Dateline: November 7 2032
Left, right, centre, liberal. Partisan, nonbinary, socio-democratic. Populist, humanist, transhumanist, fundamentalist, radical. It’s all so confusing, and I don’t know if some of the candidates are really real, or just deeply de-aged fakes.
Besides, they all say the same thing, but with different words. Their AIs have been trained to watch each other, and the voting public, and make sure they hit the right notes, without alienating anyone, but still sounding sincere.
What happened to the good old days, when you could go down to the town hall and see a real person speak and answer questions? Sure, they lied like crazy to get you to vote for them, but we knew that. And if they lied too much, they wouldn’t get a second term.
And there were always two front-runners to choose from, and maybe an independent or two. Now it’s like SA, with 27 political parties, all with a candidate on the ballot! It’s just too much.
Now there’s a flood of information, disinformation, misinformation, opinions, fact-checking, debunked and pre-bunked viral videos. I daren’t look at my feed, it just gives me a headache. Even your summary, AI, is more than I can deal with.
So I’ve come to a conclusion. AI, you know more about this than me. You know what the issues are. You know the candidates, and their flaws. You know the consequences if one or the other should win. What might happen with tax, justice, energy prices, food security, employment, whatever.
So I’ve made a decision, AI. I’m giving you my proxy. I want you to choose for me. Select the candidate that’s best for my future. You know me so well.
Just vote for me already. And let’s get back to the future.
First published on Mindbullets November 7 2024
Social cohesion now for sale
Dateline: June 28 2028
Why make promises you can’t keep and end up with disillusioned voters? Rather enter into a contract, pay them to vote for you and deliver on your contract; then everyone’s happy.
That’s the new philosophy behind open, transparent bidding for votes and it works both ways. Voters can’t complain about politicians whose money they’ve accepted and pols have a contract they have to honour, or get sued. And it’s all above board and legally enforceable.
Cynics would say, this is what happens anyway, but under the old system, votes were secret and you could never prove who you voted for, or audit their performance. Provenance makes all the difference.
Though this commercial style of elections was initially proposed by policy wonks in the US, Singapore was the first country to adopt it and the latest election, or should we say auction, has been hailed as a resounding success. Everything is done online and verified electronically — results are in immediately, as soon as the last payment is completed.
While some pundits say this could never work in a more diverse country such as India, others point out that it was the fragile nature of Singapore’s society that prompted this move. “You can’t hide the tensions below the surface forever; better to bring things out into the open and solve them like commercial issues!”
After all, capitalism is the new religion that makes society operate effectively; why not in politics too? South Korea is rumoured to be next in line for this electoral model. Perhaps the future of politics is real transparency.
First published on Mindbullets June 27 2019
Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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