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[top-politics] Re: Definition of TOP - Systematization
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Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 06:00 PM 9/15/2006, echarp wrote: >It’s rather easy, transparency to everybody is not much,
actually, it’s huge….
The problem could be easily solved. If I knew where admin issue discussion and policy resolution was taking place (I could find it, I’m sure, but the whole point is that it should be easy), I could watch the traffic. I could pick out someone who, it seemed to me, had a good grasp of the issues, who might effectively represent what I have to say. Now, right now, I might be able to email or otherwise contact this person directly. So, informally, such a system already exists. It is just not easy. “Open and transparent” does imply “easy.”
Yes. That part is not transparent, and we can not say is it open as there is no evidence for it :)
What is the qualification for modifications?
Well consensus or the consensus of those delegated to make decisions on behalf of the members, by consensus. Or, at least, by majority approval. This should be on-going, i.e., a consensus at one time should not prevent a new and different consensus from forming later.
What I can notice, any group of people can choose whatever decision making procedure they might find most satisfying for their activities. Those that are more delibrative and including might be slower, yet they might handle larger brain trust. So, it depends on specific needs.
The way I’d generally set it up would be that members, perhaps after a brief waiting period, perhaps after identity confirmation or the like, would routinely have the right to make edits. If they abuse the privilege, a moderator could restrict their right. And that restriction would be appealable. The exact process would depend on the size of the org and its nature, but the ultimate authority, if it is to be fully democratic, is with the assembly as a whole, which may routinely delegate that authority.
This part when you set fully parcipative decision process in definition of org, you can say that you have fully democratic organisation. This would mean that for an example sd2 or some other algorithm for decision making functions that good it can rebalance itslef, learn and grow.
What I can notice, current mechanisms such as slashdot is, are not such structures, yet they are trying to develop such procedure that wont need recalculations. In this moment, carmic whores as viruses find weak spots and do they work. So current big organisations have this part only as attachment for their inside decision making process.
IMO, this is basic difference between Lomax and Marks aproach is that Lomax is letting free process, ebabling autopoietic, selforganasing basic unit uf humankind, human has possiblity to learn and grow, participate and do a rebalance of political power towards decentralisation which is good and possible in this very moment also.
In the other hand SD2 is routine that might go wrong, as long as nobody tested, it can be hijacked and effort of individuals that base their work on SD2 can be banalised pretty heavily. So, my opinion is that we can not go this way in this very moment, at least we can not put bet on precisely SD2 as long as by letting basic principles of such free system combined with open source get alive, we can not go wrong. So, SD2 for testing and some not so important issues, yes. Basing the process, no.
BTW, there is an example for SD2 I could use right now. In open system such as forum is in TOP communication with some TOP organisation, concept of public could be measured on such way, in other words such TOP organisation could put SD2 reprensetative to be included in exact decision making process. In that way we can optimise such process and develop others.
With a DP process, there is always some kind of access to the top, through filters chosen by the member being restricted.
Non-DP organizations which would still satisfy the due process requirements to qualify as TOP would still have similar structures. (And do. Access to the U.S. Congress is through legislators, and access to the legislators is through staff chosen by the legislators. If you look at it closely, when it works, it is quite similar to DP, but with some serious gaps; the basic gap is that the filtering is not chosen at the bottom, but at the top.
Yes. Unless we develop TOP organisation that grew from the first moment on TOP, letting everybody do freely what they want, enabling concurency such as versions of Linux there are. We can talk about TOP parties that can enter elections and gain state legimacy. This process means getting on free political market to TOP and such party would not mean Internet democracy.
Yet, such party could strongly empower this TOP political proces, enabling much larger pluralism, elimination of
oligarchical/birocratical elements that stand between public and political enterprise, which would mean movement.In such space, with empowered citizens and tested protocols of bottom up delegation/ or other legitimation and formalisation of empowerment/ those protocols that would gain mostly legitimated bodies and force behind it, could become state arbiters /in Internet democracy, I find concept of arbiters in solving conflicts best, as long as arbiters can gain political power/influence/legitimation of wider public.
And that is exactly how it should be. In an FA/DP organization, nobody is punished by the organization. Not even criminals. But people may protect themselves, and the organization does not force any individual to associate with any other.
Can you imagine one enterprise, one country, where the rules by which it functions can be modified by anybody else?
The confusion here is between “modification” of the rules and “proposing modification.”
The assumption seems to be that just anyone can change the rules. Sure, they can, but those changes do not bind or affect anyone but them. Unless their changes gain broader acceptance.
+1
I’m merely building on serge’s proposal of “open”. Proposal I really like, but which would ask to qualify participants.
Organizations can have a qualification process, and if it does not unreasonably exclude anyone who would be legitimately concerned with the organization’s decisions, the organization could still be called “open.”
If the burden of qualification becomes greater than necessary, however, the label starts to be deceptive.
Let me try this way. When you say open, you mean you call other to help you in building public legitimation of any decision. This is actually linkage to common good concept. So, this does not mean you will accept everyone/noone as long as it is not possible and it is undrestood. Yet, if you are not going pro commong good, there are some chances you wont be able to legitimate decision by TOP organisation. I believe this is the reason transparency is not popular especially among those who are aware of going against the common good. And vice versa.
“Open” does not mean that every individual can do just whatever he chooses, with the group resources. It means that every member is free to express his opinion, within the bounds of propriety, and that there is a process by which that opinion is filtered. I.e., it is considered, though not necessarily by the whole organization. Indeed, in a large organization, that becomes impossible. DP makes almost total openness possible, regardless of scale, but many other methods exist and are in use. They just don’t scale as well.
