How to compel governments to be accountable to their own people, or the Project The Lane

       
         The following is the story of my acquaintance John Jefferson. He asked me to publish it in my blog.



          I have visited many countries. I have heard many complaints, especially in poor countries, about such evils as hard life, lawlessness, corruption, and violations of human rights. The people are aware that the main person responsible for such things is their country’s ruler, who is often deeply involved in the corruption, but they say they can do nothing because of the system.
          I have thought about this unfairness for many years, pondering how to introduce real feedback between people and their rulers, how to compel governments to be accountable to their own people.
          As a result, having much experience in inventions, I have thought up what I consider to be a solution. The following suggestion describes it.


          The well-being of a country depends on the quality of its ruler’s work.
          How can the quality of a ruler’s work be improved?
          What motivates rulers? They almost always want fame for themselves and in most cases money for themselves and their progeny.
          How to harmonise these wishes with the needs of the country? The way is to institute a strong reward-and-punishment feedback system.
          Who will impartially determine quality of rulers’ work and determine the measures of reward or punishment? A UN commission.
          When? Twice, in 20 and in 100 years after ruler’s death.
          How? By evaluating ruler’s contributions to their countries’ well-being.
          The measures of reward and punishment will involve the erecting of a monument for each ruler, the size of the monument to be between 1 cm and 10 m, depending on the commission’s evaluation. The monument will be situated in a specially designated UN Lane of Glory and Disgrace, with a copy of the monument also erected in a Lane of Glory and Disgrace in the ruler’s country.
          If the evaluation is positive, the rulers’ immediate relatives and a number of their associates, if they are in need, will receive substantial financial help. If the commission finds that a ruler has been corrupt it will confiscate the property of the relatives and close friends of the ruler.
          This feedback should be conducted through the UN because corrupt regimes are not interested in honest work.
          With this reward-and-punishment feedback system rulers would rather resign than work dishonestly, and corruption, beginning from the upper echelon, will dissipate, and countries’ well-being will improve significantly.


          I sent this suggestion, slightly changed, as a proposal to the rulers, mostly prime ministers, of several democratic countries and received absolutely no response. Perhaps, the bureaucrats in the rulers’ offices who read my highly unusual, almost fantastic, proposal decided that its author must be a madman and ignored the suggestion.
          After this fiasco I tried to find shortcomings in the proposal and found that
          (a) No ruler’s office will consider a serious suggestion or proposal from an unknown person, but ones from well-known organisations would be much more acceptable;
          (b) Popular support will be the best recommendation for accepting this proposal, and
          (c) A commercial organisation would be more likely to realise such a suggestion or proposal if it could make a profit by doing so.

           It seems that the following process could fulfil all these conditions.

           A Western commercial organisation could create a website to receive messages from people in any country about cases of lawlessness, corruption, violation of human rights, or similar evils, along with suggestions in regard to the height of a future monument, from 10 meters down to 1 cm, to the current ruler of that country. Hundreds of thousands of messages will come yearly, many containing strongly dramatic stories. Millions of people will read these stories, which will be accompanied by advertisements to provide the organisation with considerable income.
           At first, the rulers of the non-democratic countries will probably ignore these messages as they would public-opinion polls. Then the rulers will become afraid about the disgraceful height of their future personal micromonuments, down to 1 cm, and about possible future confiscations. They will then inevitably decide to soften their regimes. The next ruler will inevitably go in the same direction and will soften the regime even more, and so on.
           When this process begins to show its effectiveness the adoption of a corresponding UN resolution will become easy.
           The organisation will therefore provide the two functions of:
            a) Providing the means for the noble transformation of non-democratic regimes into democratic ones, and
            b) Making a profit from doing so.
            Many organisations will probably wish to play such a historic role.

            Generally, this proposed project is an example of how information technologies can change the world.