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Technically, they don’t.
But that is certainly not the whole story, indeed, it could be very misleading.
(FA = Free Association, a technical term as I use it, referring to organizations most easily described as modelled after the organizational traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous.)
The basic problem in politics is that politics purports to be, in the modern context, organization of the people; yet the structures used in politics result in oligarchical control and loss of full democracy.
Oligarchical control is here not used as a perjorative term. It is simply a description. Oligarchy may be appropriate under some circumstances. However, it is my thesis that full democracy is more powerful, that, properly designed and implemented, it makes a people strong. In my view, the relative success of the “West” is due to the degree of democracy which exists there. Which is also, in my view, quite limited and dangerously defective. But it is still stronger than blatant dictatorship and oligarchical control that is oppressive beyond limits.
Now, many people have noticed that what is missing is an organization of the people, and many have attempted to form such organizations. However, the communication and control structures which have been used have been largely structures inherited from royalist or strong-leader traditions. And, so, even though these organizations started as an attempt to organize the people, presumably for the benefit of the people, they ended up either failing utterly or, what may have been worse, succeeding in overthrowing prior governments, replacing the old set of oligarchs with a new one. Parties were organized top-down, for discipline, considered necessary to succeed, and, of course, did not simply fade away as had been predicted.
People who hold power only rarely give it up voluntarily. (They will believe that they know better than others what is best for the people, so anyone attempting to replace them must either be dangerously insane or an enemy of the people.)
Bottom line: attempts to change the system by employing the system are doomed to reproducing the system with new faces.
The FA/DP concept is to organize the people, not in opposition to the system, but outside it. FAs don’t take controversial positions, they neither endorse nor oppose any causes.
What good are they, then?
You might as well ask, “What good is an open mind?”
FAs do facilitate communication. That’s really almost all they do. Once people can communicate effectively and efficiently, they can organize as needed whatever activities need to be undertaken independently of the FA.
Again, this comes from Alcoholics Anonymous. AA groups never own property, and starting a treatement center involves not only owning property, but also, perhaps, employing or supporting some method of treatment which might be controversial. So what do they do? Those members of AA who want to do it, simply form an independent association, formal or informal, to take on the task. They can structure this independent organization however they like. AA will not endorse it, but the individual members are completely free to endorse it, contribute to it, work for it, talk about it, represent it if authorized, etc.
The members met through AA.
There is a new political party forming, composed of dissidents from the Libertarian Party, a minor party in the U.S. which is probably number three or four in terms of votes it gets in elections. The party is called the Bostoni Tea Party. Jan Kok has been active in the Libertarian Party, and is participating in the formation of the new party, but significant for our discussion here, he is also forming another organization called the Boston Tea Free Association.
The Boston Tea Party is a traditional political party. Well, not entirely traditional, but it will run candidates for office, presumably, it has a platform. It takes positions. The Boston Tea Free Association won’t do any of these things. However, I think, members of the BTP will be encouraged to join the BTFA. What happens if they do?
Well, right off, the BTFA is a DP organization. As such, it will create, if the members use it, a communications structure that is immune to top-down control. In AA, “Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern.” The function of the BTFA has a number of aspects:
(1) It exists to advise the BTP leadership through deliberation and DP polls. (2) It exists to advise its members regarding political action, not by taking an organizational position, but by developing consensus and expressing that consensus back to its members, through the DP structure. (That is, members are advised by people they have chosen as trustworthy, not merely by some position developed as a majority view, or as a view of “leaders,” which is how traditional parties function.) (3) It is a way for people not members of the BTP to connect with the BTP. BTFA members can be in opposition to the BTP. Thus a path is created for the BTP to grow beyond its initial doctrinal and membership limitations. The BTP can choose to change or not; but if it chooses to ignore a developing consensus, well, it is simply turning away from power, which, in that context, would be beneficial to society. We don’t want parties gaining power which will ignore a social consensus. That’s dictatorship, really, even if it satisfies the technical requirements of an allegedly democratic structure. Such as by having enough votes on the Supreme Court to basically define and implement a desired election result, combined with a gutless opposition not willing to raise the serious constitutional question of a Supreme Court making a blantantly political decision based on outcome rather than the law itself…. ahem….
If the people are organized, there is no power that can resist them. Indeed, organization of the people is quite dangerous, if the organizational structure is such that it can be hijacked by ideologues, fanatics, special interests, or other parasites.
This is why I am so interested in seeing DP implemented, at first, in an FA context. DP is a general organization method, and it certainly has potential governmental applications, but I’d much prefer seeing it used in a relatively fail-safe environment. I propose FAs as that environment.
Plus, I suspect, FA/DP organizations have the potential to make changes in governmental structures unnecessary. After all, if one has minimal democracy in government, and the people are organized, they can simply elect those whom they trust to positions of power; and should those people be corrupted, they can quickly detect this and remove them. Even massive election fraud cannot withstand the people directly organized, even with far less effective organization than we forsee for FA/DP organizations.
It is not necessary for everyone to sign on to this plan, it is not necessary for even a majority to sign on. All that is needed, really, is for a few people to begin functioning this way. If the theory is correct, those small organizations will be successful, and they will grow and be imitated.
And this is the trick: if, say, liberals form an FA/DP organization and dominate it (not by control, but simply by percentage of membership), and conservatives see that this organization is growing, threatening them, they would be quite likely to adopt the structure. And the message is the structure. Because FA/DP organizations don’t have an organizational bias, if there were a “liberal” FA/DP organization and a “conservative” one, there would be nothing, really, to prevent them from merging and seeking consensus. FA/DP organizations, structurally, encourage consensus because with consensus, effort is not wasted in opposition. If caucus A wants to advance cause A, and caucus B opposes it, they are each free to form political action organizations for their respective purposes, collect money, organize volunteers, and so forth. But their net effect will be reduced because their actions will be opposite in direction. If, instead, they can find some kind of compromise or consensus that both groups can support, their power is amplified, not reduced.
How rapidly this would cause the traditions of opposition and conflict to change, I can’t predict. But FA/DP will create forces in that direction, and will make such change possible.
As to software for DP, certainly this will be useful. I’m trying to avoid making it necessary, making it the foundation of the organization; that is the cart before the horse. DP can be implemented with a minimum of software, even special-purpose proxy can be done this way, simply by creating proxy lists and allowing people to analyze them in their own ways. Decentralizing analysis is yet another protection against fraud, though the FA context is the strongest protection.
An open proxy list, anyone can check. And anyone can take an open voting record and analyze it to expand it by proxy representation. These are only polls, in FAs, they do not result — except for organizational decisions, which are minimal in FAs — in the application of power. Polls are reported by anyone, using analytical methods that they choose. If they suspect that a set of proxies are fraudulent, they can discount them, even without investigating them directly.
But it would be useful, I’d suggest, to consider a list of possible functions of a DP tool, starting with the simplest. Instead of trying to come up with at complete system, with all the bells and whistles and possible features.
I’ve been working with assumptions of open assignment of proxies and open voting, as it is in Town Meeting government. But some might want secrecy, and DP systems with some level of secrecy are possible. Note, however, that with secrecy comes risk of fraud that cannot easily be detected.
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-M: You are the one who dodges direct questions about your V-V-V system, and you fail to defend yourself against accusations of having contradictions.
And if you think that my course of acton isn’t optimal, what should I do instead?
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 08:56:03AM -0700, Mark wrote:
23:14 < echarp> I see mark is still as stubborn and silly-M: You are the one who dodges direct questions about your V-V-Vsystem, and you fail to defend yourself against accusations of havingcontradictions.OK, let’s see if you can try courtesy and good will: please, state your claims one item per bullet, I will answer each.
And if you think that my course of acton isn’t optimal, what should Ido instead?
Not claiming yourself the winner of a game you are the only one playing, a game with rules we supposedly all know yet which you can’t express. Not changing the meaning of the words we use and define. Not being disagreeable. Not using insults as arguments.
Good luck
echarp – http://leparlement.org
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23:14 < echarp> I see mark is still as stubborn and silly
-M: You are the one who dodges direct questions about your V-V-Vsystem, and you fail to defend yourself against accusations of havingcontradictions.
ec: OK, let’s see if you can try courtesy and good will: please, state yourclaims one item per bullet, I will answer each.
-M: Courtesy and good will would be to go back to my previous posts that you dodged and answer them. (You can identify these by looking at the thread-trees that I ended.)
For now, I want to know about your directional Markov-algorithm for your V-V-V system. How does it differ from PageRank?
And you having me go to a EU-constitution group to continue discourse is not legitimate, it is another dodge.
> > And if you think that my course of acton isn’t optimal, whatshould I
do instead?
ec: Not claiming yourself the winner of a game you are the only one playing,…-M: No, there are others here who know about the Western Intellectual Tradition and its rules, and know how to follow these rules.
ec:… a game with rules we supposedly all know yet which you can’t express.
-M: Just do the best you can, and I will correct you when you deviate.
ec: Not changing the meaning of the words we use and define.
-M: I was using the best definitions and I was defending those
definitions.
I won because my final points were uncontested. This is how it works.
ec: Not being disagreeable.
-M: I am very nice when people don’t fuck-up.
ec: Not using insults as arguments.
-M: Like ‘dodge-monkey’? This is an accurate discription, so it can be used as part of arguments. (I do recommend against pointless insults.)
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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No, there are others here who know about the Western IntellectualTradition and its rules, and know how to follow these rules.
If it is so easy, please, do list those rules for my betterment! You claim you claim, but you remain empty handed.
Oh, you think I consider you that interesting and trustworthy to let you correct me?a game with rules we supposedly all know yet which you can’t express.Just do the best you can, and I will correct you when you deviate.
Yet it’s easy, it’s one of those things I learned in philosophy: if I define and use a concept, then that use is considered according to the given definition.Not changing the meaning of the words we use and define.I was using the best definitions and I was defending thosedefinitions.
I won because my final points were uncontested. This is how it works.
Or you were left alone playing your game, alone.
You are disagreeable. Ask around please, you might change if you want to. But like many other things, the most important step is recognizing it.
Or, again, what is your mental condition? I won’t make use of it to deride you, but it will make me more patient, more comprehensive.
echarp – http://leparlement.org
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echarp wrote:
No, there are others here who know about the Western IntellectualTradition and its rules, and know how to follow these rules.
ec: If it is so easy, please, do list those rules for my betterment! You claim you claim, but you remain empty handed.-M: You want me to put the rules of the 2500 year old Western Intellectual Tradition into a bulleted list? This is an entire field of study. I’ll list one rule: 1. Don’t dodge.
a game with rules we supposedly all know yet which you can’t express.
