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Time to dismantle representative democracy?

12 January 2026

No, don’t worry, I haven’t gone wildly left-wing or embraced the charms of dictatorial communism.

What I am doing however, asking whether the democracy we have cherished for so long has now become updated, thanks to advances in technology and a need for the general population to protect themselves against the seeming idiocy of those who we elect to represent us in the halls of power.

As established world order seems to be crumbling before our very eyes, is it time to acknowledge that the democratic model we built in a world before ubiquitous electronic communications and digital computers is no longer fit for purpose?

It would appear, just based on observation, that the trinkets of office and the baubles of power are simply too much for most politicians to resist. Although they may run for election with altruistic goals and promises, all too often they become intoxicated by the power and the opportunity to better their own positions ahead of those of the people they serve.

Perhaps this has always been the case but, due to the ease with which such things could be covered up, the general public was unaware.

Today however, social media allows vital information and, to be fair, sometimes misinformation, to spread like wildfire through the general population. Such ease of communication means that it has become much harder for politicians to hide behind a smokescreen and abuse the system with impunity.

Embarrassing or even incriminating events and evidence that may have once been easy to cover-up are now available to anyone with an internet connection once they hit the various social media platforms that now represent a huge proportion of all internet activity.

How have our politicians responded to this greater level of accountability?

Well in The UK and Australia, their response has been to try and limit access to that social media.

That’s right, let’s not address the problem, let’s just try to make sure people can’t see what we’re doing, appears to be the strategy.

Of course they’re not honest about why they want to significantly restrict access to such platforms because that would be an admission of fault. Instead, they roll out the "won’t someone think of the children" line and try to convince us that what they’re doing is actually in *our* interest and not their own.

Right now, both the UK and Australia are drafting plans to ban X (formerly Twitter) in the grounds that its generative AI can be used to create images that go against the morals and even the law of the land. Grok, the AI systemused by X, has been allowing users to undress or re-dress famous figures – resulting in deepfake pictures of both the UK and Australian Prime Ministers dressed in bikinis appearing as memes online.

The same strategy can also be used, apparently, to create CSAM material – which clearly is not a good thing. However, Grok is not the only generative AI system that can or does do this.

X has restricted image generation to paid users now so that they have a way of identifying and reporting anyone who would use their system to produce illegal material and it should be noted that in this regard, any AI system is merely a tool – the crime is committed by those who would misuse that tool for illegal purposes.

For politicians to ban X simply because a tiny, tiny percentage of its users would mis-use the power of its generative AI to create illegal image is somewhat akin to banning crayons, paints and coloured pencils because they too can be used to create illegal images.

I think it’s pretty clear that more than a handful of governments are simply looking for any excuse to ban those social media platforms that firmly support the principles of free speech, the free speech that would also expose their abuses of position and incompetence.

So Bruce, you’re quick to criticise but can you come up with a better option than the reprentative democracy we currently have?

Well long-time readers will recall that almost 20 years ago I did just that when I proposed a system of Recoverable Proxy.

I believe that today, more than ever, such a system is becoming an essential replacement for the rapidly failing purely representative democracy we suffer under now. Never have we been more equipped to deliver a recoverable proxy system, thanks to advances in technology over the past two decades.

Of course there remains no appetite for such change within the traditional parties, for it would disempower them to a significant degree and hand that power back to the people. This must surely be all the proof we need to prove that such a change is necessary for any politician who truly believes in democracy would surely embrace a system that delivered just that.

It saddens me to observe that so many Western governments now seem to be spending far more time and money on suppressing, surveilling and controlling their citizens than they do on serving their needs and that won’t change until we fix the failed system that allows this.

Ah well, maybe in another 20 years someone will come across my proposal and decide it’s worth a crack – but I won’t be holding my breath. As we have seen with all the anti-free-speech moves being made of late, those who currently hold power will always be reluctant to reninquish any of it, no matter how beneficial that might be to the public.

Carpe Diem folks!

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