Frankly, I don't grasp the underlying method or the rationale of this approach. User groups are quite common. What's different here?
User groups and other ad-hoc nonprofit organizations are indeed quite common. However, how an organization makes organizational decisions can be crucial in how the organization is effective in representing the interests of the members. Most organizations start out in one of two ways. Direct democracies make decisions by majority vote. As these organizations grow, direct decision making by all the members becomes cumbersome, so these organizations tend to move to an elective structure. And there is a problem with elections. In many organizations, the problem does not really rear its ugly head, generally because the members are already in general agreement, or, alternatively, because they really don't care that much how things turn out. The problem is that elections disenfranchise the minority. That is, if you hold an opinion that does not end up with a representative on the board, your opinion can end up being shut out. Organizations which become strongly divided on an issue are faced with a dilemma: make a decision favored by the majority, and lose the support of the minority. Which, even in a fully fair election system, can still be almost half of the organization. (And fully fair electoral systems, such as Condorcet voting, are rare.)
The other common process is what I call oligarchical. A group of motivated individuals found an association and set up, when they become formal, a board structure; typically the board is self-appointing; that is new members of the board are elected by the board. Members have no say in this; you have the choice to support the organization or not. What is fascinating to me is that there are quite a number of organizations dedicated to improving the democratic process. And they are not organized democratically. You join by sending them money. They don't ask you to help choose the leadership. While BeyondPolitics.org is still too small to need any structure at all -- there are a few academics and others involved -- it *will* itself, if it grows, be government by the structure that it seeks to promote.
Paradoxically, there has been a solution for hundreds of years: direct democracy with proxy representation allowed. As I've mentioned, this is, in fact, the default form of organization in the share corporation (thinking of such a corporation as a democracy of money). For some reason, however, proxy representation is rare in non-profits. And where it *does* exist, as I've seen it, the rules are such as to do the same thing as has happened in large share corporations: management has tremendous influence over proxy assignments. In the California State Automobile Association, the board sends out suggested proxy assignments to all members. I think that most members don't even know what these are, all they know is that the Association is asking them to sign it and send it in. So many of them do. Now, the CSAA, like many automobile associations, is deeply in bed with the insurance industry. There is a conflict of interest there. And I do remember one effort made in California to elect truly independent representatives to the board. It failed. As I'd expect. The rules are stacked against actual member control.
Other major associations, like AARP (also a child of the insurance industry), don't even ask for proxies. They simply have self-elected boards.
Here is what I consider important for a user association: it should really represent the members. The members should be confident that it will represent their interests to the company, as well as in other ways, and the company should be confident that they can actually communicate with their users through the association. Now, the full-blown formal structure being developed for "free associations" may be overkill for a Protel user association. However, that structure is such that it is scalable; when it is small, there is little organizational overhead, even if the full structure is in place, and when it is large, the overhead becomes even smaller. And the structure is designed to be trustworthy; it is resistant to the problem faced by many volunteer organizations: those with strong opinions and a personal agenda are more motivated to participate, and can come to dominate the organization. An open, delegable proxy structure militates against an excess of control by fanatics.
Of course, I do have my own agenda. Essentially, I see the structure of the free association as being the future of society, a Swiss Army knife of democratic organization, able to move beyond polemic and partisan politics, able to scale indefinitely. The New England Town Meeting works quite well in small towns, but has been almost universally abandoned as towns grew to the point that meetings became too cumbersome. There is a solution to the problem that does not involve abandoning direct democracy, and that solution is proxy representation. (The Town of Amherst, Massachusetts, replaced its true Town Meeting with a "Town Meeting" consisting of elected representatives from neighborhoods. This is really an overblown city council, it is not a town meeting at all, it seems.) Proxy representation *may* not be lawful in Town structures in Massachusetts. But I don't see it as necessary to change the law. Instead, citizens may form independent free associations to investigate issues and recommend voter action -- besides actual voting, possibly campaign contributions or other forms of direct action -- but, really, I see these associations functioning much the same as user groups. Think of them as user groups for a town.... They will function best when they are *not* formed to "throw the bums out," but rather to simply improve communication between a town and its citizens.
And this will not happen until and unless people come to know that there *is* a method of organizing that is trustworthy. People are generally cynical about politics, and for good reason. If they have been politically active, they have experienced the steamroller, they have experienced their contributions being hijacked for some political purpose that they did not support. And existing political organizations nearly all seem to assume that people's views come in convenient, ready-packaged assortments. If you are for A, you must be against B. Etc.
So, I'm interested in the formation of free associations in *any* and *every* field where they might be appropriate. I think that user associations are particularly appropriate.
A free association, for most practical purposes, operates as a direct democracy, but with the added right that members may appoint a proxy. The proxy is simply another member trusted by the first member. If any issue comes to a vote, any member may vote. But if a member does not participate, does not vote, then their vote is automatically added to the vote of their proxy. And proxies are delegable. So if A appoints B who appoints C, and A and B do not vote, C has two votes added to his or her vote.