M: Just do the best you can, and I will correct you when you deviate.
ec: Oh, you think I consider you that interesting and trustworthy to let you correct me?-M: You should. Have I ever been wrong about anything, or unfair with you?
Not changing the meaning of the words we use and define.
M: I was using the best definitions and I was defending thosedefinitions.
ec: Yet it’s easy, it’s one of those things I learned in philosophy: if Idefine and use a concept, then that use is considered according to thegiven definition.-M: Yes, it is easy for me. Yet it seems difficult for you to follow.
I won because my final points were uncontested. This is how it works.
ec: Or you were left alone playing your game, alone.
-M: My game is also the game of the Western Intellectual Tradition. If you prefer not to play this game, and would like to make a game of your own (inevitably one inferior, correct?), this is your problem, not mine.
ec: You are disagreeable. Ask around please, you might change if you want
to.
-M: If I am disagreeable, I would like to change to be more agreeable. Do you have any suggestions?
ec: But like many other things, the most important step is recognizing
it.
-M: Have I done anything wrong? If not, then maybe you haven’t recognized my alledged disagreeableness, either.
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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Intellectual Tradition into a bulleted list? This is an entire field ofstudy. I’ll list one rule:1. Don’t dodge.
Ahem ahem. It’s easy then, please, show me your game and its rules. Please please please oh my painful elitist surlemming.
Where oh where is it written that I have to answer to a very disagreeable and discourteous individual to win a game only him cares about?
I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR GAMES!
And I believe no one does, but for you lonely kid playing alone.
You should. Have I ever been wrong about anything, or unfair with you?
You are not being unfair, you are being delusional and arrogant, you are being completely beyond the point of convincing and exchanging thoughts and opinions. You think you have discovered intangible truths and you bend the very words we use and define in order to declare us inconsistant.
I don’t really care about your opinion you know. And do ask around, I don’t think many others around do.
Which part of my sentence went wayyy over your head? :-DYes, it is easy for me. Yet it seems difficult for you to follow.Yet it’s easy, it’s one of those things I learned in philosophy: ifI define and use a concept, then that use is considered according tothe given definition.Not changing the meaning of the words we use and define.I was using the best definitions and I was defending thosedefinitions.
My game is also the game of the Western Intellectual Tradition.If you prefer not to play this game, and would like to make a game ofyour own (inevitably one inferior, correct?), this is your problem, notmine.
Sorry. Rhetorics is not a game, it is the art of convincing. You fail miserably. In fact you don’t even play in that league, considering you very much admit to only speak to the “gallery”, not to the fellow who is trying to have a discussion with you.
You seem to merely be talking with you. Adding insults and arrogance on top of that!
Humility and courtesy will go a long way in the mind of others.You are disagreeable. Ask around please, you might change if youwant to.If I am disagreeable, I would like to change to be more agreeable. Doyou have any suggestions?
You use insults and derogatory words to describe other fellow human beings in an exchange of ideas. This is definitely not called for.But like many other things, the most important step is recognizingit.Have I done anything wrong? If not, then maybe you haven’t recognizedmy alledged disagreeableness, either.
I have called you an “elitist prick” before, and you didn’t appreciate the taste of your own medication. Do you understand, if only by shared pain? By compassion?
You consider yourself worthy enough to direct the lives of others, for “their own good”.
You want to teach around a game nobody cares about yet of which you claim yourself as the winner.
Please stop.
Or… Mark… Do you take medications of any kind, or something like that…? (I’m honestly asking)
echarp – http://leparlement.org
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Hi,
If I may interfere in the exchange for a second, it seems to me that Mark is concerned about designing a system with a lot of sophistication from the start. On the other hand, Emmanuel seems more concerned about designing a system that won’t have as many options and background rules, and will allow a direct implementation and simpler use.
It seems to me that Mark’s concept of a system would probably be adequate when people have had a chance to familiarize themselves with network-based TOP democracy, and such system may need to face use on a very large scale in which more complex algorythmic fine-tuning may be required to allow deliberative processes not to be bogged down by information overflow. On the other hand, if one agrees that any TOP democracy system is extremely likely to be first adopted by small organizations / local authorities, as opposed to national governments, a requirement in order to get things started quickly would be a TOP democratic system that can be implemented and operated simply and efficiently by a small constituency
Therefore, it would make sense for Emmanuel to develop his project in as simple a form as possible, while Mark seems well suited to help with the future evolution of such a system when considering larger constituencies, which will undoubtedly influence for the better the initial platform in the meantime. In the same fashion, the lessons learned with the implementation of a simpler system would surely greatly help in the detection of possible problems linked to scale and inform Mark’s own effort. Thus your disagreements/differences could actually be exploited to benefit both your visions over time as opposed to being seen as mutually exclusive propositions. If I misunderstood your respective positions, please do correct me.
Regards,
Serge
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Amen :-)
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Hey Mark,
You should maybe balance what means more to you:
On the specific technical points you mention, one in particular seems of interest: the issue of directors. Not too sure by what this means within your system actually. But here’s my take on this. Pitcure a town. You have your usual mayor and councillors structure, except these have been elected on the platform of implementing TOP politics, and therefore allow full access to information and act according to the consensus/votes/decisions in the public deliberative system. One could easily imagine checks and balances to ensure the elected representants don’t just forget their promises once in office. Adding this to the dynamic of moderators filtering information as defined by Gale and the possibility to delegate vote, it could make for a very efficient system on an already reasonnable scale, probably in the thousands of users.
Furthermore the ongoing discussion between you and Emmanuel about the number of options and delegates seems vain for two reasons. The main one is that the very nature of the system will allow for people to change the way they want it to operate. Bearing that in mind, you might as well avoid the extra complexity and only lay foundations on which users can build.The second reason is very simply that your propositions do not seem to be mutually exlcusive. Imagine that a system was done that offers a simplified accessible operation, it wouldn’t have to mean that users can’t click an option to choose a more advanced way of delegation and increase the number of delegates they choose on a certain matter of wide-ranging interest and complexity (say budget). And that the said options can’t be added-on by updates/modules as time goes on and lessons from actual operation are learned.
Best regards,
Serge
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Serge wrote:
Hey Mark,You should maybe balance what means more to you:- defend your position, as reasonnable as it may be,- collaborate on creating a simple easy system, maybe short of thesophistication you would prefer it to have, but nonetheless allowingprogress towards putting TOP politics to action.-M: The most complex part is the centrality algorithm, and this would be the same whether the system has multiple inputs or not. Additional sophistication doesn’t add much to the complexity.
S: On the specific technical points you mention, one in particular seemsof interest: the issue of directors. Not too sure by what this meanswithin your system actually. But here’s my take on this. Pitcure atown. You have your usual mayor and councillors structure, except thesehave been elected on the platform of implementing TOP politics, andtherefore allow full access to information and act according to theconsensus/votes/decisions in the public deliberative system. One couldeasily imagine checks and balances to ensure the elected representantsdon’t just forget their promises once in office. Adding this to thedynamic of moderators filtering information as defined by Gale and thepossibility to delegate vote, it could make for a very efficient systemon an already reasonnable scale, probably in the thousands of users.
-M: OK.
S: Furthermore the ongoing discussion between you and Emmanuel about thenumber of options and delegates seems vain for two reasons. The mainone is that the very nature of the system will allow for people tochange the way they want it to operate. Bearing that in mind, you mightas well avoid the extra complexity and only lay foundations on whichusers can build.
-M: SD2-S has only five or six input variables, with only one needed to
be selected by the voter.
By comparison, what would your suggestion look like?
S: The second reason is very simply that your propositionsdo not seem to be mutually exlcusive. Imagine that a system was donethat offers a simplified accessible operation, it wouldn’t have to meanthat users can’t click an option to choose a more advanced way ofdelegation and increase the number of delegates they choose on acertain matter of wide-ranging interest and complexity (say budget).And that the said options can’t be added-on by updates/modules as timegoes on and lessons from actual operation are learned.Best regards,Serge
M: Have you seen my screenshot?
-————————————————————————————
Name: [ Mark Rosst___]
Manditory Representitives(2): [(1)Marko Rodriguez, (2)(default)] Optional Representitves(upto 8): [___________(blank)__________]
Issue X
Position: yes[x], deliberate[ ], no[ ]
Issue delegate, one manditory(defaults to representitves if no delegate is selected.) [__________Brad deGraff] Optional additional delegates(4)[______(blank)_______]
Decision threshold, PageRank (>50%-70%) [60%(default)] AND Popular vote (>35%-50%) [40%(default)]
Decision Number 5(min number) + 0%-85% of voting population
[50%(default)]
-————————————————————————————————-
-M: What would yours look like?
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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Hi Mark,
Thanks for the screenshot. I have in the meantime gained a better understanding of the FA/DP model advocated by Lomax, and I have to say it’s worth giving some serious thought to, as it’s a less direct but probably far easier to implement method, with the added bonus that the very way it functions would probably act as a wake-up call to citizens who could then realize the amount of power the do have and influence they could wield as a result.
As far as models go, I don’t have one per se, but I think I’d be happy using a system in which I can just delegate my vote to one person per issue, maybe in a mutual trust bond whereby I’d be trusting them to represent me on A issue a, B on b, and C on c, and each of my delegates would be trusting me to represent them on issue d. This way one also shares the effort – so it’d be quite compatible with the model you propose. As for your approach, this goes way further as you are looking it seems at a whole overhaul of the legislative power, and integrating direct democracy with a dose of representative democracy, thus guaranteeing necessary decisions aren’t stalled by lack of participation, but also that votes without sufficient participation can’t be hijacked by special interest.
Save for the delegating details, the weighing of representation and direct democracy through such a system seems very reasonnable, and may help overcome the argument that without representation nothing would ever happen, as detractors of any form of more direct democracy would probably say.
So based on your model I wouldn’t actually have serious grounds to propose major changes. I have one main issue with the default representative though, and one other remark. So, to take the screenshot again, say in the context of a town council with 20 traditionally elected councillors:
Name: [ X, voting citizen of city Y
— Representative Side
Mandatory Representatives(2): [(1)Councillor 5, (2)Councillor 16]
— default seems potentially dangerous as it could divert half my represented voting power to someone I actually oppose
Optional Representatives(upto 8): [___________(blank)__________]
— could be useful but not absolutely needed, optional status thusseems logical
Direct voting side:
Issue X
Issue proxy(defaults to representatives if no delegate is selected.)
