Harmonizing Motives with Natural Government

If you need a plumber to do some work for you, how do you choose your plumber? Would you conduct a boxing match and then hire the winner to be your plumber? Obviously not, since the ability to win a boxing match has nothing to do with the ability to do plumbing work. Instead, you would look for someone who has proven his ability as a plumber.

What is the purpose of government? Shouldn't the purpose be to pursue true peace by resolving disagreements and providing leadership to enable each person to pursue his own self interest without infringing on anyone else's freedom to so the same? In an ideal state of true peace, wouldn't every single person agree that everything that is done is perfectly fair to everyone? I will call it "universal agreement" -- that ideal state of perfect peace. The purpose of government should be to motivate and arrange for the universal pursuit of universal agreement.

And so, how should we choose our government leaders? Should we conduct a boxing match and then choose the winners to be our government officials? Obviously not. Instead, we conduct political contests. But is the ability to win a political contest synonymous with the ability to pursue universal agreement? No, because the whole idea of a political contest presumes that disagreement is unavoidable, and that the only question is which of the mutual adversaries will be given the legal authority to coercively overpower the others. That's politics -- a contest to see who can most successfully overpower adversaries. It has nothing to do with the pursuit of universal agreement.

There is a way to reform politics, to motivate every person to honestly and diligently pursue true universal agreement. Please try to find and inform me of flaws in the following logic:

In order to pursue universal agreement, conflicts must be resolved by arbiters who are motivated to rule in ways that are agreeable to all.
In order to be so motivated, every arbiter must be placed in a predicament such that the option to rule in any way other than a universally agreeable way, would result in consequences which that arbiter would consider to be unacceptable.
Given this motive to rule in a universally agreeable way, every arbiter would need to seek advice from experts who have proven their ability to formulate settlements that are universally agreeable. Just as you would look for a proven plumber to do your plumbing, the arbiters would look for proven experts in the pursuit of universal agreement.
Experience would develop ever more capable experts, just as in any other field. Observe how just a few years of experience has develop ever more capable computer manufacturers and programers. So likewise, a few years of motivated pursuit of universal agreement would bring us much closer to the ideal.
Learning from experience that arbiters are motivated to rule in universally agreeable ways, each of us, as we go about our own business, would be motivated to always act in universally agreeable ways, in order to avoid being penalized by arbitration. And we would all look for advice and guidelines to help us in that pursuit. The pursuit of universal agreement would be universal.

The next question is how to place every arbiter into a predicament such that his choice will always be to rule in a universally agreeable way.

The first principle is that arbiters must be chosen completely at random from a list that anyone could voluntarily sign up on. This would give every person an equal chance of becoming an arbiter. If arbiters were chosen by any kind of contest, then the winners of that contest could stack the deck, so to speak, so that the arbiters could all rule in the interest of the winners of the contest, and against the losers. Random selection is logically the only way to pursue true universal agreement.

Next, the randomly chosen arbiters must be held accountable, motivated to rule in universally agreeable ways. To provide this motivation, the first principle, as in the above paragraph, would give any observer the option to call for a subsequent arbitration against any arbiter. Knowing that, the only way any arbiter could avoid subsequent arbitration would be rule in a way that no one would disagree with.

Maybe you are thinking that this is an impossible predicament -- that it is impossible to rule in a universally agreeable way. But think it through. Wouldn't any arbiter think the same -- that true universal agreement is an impossible ideal? And so, what could an arbiter do? He would have to approximate the ideal the best he could by forsaking any bias or preconceived notion. And he would have to rule accordingly, knowing that both the accusers and the accused would likewise have to approximate the ideal the best they could. He would thereby rule against anyone, who did not forsake all prejudice. Any accuser who called for arbitration, would therefore be penalized unless he too forsook all of his prejudices. The universal need for universal agreement would motivate the accusers as well as the accused. All would have to forsake all prejudice and discover common ground of agreement. The universal need to pursue universal agreement would compel us to come ever closer to the ideal.

Here is an arbitration procedure that would generate the universal motive to pursue universal agreement:

You might be concerned about the qualifications of the randomly chosen arbiters. Should there be a way to screen them? If there was, what would prevent someone from manipulating the screening procedure, thereby corrupting the arbitration?

But would you sign up on the list of potential arbiters if you were not confident that a subsequent arbitration would consider you to be qualified? If you weren't sure about it, wouldn't you ask for advice? Wouldn't those who care about you make sure that you were advised?

