Mass Politics and the Failure of Government Part 2

What should be clear to even the most casual observer is that past a certain threshold the notion of government ceases to have any functional ability. It becomes corrupted, as power is systematized and institutionalized and directed further and further away from individuals.
The marriage between corporate bodies and governmental bodies is an unsurprising outgrowth of this process, since the corporations are structured in precisely the same way, and pursue the self-same goal of maximizing efficiency (in the pursuit of profit), regardless of the externalities involved, whether these be people (politics), or the environment (industry).
Since there is no functional mass democracy, simply voting for one political party or the other makes little difference. A great many individuals in western industrial countries seem to recognize this fact, and their noble decision to abstain from contributing to the farce is predictibly regarded as disinterested social apathy by the corporate media.
What then is the solution? Greater political involvement? More independent parties? Unfortunately, there is no political cure to the disease of mass society. The very concept, as an extension of industrialism, is fundamentally and irrevocably unsustainable on this planet.
What this means is quite simply the collapse of society as it is currently organized. However, this doesn’t spell the end of either some form of human society or culture, merely that they would exist in a radically different form.
What is needed is true democracy, mediated directly by the people, without the intrusion of secondary representatives or the burdens of ineffective legal, financial, or educational systems.

We are at a point now in our technical evolution where this kind of organization is possible, where the social unit can take the form of a decentralized network of self-motivated individuals, operating in accord with their mutually-held sets of values.
How is this networked collective different from a so-called representative government?
Representative government is heirarchial, with nested layers of effective power leading up to a central deciscion maker. It is classically pyramidal in structure, concentrating power at the topmost echelons. This assures that, while providing the claimed ‘legitimacy’ of the ruling elite, the masses themselves are thoroughly devested of any actual power over the direction of their lives in any but the most superficial ways.
Contrasting this, a networked collective has no center-point where power gathers in an unchecked manner. Power is distributed at all places along the network. Every point is the ‘center’, and influence and power propagates nonlinearly.

Interestingly, such networks are oriented towards best serving humanitarian ends, ie. responding quickly and efficiently to disasters while governments get ensnared in proceedural debates. A netwok can act instantly once it has formulated a goal, and correct itself as it progresses, without the need for authorization from ‘up high’. At the other end of the scale, a network quite naturally acts to defuse violence and confrontation, since all of its actions instantly propagate throughout the whole structure, self-interestedly encouraging peaceful resolutions. Additionally, since there is no central authority that can order members to attack a target- all decisions are made by morally culpable agents who cannot transfer their responsibilities onto a leader.