- ok
[__Trusted other voting citizen of city Y]
Position: yes[x], deliberate[ ], no[ ]
Optional additional delegates(4)[______(blank)_______]
Decision threshold, PageRank (>50%-70%) [60%(default)] AND Popular vote (>35%-50%) [40%(default)]
Decision Number 5(min number) + 0%-85% of voting population [50%(default)]
Also could you maybe point me to a couple articles/sources explaining how a centrality algorithm is elaborated? You seem to identify it as the single most important element in such a system, so I’d like to understand this better (I am not a programmer but I do have a scientific background). Tried to find some info on centrality algorithms and stumbled accross http://www.truthmapping.com/ so I assume you may be linked to that as it discusses SD2. No time to read through it yet, but I see there are a number of critiques/rebuttal etc there, and I like the way the logical process is defined and each step analyzed, as well as how the premises of the reasonning are identified
Regards,
Serge
Regards,
Serge
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At 09:23 AM 9/8/2006, Serge wrote:
Thanks for the screenshot. I have in the meantime gained a betterunderstanding of the FA/DP model advocated by Lomax, and I have to sayit’s worth giving some serious thought to, as it’s a less direct butprobably far easier to implement method, with the added bonus that thevery way it functions would probably act as a wake-up call to citizenswho could then realize the amount of power the do have and influencethey could wield as a result.As they awaken, they will find useful such tools as are being proposed by various people and projects. The FA/DP concept does include ideas about how to implement it with extreme simplicity. It does not depend on the efforts of programmers. However, there are plenty of tools that would be useful.
Sometimes I kick around the idea of forming Beyond Politics World Services, Inc, which would be a company or possibly a nonprofit corporation that would be in the business of providing tools and other services to support the ideas. Bill Wilson arranged the formation of AA World Services, Inc., a nonprofit corporation, but that the corporation was nonprofit did not prevent it, as the publisher of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” from paying millions of dollars in royalties to Wilson and his heir, his wife, until she finally released the book into the public domain (or it was released when she died, I’m not sure which at the moment). If we followed the AA model, the board of BPWS would be elected by the members of BP, with certain safeguards in place to prevent packing. (Because anyone can join an FA at any time, a special interest group could, under some conditions, pack the membership and thus win elections. So I’d expect that the Board would have staggered elections, and at any given time a Board majority could change the bylaws to head off a problem. Not likely to be necessary, though. And I’d expect an elected Board of BP to consist of people who support and understand the concept of a Free Association, they would take their position as trustees seriously, they would not oppose a true consensus of the members.)
As far as models go, I don’t have one per se, but I think I’d be happyusing a system in which I can just delegate my vote to one person perissue,
You would soon tire of it…. Think of what I expect to happen: you would belong to hundreds of FAs. (Some would think of a huge FA with interest forums within it; perhaps, but more likely, I think, would be that the FAs would each be independent, with a large FA as a coordinating body.) Each of these FAs would encounter many issues. Issues will be coming up all the time.
But, yes, you would routinely name a proxy within each of the FAs you belong to. You could consider that each FA is covering an “issue.” So you’d have what you want. Just not with each issue within each FA.
maybe in a mutual trust bond whereby I’d be trusting them torepresent me on A issue a, B on b, and C on c, and each of my delegateswould be trusting me to represent them on issue d. This way one alsoshares the effort – so it’d be quite compatible with the model youpropose.
Yes. You would belong to hundreds of FAs, but you would only be active within a few. The rest would be, more or less, set and forget. You would not even be following the traffic. If such an FA has a general mailing list, you would not routinely read it, unless it were one of a few of special interest to you. You’d have followed it for a while when you joined, then you would have named a proxy and gained acceptance, and from then on the proxy would tell you if your attention were needed for some reason. Rarely each of these FAs might send you a message directly. If they abuse the right to do that, you would be tempted to resign your membership…. (just as you would be tempted to reassign your proxy if your proxy sent you too much mail.)
As for your approach, this goes way further as you are lookingit seems at a whole overhaul of the legislative power, and integratingdirect democracy with a dose of representative democracy, thusguaranteeing necessary decisions aren’t stalled by lack ofparticipation, but also that votes without sufficient participationcan’t be hijacked by special interest.
You are getting it. The power is far too distributed to be easily hijacked by a special interest. There are too many people to bribe, and the structure requires that proxies be responsive to their clients. The actual power is exercised through the proxy structure, so nothing happens of consequence except that proxies recommended it to their clients, and if a proxy is at a high level, and thus theoretically represents sufficient concentration of power that it would attract corruption, the corrupted proxy then has the problem of trying to convince his clients to exercise the power in the corrupted way. And at a high level, those direct clients are themselves relatively high-level proxies for others. They can and will ask questions, and they will expect answers. To corrupt many of these would take so much money that it would be more efficient to simply offer concessions or benefits to the entire membership. And that would be legal as well. Corporations do this all the time at present, they want to build something in a town, they offer to provide something that the townspeople want.
So the separation of the communications function, the intelligence, from the power to act, which remains with the people, is crucial. Indeed, this characteristic might remain indefinitely. A mature system might have FA/DP organization of the people, and an elected assembly that has legal authority. The FA/DP organization essentially watches the assembly and advises the people how to act, i.e., how to vote, whether or not to sign a recall petition, etc. The “elected assembly” might, in fact, become fairly small. It might even be proxy-based, that is, its members might have differing voting power. Or, alternatives, it could be elected by Asset Voting, which allows the creation of a peer assembly — all members have equal voting power — which is nevertheless fully proportional, that is, every member represents exactly the same number of voters (within roundoff error). Asset Voting is pretty simple: under Asset Voting, when you vote for a candidate — secret ballot is assumed — your candidate then has your vote as an “asset.” It can then be cast for a candidate to create winners. If a candidate receives excess votes, over the necessary quota to be elected, the candidate can recast those votes. The determination of the assembly thus becomes a deliberative, negotiated process. It is DP, if you look closely at it. Every vote counts, none are wasted.
(Warren Smith invented it, as far as I know. His implementation was complex — he’s a mathematician — but I’ve proposed a simplified form that uses a standard ballot, i.e., a list of candidates and you vote for any number of them. If you vote for more than one, your vote is divided among them. Thus I called it Fractional Asset Approval Voting. Standard Approval Voting — a great and very simple improvement over standard Plurality — simply allows one to vote for more than one, in single-winner elections. Contrary to some first impressions, in standard Approval Voting, there is no inequity in allowing voters to cast more than one vote, for, effectively, it only means that the particular voter is abstaining from participation in the pairwise election between candidates approved, but votes for one of them in every pairwise election with other candidates. But under Asset Voting, if full votes were counted, extra voting power would in fact be given to those who vote for more than one, and therefore the votes must be divided. The alternative, which might be called Standard Simple Asset, would not allow overvoting, you’d just vote for one. Given that the votes can and will be redistributed, this would be far less problematic than standard Plurality.)
Save for the delegating details, the weighing of representation anddirect democracy through such a system seems very reasonnable, and mayhelp overcome the argument that without representation nothing wouldever happen, as detractors of any form of more direct democracy wouldprobably say.
Right. DP will be, in any large organization, mostly representative democracy. With every member actually represented…. unlike what happens when representatives are elected. The U.S. was founded with the slogan “No taxation without representation,” but, in fact, if the representative I voted for is not elected, who, exactly, represents me? The U.S. system does work, to a degree, because elected representatives, quite often, do consider that their job is to represent their entire constituency, but it’s hard to do this when unresolved controversies with strong opinions are involved. How can a pro-legal-abortion representative represent a so-called “pro-life” constituent?
(It’s not impossible, but it is also rare that a rep would actually pull it off.)
So based on your model I wouldn’t actually have serious grounds topropose major changes. I have one main issue with the defaultrepresentative though, and one other remark. So, to take the screenshotagain, say in the context of a town council with 20 traditionallyelected councillors:
Since my work is with the simple FA/DP model, which, by definition, is not going to replace a town council with authority, I’m not examining this in detail. FA/DP advises the Town Council through poll results, it does not control the council (this was the error made by Demoex, in my opinion), and it advises, through the proxy structure, the individual voters. I expect that it will advise voters factionally. That is, some proxies will recommend voting for some councilors, and some proxies will recommend voting for others. However, it will not be unusual to find nearly all proxies recommending certain councilors. And, indeed, some of these councilors may be high-level proxies within the FA/DP organization themselves. All this really means is that they have the trust of the public, and they have been willing to keep open clear channels of communication with the public, through the DP structure as well as through official town channels.
[discussion deleted]
Also could you maybe point me to a couple articles/sources explaininghow a centrality algorithm is elaborated? You seem to identify it asthe single most important element in such a system,
I’m not sure where I did that, the context is missing. A list of proxy assignments plus a list of votes can be used to create an expanded vote. It’s pretty simple to come up with algorithms to do that. It is easiest to state recursively:
If A votes, A’s vote stands. To A’s vote is added all the votes of those who have named A as a proxy, but who have not voted themselves.
(This is standard proxy)
Proxies are considered delegable. So if A has named B and B has named C, and neither A nor B vote, C’s vote carries with it the votes of A and B. As well as any unexercised votes among those who have named A or B and who have not voted.
I’ve set out a couple of times to write a specific algorithm, but I’ve never completed it for lack of time. I don’t consider it a difficult problem.
A subproblem is how to create a proxy tree, a list of members showing the proxy relationships in an organization. This could get enormously complex if more than one proxy is assigned, but if members only assign one proxy, which is the basic, simplest system, it is pretty simple. And such a list, as generated, could be printed out and used in face-to-face meetings to determine vote counts and to meet quorum requirements, etc.
DP organizations, once the proxy system is in wide use, could have much higher quorum requirements than are routine, provided that a member is considered “present” if the member is represented by a proxy who is present. (“Present” may also be measured by participation in a vote.)
so I’d like tounderstand this better (I am not a programmer but I do have ascientific background). Tried to find some info on centralityalgorithms and stumbled accross http://www.truthmapping.com/ so Iassume you may be linked to that as it discusses SD2.
No, never saw it before. I’ve only got two eyes, I’m grateful for all the others which advise me…
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There is a solution to that: to organise all issues in a tree of issue. You would then have a general issue, and plenty of sub issues with their own sub sub issues, etc. Just like this very forum we are right now using.As far as models go, I don’t have one per se, but I think I’d be happyusing a system in which I can just delegate my vote to one person perissue,You would soon tire of it…. Think of what I expect to happen: you would belong to hundreds of FAs. (Some would think of a huge FA with interest forums within it; perhaps, but more likely, I think, would be that the FAs would each be independent, with a large FA as a coordinating body.) Each of these FAs would encounter many issues. Issues will be coming up all the time.But, yes, you would routinely name a proxy within each of the FAs you belong to. You could consider that each FA is covering an “issue.” So you’d have what you want. Just not with each issue within each FA.
Each delegate/proxy would manage one issue and its sub issues.
This is strictly equivalent to having a large FA containing FAs which could themselves contain yet another level of FAs, etc. Or equivalent to a government with branches which will contain yet another administrative level, down to the bottom!
