Good Morning, Kristofer
re: "... would be good for the petition to include information
about the level of the person who originated it."
My initial reaction to this suggestion was unfavorable, oddly, for the
very reason you thought it worthwhile; fear that petitions coming from
the lower levels of the 'pyramid' would be considered less important.
On further thought, though, I agree with you. As you point out, it is
likely the distribution of petitions will be simplified by including the
petitioner's level. In addition, those who rose to higher levels were
deemed more representative of the views of their peers than those at
lower levels. It is reasonable to give their opinions greater weight.
One additional factor is that it may aid discourse among those who met
to make selections.
re: "The assumption here is that if someone high up in the
pyramid petitions the official, he has the support of many
below him."
I agree this is a reasonable assumption in terms of how an elected
official initially evaluates a petition. However, the ease with which
constituents may support or oppose petitions provides a means of
confirming the assumption. Since it is easy for constituents to support
or oppose a petition, official performance will be better judged by
actual support than by implied support.
Beyond performance evaluation, though, is the impact of petitions on an
official's biases. Petitions represent ideas and convictions. They may
counter ideas and convictions held by the elected official or reinforce
them. They may achieve merit on the breadth of their support or on the
force of their reason. Thus, the bidirectionality of the system not
only provides a means of sanctioning, it also serves to influence
elected officials' attitudes. As you've pointed out, when participants
move to higher levels they can not represent all the views of all the
people who elevated them. Petitions provide a means of energizing views
which are commonly held but which are 'lost in transit', so to speak.
re: "... the pyramids exist ... and their composition is known to
(at least) the public officials ..."
In my view, the composition of the pyramids and all petitions should be
public information. It is true this will make those who achieve the
higher levels targets for influence peddlers but I don't believe such
corruption will be as easy to achieve as it is at present. Here's why:
Our political landscape is dominated by political parties and political
parties are conduits for corruption. Corruption occurs in static
conditions and party professionals are like apples in barrels,
susceptible to rot. The Practical Democracy electoral method is
dynamic; is has no organization or fund raiser to provide a corrupting
influence. Those who would corrupt our elected representatives can not
do so en bloc, as they do with parties, they have to corrupt each
elected official, individually.
There is an enormous difference between telling a party fund-raiser what
laws you want in return for your 'contribution' and trying to corrupt
individuals who have no need of campaign funds and who are selected by
their peers for their intellect and integrity. In addition to the risk
of exposure, which is always a threat when approaching a target, there's
the problem of effectiveness; corrupting a single official does not
ensure enactment of a law in the way contributing to a party does. This
method may not completely forestall corruption, but it will certainly
make it more difficult and less effective than it is now.
re: "My broad idea is that since the pyramid is exponential in
nature, with a fixed chance of petition from each at the
bottom, the number of petitions would increase exponentially
as well, and so in order to sift through the mass, there has
to be some sort of method for finding what's truly
important, some sort of information aggregation and
selection."
The constituents' ability to support or oppose petitions will probably
have two effects:
1) It will increase public participation because those who would be
unlikely to 'write a letter to their Congressman' may (and, in my view,
probably will) support or oppose the petitions of others ... if it's
easy to do so.
2) It will reduce the number of petitions because those who are likely
to 'write a letter to their Congressman' may find that someone else has
already done so. Of course, in this case, pride of authorship may
inspire parallel petitions, and that could lead to the murky waters of
petition amendment. I'll pass on examining that eventuality, for the
moment.
Are statistics available to show how frequently citizens 'write their
Congressmen' and can that data can be extrapolated to guesstimate the
severity of the problem? I'm not sure how helpful that will be, though,
because events may cause a flurry of petitions that can not be anticipated.
re: turnover of elected officials
This is not directly responsive to your letter, but I'd like to mention
that one of the provisions of the Sefton Petition is that "the random
grouping mechanism must insure that no two people are assigned to a
triad if they served together in a triad in any of the five most recent
elections. This provision not only makes it unlikely that a given
individual will be returned to office repeatedly, it also ensures the
ideologies of our elected officials are constantly refreshed.
In two-party systems, particularly, there is a periodic wrenching from
one side of the political spectrum to another. Neither side ever
correctly reflects the true will of the people (which is, of course, the
feedstock for the demand for additional parties and proportional
representation). The method we are discussing will elevate those who
best reflect the attitudes and aspirations of all the people. They will
create a government that moves inexorably in response to the people's
wishes.
Fred
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