In general, whoever is of sound enough mind to know what the list is for, and who voluntarily considers signing up on it, would also be able to understand the need to be qualified enough to seek expert advice. The effect is that in most cases, people would naturally screen themselves by not signing up if they doubted their own qualifications. The few exceptions would be dealt with when someone called for a subsequent arbitration to rule concerning the qualifications of a former arbiter. And these exceptions would provide evolving guidelines for all who contemplate whether to sign up on the list.

Realistically, what would the reasonable qualifications be? The answer is to try to estimate what any expert would think. What do you think?

Could the arbitration officials be bribed? What would prevent the arbiters from immediately directing the police to arrest the person who attempted a bribe, and then including in their ruling some kind of penalty that would make that person wish he had not have attempted the bribe? Wouldn't you expect an arbiter to do that? Wouldn't subsequent arbiters and their experts expect that? In order to avoid themselves being penalized in subsequent arbitration, the arbiters would need to clearly and fairly penalize any attempt to bribe them.

Even if the briber tried to keep the bribe a secret, the purpose could only be to cause the arbiters to make an unfair ruling. And an unfair ruling would motivate someone to call for a subsequent arbitration to investigate it and decide how to penalize both the briber and the corrupt arbitration officials. The deception would have less chance of success because it would be totally contrary to the entire legal procedure rather than a manipulation of it, as in the political systems that have been tried..

Could the arbitration officials be threatened? Someone might try, but consider their chances, compared to their chances in our current system. In our current system, no one can be legally arrested unless they have violated a law. Loopholes are invitations to manipulators. But with this random arbiter procedure, anyone could call for arbitration for any reason, and the arbiters, as advised by their experts, would decide what to do about that specific case. This plugs up all loopholes.

This means that if you have a hunch that someone is planning some kind of threat, crime, or terror, you can call for arbitration. If the arbitration officials agree that your hunch is worth investigating, they will decide whether there is a threat, and what to do to avoid the possibility. Even if there is no conclusive evidence that the accused is guilty of a destructive plan, the experts would be expected to take fair and reasonable steps to make sure that the suspected evil plan can't happen, while still not unfairly penalizing the accused. In our current system, it is harder to get anything done until a crime has already been committed, and then if the police violate the rules of evidence, the criminal will go free even if the illegally obtained evidence proves him guilty. There would be no such loopholes when power is dissipated by this random arbitration procedure.

At the same time, you would need to truly trust your hunch and avoid any ulterior motives, since the experts might discover your ulterior motive, and penalize you for it.

Maybe you might fear that we would all be looking over each other's shoulder, making our lives very uncomfortable. But think some more. Each case would be investigated individually. And the experts, having been chosen by arbiters who are trying to avoid subsequent arbitration, would be among those who are the most successful at estimating the common ground that is agreeable to everyone, or as close to it as possible.

These intelligent experts would be aware of our concerns about looking over each other's shoulder. And they would be expected to make rulings that would relieve us of this uncomfortable feeling. In order to avoid themselves being accused and called to subsequent arbitration, they would make rulings that would assure all of us that all we need to do is honestly make reasonable efforts to seek true agreement.

Would you like to be forgiven for honest human error? Most people would. The experts would know this, and rule accordingly. Being honest with yourself, if you made a costly human error, would you welcome help on how to rectify your error and avoid doing it again? Most people would. And the experts would rule accordingly. For arbiters and their experts to fail to consider such things would be to risk being penalized by subsequent arbitrations.

Is it fair to look over the shoulder of someone who reasonably might be a potential terrorist? Is it fair to look over the shoulder of someone who you have no good reason to suspect of doing anything wrong? The answers to these questions that are the closest to being universally agreeable, would be the way the experts would advise, and the way the arbiters would rule. And each instance would be evaluated individually according to the spirit.

Could your life be any more comfortable and confident than that, knowing that all you have to do is make a reasonable effort to seek fair agreement, knowing that you will be forgiven for human error, helped when you need it, and can be protected from the possibility of a crime before it is committed?

Remember that people contemplating a call for arbitration would need, for their own sakes, to estimate what the experts are most likely to rule. And the arbiters, for their sakes, would need to estimate what any subsequent expert, selected by any randomly chosen arbiter would most likely rule. Therefore, everyone, no matter who they are, what they are doing, or where or when they are doing it, would need to always be estimating what is as universally agreeable as possible. Mutual trust would be maximized.

You might be wondering about law. In order for this arbitration procedure to work, it would need the authority to overrule any application of law. Would this leave us without laws? No, but it would change laws into guidelines. Guidelines are needed so that we can know what we can and cannot do without offending each other.