We then have:
echarp – http://leparlement.org/irc
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At 07:42 PM 9/9/2006, you wrote:
Each delegate/proxy would manage one issue and its sub issues.Sure. As long as “issue” is broadly enough defined, such that I’m not spending much of my time figuring out whom to name with all these new issues cropping up….
If there is a separate proxy named for some issue, I’d prefer to think of this as a separate organization….
But:
This is strictly equivalent to having a large FA containing FAs whichcould themselves contain yet another level of FAs, etc.
Yes. That is, there can be a large FA which provides services to many specialized FAs. And, indeed, there may be corporations, both for-profit and non-profit, which provide services. Corporations, of course, are not FAs, practically by definition. But corporations can act as trustees for FAs.
As to the development of such a system, I do see many small organizations forming first. Some of them, as they see a common interest, will merge for the efficiency of it. There is no harm in merging, as FAs, as long as the merger creates a new organization which is itself an FA. There is no harm because the DP structure makes it thoroughly simple to split, should that become desirable to a faction.
FAs, indeed, may spin off non-FAs; in some cases the non-FA might be larger than the remaining FA. Depends on what the members want to do!
But, again, my thinking is to start simple. Start with organizations with some special focus. The one that keeps coming back to me, and a little work has been done in this direction, is a small-town FA. I see a crying need in situations literally close to home.
Aside from projects in which I may become personally involved, I’m trying to promote a general understanding of the possibilities. It could be much simpler to transform society than we imagined.
Or it might be much more difficult than I imagine….
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Just delegate your vote on the root issue. Then no need to care for all the new one cropping up.Each delegate/proxy would manage one issue and its sub issues.Sure. As long as “issue” is broadly enough defined, such that I’m not spending much of my time figuring out whom to name with all these new issues cropping up….
This root issue is the same as a FA.
If there is a separate proxy named for some issue, I’d prefer to think of this as a separate organization….
Because you consider one proxy per participant per organisation. “Issues” are effectively a very broad term, in my software I just speak of elements (elts), each one of our posts in this forum is an elt onto which we can vote. And in time, for which we can delegate our vote.
Each user can:
FAs, indeed, may spin off non-FAs; in some cases the non-FA might be larger than the remaining FA. Depends on what the members want to do!
Definitely depends on the members, yes. FA seem like an empty shell which are filled by people and their energy.
Aside from projects in which I may become personally involved, I’m trying to promote a general understanding of the possibilities. It could be much simpler to transform society than we imagined.Or it might be much more difficult than I imagine….
I do tend to think it will be much more difficult :(
If only because society as a whole, the human specie in fact, does not change deeply that often.
Internet, cell phones, might have triggered the release of an energy sufficient to modify everything.
echarp – http://leparlement.org/irc
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Today, I had to drive a long distance, and had a lot of time to think. It suddenly occurred to me that, while Delegable Proxy is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it is essential in large organizations, it is not necessary in small ones, but standard proxy is. By attempting to explain DP I’ve been unnecessarily complicating matters.
In a Free Association, DP need not be formally implemented, because if there is standard proxy, anyone can use the proxy list to develop expanded votes in order to measure expected consensus. What is missing, actually, is standard proxy. Many small organizations simply do not use the device. However, it could be useful from the very beginning. And it is a standard, traditional, well-understood concept, if I write “proxy” many people will pretty correctly have a first-order understanding of it, though not necessarily of the deeper implications.
So I’m thinking of announcing locally the formation of an association. The purpose of the association is to improve communication between the citizens of our town and the town government, but, most specifically and immediately, with the police. The situation is actually pretty bad. Since my wife was stopped last week for an expired registration tag (by one business day), and the police put her and our two small children out on the street and had the car towed, I’ve been talking with people and what I’ve discovered is that practically nobody has a good opinion of the town police. One man, who owned a substantial business here for years before he sold it, who is retired except he volunteers for a sheltered workshop that employs people with handicaps, told me that the real motto of the police here was not “protect and serve,” but “harass and humiliate.” Many others told me stories of how they or their friend suffered this or that indignity at the hands of the police. And these are not counterculture people. These are pretty much mainstream here. And, at the same time, the police told me that they were seriously understaffed, that they could provide better service — which in this case was merely bringing the confiscated license plates into the station so I could get them to recover the car from the storage facility, which took them about three hours when they were confiscated about three minute’s drive from the station — if only they had two or three more officers. And they don’t have more officers because they can’t afford them, and they can’t afford them because the citizens of the town won’t vote to authorize the expenditure. And why should the citizens vote more money for the police when they don’t feel sympathy for them, they don’t like them?
So there is a wedge here, I suspect. I can hold an organizational meeting — I certainly have not worked out the details of exactly what the organization would be about, but grievances over routine police towing of cars, which has hit many people and which just may be illegal, might be the excuse. Now, most people will not go to such a meeting, but this would be the twist, in the announcement: “If you can’t come, or can’t spare the time, ask a friend to go and let you know if there is anything you should do.” I still would not expect a large number of people to show up, just a few. However, these few might represent a few more, and when someone goes to talk to the mayor, that person — or those persons — may be able to correctly claim that they represent not just themselves, but quite a few more as well. In other words, we start to get some political traction.
If things would go as I would approve, the organization would not be oppositional. The approach would be more “we have a problem,” and “we” includes the town government and the police, not just those outraged by abusive police behavior. And once we have a small proxy network, it can grow. The whole point of proxy representation is to make it easy.
I have no idea what will actually happen, but it could be an interesting experiment, n’est-ce pas?
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At 04:53 PM 9/11/2006, echarp wrote:
That is correct. One can consider, to be sure, more complex organizations, but it is hard enough to examine the consequences and likely characteristics of the simplest DP organizations. In a sense, the proxy defines the organization. If I name a proxy who happens to be active in X organizations, I am a short step away from being a member of all those organizations. Indeed, my proxy may suggest that I join them. It adds proxy rank.If there is a separate proxy named for some issue, I’d prefer tothink of this as a separate organization….Because you consider one proxy per participant per organisation.
In a sense, the proxy is the most important element, the organization is secondary.
“Issues” are effectively a very broad term, in my software I just speakof elements (elts), each one of our posts in this forum is an elt ontowhich we can vote. And in time, for which we can delegate our vote.Each user can:- propose elts,- vote on the proposed elts,- delegate their vote on those elts.
Practically speaking, I don’t think this is very far from what I have in mind. It is just approaching it from the issue direction rather than from the personal connection direction.
Yes. The FA is a truly minimal structure, almost an organizing concept that people happen to follow voluntarily than a traditional organization, with strong officers, bank accounts, budgets, etc. AA meetings do have officers, but they are clearly servants of the meeting. At least at most meetings. It is a little tricky describing AA meetings, since there is actually no central control, and meetings can vary greatly. I can write that the secretary is not the boss, and then there is a meeting where the secretary tells everyone what to do. Of course, attendance at this meeting is quite likely to decline rapidly, and, unless the secretary wises up or is replaced, that meeting might end up disappearing. It gets boring showing up, opening the doors, making the coffee, and hardly anyone shows up.FAs, indeed, may spin off non-FAs; in some cases the non-FA might belarger than the remaining FA. Depends on what the members want to do!Definitely depends on the members, yes. FA seem like an empty shellwhich are filled by people and their energy.
An AA meeting, especially a large one with substantial rent to pay, will have a bank account. It might have as much as a few hundred dollars in it….
The point is that the activity of an FA meeting is that of the members, who continue to own that resource, they do not turn it over to the organization. I have never heard of an AA meeting with an employee. Even intergroup (where meetings in an area coordinate their activities, publish meeting lists, etc.) would, I’d think, generally not hold substantial assets. (My experience is more with other programs than AA, where, definitely, what I’m writing is true.) And AA as a whole is practically a phantom, because national and international coordination is handled for the most part by AA World Services, Inc., which does hold some assets and which does have employees and formal legal structure, but which is not AA itself, but a “service board … directly responsible to those [it] serve[s]” The closest thing to AA itself is the Conference, which takes place once a year in New York. Interestingly, they have a travel equalization system…. so that all delegates contribute the same amount to travel costs.
(Cash never flows from the central organization to local groups. Local groups are rigorously independent, that is part of the design. Instead, the central organization is designed to depend almost entirely on the local groups, so ultimate control is distributed, not centralized. That control is not through democratic process, but through economics: if the central organization fails to respect the broad consensus of the groups, it will lose their support, and they do not need it. It needs them. It serves them by providing publications as a convenience, and through a few other services. AA intergroups, in the past, published material independently, they can afford to do it if they need to. But, instead, most of them send their excess cash on to AAWS. Does this mean that AAWS provides free publications? No, I don’t think so. It sells them, at only a small margin above cost. Once again, the central organization is not subsidizing in any way local activities. I think there are lessons aplenty in this.)
Why do I write so much about AA? To my knowledge, it was the first successful organization to formally adopt the Free Association principles. Many of those principles long predate it, you can find some of the ideas, I think, in anarchist literature. But the idea, for example, of keeping the organization as a whole above controversy, is not so easy to find. After all, people interested in politics usually are pretty opinionated!
And AA was not just successful, it was spectacularly successful. It essentially saturated its market, it has no major competition. (Technically, of course, it does not “compete.” AA meetings, for example, don’t advertise, nor does AAWS.)
Is AA TOP? In some ways, yes. To members. And members are self-defined. “The only qualification for membership is a desire to stop drinking.” I’ve been to many open AA meetings, including small ones where the gentle expectation is that everyone will speak, and I’ve sometimes “qualified” myself by saying, “I’m qualified for membership because I have a desire to stop drinking. YOUR drinking.” Which always got a laugh. In fact, that is more or less the membership qualification for Al-Anon, not AA; Al-Anon is essentially a support group for families of alcoholics which was founded through the realization of Bill Wilson’s wife that she, in fact, needed the kind of support that Bill was getting through AA, that she was, in some ways, just as insane as him….
Most people think it is impossible, even before they know what it is. So perhaps you have become a little more optimistic!Aside from projects in which I may become personally involved, I’mtrying to promote a general understanding of the possibilities. Itcould be much simpler to transform society than we imagined.Or it might be much more difficult than I imagine….I do tend to think it will be much more difficult :(
I’ve been making up slogans, for the last year or so….
If we want to change the world, it has to be easy.
Lift a finger, change the world.
Or the dark-edged one, “How to change the world in one easy step? Go back to sleep. We will change it for you.”
If only because society as a whole, the human specie in fact, does notchange deeply that often.
The kind of change I’m working on could be a
once-in-the-history-of-the-species kind of change. It does not
involve major changes at the individual level, actually, though such
changes would come as a consequence.
