shell. Stay small. Stay local. Just try to build a good life where you are, on your little patch on the earth, with the few friends or family you have. That’s what we evolved to do, that’s all we need and can manage. Let the Dutch politicians—or the UK ones, in this case—flail around helplessly trying to make one law for millions of different people.

I’ll just focus on my small community and my small life, and I’m not eager for more. That’s the only way to not be heartbroken whenever I look to any government, be it my own or that of our friends across the pond.

Those were my thoughts,

Tiamo Pastoor