Firstly… you could argue MPs are being disintermediated Absolutely agree that the flow of knowledge/power/money/etc through global networks makes traditional nation-states and their institutions increasingly redundant. Meanwhile people are still engaged politically (with a small ‘p’) on a local, community scale.

Secondly, small-scale participatory democracy has seemed to work since the birth of democracy. It only started to disenfranchise people when it was mass marketised.

The principles of the above are pretty much proven, even in modern settings, through consensus decision making – used in organisations from Korean corporations down to the Climate Camp movement

Someone suggested yesterday in all seriousness that we should just replace MPs with robots, and people vote on what buttons we want the robot to press. I suppose a more human form would be more like Ebbsfleet community-owned football club http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/ where owners vote on everything the club does.

To add to the layer of questions: direct democracy is a far better approach to political organisation than representative democracy. And its significantly more viable thanks to the internet. In fact technology has been a driving force for much political change – cf. development of domestic technology and the electoral emancipation of women.

Direct democracy will likely remove the need for MPs and political parties – which as irreducible hierarchical institutions – won’t have a role, i.e. if people represent themselves then we wont need to pay others (MPs) to do so.

Just some more thoughts of mine. Not sure how this all plays out in wider society, but there are a number of viable alternatives based on an anarchy (which is a very well organised, peaceful system rather than chaos as often portrayed) which should really be explored further.

Decision makers could access qualitative snapshots of what is being said or complained about and get a little closer to the real people out there without having to wade through paperwork, knock on people’s doors or make inaccurate generalisations. It could help them become more dynamic politicans. Maybe.

The low level involvement from the public should encourage more people to speak up and it could become like a crowd sourced democracy. But maybe I’m being a bit too idealistic.