At 11:09 PM 11/12/2005, James Green-Armytage wrote: > Although governments may be politically omnipotent in > theory, in practice corporations, schools, unions, religious > groups, and nonprofits >collectively wield an easily comparable amount of power.
Yes. In fact, in a society with an electoral democracy, the government is manipulable through the electoral process as well as through information campaigns and lobbying, not to mention bribery. All of these take organization, so, the question is: How do the groups which seek to control or influence government policy organize? With sufficient organization of sufficient resources, NGOs can, in an electoral democracy, control the government. The people as a whole are the largest and potentially most powerful "special interest," but the people as a whole are not organized; perhaps some of us suffer from the illusion that the *government* is our organization. Indeed, the government *could* be our organization, but in order to get to that position, we must organize *independently* of government. The BeyondPolitics plan is to develop Free Association/Delegable Proxy technology and to encourage its adoption by organizations of many different kinds; wherever there is a need for an efficient yet trustworthy peer association, FA/DP might work well. If it does, then political applications will become obvious. And easy. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