Nor does it require “society as a whole” to change. Only a few must change, and that change consists mostly of realizing that coordinated collective action is possible without coercion. It is like a libertarian who has worked for years to try to change the government to be more libertarian, who suddenly realizes that he’s been working on the wrong project. He needs to create libertarian organizations, not governmental, to demonstrate that the philosophy works, and to show that coercion is actually not necessary. Or at least to show the degree to which it is not necessary.
Governments are currently very much about coercion. Taxes are, of course, coercive, practically by definition. Public safety is maintained through coercion, even when it is known that coercive methods don’t work. An example is one I’ve mentioned: it is known that speed limit signs have no effect on the speeds at which people actually travel, it has been tested. So attempts to increase traffic safety by setting lower speed limits do not increase public safety. They merely make it easier to catch and punish “speeders.” And in most places, the average person travels faster than the speed limit. One reasonable argument for posted speed limits is that it makes it easier to prosecute people who are driving at an unsafe speed, because “unsafe speed” is actually not a fixed thing, it depends on conditions, it even depends on the driver and the condition of the driver.
Does this increase traffic safety? Probably not, indeed, it is possible that there is some slight damage to safety. Why? Well, a few people do religiously obey speed limit signs. Thus creating a bit of a traffic hazard, because the safest traffic is generally traffic moving at a constant speed, as long as that speed is not truly excessive.
Now, I’ve been cited for speeding in Massachusetts three times, and, as I’ve mentioned, I contested all the citations and was found not responsible. Even though I was actually exceeding the posted speed limit. Without going into details, it is not terribly difficult to “beat” speeding tickets, if one was not actually travelling a an unsafe speed. But that’s not my point here. My point is that I was stopped for speeding a fourth time. The officer simply warned me and let me go with no citation. The four stops were each in a different town. Guess which town is the one in which I pay more attention to speed limits.
I just realized this today. The intervention of that officer who did not punish me, but who was merely advising me, cautioning me, is the intervention that stuck. I certainly did not resent it! Now, this is just me, but I suspect that I’m not so unusual.
It still may be necessary to coerce the seriously dangerous driver. Even there, there may be better methods than punishment, I don’t know. But I do know that punishment as a pedagogical method has long been discredited. It is actually illegal. In Massachusetts, in order to adopt a child, we had to promise not to use punishment.
Okay, so children don’t respond well to punishment. Now, at exactly what age does punishment start to work?
(When punishment is so certain that it becomes simply the obvious consequence of doing a thing, it works quite well. It is when a behavior usually produces a reward and only rarely a punishment that punishment is singularly ineffective. The offender merely seeks means of avoiding the punishment.)
But society does not respond rapidly to new information. Again, this is functional. “New information” can shift all the time. First it was decided that fat was bad for you, that fat was responsible for the excess heart disease in certain societies. And cholesterol is really bad, since that is what clogs arteries. Then it was announced by the “experts” that, no it is not all fat. There are good fats, it is those bad saturated fats that are the problem, i.e., butter and so forth. And cholesterol? Well, at first, you better stay away from eggs. Then, no eggs aren’t so bad. Indeed, cholesterol in diet has very little to do with cholesterol in the blood, since the body makes its own cholesterol. And, even though the “only sat and trans fats are bad and cholesterol is okay” position has mostly made it into print in mass media, that, itself, is far from the truth. From what I’ve been able to find, there is no substantial research implicating saturated fat. Consumption of butter, for example, did not correlate with heart disease, when it was studied. Blood chemistry improves on a low-carbohydrate diet which is high in saturated fat.
How did this public information mess — which is still very much a mess — come about? Well, turns out that there is no good method of reliably determining scientific consensus. A governmental body held some hearings, which were dominated, it’s been charged, by people holding a certain view, based on some defective research, a seriously flawed study, and that body issued a report which became a public health agenda, an attempt to save millions of lives by improving diet. Unfortunately, they got the science wrong.
Ahem. FA/DP methods should be able to find and generate scientific consensus in a quite scientific way. That is, they have a means of, we anticipate, measuring consensus without having ask everyone. Only a few need actually participate, when the matter is simple. And when it is complex, FA/DP should be able to bring together the best thinking, to filter it from the noise.
Yes, the kinds of good information ranking systems that are being worked on by some here can help….
Internet, cell phones, might have triggered the release of an energysufficient to modify everything.
Perhaps. Actually, the FA/DP principles do not require the internet, and the lack of the internet might only slow things down a little. The barrier is not the difficulty of communication. It is the absence of understanding as to what is needed. FA/DP might actually reduce the traffic, for there is a huge amount of redundancy noise in the present system due to lack of filtering. Because the information is so vast and unfiltered, I don’t know if what I’m writing is also being written somewhere else, more or less, and even google does not make it easy to find, because an independent effort may well not use the same words.
However, it may indeed turn out that some internet project was the crucial turning point. On the other hand, I’ve got a local project that may take up my attention for some time. I’ll write about it in its own topic. It is not an internet project, per se, though it may have a web site, perhaps a dot-BeyondPolitics domain, and that may facilitate it. But it will involve face-to-face meetings.
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In that way you loose power of simplicity.
ATB,
Gale
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On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 05:07:56AM +0200, illegale wrote:
In that way you loose power of simplicity.In what way exactly?
Transitive delegations?
One delegate per issue and per participant?
A tree of issues?
echarp – http://leparlement.org/irc
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Hey Lomax,
Inadvertently a point has been proven here, ie the many takes on the idea of direct democracy have much more significant common grounds than differences. I was answering Mark directly about his SD2-S system, and it just so happens that the comments regarding the goals of implied by the structure of SD2-S, were met by your following comment: “You are getting it. The power is far too distributed to be easily hijacked by a special interest..” So one more reason to pool efforts if goals are seemingly agreed on by everyone.
I did mean Mark in the “you may be linked” to the www.truthmapping.com and the question on centrality algorithms was primarily intended for him (but of course anyone else is more than welcome to point me to relevant resources).
On the points you discuss, I think we’ve pretty much reached agreement. I have been unclear when stating “one proxy per issue” – in the larger scheme of things it would be one proxy per issue domain, and assuming one such proxy would probably share his workload with more specialized proxies dealing with other people willing to be proxies looking at some subtopics in depth. So here again, agreed with what you’re saying.
Finally, about Beyond Politics World Services, if we’re talking tools, I don’t think there’s a need. It seems the purpose of this group, or at least a large part of its participants is already to make TOP politics practical by designing effective opensource tools that could be made available to anyone willing to give TOP structures a go.
Best regards,
Serge
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Serge wrote:
Hi Mark, Thanks for the screenshot.[…] As for your approach, this goes way further as you are looking it seems at a whole overhaul of the legislative power,…-M: I am seeking to reform organizational methods in general, whether or not the organization is political. I am fond of this method being applied to educational institutions.
S:… and integrating direct democracy with a dose of representative democracy,…
-M: The only DD that SD2-Smartocracy has is with delaying decisions
that the voters may be uneasy about. A decision can proceed with only
40% approval by default.
Decisions are still made entirely by RD.
S: …thus guaranteeing necessary decisions aren’t stalled by lack ofparticipation, but also that votes without sufficient participationcan’t be hijacked by special interest. Save for the delegating details, the weighing of representation and direct democracy through such a system seems very reasonnable, and mayhelp overcome the argument that without representation nothing would ever happen, as detractors of any form of more direct democracy would probably say.
M: :)
S: So based on your model I wouldn’t actually have serious grounds topropose major changes. I have one main issue with the defaultrepresentative though, and one other remark. So, to take the screenshotagain, say in the context of a town council with 20 traditionallyelected councillors:Name: [ X, voting citizen of city Y— Representative SideMandatory Representatives(2):[(1)Councillor 5, (2)Councillor 16]— default seems potentially dangerous as it could divert half myrepresented voting power to someone I actually oppose
M: Then fuck’n vote for a rep! :)
The default is just a convienience for those who don’t know the
players.
And the algorithm makes ALL voters candidates, so the voter has lots of
choices.
Also the algorithm would never give default power to the top player, so
it wouldn’t feed any rank entrenchments.
Optional Representatives(upto 8):[___________(blank)__________]— could be useful but not absolutely needed, optional status thusseems logical
-M: Yes, I think that enough people would vote for the delegate/specialists that it would divert decision rank away from trustee/generalists.
Direct voting side:Issue XIssue proxy(defaults to representatives if no delegate is selected.)—- ok[__Trusted other voting citizen of city Y]Position: yes[x], deliberate[ ], no[ ]- don’t see the interest of this, either you do have a position and youcan vote yourself, either you don’t and you should then trust yourproxy’s judgement / maybe I misunderstand the meaning of this line
-M: Its not proxy judgement or personal judgement, its proxy judgement and personal judgement, so the position that one takes gets counted as the popular vote, and it gets counted as the proxy vote when someone else selects the voter.
Optional additional delegates(4)[______(blank)_______]- could be useful on complicated issues such as budget, but againprobably not necessay in many cases, so optional status seemsappropriateDecision threshold, PageRank (>50%-70%) [60%(default)]AND Popular vote (>35%-50%) [40%(default)]- makes senseDecision Number 5(min number) + 0%-85% of voting population[50%(default)]- makes senseAlso could you maybe point me to a couple articles/sources explaininghow a centrality algorithm is elaborated? You seem to identify it asthe single most important element in such a system, so I’d like tounderstand this better (I am not a programmer but I do have ascientific background).
-M: All voting in democracy is processed with a centrality algorithm. With majoritarian democracy, this algorithm is counting, also called ‘in-degree’.
The problem with this algorithm is that it is only one layer deep: A votes for B.
By contrast, with PageRank, this has unlimited depth:
A>B>C>D>E…, or even with forks A>B-and-C >D,
PageRank can even handle loops.
The idea here us to use a complex and non-arbitrary algorithm to do most of the work.
S: Tried to find some info on centralityalgorithms and stumbled accross http://www.truthmapping.com/ so Iassume you may be linked to that as it discusses SD2. No time to readthrough it yet, but I see there are a number of critiques/rebuttal etcthere, and I like the way the logical process is defined and each stepanalyzed, as well as how the premises of the reasonning are identified- so will definitly go and read, if only to have a closer look at theway the dissection of logic is done.
-M: I posted that, but haven’t cleaned it up in a while.
Here is the algorithm explained:
http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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Hey,
Thanks for the link.
I must be missing somthing though. At one point you state:
Decisions are still made entirely by RD
and then
-M: Its not proxy judgement or personal judgement, its proxy judgement and personal judgement, so the position that one takes gets counted as the popular vote, and it gets counted as the proxy vote when someone else selects the voter.
