This survey is based on the premise that none of the various political parties seeking your votes in this General Election offer a combination of visions of society which most people would hold. These questions test that hypothesis.
We also need a much longer-term perspective to deal with the many challenges with which we are confronted: climate change, international conflict and tension, and the endemic polarisation of wealth. Meanwhile the range of economic choices we have on offer are legacies of either Adam Smith for capitalism or Karl Marx for socialism.
This survey points towards a society based on egalitarian capitalism in which the freedom of choice and individual lifestyle enabled by democratic capitalism would co-exist with moving towards a more egalitarian society. Current political offerings either play lip service to ‘levelling-up’ or rely on heavyweight state intervention to deliver more equality, but they pay little attention, for example, to the significance of the human life cycle.
This could give us the opportunity to use inter-generational rebalancing in order to provide starter capital resources and life skills to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve their potential, and a constitutional approach would use inheritance levies to enable this.
Recent advances in data harvesting and generative AI are also driving huge wealth creation, concentrated among very few hands. This presents a major challenge not only in wealth polarisation but also as a result of automation replacing employment, which could result in welfare subservience via the introduction of ‘universal basic income’.
A more constructive response could be to introduce a more egalitarian form of capitalism by sharing that wealth: issuing equity stock in tech giants and thereby enabling dividends to be paid to individuals in return for harvesting their data and creativity. Our survey includes questioned originally asked in a 2021 seminar.
Meanwhile the imposition of state-run ‘free at the point of use’ monopolies for health and education not only removes choice and results in dysfunctional service and a huge burden on the public purse, but it also denies the opportunity to concentrate publicly-funded assistance for those most in need. The application of mandatory health insurance for the wealthy (which could be drawn down when NHS services are used), and the use of voucher systems for those needing publicly-funded support so that they too can access private education, would provide both choice and fairness for all.
Due to an electoral cycle which is the central feature of our democracy, the focus in the first chamber of parliament (the House of Commons) is inevitably short-term. The second chamber could provide the opportunity for scrutinising proposed legislation to ensure its long-term relevance, together with providing the public with the opportunity to lodge proposals of long-term significance; but it currently relies on a system of appointment and privilege.
The survey therefore invites opinions on reform of the second chamber of parliament (currently the House of Lords) and, because this not only affects the United Kingdom but also global governance issues, it also seeks your views on achieving greater democratic legitimacy for the United Nations.
We look forward to your thoughts on these issues!