The difference between a law and a guideline is that the law is coercively enforced according to its letter, whereas a guideline serves to point the way according to its spirit. No matter how many laws there might be, there will always be loopholes which enable manipulators to violate the spirit without violating the letter. But when power is dissipated by this random arbiter procedure, the spirit of all guidelines would be the sincere seeking of universally agreeable fairness. There could be no loopholes because anyone could always challenge the application of a guideline whenever it violates the spirit, and the arbiters would always have to rule according to the spirit of universal agreement, in order to avoid themselves being penalized by subsequent arbitration.

Government as we have known it, does many things that might really need to be done in order for people to be able to live and let live peacefully and comfortably. Such things as zoning, regulation of traffic, regulation of commerce, environmental protection, help for needy people, and so on, are issues that many people feel very strongly about. You might fear that a random arbiter procedure does not specifically provide for these things. But think some more. This random arbitration procedure would provide for a universal motive to act in ways that are as universally agreeable as possible. Power dissipation would do absolutely nothing to inhibit any effort to organize for mutual benefit.

The universal motive would exist, for leaders to lead, and for followers to follow. If random arbitration was established, many government organizations that already exist, might turn out to be as universally agreeable as anyone has yet figured out. But given the motive for universal agreement, existing organizations might be adjusted according to more universally agreeable ideas as they become known.

These organizations might be viewed very different than in our current system. People would look for them and cooperate with them to the extent that they prove to be useful in avoiding arbitration, enabling people to know how to coexist harmoniously. To the extent that they disrupt that goal, they would be abandoned.

Many people might have good ideas on how we might cooperate for our mutual benefit. But in order for their ideas to work, they need to persuade people to listen and to cooperate. In our current political system of competition for legal coercion, they can get no where until and unless they become successful competitors in that contest. This necessity diverts a growing portion of time and effort away from the positive ideas that they have, towards the struggle for power.

But with the establishment of a random arbiter procedure, it would be much different. Instead of the need to compete for legal coercion, the need would be to devise ideas that really work. Everyone would be looking for ideas that really work – that really do enable people to cooperatively go about their business without offending each other and being called for arbitration. All you would need is an idea that really works, and people would come to you, wanting you to lead while they follow.

You might be thinking that organizations for social planning require money to pay the planners. How would they be paid? If by taxes, who would have the authority to decide who pays how much tax?

Must people be taxed, forcing them to buy houses, cars, televisions, potatoes, and so on? Doesn't our demand for these things motivate us to willingly pay for them? Why should it be any different with our demand for planning and for guidelines? Everyone would need these things in order to know how to live without constantly offending each other and being called for arbitration. All we need is a procedure that enables each person to pay for the planning and guidelines of their choice. Why wouldn't there be a supply for that demand? There would be no power struggle to take its place, and the universal need to agree would replace the need to coercively force people to pay taxes.

You can use your imagination. Maybe we would hire "planning parties", instead of joining political parties. Each person would hire the party they trust the most to guide them in how to avoid arbitration. Or maybe we would arrange to have "proposal planning systems", enabling people with ideas to make their proposals, so that all of us could pledge our moral and maybe our monetary support to the plans of our choice. Maybe our monetary pledges for a plan might be valid on the condition that the plan receives the support it asks for in order to work. The demand for efficient means for hiring planners whose ideas prove to be useful, would motivate the supply. You might have better ideas than these.

This is the issue that is near the root of most disagreement. There are two basic sides which oppose each other on this issue. Random arbitration logically resolves the disagreement.

On one side are those who believe that the earth as a whole is the common property of all human beings. From this point of view, for any human to claim a portion of the earth, excluding anyone else's right to it, is not fair because people are not equal in their ability to stake their claims. Those with greater ability would prosper while those with lesser ability would comparatively suffer. A person should not have to suffer merely because he was born with less mental or physical ability than someone else.

Yet, it can't be denied that somehow the earth must be allocated so that each person can use his fair share of it. How can this allocation be accomplished? The only way that a communist knows is for the communist party to seize, by any means possible, totalitarian control of all legal means of coercion, so that they can coercively compel their idea of a fair allocation of the earth.

The problem is that there is disagreement on what is fair, and the resulting struggle for power consumes an ever increasing portion of time and effort, defeating the purpose and resulting in the opposite of the intention. Those who have gained the greatest influence on the use of legal coercion, are able to live in luxury while their defeated opponents are beaten into temporary submission – temporary until the oppressed are able to re-build underground, sufficiently to revolt.