Absolutelly. If there is no people who could be interested in product you openly offer, you can not gain power. If you can not gain power, you are politically irrelevant. So, by being TOP, you let public be the final arbiter in whole. And this is characteristic of true democracy, IMO.
“Transparent” and “open” are thus not absolutes, they are relative. There is a children’s educational page in our newspaper, and it, perhaps unknowingly, had some cartoons in it, about democratic process, that were hilarious. The page makes games out of the subjects it examines, word puzzles, mazes, etc. So they had a cartoon on the right of petition. And it showed a maze, with a letter at one end and a mailbox on the other end. “Help Betty send a letter to the mayor,” was the caption.
A petition should not have to go through a maze! Yes, there must be a process, but it must not be unnecessarily difficult to negotiate. A process might exist, but if it is too difficult, we should not call the organization “transparent.”
Indeed. Yet, common sense can set some basic tasks in front of such organisation that can be easily measurable/recognised. Deeper we enter into this process, more prone we are to “leaches”. Of course, we do not need optimal, but only effective process going on. No optimum in openness, I can notice. If that was so, time would probably be stopped :)
How do you qualify the “open” part of TOP?
It is not a simple problem. Secret ballot, for example, is not transparent. If an initiative fails, we don’t know who, specifically, opposed it. It is one thing to use occasional secret ballot to validate and confirm that an open process is not being distorted by coercion, direct or subtle, but quite another thing to build a whole system on it. Indeed, the probability seems high to me that the last two Presidential elections in the U.S. were distorted by corruption and error in the election process, producing results opposite to the actual intention of a majority of voters. Secret ballot systems will always be vulnerable, to some degree, to this.
If you have secrecy in some base, than you do not allow system to learn from its own mistakes. That is the important reason I am against any form of secrecy in political life. Other one is actually based to doubt that such secret ballot could ever gain legitimacy as process. It goes against the essence of TOP org.
I would suggest that an organization is not fully TOP unless all participants are known, or, if not known, then what they contribute does not control outcomes, it is merely information subject to verification or rejection by the organization’s process.
Interesting. If you want to make it “earthy”, you have to link it to capital from reality, such as somebodies identity it is. But, could you develop virtual TOP organisation also? If not, why not? The basic principle of TOP and paradigmatic difference to current orgs is sharing instead of controling info in order of gaining power, anyway.
Full TOP may not be realizable in power structures under present conditions. So I would think that one needs to develop a series of measures and report how an organization satisfies the criteria. 100% in all measures may not be possible outside of FAs. But organizations could substantially satisfy the criteria, and thus legitimately be called TOP.
You might be right.
I know, you’d like to have a clear criterion, such that if they do X, they are TOP, and if not, they are not. Unfortunately, such clear criteria are rare with measures that are truly useful.
Hmh. This task is certainly not easy one, yet I do not find it impossible to be done. For an example, if Croatian socialists open their non-public forum to public and they enable free participation to others and in the same moment enable individuals from party to gain power base on informed citizens, some very important thing is done in that way for sure.
In the same time, you can have some other party that has same possiblities that are not being used, where public only comments and nobody is listening, yet there you get pretty clear notice what party is better and more public oriented and after all more democratic. And that is not small thing. In this way we actually support process of learning, optimisation and opening of parties. Those parties that remain closed wont benefit. Those who enable more opening, more participation, do benefit.
BTW, in scientific work i do about pharmacy and use of internet in informing patients, medical personality used to stigmatise internet, so there where no big work from medical institutions in offering info services for patients. But, demand from patients bypassed conservative institutions and conservative minds, so now these paranoic autors look rather funny. All thanks to open (or maybe better to say free) process that internet enabled.
But an organization which is only open “to its members,” if membership is restricted, is not purely “open.”
Yes.
ATB,
GAle
+1
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illegale wrote:
Lomax wrote: > echarp wrote:
[...] > > The way I’d generally set it up would be that members, perhaps after > > a brief waiting period, perhaps after identity confirmation or the > > like, would routinely have the right to make edits. If they abuse the > > privilege, a moderator could restrict their right. And that > > restriction would be appealable. The exact process would depend on > > the size of the org and its nature, but the ultimate authority, if it > > is to be fully democratic, is with the assembly as a whole, which may > > routinely delegate that authority.
G: IMO, this is basic difference between Lomax and Marks aproach is that Lomax is letting free process, ebabling autopoietic, selforganasing basic unit uf humankind, human has possiblity to learn and grow, participate and do a rebalance of political power towards decentralisation which is good and possible in this very moment also.
-M: SD2-S is amplifying of these free, autopoietic, self-organizing processes.
SD2-S doesn’t add anything that is contrived or arbitrary.G: In the other hand SD2 is routine that might go wrong,...
-M: How?
G:...as long as nobody tested,...
-M: The only way for it to be accepted is for it to be tested - therefore it will be tested by the time that it has large scale applications.
G:...it can be hijacked and effort of individuals that base their work on SD2 can be banalised pretty heavily. So, my opinion is that we can not go this way in this very moment, at least we can not put bet on precisely SD2 as long as by letting basic principles of such free system combined with open source get alive, we can not go wrong. So, SD2 for testing and some not so important issues, yes. Basing the process, no.
-M: If your idea of a ‘free system’ is a mere communication network like Lomax’s FAs, then you have bodies with no decision making capability. You have nothing.
G: BTW, there is an example for SD2 I could use right now. In open system such as forum is in TOP communication with some TOP organisation, concept of public could be measured on such way, in other words such TOP organisation could put SD2 reprensetative to be included in exact decision making process. In that way we can optimise such process and develop others.
M: OK. :)shanti
Mark, Seattle WA USA
+1
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