I have heard comments against the proposal we
have for a sustainable socioeconomic system that it has an authoritarian characteristic.
To me, that suggests that people either don’t understand our proposal or they
don’t understand what the word “authoritarian” means or perhaps they have some other agenda? Either
way, I thought I would go through this again and highlight our system as compared
to an authoritarian system.
The
socioeconomic system that we propose falls within the classification of authoritative
but not authoritarian. Both systems rely on authorities and both systems have
rules, so, to some degree I can understand why people might get confused, especially
if they just take a quick look. So, how do the two systems differ?
In an authoritarian
system you do what the authority tells you to do because they have the
authority. You can’t question the authority. Authoritarian governments tend to
have a centralised characteristic and uses force to enforce the decisions of
the authority. Examples of authoritarian governments include Saudi Arabia, North
Korea and Iran.
In an authoritative
system the authorities have their position because they have knowledge or expertise in
a given area. In a complex system, no one person will have knowledge or
expertise on every aspect of society but some people will know a lot about a
certain part of society. This leads to a distributed system of government made
up of multiple authorities (in direct contrast to an authoritarian form of
government). So, people do what a given authority says not as a result of force
or through fear but as a result of mutual respect; they acknowledge that that authority
knows more about the subject than they do and the best course of action means
following the authorities instructions.
In an authoritative
system you can also question the authority and the authority listens to the people. If
people can object in a rational way with supporting evidence the author could
even change its advice. Also, due to the distributed nature of an authoritative
system, you also have multiple authorities to go to; if you disagree (and in an authoritative
system you can disagree and even disobey the authority but in doing so you follow the less optimal path) with any
one of them, ask another.
Authoritative systems
also have a characteristic of openness. They don’t just say “do this” but they also
say why and support their decision with evidence. Other authorities can review
the authority in an open peer to peer review process. So, the system also has a self-checking
nature.
Today we have no
really good examples of an authoritative form of government but you can get
some idea of how such a system could work and how it differs from an authoritarian
system if you look at authoritative parenting.