The second statement seems to imply that popular voting, ie DD, is playing a role (which is what I understood from your screenshot), as opposed to what the first statement is suggesting. Could you clear this? In the case of someone selecting a voter that has already cast a vote as his proxy, isn’t it similar in effect as direct voting? Feel free to point me to an old post if this has been discussed before.
As a remark, it seems predictable enough that with the sheer number of possible issues, very few people would be actively involved with an issue and not be representing other voters as proxies for that issue. By the same token, if one doesn’t follow debates, it seems unlikely he would have any opinion beyond what his proxy filters down and advises. Why not then allow direct voting? Proxies do have to start somewhere..
Regards,
Serge
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S: Hey, Thanks for the link. I must be missing somthing though. At one point you state: Decisions are still made entirely by RD and then:
“-M: Its not proxy judgement or personal judgement, its proxyjudgement and personal judgement, so the position that one takes getscounted as the popular vote, and it gets counted as the proxy vote whensomeone else selects the voter.”
S: The second statement seems to imply that popular voting, ie DD, isplaying a role (which is what I understood from your screenshot), asopposed to what the first statement is suggesting. Could you clearthis? In the case of someone selecting a voter that has already cast avote as his proxy, isn’t it similar in effect as direct voting? Feelfree to point me to an old post if this has been discussed before.
-M: The screenshot/ballot provides for a DD-like input, and this data gets used:
S: As a remark, it seems predictable enough that with the sheer number ofpossible issues, very few people would be actively involved with anissue and not be representing other voters as proxies for that issue.
-M: Thats why I would have numerical thresholds for issues also.
S: By the same token, if one doesn’t follow debates, it seems unlikely hewould have any opinion beyond what his proxy filters down and advises.
-M: Then the proxies’s opinions are needed.
S: Why not then allow direct voting? Proxies do have to start somewhere..
-M: What is direct voting? How it is done, or how it is counted?
With SD2-S, the direct vote is always allowed, and it is always counted atleast for deliberation purposes.
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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Hey,
I guess I should have started by asking this instead. Do you have a definition document of some kind of SD2-S as a system? Instead of asking fragmentory questions and getting logically fragmentary answers, it’d probably be a better starting point. I have to say I am confused as to the thresholds, whether it’s all functionning in parallel or as aggregates, whether you actually expect 40% of the whole voting population to cast a direct vote on each issue – even if through a position through proxy, etc etc etc. And direct voting is a voter directly casting his vote to be counted on a given proposal/issue.
Regards,
Serge
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S: I guess I should have started by asking this instead. Do you have adefinition document of some kind of SD2-S as a system?
-M: Good question. I just now looked and the closest thing to
documentation is my ‘screenshot’ posts. I do have a Yahoo group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sd-2/
and my constraints for SD2 as an umbrella system are here.
But this is just for selecting generalist/trustees/directors, SD2-S is
much more sophisticated.
To understand SD2-S, look at the screenshot, and understand the default
hierarchy:
If specialists are not selected by the voter for an issue, then the
previous generalist/trustees are defaulted to.
S: […]whether you actually expect 40% of the whole votingpopulation to cast a direct vote on each issue – …
-M: No, 40% of whoever votes, by popular vote. A majority isn’t needed as long as the default 60% of PageRanked proxy vote is met.
S:…even if through a position through proxy, etc etc etc.
-M: And the representitive vote is determinned by PageRank – this is the proxy vote, and this needs 60% by default.
S: And direct voting is a voter directly casting his vote to be counted on a given proposal/issue.
-M: OK, ‘to be counted’ , which does what? With SD2-S, this either triggers deliberation thresholds or not.
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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a requirement in order to get things started quickly would be a TOPdemocratic system that can be implemented and operated simply andefficiently by a small constituency
+1
I actually think you are right in many ways. SD2 is a kind of overly complex delegable proxy. With the addition of fragmented delegations, ranks, directors, automatic delegations, and the reliance on indirect participation over direct one.
He does not care about issues, but about “leaders” (which he calls “directors”).
Delegable proxies are a way to make sure a Direct Democracy can also have elements of representation to alleviate the burden of participation on every single thing.
But the heart of the trouble is not there, it’s mostly a matter of presentation: Mark has made a fool of himself through his words and attitudes. It’s a shame, because at the bottom of every person, there is a story to be told.
Don’t hesitate to talk with him, but good luck and be prepared for long and painful “games” :-(
We just had a great example today: he understood that what I propose is a delegations’ tree of unlimited depth. That took him a few months! :(
echarp – http://leparlement.org
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a requirement in order to get things started quickly would be a TOPdemocratic system that can be implemented and operated simply andefficiently by a small constituency
-M: Serge, welcome!
ec: +1 I actually think you are right in many ways. SD2 is a kind of overlycomplex delegable proxy. With the addition of fragmented delegations,..
-M: All the systems have this, (except the pure RD forms of SD2, which the general trustees run things, but this isn’t SD2-S.)
ec: ranks,…
-M: All DP systems have this, but I am just overt about using the word ‘rank’. Emmanuel seems to want to rank non-ranking above ranking.
ec:…directors,…
-M: Emmanuel thinks that all directorship should be distributed without
a center.
His V-V-V system also generates tighter directorship centers than SD2-S
would.
He just doesn’t call it ‘directorship’, therefore it magicly wouldn’t
exist.
ec:…automatic delegations,…
-M: This is a user convenience that would be recommended against. Its best to have as much info from the voter as possible, therefore SD2-S has a more complex ballot than V-V-V.
ec:…and the reliance on indirect participation over direct one.
-M: Au contaire, actual participation is encouraged by having overt
ranking which creates a competitive environment. Mere direct
legislative input is not ‘participation’, and can hinder actual
participation.
The confusion between participatory democracy and direct democracy is
rampant here.
ec: He does not care about issues,…
-M: Yet I give input for issue positions on my ballot. WTF?
ec:…but about “leaders” (which he calls “directors”).
-M: I care about both. Emmanuel seems to want to ignore the administrative end.
ec: Delegable proxies are a way to make sure a Direct Democracy can alsohave elements of representation to alleviate the burden of participationon every single thing.
-M: What everyone wants is not DD, its participatory democracy.
V-V-V in practice would be RD, it just a more DD disabled for of RD
than SD2-S.
And he still hasn’t explained how he can do his augmented democracy
without an input constrained PageRank.
ec: But the heart of the trouble is not there, it’s mostly a matter ofpresentation: Mark has made a fool of himself through his words andattitudes.
-M: Read: Emmanuel wants the truth sugar-coated. He wants to be controlled by feeling instead of fact.
ec: It’s a shame, because at the bottom of every person, there is a story to be told. Don’t hesitate to talk with him, but good luck and be prepared for long and painful “games” :-(
-M: Serge, I am a nice guy, but I do defend myself (this gets me into trouble).
ec: We just had a great example today: he understood that what I propose isa delegations’ tree of unlimited depth. That took him a few months! :(
-M: Emmanuel, had you responded to my questions, you would have realized that your intent of the algorithm was not the issue, but how you would accomplish this intent without PageRank.
See, Serge, Emmanuel has been dodging important technical and theorectical questions. This is the kind of communication that is needed for the field to develop.
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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E!
More programing, less loosing time!
:-P
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E!More programing, less loosing time! :-P
lol
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For now, I want to know about your directional Markov-algorithm foryour V-V-V system. How does it differ from PageRank?
A participant can directly vote on issues, or can delegate his voice on each issue to someone else.
This delegation is transitive, that is, his delegate can also delegate his 2 voices to another individual, who can also delegate his 3 voices to yet another one. No limit.
One can change anytime his actions.
A direct vote will, of course, override an indirect delegation.
Thus, someone participating will have two available actions for each issue:
Some differences:
But of course, do carry on as usual and have fun with yourself.
echarp – http://leparlement.org
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For now, I want to know about your directional Markov-algorithm foryour V-V-V system. How does it differ from PageRank?
ec: A participant can directly vote on issues, or can delegate his voice on each issue to someone else.This delegation is transitive, that is, his delegate can also delegate his 2 voices to another individual, who can also delegate his 3 voices to yet another one. No limit.
-M: Unlimited depth – like PageRank. But I notice that it is only one delegate per voter. Again, because there is only one, there is no ability to fork around dead ends and loops. This creates instabilities and is overly centralized compared with having multiple proxies. Well, what is your response?
ec: One can change anytime his actions. A direct vote will, of course, override an indirect delegation.
-M: ‘of course’ – again, why the override? Why not let the voter decide if there is going to be an override or not? Maybe the voter wants both a direct vote and more than one delegate. SD2-S allows for this. How is your way better?
ec: Thus, someone participating will have two available actions for each issue:- +1 or -1 (this will certainly evolve in time) – delegate to someone else
-M: SD2-Smartocracy offers:
The only two that are mutually exclusive are #1 and #3. This yields about 20 different combination possibilities for the voter. How is your way better?
ec: Some differences:- no rank or other such silly concepts
-M: Delegates all have differing voting power relative to one another. This is rank whether it is called ‘rank’ or not. (I have said this before, and this is an uncontested point of mine.)
ec: – direct expression override indirect one
-M: Why? If you need administrators anyway, why not just bundle them
into the vote?
This would make a manditory rep vote, and with SD2-S, they would still
have the option for a direct vote. (This is another uncontested point
of mine.)
ec: – software won’t assign votes without human participation
-M: You aren’t comparing V-V-V with PageRank, you are now comparing V-V-V with SD2-S. Fine, this is better.
SD2-S’s Dance-Monkey algorithm will assign a rep vote only if the individual voter doesn’t select at least two manditory reps. There is still human participation here – Dance-Monkey is just looking for gaps in the rank distribution curve to fill, this rank distribution is created entirely by human participation. Without human participation, humans selecting other humans, all voters would be equal. Under this condition, Dance-Monkey would be DD.
ec: – not tens of elements onto which to intervene for every issue
-M: A critique of user flexibility?
I offer the voter 5 options.
On any issue vote, a voter selecting an issue position and one delegate
would be fine.
The defaults would cover the rest.
Does anyone have a better way?
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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At 05:19 PM 9/4/2006, echarp wrote:
A participant can directly vote on issues, or can delegate his voice [oneach issue] to someone else.This delegation is transitive, that is, his delegate can also delegatehis 2 voices to another individual, who can also delegate his 3 voicesto yet another one. No limit.[One can change anytime his actions.]A direct vote will, of course, override an indirect delegation.This is, quite simply, delegable proxy, except that in the work of BeyondPolitics.org, we generally assume a general proxy rather than issue-specific proxies. However, specific proxies are a possibility. (Technically, since our work is mostly toward the implementation of DP in Free Associations, just about anything is a possibility.)
A specific issue proxy would, if assigned, override the general proxy assignment.
