Or, quite apart from intentions, if you want to see what can really happen
to a democratic system, read a few chapters of Hacker's and Pearson's
"Winner Tale All Politics".
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: "michael gurstein" <[email protected]>
To: "'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2013 10:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] The coming democracy of power groups
For an interesting 21st century bottom up alternative see
liquid/delegative
democacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy and
particularly
http://www.brynosaurus.com/deleg/deleg.pdf
M
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2013 5:20 AM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'
Subject: [Futurework] The coming democracy of power groups
In politics and business -- and, indeed, in any organization of serious
intent -- significant decisions are always taken by a small group at the
top. It's a delusion to imagine that our much applauded one-person
one-vote
at general elections gives us a workable democracy. It doesn't. It gives
us
a political system in which most people are disinterested most of the time
and will only vote for the party which can offer the best benefits to
their
particular class (or their particular job or income stream), not the
country
as a whole. Most people are only interested in politics in so far as it
affects their tax rate or their welfare benefit.
But, if democratic institutions such as the House of Commons or Congress
don't live up to their original democratic expectations then, in a
paradoxical way, small groups do. In today's complex society we have many
quite powerful small groups who not only take decisions to benefit
themselves but also try become as infljuential as possible in the private
deliberations of the most powerful small group of them all -- the three or
four individuals who comprise the small group which the are closest to the
government's (or MNC's) leader.
For example, in the UK today there are probably a dozen such small groups
who are more or less in competition for David Cameron's personal attention
and favour. These would include a small group of the most senior people
who
are judges or civil servants or media personal or food supermarkets or
airport/plane or railways or farmers or oil drillers or armed services or
sports or royal courtiers or ecologists or accountants or medics.
Go back as recently as a century. How many small power-groups then? A lot
fewer. Maybe half-a dozen. Go back another 300 or 400 years and we have a
smaller number still -- for example: a small group of the leading
land-owning aristocrats (all trying to angle their daughters into the
royal
family!), a small group of leading churchmen/monastics, a small group of
goldsmiths,
So let's go back further to pre-agricultural times, and further still to
the
earliest time when man's predecessors were thrust into the savannah from a
rainfores. There we have the ultimate -- one group only, tne power group
being only two or three. One small group containing, if anything, little
more than one extended family. There'd be the grandfather with maybe his
brother, his two sons and a daughter plus two or three other women who'd
come over from other groups when they want to partner a male and raise a
family. (Incest taboo in order to avoid in-breeding.)
'Democratic' practice as we have known it has nowhere to go now. There
isn't
the faintest chance that governments, we we know them today will ever be
able to pay their national debts. However, as increasing number of
specialized power groups develop then something resembling Athenian market
square politics is actually taking place beneath the surface.
Keith
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