In another post, I wrote:
"Conservative" and "liberal" are gross generalizations of political
positions that often end up being the opposite of accurate.
and here I follow up on that.
We need political systems that move beyond polarized politics; I think it
can be done, and hence www.beyondpolitics.org, qv. While that web site
contains an old writing with my basic ideas -- the thinking behind them
goes back thirty years -- I just found that there is another initiative
that independently came up with essentially the same solution. There is a
Swedish political party that ostensibly incorporates many of the concepts,
and there is even software that might make it practical under conditions
requiring the equivalent of secret ballots. (My own concepts require, as a
precondition, a secure society *or* an outside neutral and trusted force;
for the mechanism guaranteeing trustworthiness, in the basic
implementation, depends on transparency. Election fraud requires secret
ballots; no secrecy, such fraud would become very, very difficult if not
impossible. -- but there are no elections in the system I conceive; but
there are decisions to be made.) For the Swedish ideas, see
http://www.vivarto.com/the+Vivarto+Story
There are also independent initiatives which can be found by googling
"liquid democracy." I did not find these until recently because they don't
use the absolutely normal name for a person to whom voting rights are
delegated, i.e., "proxy." And I had always searched before for "proxy
democracy." But recently it's been pointed out to these people that the
concept of someone who you personally choose -- as distinct from being
elected -- and who may, in your absence, act for you in an organizational
structure is actually very old, as old, probably, as the share corporation.
And it is practically universal in that context.
(Share corporations have their own political problems, problems which can
be addressed and, I think, solved rather easily in ab initio efforts. The
biggest problem with existing power structures is that if there is any
inequity in the structure, i.e., a feature that favors some subgroup, that
subgroup will have, ipso facto, increased power and will thus be motivated
to preserve the existing inequities or even to increase them. Thus
management in a large corporation, without there being safeguards in place,
can have a huge advantage when it comes to collecting proxies; thus it
becomes extremely difficult, even in the face of blatant abuse, to mount a
shareholder revolt. But my own work is directed at new organizations, not
at trying to change existing structures directly. And it seems that Dr.
Nordfors, one of the founders of the Direct Party, the Swedish party
mentioned above, has come to similar conclusions; existing structures are
too resistant to change.)
Does this have anything to do with Protel? Yes. One of the obvious
applications of the kind of direct/proxy democracy represented by my
initiative and the Swedish one, is for user groups. A user group that was
organized according to these concepts would, in fact, represent the users,
it would be not only a way for users to express what they want, coherently
and without bias from the hyperactive special interests who often dominate
such organizations, without requiring more effort than people were willing
to invest. I call these organizations "free associations," and free
associations, by design, would be relatively easy to form and easy to maintain.
It was my intention, quite a while ago, to propose a charter for the
Association which would incorporate these ideas; and a draft charter was
proposed back in April. There was a tiny amount of discussion and no
opposition; however, I've been overwhelmed with other responsibilities and
have had no time to push the matter. If one other person were to take an
interest, it could be done.
A Users Association does not have to actually represent every user, but it
should be *open* to every user (the draft restricts voting membership to
licensed users only). As proposed, the Association is a direct democracy,
with the added right to name a proxy. I may not have put all this in the
charter, but a proxy is charged with the task of being a communication link
between the organization and all the members who have entrusted him or her.
This communication is bidirectional. In some of the conceptual
implementations of the ideas, where it is expected that the level of
business of broad interest would be high, direct proxies are limited to a
maximum of, say, twenty; but indirect proxies are not limited expect
possibly at the top level -- in the association as proposed, a single
person may not represent more than one-third of the voting membership in
any binding vote. However, the function of a user association is primarily
communication, which generally does not involve binding decisions. For the
communication purpose, it is possible that there might be a superproxy,
i.e., someone who, directly or indirectly, represents everyone.
More likely, however, there would be a small number of people who
collectively would represent nearly all members. But free associations
never bury individuals as to the right to vote, unlike all electoral
democracies so far implemented. It is, again, like the voting at the annual
meeting of a corporation. If you own one share, you can vote that share.
You don't have to choose a proxy from a list provided to you by someone else.
So if, for example, the users were to make a wish list for Protel's future
development, the users would collectively sign off on that list, and any
dissent would be recorded and dissenters would have a ability to record
arguments for their positions. Altium officials, if they were interested,
would be able to quickly find out how the bulk of users feel (or at least
people entrusted by the bulk of users) as well as being able to see, to
whatever depth they wished, the range of opinion.
Yes, if a company depends on the ignorance and incapacity of its users, a
company might be threatened by the formation of a strong user association.
However, I'd not want to be associated with such a company -- it is a
sinking ship or at least a leaky boat. Consider the case where there is a
company with one customer. Personally, I'd prefer to work for an
intelligent customer, one who knows that our interests converge, just as,
as a customer, I'd rather patronize companies that demonstrate that they
have similar knowledge. Opposition of interests between customers and
companies (and employees, the third element) are artificial, based on
partial vision. Obviously, if Altium were to go belly-up, or to limp along
without funds to maintain and develop the program, the users would suffer,
not to mention the employees. And if the users go bankrupt, so will the
company. It is in the interests of all the parties that the other parties
be healthy.
My own interests are far more in the organizational technology than in
Protel itself. I see the organizational technology as crucial for the
future of our species, and the lack of it as the source of many of the ills
that afflict the world. And I have children and grandchildren who I'd like
to see live in a safer world. So this particular effort is an example of
"Think globally, act locally." My suspicion is that *any* implementation of
the direct/proxy democratic ideas will further the reform of society, in a
very gentle and safe way. My slogan:
Lift a finger, save the world.
But most people won't lift a finger.
True?
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