However, once again, an organization can make just about any rules it likes. What I quoted above, except for what I put in quotes, is what we call delegable proxy. I put the differences in brackets.
We assume that one may change one’s proxy at any time. If that is what was meant by “one can change anytime his actions,” then this is part of our concept.
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On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 10:51:59PM -0400, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
A specific issue proxy would, if assigned, override the general proxy assignment.Of course.
We assume that one may change one’s proxy at any time. If that is what was meant by “one can change anytime his actions,” then this is part of our concept.
Then it is :)
Why not also allow to change one’s votes anytime?
echarp – http://leparlement.org
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At 05:56 AM 9/6/2006, echarp wrote:
Why not also allow to change one’s votes anytime?Depends on the voting system. Where votes are public record, it would not usually be a problem. Yahoogroups polls, if I’m correct, allow one to change one’s vote at any time up until the poll is closed.
In an FA, there are two kinds of polls. One is to make decisions,
which in FAs are rather limited, generally to procedural issues.
“Shall the mailing list be moderated?” In some cases an action that
is not easily revocable will be made. For such an issue, there is a
natural closing time for the poll. Where a condition is continuing
and could change at any time - the moderation question is an example
- a poll can be standing, and anyone could change their vote at any
time, and if it shifts the result, the action could similarly shift.
The other purpose of a poll in an FA, which is the most significant for our purposes here, is to measure consensus with regard to a possibly controversial issue. If there is, in fact, controversy, a poll could remain standing until it becomes moot. For example, “Shall members of the FA vote for Candidate X in November, 2008” The FA is not electing the President and the FA itself is not going to make a recommendation. However, a political FA is nevertheless quite able to facilitate communication, and it can also report facts. The result of an FA poll is a fact. In this case, though, the poll will become moot after election day, it would make no sense to allow vote changes after that.
If polls remain open, the results of a poll are transient. All this means is that any official report of the poll, where the FA itself announces the poll results, must be dated. “As of 12:00 AM, December 1, 2006, 98% of the members either voted or were represented by a proxy who voted. The result at that time was X.”
FA/DP organizations are in themselves all talk and no action, so to speak. But the talking is done by and considered by people who will act, and the process is one which, in theory, should allow groups of people to readily identify each other for the purpose of coordinated, cooperative action. Further, it would unite such people together with others with, possibly, opposite views, and these opposing groups could know their relative strengths (in numbers, at least. Not necessarily in financial resources, though there could be means of measuring that as well. Where financial resources are being measured, mere report won’t suffice….). This is the configuration that I expect is likely to facilitate the formation of broader consensus than is possible through the current fragmented political process, which actually encourages disagreement and opposition, it feeds on it.
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On Wed, Sep 06, 2006 at 09:39:17PM -0400, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 05:56 AM 9/6/2006, echarp wrote:I do tend to think in terms of electronic communications. Yes, changing votes would imply that any result would require an associated time stamp.Why not also allow to change one’s votes anytime?Depends on the voting system. Where votes are public record, it would not usually be a problem. Yahoogroups polls, if I’m correct, allow one to change one’s vote at any time up until the poll is closed.
And if polls are closed at a given time, for exterior conditions for example, then any change is moot, and can merely act as an opinion poll.
echarp – http://leparlement.org
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as mark, useful as a wall against which to bounce words :)
-M: Emmanuel, you are the one with standing points that you have not responded to.
-M: I think that I am the most focused one here. I keep emphasizing the importance of centrality algorithms and the importance non-arbitrariness and non-contradiction.
-M: You are the:
-M: There is no helping ‘him’, there is only helping humanity. If my system has the soundest theoretical basis, it should be devoloped. And soundest theoretical basis(before testing) is determined by debate.
-M: If prick=someone who whups Emmanuel in debate for his own good,
then this is me.
If prick=someone who breaks rules of discourse, then this is not me.
-M: It may be useful to define ‘prick’ first.
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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At 12:29 AM 9/7/2006, echarp [reporting chat log] wrote:
19:44 < illegal> you think it would be good to join these two grous*?19:44 < illegal> channels?19:44 < illegal> more meat?19:44 < urgen> you mean #opencoop?19:44 < illegal> yes19:44 < illegal> very simmilar, maybe identical thoughts19:44 < urgen> there are too many different points of interest19:45 < illegal> what you mean?19:45 < illegal> this group to be for echarps system only?19:45 < illegal> me personaly am samely attached to both of them19:45 < urgen> I find it difficult to be on so many channels and so many networksThis discussion got to the point of describing the problem that DP is designed to solve. When organizations implement DP, the proxy not only filters to protect the org from traffic, but also to protect the client from traffic. This is why it is important for the culture to encourage proxies to have a limited number of clients. A direct proxy should not have more clients than the proxy can intelligently handle. No fixed limit can be set, because different orgs and different proxies could handle different numbers of clients. Rather, I say that the limits should be set by the clients. If they get good service, fine. If not, then they would seek to find a better proxy. If they like the proxy but the proxy is simply too busy, has taken on too many clients, then they can ask the proxy for a recommendation and the proxy might recommend another client, which would still leave the original proxy in the chain representing the client, just at a higher level.
Proxies, too, reach a natural limit even when their clients don’t complain. A proxy has agreed to accept communication from the client, directly. When that traffic reaches a certain level, the proxy is overwhelmed. Some might handle this with staff, but that brings its own problems.
With DP, the client can, for example, with a mailing list meeting on yahoogroups, set subscription status to Special Notice, which requires moderator approval. If the moderator is immoderate, they can simply unsubscribe and rely totally on the proxy, but I would generally not recommend that. Rather, I’d leave a channel open for the contingency of proxy failure, regardless of reason. The proxy could pass away. How would the client know if the org can’t contact the member? Moderators can find the email address of all subscribers, but, unless they keep archives, not of those who have left.
In an FA/DP org, it is quite safe to leave matters to the proxy, because the proxy has not, generally, been entrusted with assets. The proxy is only a communications link, just like the organization as a whole. None-FAs, which are generally necessary for coherent action (not always) are different, and it is up to those who create and fund them to determine what level and kind of supervision is necessary.
This division into communication and control mechanisms is actually essential to the FA/DP concept, and the failure to understand the consequences of mixing the two is responsible for a great deal of misery. Once there are control mechanisms with the power to control members, thought is no longer completely free. And there are strong forces tending toward subtle or even gross repression.
My opinion is that large FA/DP organizations, once they form, will be able to effectively control the control mechanisms, through the distributed power of member consensus.
But because FAs are, by design, not controversial, the FA/DP
“revolution” becomes possible in places where otherwise change might
be — and is — repressed. China, I think, is a very good example. So
is Ethiopia. True tyrants will fear FA/DP, but what is more common,
oligarchs who believe that they have the best interests of the people
in mind, will not be so ready to fear it. FA/DP is not going to
overthrow them, not by itself. Only the development of a broad
consensus in an FA/DP organization — which will include them and
their supporters — would reduce their power, and it would do it in a
way that would be likely to fully consider their personal
interests. A small cut of a free society is probably far greater than
a large cut of an oppressed one. Ethiopia, which I saw less than two
months ago, has tremendous social resources that are lying fallow,
because the society is not well organized to use them. It has one of
the lowest per-capita incomes in the world, but that very fact is a
resource: labor is cheap. However, cheap labor is worthless unless
harnessed in some way. And it will be inefficiently harnessed -
very inefficiently - if it is organized through repression and
oppression, even if the oligarchs, excuse me, the leaders of the
people, are seeking the public interest. Or think they are.
(I do not use “oligarch” as a perjorative term. Oligarchical structures are an ancient device for social organization, and it probably still has its place. Just not everywhere and for everything.)
19:47 < illegal> this is what goal?19:47 < echarp> one is about democracy and a forum/mailingList, the other about a model19:47 < echarp> or am I wrong?19:47 < urgen> opencoop wants to promote opencoop19:48 < urgen> it is an entity19:48 < illegal> what is opencoop in its essencE?19:48 < urgen> an entity mostly focussed in britain19:48 < illegal> looks familiar to stuff lomax talks about19:48 < illegal> very simmilar
I haven’t looked at it. Sounds like I should. Now, if I decide that the traffic here is too much, or too tempting, i.e., to enter into endless flaming debate, I would attempt to leave behind a proxy. This requires no formal network, I simply ask someone to watch this list for me and let me know if something important is cooking. If that person agrees, that person is performing the essential proxy function. Voting is merely a detail. If the proxy needs me to cast a vote, then I would simply cast it upon recommendation. Presumably.
This is why FA/DP democracy requires no changes in law or existing structure to function with the full weight of any FA/DP consensus. Restrictive rules (such as no proxy voting) merely make it a little more trouble. Not much.
Standard proxy, of course, merely extends the functional scale of the democracy. At a certain scale, standard proxy meets limits, we know this from observing the behavior of large corporations. But once there is an FA proxy structure — which simply means that people start choosing de facto proxies, DP is really an obvious next step, and, once again, it takes no organizational agreement to get it going. A few delegated proxies simply start functioning as such. A phone tree, for example.
19:48 < illegal> and that part is actually part of the whole thing19:49 < illegal> you think they are regoional crew19:49 < urgen> there are some theories about similar interest but I seem to find they depart when you finally arrive at understanding19:49 < illegal> i mean not focues to global?19:49 < echarp> illegal: true, lomax might appreciate opencoop yes19:49 < echarp> and so do I, see, I’m there (although I don’t participate much, true)19:49 < illegal> to me, this is all about same thing19:49 < illegal> different aproaches19:49 < illegal> and views19:49 < illegal> yet, communication solves that problem out
The BeyondPolitics plan is to encourage and support efforts to implement FA and/or DP organizational structure. It is my view that these are ideas whose time has come, that society is like a supersaturated solution, awaiting a seed crystal. The seed crystal is simply a structure that is sufficiently organized to trigger self-similar organization either in connection with itself or elsewhere. It is the idea that is being promoted, a meme, if you will.
Most of these efforts will be “local” in some sense; that is, they will have a specific focus, and, in connection with that, they may be physically local. Face-to-face meetings.
However, if there come to be two general-purpose FA/DP organizations, or “competing” FA/DP organizations, they will merge. When I’ve written about fissioning of FA/DP organizations, the separating groups still remain connected with each other, where it counts. Through membership, and if they are DP, this becomes practical. If you don’t want to discuss politics endlessly with people you can’t stand, you can still belong, you just stop following the traffic and leave it to your proxy. Or your proxy’s proxy. It only takes one proxy from one group willing to participate in the other, and they have effectively merged.