There are no elections in a free association. (However, the association may hire staff, including administrators, if it so chooses, as it may appoint officers. But these officers are not *representatives*; rather, they are servants of the association, and their service is at the continued pleasure of those who hired or appointed them.)
Perhaps a demonstration would help. Let me propose two related real world scenarios:
1) I use Protel 99SE, which is reportedly no longer supported after year's end. Protel DXP was not for me, so I skipped that. Protel 2004 is a mystery to me. I would like to know the following:
* What is the productivity rating of Protel 2004 compared to Protel 99SE?
* Is Protel 2004 a solid, reliable product, essentially free of bugs?
* Does Protel 2004 have a logical structure and natural learning curve?
* What is the cost of ownership (updates, support, etc), including intangibles? (eg Protel 99SE was very costly at first in terms of time wasted dealing with all of the problems - now at SP6, and still significant bugs).
* Does importing / exporting between OrCad and Protel 99SE work?
* Does Situs work?
Evaluation via the trial version is problematic. The trial period is too short for this type of product, the trial start date is not at the evaluator's convenience, and the trial version is apt not to be the latest.
Now, these are issues that are currently addressable through the user mailing list(s). I'm not going to get into answering the questions about P2004 (which is largely a service release of DXP); my interest here is the process. How would a proxy democracy free association deal better with this problem (essentially, a user question regarding the usability of a company software product)?
First of all, the free association could establish a review board, which could collect experience and opinion from a wide range of users. Such a board would theoretically be capable of adding something to the opinion that is currently not easily available to the mailing list subscribers: focused and weighed analysis. What is really crucial about such a review board is that the process by which it is chosen would be one that would really deserve trust.
2) Simply put, I don't trust Protel 2000. I'm willing to give it a try, but the evaluation is problematic (as stated above). I can't afford to devote a full time block of 30 days for this. I would like to see the evaluation procedure replaced with an ironclad, 100% customer satisfaction, pro-rated one year guaranty:
* Full refund up to 120 days.
* 75% refund up to 240 days.
* 50% refund up to 1 year.
This represents a solid deal, rather than the handful of questionable gimmicks presented in the past. If customers like the product, they'll keep it. A few people may indeed abuse the "free" time, but on the other hand, this may trigger a stampede of customers. It's all within normal business risks.
Very good. Now, you have here an idea, a suggestion to be made to the company. As an individual, you have a limited ability to see that the suggestion is seriously considered. You might -- as I have -- call up Protel Sales and make a suggestion. You might or might not find a sympathetic ear. For some reason, salespeople sometimes seem compelled to defend what they see as the company's position. That is, perhaps, rather bad sales practice, but I've certainly found it to be common.
Let me give a small example. I use the Australian accounting software MYOB. MYOB is designed to run networked, multiuser, peer-to-peer. What this means is that the company file sits on one of the computers, and users run the MYOB software on their own computer, accessing the company file over the network. This means that all the users must transmit huge amounts of data across the network; the implementation is slow unless *all* the computers are fast and the network is fast. 100MB networks are barely tolerable. And it seems that crashes are common. Anything that goes wrong with any of the users can have a persistent effect on other users. Among other irritations, if a user gets dumped (a message appears on a running instance that a remote user is not responding and attempts will cease, and the remote user's instance simply shuts down without further ado), the remote user is still considered logged in, so cannot log in again until *all* users shut down and restart, which resets the user list. Now, faced with this, and an increasingly large company file, it occurred to me to find out if MYOB would run on a server. I suspected it would because I had sometimes accidentally opened an additional instance of MYOB on the computer hosting the company file, and the additional instance ran without hitch. So I called MYOB to find out. One salesperson, the senior one, I talked to said that she had no idea. I think she was lying, in retrospect. (She might have said "I can't say," which may have been the truth, but misleading.) But another told me "I've heard it does work, but the company does not support it." When I suggested that running MYOB on a server could make the program much more usable, I was told that MYOB is a small business program, and therefore most customers would not want to go to the expense and trouble of setting up a server. That was a defense of the company position not to support server usage of the program. (There is nothing in the license to prevent it.) And it was, simply, wrong.
I asked on an independent user group and was told, yes, it runs on a server, and, in fact, this was by far the best way to run it multi-user. So why doesn't the company tell the users, the vast majority of whom don't even know that there is an independent user group; instead they, if they pay for maintenance (which costs almost as much as the program), they may subscribe to a company-sponsored user group. I have no idea what kind of information they get there.....
So I took a computer that was lying about, bought a Windows 2000 Server license for $200, and set everything up. It was easy. And does it ever work! I can now run my accounting program from home across a 56K internet dialup, something that was not even worth trying before. We are now running three users simultaneously, and all of them run faster than a single user on the slower computer that was previously hosting the company file. And we gain some other server advantages, no extra charge. Yes, we did have to spend a little extra, but actually, we spent more on the extra user licenses.... And no more crashes.
