While I agree that the lack fo checks and balances is a significant problem in the NRP and many if not most of it's neighborhood organizations, it is a problem that can be repaired. The NRP does not have to die - if it did we would lose the value of its experience and the "wisdom" gained. NRP can and should reform itself, there is enough good in it that it would be possible to change or remove the failed/ weak aspects and renew it.
Michael Atehrton wrote: > Although one goal of the NRP may have been some type of democratic > pluralism in which the greatest good is fairly distributed by a > reallocation of governmental power, I would have hoped that by now > people would have realized that the NRP has simply shifted power from a > large municipal bureaucracy to smaller one, and not to the "people." > Just as communism was based on an implicit assumption that the goodness > of human nature would surface after the end of capitalism oppression, > the NRP founders must have assumed that shifting power to the > neighborhoods would automatically result in fair, wise, and > representative decision making. Unfortunately, unlike the the Framers > of the Constitution they failed to account for the propensity of humans > to favor selfish personal interests over the general welfare. This > reliance on the goodness of human nature and not on a series of > checks-and-balances is the NRP's fatal flaw. Let it die its natural > death, along with so many other failed social experiments. > > Michael Atherton > Prospect Park > > _______________________________________ > Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn > E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: > http://e-democracy.org/mpls _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
