JULIAN When I become president of these United States,
I solemnly swear that the voices of every man, woman, and baboon will be heard!
TRACE *face*
JULIAN Hello participating members of society, Julian
and my running mate Trace here for DNews.
Two and a half thousand years ago, some ancient Greek people got together in Athens and decided
that not having a say in their government was a bunch of minotaur skata.
TRACE They decided there should be a system where
everyone, well, men at least, could have an equal say in decision making, and they named
their new system Demokratia, which translates to Power of the People.
JULIAN Right on!
This has for the most part been regarded as a step in the right direction.
Getting together, coming to a decision with equal voices regardless of our position in
society.
It’s what separates us from monkeys.
*pause* I’m totally kidding, monkeys do that too,
as observed by researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
TRACE The researchers tracked the movements of a
troop of olive baboons in Kenya and found that every member of the troop had an equal
say in where they all went.
JULIAN This was surprising, because olive baboons
have a strong social hierarchy, and dominant members get choice picks of food or mates
over their subordinates.
But when it comes to trekking across the savannah, olive baboons move more like a school of fish
or flock of birds.
TRACE In other words, no dominant members of the
troop had a disproportionate say on where the entire gang went.
When two monkeys started moving in different directions, the rest of the troop would decide
which to follow, and eventually the whole group would go with the decision of the majority.
And if the two initiators picked directions that were similar, the group would choose
a path that split the difference.
They compromised!
Americans are more stubborn than baboons!
JULIAN That's going to knock us in the polls.
You may be thinking that, sure, group based decision making may not be uniquely human,
but it sounds like a primate thing at most.
Well it’s not, democracy has been observed in… bees.
I know, bees have a “queen” so you might think that technically makes them a monarchy.
But the queen only has that title because she gave birth to everyone in the colony,
it’s exactly how British people work.
TRACE I would like to state on behalf of DNews that
that is not a thing.
Anyway, and like England’s constitutional monarchy, the people, I guess in this case
bee-ple, have a say in some issues.
If the hive is deciding it’s time to choose a new location, bees who are in the know weigh
in on the benefits of the potential sites.
Size, flower density, humidity, amount of honey they'd have to put into the NHS…
JULIAN The National Honey Service.
TRACE Then the individual bees vote using the power
of dance, and once they have enough bees in on the dance craze they brexit their old hive
and head to the site the majority picked with the queen in tow.
JULIAN Of course, some bees will stay behind at the
old site where new queens are hatched.
Usually the first queen to mature breaks out and murders the other infant queens to establish
herself at the top.
TRACE However if the original colony was very large,
then the bees will actually send out two new groups to set up colonies, and the second
group needs a strong queen of their own.
JULIAN In order to find out which potential queen
is most Bee-once, the workers will actually protect all the developing queens until they
hatch, and then let them fight to the death.
You can think of it as an election.
TRACE Of course not all animals or insects that
live in groups have democratic systems.
Wolf packs or ant colonies don’t work like baboons or bees because their strategy seems
to be working for them so far.
JULIAN Will democracy turn out to be the system that
leads to long term success for you in particular and our species as a whole?
There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to participate in it.
Sometimes in a democracy people use their voice to elect someone who would rather the
people shut up.
To learn why this odd hybrid called an authoritarian democracy happens, check out Trace’s video
here.
TRACE Do you think
more than half the people are right more than half the time, or would you vote to scrap
democracy and try something else?