--- On Sat, 28/3/09, Fred Gohlke <[email protected]> wrote: > Good Morning, Juho > > re: "I'd encourage maintaining some separation of the > political > and business segments of the > society.." > > How would you go about accomplishing that?
I think there are many options. One could start for example from setting limits to use of money in the elections (and between them). In a more extreme scenario politicians could just cope with their (high) salary and those communication capabilities that the society offers them. Any donations to politicians could be classified as bribes. > > > re: "The triads and other low level approaches may do good > job in > at least waking up some potential > leaders. It is however > not guaranteed that they or other > competent people will end > up at the top." > > Of course not ... and stating the obvious does little to > aid our effort to understand complex matters. > > We are talking about a method that gives every member of > the electorate an opportunity to participate in the > electoral process, to the full extent of their desire and > ability; a method that takes control of elected officials > away from political elites and puts it back in the hands of > the people, where it belongs. The method guarantees > nothing, but it opens the door for competent people to rise > to the top ... a prospect denied us by the current political > infrastructure. I guess also the current system theoretically allows people to influence although there may be problems on the way and in the system. > > > re: "In practice all political systems have some > groupings/parties though." > > There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's > healthy. The problem is not that people seek out and > align themselves with others who share their views, it is > when those they align themselves with have the power to > compel their support. If the group can not attract > voluntary agreement with the views it espouses, those who > dissent must be free to form new alliances. > > > re: "I have also spent some time in thinking how we could > make > the party structure more dynamic > and having more variation > than few monolithic blocks with > established power structure > do offer." > > Have you come up with a means we could examine? I was mainly thinking about offering proportionality also between different segments of parties (in addition to basic proportional representation) and systems that will offer that also in practice. You seem to build representation starting from individuals at the bottom.. Another approach is to allow parties to be divided in smaller pieces that can be controlled by the voters. > > > re: "Since some kind of grouping of people and ideologies > is > likely we better have means to > heard them." > > Is there a better way than letting each and every person > advance their own ideology as effectively as they can? I think yes since starting from individuals and their individual ideologies can be complemented by offering also some tools for the situation that arises when the individuals start forming ideological groupings. I'm thus accepting the fact that there will be groupings and that we need to have models and tools to understand their dynamics and control them. Juho > > Fred Gohlke > ---- > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info > ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