On the other side are those who observe the power struggle and conclude that a dictator who has successfully defeated his opponents in the struggle for power, must perpetuate the oppression of his opponents in order to retain his power. This thereby corrupts whoever gains the power, resulting in a perpetually unfair and oppressive allocation of the earth.

From this point of view, the nearest we can come to a fair distribution of the earth is let each person stake his claim according to first come, first serve.

Yet, it cannot be denied that first come, first serve cannot be accepted literally in all cases. For example, the first to find water in a dry country cannot expect to have the sole authority to determine who gets water. There can be violent disagreement on issues like this. And so there has to be a way to resolve disputes over who owns what. This need seems to require a government with the power to resolve these disputes and to determine where and when the property rights of one person infringe on the property rights of another person.

A government with the power to make these decisions is thereby the focus of a power struggle -- the contest for legal coercion. And as the power struggle evolves, the losers in the competition are tempted to resort to illegal means in an effort to challenge what they see as an evil machine.

Communism and capitalism evolve towards each other, approaching a terrifying end, as the losers of the competition for legal coercion resort to extreme means. Only our natural desire for peace and harmony can temper, delay, and maybe avoid the terrifying end. Thank goodness for the good in human nature.

Logically, the only way to fairly resolve disputes over the allocation of the earth is to remove all possibility of anyone controlling or manipulating the procedure that is used to resolve the disputes, thereby compelling all to seek a universally agreeable allocation. And logically, the only way to do that is to select at random those who have the final say, while holding all equally accountable for what they do. This is what a random arbiter procedure does.

With a random arbiter procedure, the communists can have their idealistic desire – a distribution of the earth that is in accordance with fairness and equality, rather than in accordance with ability – and the free enterprise capitalists can have their idealistic desire – private ownership by each person of what he fairly should own, free to use it in any way that does not infringe on anyone else's right to do the same.

What it would boil down to is that you would own what any expert who knew your particular circumstances, would agree that you should own. Living by this principle, which would be the only way to avoid being penalized by arbitration, all people would always be looking for common ground of agreement on all issues of ownership -- including such issues as help for needy people, ownership and control of public utilities, environmental protection, and so on.

Imagine an ideal congress -- a group of representatives that truly includes ideal representatives of every single solitary person in the whole society. Being ideal, each of these representatives would be people with unblemished reputations for being honest, intelligent, knowledgeable, and incorruptible. Now suppose that the only way for this congress to pass a law, or change a law, or interpret a law, was for it to arrive at a unanimous agreement. Absolutely nothing would be legally passed without the unanimous agreement of every member of this ideal congress.

Under these circumstances, what would be the chances of this congress passing any law that unjustly oppressed any minority? Logically, it could not happen, since the representative of that minority would not agree to any such thing, and without his agreement, there would be no unanimous agreement.

You might think that such an ideal congress is impossible among humans as we know them. But how do you know? Logically, the random arbitration procedure proposed here, would have this exact effect. The only way for a an arbiter to avoid being penalized by a subsequent arbitration, would be to choose experts who are capable of finding a universally agreeable settlement for the case. If an arbitration made a ruling that was not agreeable to one single person who himself truly seeks unanimous agreement, then that person or whoever represents that person, would not hesitate to call for a subsequent arbitration against the arbitration officials who made that ruling.

The experts that the arbiters would need to seek, would play the role of the ideal congressmen. They would be the ones who are the most universally trusted. They would be the ones who had the knowledge, the intelligence, the determination, and the drive to seek out every other such trusted person, representative of every single other person and every single other interest in the whole society. These trusted people would seek each other out, communicate with each other, and because of the unanimous determination to establish unanimously agreeable common ground, they would formulate guidelines that are agreeable to everyone who likewise seeks unanimous agreement.

As they seek each other out, they would need to ignore their irrelevant differences, such as race, gender, and so on. The ones who would be sought would be the ones who prove themselves most able to resolve disagreements in a way that is unanimously agreed on as fair.

Notice that this whole idea appeals only to those who truly seek unanimous agreement. Anyone who seeks any kind of biased favor for any interest group, at the expense of some one else, would find no comfort anywhere in this procedure. They would have no representation among those who arbitrate decisions. Logically, they would be the only minority that really would be suppressed by this random arbitration procedure. Every selfish and unjust effort to profit in any way at the expense of anyone else, would be suppressed.

