Digital "Shock Collars" For Politicians
If Government Wants To Use Technology to Make People "Comply," So Can We
Where is the point of failure - the corruption point - in our current systems of government?
It’s the representatives. Our problem is them. Over time, our arrangement with representation has become corrupted to the core. From money and dark money in politics to the revolving door with big business, blackmail, bribery, and fraud - it is the politicians who are the weak link in our systems.
Humans are always corruptible.
The way to fix this is to create new systems controlled by the people that hold these corrupt representatives accountable. Think of the new systems like "digital shock collars" for our politicians. Good representatives will volunteer to wear them, while corrupted ones will expose themselves by refusing to. Imagine requiring politicians to join a new platform built and controlled 100% by the people that did things like give the public servants “social credit scores,” compiled evidence of their corruption, and held them accountable. This is exactly what they are trying to do to us, the citizens.
Today, representatives don’t know - or care - what their constituents want, let alone how to be courageous enough to stand up for them. Once in power, they vote on bills they never read, written by corporations, PACs, and special interest groups that do not represent the people. They make promises they never intend to keep, and there is no accountability. They tell you what issues you should care about and almost never face the consequences of the harm their policies create. They only pretend to listen every few years during election season.
We the people no longer have a say in the solutions. We are told what the solutions are in a top-down fashion. Think of any common crisis and you'll find a pre-packaged solution ready to be forced on us. Constituents are not invited into the problem-solving process, so how can this be called “representation?”
We can change this. There is another way - a way to reclaim our system and restore the people's voice as originally intended. Since today’s politicians won’t sit down to listen and collaborate with their constituents, we propose a re-infiltration of the system with a new kind of politician - a transparent one. One whose primary mission is to root out corruption and return power to the self-governing People. One who uses collective “swarm” intelligence systems to work directly with the people. One who volunteers to join our systems with us that we build.
Sure, there might be some well-intentioned politicians willing to participate - and that’s great. But most will resist, especially the corrupt ones. This resistance will serve as a perfect litmus test, separating those who serve the people from those who serve the forces that corrupted them. If they’re truly on our side, they should have no issue decentralizing their own leadership and proving it by joining our hard-to-corrupt systems.
Imagine this:
Linda Steele (a fictional character) runs for office. What she does redefines what we expect from our representatives. It doesn’t matter who Linda is or what party she represents. All that matters is this:
She is willing to decentralize her own leadership and join us on our new platform.
That’s it.
She takes office, turns to her constituents, and says: “We have one goal - to root out the biggest problem we face: corruption in government. Until we accomplish that, you - the people - are in control. I am just a figurehead, a representative. I’ll make suggestions, but your voice will be my voice. Your actions, my actions. Tell me what rock to turn over, and we’ll go look together.”
If the technology we have today had existed 250 years ago, do you think the founders of the American Republic would have used it to empower voters and make government more accountable? The tools to corrupt our systems have outpaced our ability to defend them. We now need bold, hard-to-counter solutions to fight back. Self-governance - not top-down governance - enhanced by technology, is the way forward.
Imagine every region of the country getting its own decentralized “Manchurian candidate” - someone who runs openly and transparently - and then hands their power back to the people through a reformed, modernized system. One with a new code or constitution that seeks to root out corruption. If done right, this would spread like wildfire and become the norm in all governments, everywhere.
Picture Linda Steele refusing campaign funds. She wins office - could be mayor, senator, school board member, it doesn’t matter. Her constituents then plug into her decentralized role through a modern system that acts as the digital shock collar, where the people can watch, track, and rate her every move. Instead of working for corporations and PACs, she now would work transparently with the people who elected her, through a new system designed to hold her accountable.
How transparent? Well, if the politicians have nothing to fear, then they should have nothing to hide, right?
We’ve covered this before (like here), but imagine our representative recording and live streaming every meeting she attends, in real time, for public feedback. Imagine she posts all bills online before voting on them, and the people discuss and provide input (we wrote about that here). It would be like an interactive reality show where constituents almost control their representatives - especially when it comes to rooting out corruption.
Linda could wear cameras all day, sharing every interaction with the public. The people would finally get to see how government really works behind closed doors. Every roadblock she hit would become one that we navigate together. All contracts, policies, and bills would be posted to our digital platform and reviewed collectively before any decisions are made. And if she truly was a good candidate, then this would make her that much better.
Every side of every debate could be heard - piece by piece - instead of being told which side to support based on party lines.
If the media attacked her, they’d really be attacking her constituents. Every time she spoke, she’d be speaking for us. We would have the receipts to prove it.
That is what a real representative democracy looks like.
The people could also propose new bills - especially ones aimed at fighting corruption - and help repeal bad bills that protect those doing the corrupting. Once enough decentralized leaders existed across party lines and states, we could begin passing laws that permanently reformed our government.
Now imagine how badly the people currently corrupting the system would want to stop this. Imagine government systems operating under a new cultural principle: results matter most. Picture a society built on metrics, transparency, trust, feedback, honest self-assessment, and a growth mindset.
It’s possible. High-trust digital systems can allow us to control our representatives again.
Decentralization works. We’ve seen it in business. We’ve seen it in finance. Napster broke the music industry’s centralized control. Podcasts and Substack have crumbled the power of legacy news outlets like CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. Now it’s time to bring decentralization to government. The key is building systems that are trustworthy enough to use, and ones that get results.
Today, the world needs leaders courageous enough to decentralize their own leadership. We need our own candidates for corruption reform connecting to the people in brand new ways, to create a powerful force of highly aligned people all fighting corruption on both sides of the aisle, together in a decentralized and transparent way. This is why we believe collective intelligence plays such an important role in fixing our corrupted systems.
Thanks for reading!
All problems that do not defy the laws of physics are solvable with the right knowledge - David Deutsch
Humans solve problems better in high-trust groups, and solving problems is happiness!
#CollectiveIntelligence
For over 3 billion years on this planet there were only single-celled organisms. Then one day they somehow learned to work together and make complex multi-celled creatures . Right now we are like those single-celled organisms. Our next evolution is finding how to work together, better… (like we wrote about here).
#SwarmAcademy #NetworkState #LEADERLESS #ResultsMatterMost #DecentralizeEverything #DemandTransparency
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That is a really well written article. We are trying but here in "Northern VA" it is like swimming upstream. I am going to write some letters today to elected representatives who sound exactly like Linda Steele. The machine just keeps rolling regardless of what has been stated and voted for. I am feeling very discouraged today. Thanks for the article.. :)
This is a powerful and important vision, and I really appreciate the clarity of your call to root out corruption and return agency to the people. That said, I’d like to offer a gentle critique from the lens of coordination systems. While flipping the power dynamic so that politicians are held accountable by the people sounds like justice, it still relies on a framework of control and coercion. The "shock collar" metaphor, the use of public scoring, and the emphasis on constant surveillance risk recreating the very dynamics of Power Over that we are trying to escape, just in reverse.
Instead of building a system that punishes representatives into alignment, what if we built one that invited them into shared responsibility? We could design participatory systems that center transparency through collaboration, not threat. Rather than scoring and sanctioning individuals, we could create shared dashboards and deliberative spaces that allow people and politicians to learn, act, and adapt together. Trustworthy systems don’t just expose; they cultivate a culture of mutual clarity, curiosity, and accountability. If we really want a new kind of politics, maybe the answer isn’t to flip who controls whom, but to dissolve control altogether in favor of true coordination.