The word "ostracism" has a fascinating history.
It comes from the ancient Greek word "ostraka," which referred to shards of broken pottery or stone.
Ostraka were abundant in old Mediterranean communities, and people used them like bits of paper.
They scratched little notes on them, or painted miniature scenes on them, or used them to keep records of prescriptions and ingredients.
But in ancient Athens, during the early period of that city's famous democracy, ostraka were used for an extra purpose.
The institution of 'ostracism'
Every year, Athenian citizens were asked if they wanted to hold a special vote to expel someone from the city-state (usually a prominent member of the elite).
If they voted 'yes,' the vote was held two months later.
During that vote, they'd write the names of the people they wished to exile on ostraka, and hand the ostraka to officials.
Officials would tally the names, and whoever received the most votes would be banished for the next 10 years.
It was an ostracism, derived from the use of ostraka to kick the person out.
"It was a negative popularity contest," historian James Sickinger, of Florida State University in the United States, told the Smithsonian Magazine last year.
"From early times, it seems to be used against individuals who were maybe not guilty of a criminal offence, so [a case] couldn't be brought to court, but who had in some other way violated or transgressed against community norms and posed a threat to civic order."
In today's language, that ancient democratic practice might be described as being a part of cancel culture.
But historians say it played a crucial role in reducing political tension among the Athenians.
And the Athenian people didn't abuse it. Fewer than 20 known ostracisms occurred, and the targets were typically powerful men who were accused of damaging civic society in some way, or of planning to.
The 'people' were in charge of their policies
One of the joys of researching the history of a word is learning about the culture it came from.
Another fascinating element of Athenian democracy was the way in which policies were adopted by its citizens.
Members of the boule (the city-state's leaders who were chosen by lottery every year to serve a single-year term), would propose policies.
But those policies could only be adopted if the citizens voted in support of them.
The voting citizenry (the Assembly) comprised every male citizen of a certain age (the society was a slave holding patriarchy, so women couldn't vote, and neither could slaves).
The total population of voting citizens sat somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000.
That Assembly of citizens would meet three or four times a month to discuss the boule's latest policy proposals, with roughly 6,000 citizens attending each meeting.
The Assembly was responsible for declaring war, and for electing military generals and magistrates, and it had the final say on legislation, among many other things.
'We are not a democracy'
Jeremy McInerney, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, says the Assembly voted on everything from raising taxes to building the Parthenon.
That made their political culture very different from today's "representative" democracies.
"They didn't delegate it to a group of representatives," McInerney told National Geographic's TV mini-series "The Greeks" (2016).
"If you had a time machine and an Athenian dropped into the US, the Athenian would say 'well, you're not a democracy. You know, you yourself didn't vote on the latest tax increase or Obamacare or anything like that, that was decided for you,'" he said.
Archaeology professor John R. Hale, from the University of Louisville, made similar remarks in the same series.
"We could be a democracy but we're not," he said.
"We like to call ourselves that, [but] we are not a democracy. It's not power to the people, it's power to a chosen set of leaders who the people, yes, have chosen, but then have to put up with once they are in the corrupting position of being in power."
A thought experiment
As a thought experiment, think about Australia's modern economic policies.
Australia's economic policy settings are controlled by a small group of elites drawn from politics and the bureaucracy and 'independent' bodies such as the Reserve Bank.
Since the 1980s, their policy settings have been built around a particular view of the world.
That view of the world, broadly speaking, has focused on the "supply-side" of the economy.
It's considered budget surpluses to be an inherently good thing.
It hasn't prioritised genuine "full employment," settling instead for a level of unemployment that suppresses wage growth and pacifies workers.
It hasn't prioritised eradicating poverty, even though it's within the government's power to lift hundreds of thousands of households out of poverty by increasing social security payments (as the federal government did for a few months last year, during the pandemic, before sending those households back into poverty).
It's accepted a large increase in wealth inequality, and the emergence of a phenomenon called unemployment "scarring" (which refers to the scars left on individuals and communities from long-term unemployment).
It's overseen a situation in which Australian house prices have become some of the most expensive in the world.
The public's had little control over that policy platform.
Votes on single policies are rare
In our "representative" democracy, voters are rarely given the opportunity to vote on single policies (the marriage equality vote in 2017 being a recent exception).
They've never had the power to vote on every policy, individually, that's presented to parliament.
Instead, our major political parties take a suite of policies to an election, and if they win an election they claim to have a "mandate" to implement every one of their policies.
They also say they have a mandate to "govern", which means they feel comfortable legislating new laws that weren't considered at the election.
And there's no mechanism for citizens to remove an individual politician from power (unless section 44 of the constitution is involved), other than waiting for the next election. Even then, if you're not a member of that politician's electorate you have no power over them at all.
It's a far cry from the original demokratia (from demos, "the people," and kratos, "power").
What if things were different?
But what if Australians had the opportunity to vote on individual policies, like the Athenians?
What level of unemployment would we vote for? Would we be happy with an unemployment rate of five per cent? Two per cent? Less than two per cent?
What if we could vote on the level of the minimum wage, or who should be appointed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal?
Would we vote for corporate and personal income tax rates to be higher or lower? What if we had the opportunity to vote on the maximum number of residential properties someone could own?
Or what if we could vote on how much money should be dedicated to saving the Great Barrier Reef and Tasmania's forests, and which organisations should be entrusted with the money?
The possibilities are endless.
And when you think about it, you realise how little control Australian voters have over major policy settings.
What can voters actually vote for?
Over the past year, an important debate has been taking place about the suitability or otherwise of our economic institutions.
Is the Reserve Bank's inflation targeting regime still fit for purpose?
Should we create an economic stability board that has the power to stimulate or suppress demand by manipulating tax rates?
Should we introduce a universal basic income or a federally-funded job guarantee?
It's not like voters haven't been complaining about some of these things for decades, or been trying to propose their own alternative policy ideas.
But more members of the elite have been willing to countenance new ideas recently, so the public "debate" has been lively and exciting.
Unfortunately, voters won't get the chance to vote on any substantive policy changes, not at the individual policy level.
Not unless Australia becomes more democratic.
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2021-04-10 22:53:27Z
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