Hi! On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 8:34 PM, Peter Lindener <[email protected]> wrote: > At his point, while we could have discussions about how best to resolve these > cyclically ranked majority.....
It seems that you are assuming that the possibility of cyclically ranked majority is the biggest issue with democracy? I could argue that the biggest issue is assumption that we can based on preferences of individuals determine what would be the best for the group as a whole. Why exactly would this be related? Why exactly if we know what each individual wants for him or herself, we would know what would be best for the group? (For any definition of "best".) Of course you get conflicts and cycles if everyone looks only at his or her own interests. I found it a bit premature optimization that we are concerned how to optimize voting among given choices when we should be maybe more concerned how the choices are constructed. Because this is the big question. Not how can we find fancy ways to sum up the votes among given options. The issue is that we are always given options to choose from. But we are hardly ever consulted in preparation of those options. Is this really democracy? To be allowed to vote which among two kings or queens (or hundred or whatever number) will rule you for next four or five years? Beautiful. So my question is more: how can we get new ideas and new solutions to issues from participation of everybody? How can we get people to be able to contribute to the solution to the issue, not just to choose among provided solutions? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUS1m5MSt9k Mitar -- http://mitar.tnode.com/ https://twitter.com/mitar_m -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at [email protected] or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