And this is another reason why this has to happen with an FA and not with a control structure. FAs don’t take controversial positions. By joining, you are merely expressing interest in the subject, not approving of any specific position or even general philosophy. You can be absolutely opposed to the project, and still you can join, or it is not an FA.
(Disruptive behavior, violating rules in a way that makes it difficult for others to communicate, can lead to sanctions, but such sanctions don’t result in expulsion, just in restriction around the disruptive behavior. FAs don’t punish members, period. If members violate laws, any member is free to complain, though, in my experience, it takes something pretty drastic. I remember a meeting where a woman reached into her purse, and a therapist in the group was looking for the exit. Neither he nor I would have been surprised if she had pulled out a gun. But she did not…. This meeting did decide to ask her not to attend any more. She was not expelled from the organization, just from a single meeting, and there were dozens available in the area. Did she make a problem elsewhere. No.)
19:54 < illegal> nsh at other hand as i can notice is not interested in org stuff about what we are doing19:54 < echarp> and he is only in #opencoop ?19:54 < urgen> nsh is interested, just busy
It is absolutely crucial to understand what happens to organizations that don’t have something like DP in place. They leak members. People may, possibly, maintain some kind of membership, but because they don’t go to meetings any more, they don’t know what is happening unless someone happens to tell them or they read about it. Such organizations have to spend money just to reach these members, they have to snailmail newsletters, etc. Newsletters are optional in FA/DP organizations.
Note that the problem is not solved by mailing lists in large organizations, unless the traffic on the list is strongly limited. Which then institutionalizes an oligarchy. DP can do this, by creating an oligarchy that is continuously and directly responsible to the members. The members have the power to completely bypass the organization if needed. Easily. Currently, to bypass the oligarchs in nonprofits, it can take a massive effort, because only the oligarchs have control of the mailing list. Which is essential, in fact, in a non-DP organization. This is why I frequently comment on “the problem” as being inherent in the structures that are used. Existing power structures create the phenomena that most of us see as the problem. The oligarchs also see the problems, but they don’t know that there are alternatives.
(Some know, but those are actually, in my opinion, rare. They generally believe that society needs them to be in their positions. And, indeed, absent alternatives, they are correct.)
Anarchists got their bad name by failing to see this, and by attempting to tear down the system without having demonstrated alternatives that can function better on a large scale.
My theory is better than your actual behavior.
This is a variation on an old theme: the ideals of my religion are better than the actual practice of people claiming to belong to your religion. So we think that Christianity promotes peace and tolerance, while Islam promotes terrorism and oppression. And so the dance of destruction goes on.
No, the ideals of Christianity — at least in the social realm — are quite similar to the ideals of Islam. And the actual practice of nominal Christians is not better than the actual practice of nominal Muslims.
It is not my purpose here to debate religion, by the way, I am just calling attention to the possibility that, once people actually start to communicate with each other in a way that encourages the discovery of consensus, many ancient feuds might simply become the horrors that we read about in history books. “What, they killed thousands of noncombatants, including many children, in the pursuit of a few criminals? How could people have been so cruel, so unfeeling?”
19:57 < illegal> lomax btw did not respond to my question\
I’m unaware of this. What question?
19:58 < echarp> I knew lomax beforehand, but that was a long time ago19:58 < illegal> hmh, when?19:58 < illegal> at yahoo?19:58 < echarp> by mail I think19:58 < echarp> we had some exchange
My mail system has a number of mails from echarp. Most have “Liquid Democracy” in the subject header. I haven’t reviewed them recently, but we did write back and forth a few times. They were in July 2005. I think I had posted to [demexp-en].
19:58 < echarp> I’m going to join his party and FA19:58 < echarp> just for the sake of it19:58 < illegal> whos party19:58 < illegal> lomax?19:58 < echarp> boston tea party19:58 < echarp> yeap19:58 < illegal> :)19:59 < illegal> cool
Boston Tea Party is not my party at all. It is an offshoot of the Libertarian Party in the U.S. Jan Kok has been active in the Libertarian Party and with the formation of the Boston Tea Party. It is not an FA.
However, there is a mailing list associated with it which is currently an FA, more or less. Joining the list is not endorsement of Libertarian goals at all, nor of the specific party in question. And a proxy list has been created, by Jan. I’ve named him as my proxy, but there is very little traffic, so I still subscribe.
Metaparty.beyondpolitics.org is a project of Jan Kok. As the domain provider, I have admin access, but I would not routinely use it.
19:59 < illegal> i will go to yahoo groups19:59 < illegal> yet, i think i can not be memeber as long as i am croat!
I’m quite sure you are welcome on the general mailing list, btpnc-talk. There are no membership requirements, other than not acting as a spammer.
The efforts mentioned here on top-politics are an expected part of the BeyondPolitics plan, whether or not we ever communicate further. The BP plan involves massively distributed action outside existing structures. Whether or not action takes place within existing structures is not so important. Premature action within existing structures, though, can be quite harmful, whether it succeeds or fails. I think of Iran and the fall of the Shah as an example of dangerous success, and of Tienanmen Square in China as an example of failure due to premature action.
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I find your discussion very important!
The issue about privacy/secrecy and secret votes in relation to TOP,
has to be cleared out since ther obviously are some different views
currently.
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On 10/24/06, MG <magnusgus@gmail.com> wrote:
I find your discussion very important!The issue about privacy/secrecy and secret votes in relation to TOP,has to be cleared out since ther obviously are some different viewscurrently.
Is different views a bad thing? Do we really want everyone to be of the same opinions?
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Ofcourse not, but certain steps has to be taken in evolution in order
to design a system…
This needs some sort of consensus i believe?
But many things can also be left for further decisions if work with
options.
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I agree with Magnus that if we have the intention to pool our efforts, we need to find at least a common basis. Bearing in mind that an open-source system could be tweaked and receive add-ons by its users for anything – as long as the result remains open.
The issue of the secret of the voter’s identity need not be an issue here. One is going to need a username and login. The question is whether this username will be a real ID or a pseudonym.
In terms of transparency, there are several reasons for which voting records should be fully transparent (ie who voted for what):
Serge
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just to say I definitly didn’t find the top politics group through
google. Can’t remember how though.
My search terms when trying to get an idea for what efforts were under
way were:
e democracy, open democracy, direct democracy, participatory democracy.
Also I’ll agree with Gale that the interaction between Mark and
Emmanuel doesn’t seem productive at all right now, but I have to say
that what Mark advocates in terms of system can be quite an addition to
the debate, in the sense that his system retains a measure of
representative democracy and therefore could be seen as an intermediary
step towards (and as such, easier to build consensus for) more direct
forms of democracy.
Regards,
Serge
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On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 02:05:05PM -0000, Serge wrote:
Also I’ll agree with Gale that the interaction between Mark andEmmanuel doesn’t seem productive at all right now, but I have to saythat what Mark advocates in terms of system can be quite an addition tothe debate, in the sense that his system retains a measure ofrepresentative democracy and therefore could be seen as an intermediarystep towards (and as such, easier to build consensus for) more directforms of democracy.If I may ask, what do you consider is an addition?
Isn’t DP also a mix of direct and representative democracy? But one which encourage participation and responsibility of everybody and not just a few directors?
echarp
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Serge wrote:
just to say I definitly didn’t find the top politics group throughgoogle. Can’t remember how though.My search terms when trying to get an idea for what efforts were underway were:e democracy, open democracy, direct democracy, participatory democracy.
Thank you very much Serge for your suggestions. I believe this aspect of group marketing is rather important if we want to rise significance of this place. If I remember properly, expertise site I am working on right not pharmacy gains over 70% of new visitors through google during some months.
Also I’ll agree with Gale that the interaction between Mark andEmmanuel doesn’t seem productive at all right now, but I have to saythat what Mark advocates in terms of system can be quite an addition tothe debate, in the sense that his system retains a measure ofrepresentative democracy and therefore could be seen as an intermediarystep towards (and as such, easier to build consensus for) more directforms of democracy.
I do believe for a while that step by step aproach is the best one as long as that is grounded, foolproof. This actually means that either of suggested mechanisms of network measuring need a place or group of people that can be counted in hunders or maybe even thousands to see how do they actually workand how usefull it is in RL. Before that moment, we are actually not talking about facts, but expectations which is much less solid and interesting for third party who is actually essential to make any of these systems strong enough to become part of real world politics.
ATB,
Gale
Regards,Serge
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Hi Emmanuel, hi Gale,
Yep do agree on the need to implement and test, came out looking for what could be implemented and how, rather than just for the debate - even though it is interesting for me as I am new to the group to get a better prospective of what each envisions practically.
Emmanuel, what I meant was that in Mark’s system there is also
Delegable Proxy (and the other mechanisms everyone pretty much agrees
would be beneficial), but that it retains a part of what the old system
was made of (as in, purely representative,
one-ballot-every-5-years-style traditional RD), and therefore would
constitute a safety net of sorts for these doubting the efficiency of a
DP-only system.
Basically it would act as an argument allowing to overcome the age-old
“it’s never gonna work, too risky, why should we change a system that
works, etc”. Therefore, people unwilling to try the system would still
be represented the old way should they prefer to – and that would allow
to neither negate their voting rights nor prevent the implementation of
a progressive system for these willing to give it a go.
regards,
Serge
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Emmanuel, what I meant was that in Mark’s system there is alsoDelegable Proxy (and the other mechanisms everyone pretty much agreeswould be beneficial), but that it retains a part of what the old systemwas made of (as in, purely representative,one-ballot-every-5-years-style traditional RD), and therefore wouldconstitute a safety net of sorts for these doubting the efficiency of aDP-only system.
As far as I can tell, there is no “old system” retained anywhere.
Me I also propose permanent voting, until outside conditions render the vote meaningless. Not only that, but electoral lists freely maintained by anybody who feel like it. Institutions could use existing real life one, with public PGP keys for voter identification.
echarp
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echarp wrote:
Emmanuel, what I meant was that in Mark’s system there is alsoDelegable Proxy (and the other mechanisms everyone pretty much agreeswould be beneficial), but that it retains a part of what the old systemwas made of (as in, purely representative, one-ballot-every-5-years-style traditional RD), and therefore would constitute a safety net of sorts for these doubting the efficiency of a DP-only system.
ec: As far as I can tell, there is no “old system” retained anywhere.-M: Its in the default hierarchy: delegate/specialist > trustee/generalist > algorithm-selectee
People would be encouraged to vote for specialists, but if they don’t, then their last generalist-trustees would be used. This is RD.
ec: Me I also propose permanent voting, until outside conditions render thevote meaningless.
-M: Yup.
ec: Not only that, but electoral lists freely maintained by anybody who feel like it.
-M: With SD2-S, voter list = electorial list. And if someone doesn’t want to serve, then a lower (politicly)ranked person is selected.
shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
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