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[top-politics] Disagreeable
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> Intellectual Tradition into a bulleted list? This is an entire field of > study. 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.
> > > > Not changing the meaning of the words we use and define. > > > > > > I was using the best definitions and I was defending those > > > definitions. > > > > 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. > > Yes, it is easy for me. Yet it seems difficult for you to follow.
Which part of my sentence went wayyy over your head? :-D
> 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.
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!
> > You are disagreeable. Ask around please, you might change if you > > want to. > > If I am disagreeable, I would like to change to be more agreeable. Do > you have any suggestions?
Humility and courtesy will go a long way in the mind of others.
> > But like many other things, the most important step is recognizing > > it. > > Have I done anything wrong? If not, then maybe you haven’t recognized > my alledged disagreeableness, either.
You use insults and derogatory words to describe other fellow human beings in an exchange of ideas. This is definitely not called for.
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
+1
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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
+3
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+1
Amen :-)
+1
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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 the sophistication you would prefer it to have, but nonetheless allowing progress towards putting TOP politics to action.
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
+1
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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 the > sophistication you would prefer it to have, but nonetheless allowing > progress 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 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.
-M: OK.
>S: 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.
-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 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
-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
+1
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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[ ]
- don’t see the interest of this, either you do have a position and you can vote yourself, either you don’t and you should then trust your proxy’s judgement / maybe I misunderstand the meaning of this line
Optional additional delegates(4)_(blank)______]
- could be useful on complicated issues such as budget, but again probably not necessay in many cases, so optional status seems appropriate
Decision threshold, PageRank (>50%-70%) [60%(default)] AND Popular vote (>35%-50%) [40%(default)]
- makes sense
Decision Number 5(min number) + 0%-85% of voting population [50%(default)]
- makes sense
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
- so will definitly go and read, if only to have a closer look at the way the dissection of logic is done.
Regards,
Serge
Regards,
Serge
+1
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At 09:23 AM 9/8/2006, Serge wrote: >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 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 happy >using a system in which I can just delegate my vote to one person per >issue,
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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:
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 explaining >how a centrality algorithm is elaborated? You seem to identify it as >the 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 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, never saw it before. I’ve only got two eyes, I’m grateful for all the others which advise me…
+1
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10/09/06 01:42
Tree of issues
> > 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, > > 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.
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.
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!
+1
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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 which >could 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….
+1
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> > 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….
Just delegate your vote on the root issue. Then no need to care for all the new one 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:
- propose elts,
- vote on the proposed elts,
- delegate their vote on those elts.
> 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
+1
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13/09/06 05:38
An FA/DP project.
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:
> > 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.
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.
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 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: >- 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.
> > 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.
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.
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….
> > 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 :(
Most people think it is impossible, even before they know what it is. So perhaps you have become a little more optimistic!
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 not >change 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 energy >sufficient 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?
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10/09/06 01:42
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