You might doubt whether there is any human being alive today who would qualify to be an ideal representative as described above. But if this is true, then logically, what would happen if the only way arbitration officials could escape being penalized by subsequent arbitration, was for them to find some such trusted person who actually could rule in a way that is agreeable to every other person who likewise seeks unanimous agreement? The only logical resort would be to pray -- to appeal to whoever or whatever it is that is responsible for our being here, in the effort to be guided by that One who is no respecter of persons. If prayer is the only resort for everyone, then the only hope for success for anyone would be to commit to the One, which would be the basis of universal agreement.

In this effort, people would need to abandon their quarreling over what to call the One. And they would need to abandon their quarreling over how to be saved or who can be saved. Their common need would be universal agreement. The effect would be that the only ones who can be "saved" would be those who truly commit to universal agreement. And the logical conclusion must be that that is the substance of every sincere religion, no matter how they explain it.

Whatever problem you might imagine, would be a motive for someone to call for arbitration. Therefore, any problem that you can imagine, would be dealt with by intelligent arbitration officials who need, for their own sakes as well as all others, to make rulings that are as universally agreeable as anyone has yet figured out. What more could we as humans do to resolve disagreements?

Is there a part of you that would like to live in a world where everyone agreed with everyone on all issues of fairness -- enabling all people to pursue their own individual tastes and preferences? The only limit on anyone's freedom would be if he infringed on anyone else's freedom. Everyone would agree on a fair way to disagree on individual tastes and preferences. Freedom and peace would both be maximized.

There must be a part of nearly every person that would like to live in such a world. In that respect, we already have a near universal agreement on the desire for universal agreement. But there might also a part of nearly every person that says that this world is just not like that. Whether we like it or not, there are and always have been disagreements on what is fair. Given that disagreement, many and maybe most of us, seek to overpower our adversaries rather than to seek agreement. None of us sees any realistic possibility of agreeing with adversaries who are not willing to seek agreement with us.

That second part of us -- the part that assumes that reality requires us to try to overpower uncooperative adversaries -- has always been the part that is in control. This part has always been in control of most and maybe all people in their individual consciousness. And this part has also always been in control collectively among us, so that our political systems reflect this assumption.

The first part of us -- that part that would like to pursue true universal agreement on fairness -- would take control if and only if we became aware of a logically realistic way to actually make it happen. That is what this web page offers.

If there is error in the logic, please inform me so that corrections can be made, leading to a truly realistic plan. Once such a plan is agreed on, what is there to prevent that first part of us from taking control, for the first time in history?

Who or what are we waiting for? Ever since this idea came to me 35 years ago, I have tried many many ways of explaining it, while my own understanding of it evolved. Most criticisms were that the human race is not ready for this, and it might be a few thousand years before we are. And so now I ask, who or what are we waiting for?

Are we waiting for uncooperative people to evolve to the point where they are willing to cooperate? If so, then what are we doing with those people now, with our current political systems? Aren't we trying to track them down, arrest them, confine them, and reform them? What would prevent us from doing the same thing if a random arbitration procedure was established? Everyone would have a motive to pursue universal agreement, which would require us to overpower anyone who refuses this pursuit. The only difference would be that random arbitration would eliminate the possibility of such uncooperative people manipulating the system.

So it is not the uncooperatives that we are waiting for. A power dissipation procedure would deal with them in the same way that we attempt to deal with them with our current system.

Who then are we waiting for. We must be waiting for that first part of us to take control, both individually and collectively. We must be waiting for the good in us -- the part that really does wish for true universal agreement and cooperation. We are waiting for the good in us to become aware of a realistic way of achieving this ideal. And we are waiting for the good in each of us to communicate with each other, telling each other of our agreement with this idea, and cooperatively building a popular demand for it. When the demand has grown sufficiently, politicians, in order to be elected, will need to formulate a way to actually establish the procedure.

Must we forever be governed by the evil in us -- the part that assumes that evil is our eternal adversary which we must forever seek to overpower, over and over again, only to see it to rise again and again in ever more complicated forms?

Evil cannot overcome evil. Good must take the initiative and claim its rightful place as our government.

What should you do? If you agree with the idea that adversity can be overcome only by motivating mutual adversaries to truly pursue true agreement with each other, then you need to let your agreement be known so that the demand for this idea can grow and become recognized as a force to deal with. And if you agree that the random arbitration idea that is suggested on this web page, would actually motivate this universal pursuit of universal agreement, then you need to let that agreement be known.

If you do agree with it, please tell others about this, and answer the following question. As response comes in, this web page will start monitoring the growth of the agreement.