Now, an independent user group *could* negotiate with the company on behalf of the users. Some companies would fear that; but, frankly, I'd personally rather deal with coherent and sober representative of all my customers than try to deal with all of them individually. The latter is really impossible, except in isolated instances. I think that a company that intends to profit by serving its customers well would benefit greatly by improved communication with the user base. And one that tries to profit through the ignorance of its customers (MYOB does sell a much more expensive server edition....) may not like the idea. Unlike Altium, MYOB is not about to let its users know that there is an independent user group....
The first scenario infers Protel 2000 user involvement and response. The second scenario infers Altium's involvement and response. Crank these two scenarios through your "New Direction Procedure" and show us what happens.
The details would be determined by the association process. I can only present possibilities. The first issue is facilitated by user organization; that is, users may conduct surveys as well as gather analysis from members.
Real users are, indeed, in a much better position to evaluate software than, for example, "software reviewers," who may install a piece of software, use it for a few days, and make a truly horrible and ignorant assessment, as I have seen happen with Protel.
By the same token, it should be highly useful to the company to know what users -- and potential upgraders -- really want. Presumably, the company will profit by satisfying the needs of its users. It may, to a certain degree, anticipate those needs; sometimes, it might even do a better job than the users themselves, who may be bogged down in day-to-day details. But I have no doubt that better communication between the users and the company will benefit both.
In a proxy-democratic structure, one knows *exactly* where to go, where to send that email, to communicate with the organization as a whole. Even in a very large organization, the structure acts like a filtering and collection system, perhaps similar to how the nervous system operates. That is, if you, as an individual member, with no special participation history with the association, have a suggestion that you'd like to present, you could send it to your proxy, someone you have chosen by watching association communications for a time. Perhaps you long since shut off that direct mail, remaining subscribed to association list(s) only in "special announcement" mode, which still allows the association to reach you, but which means that you don't get routine traffic; which is where most users will probably want to sit, being busy. But you do know who your proxy is. So you make the suggestion to your proxy. Now, in a free association, proxies must be accepted. They are personal connections, not blind votes. So your proxy has agreed, at some point in the past, to receive communication from you and to respond. Your proxy either likes your idea or doesn't. If he or she does not like it, there is an obligation to explain. If you don't like the explanation, you can submit it to someone else. But note that if you can't convince someone you chose as trustworthy that your idea is good, you might save some time for yourself by considering that perhaps it is not good. Or you might improve it. A free association does not bind you, and it provides you with multiple channels for expression.
And if your proxy likes the idea, the proxy passes it on. As a member, you can watch this process, you can review the communication regarding your idea, and you can, directly if the discussion is taking place at an open level of the organization, or indirectly through your proxy if the discussion is taking place at a high level in a large organization, continue to comment on your own idea if you think it is not getting a full hearing. And if the idea reaches the top of the organization, then the organization takes it to the company. And at this point it may be going with an effective consensus of the users.
Don't you think that the company would be well-advised to give careful consideration to such ideas? The company remains free, and, indeed, it is the company's responsibility to its shareholders to take care with what it accepts from the users. But surely the shareholders would want the company to enjoy positive relations with the users. Frankly, if a free association of users is in place, and the company is responsive to it, the users will come to think of the company as "their" company. Why switch to another CAD system if the company behind the one you already have is responsive to what you need?
Note that I think that Altium is already remarkably and unusually responsive to the users.
PS Objective diligence is preferable to empty slogans.
Perhaps. Sometimes slogans can get across a point in an environment full of noise.
Contrary to the pessimistic claim below, people do "lift fingers", many with good intentions - on the other hand, an errant finger sometimes ends up in someone's face. This is likely to invite a fist full of fingers in response. So if you have a worthwhile goal, use objectivity as the finger that points the way.
Now, what I wrote was:
> My slogan: > > Lift a finger, save the world. > But most people won't lift a finger. > > True?
The slogan is intended as a stimulant, not as a rational assessment and explanation. There are really two parts to it. The first is "Lift a finger, save the world." This implies that saving the world -- whatever that means -- is not necessarily a difficult thing, that there might be something *easy* that could be done. Indeed, it is my suggestion that if "saving the world" is difficult, it won't happen. So the suggestion in the first part of the slogan is that there may actually be something very simple that could be done which would have deeply salutary effects on the body politic. And I'm suggesting that founding free associations for almost *any* purpose is that action. If you are going to found an organization, and that organization is of a nature that it will benefit from broad participation, I'd suggest investigating the work that is being done on this kind of structure, and, if it seems that it could help, use it. This simple action -- which should theoretically reduce the effort needed from individual members to maintain participation in an association, while retaining the power of direct democracy -- might have far-reaching consequences. But, if not, it might still help in the instant situation. And what's the harm?
If you were being asked to contribute substantial sums of money, or to, for example, entrust *me* with the user association, perhaps there could indeed be substantial harm. But that is not what is being suggested.
However, nothing is going to happen with the user association unless someone *other* than me picks up the ball and runs with it. I'm here to help. I am still the elected chair of the Protel User Association, but I am not about to put major effort into shoving that Association in some direction, *unless* there are others willing to put in at least a small amount of effort. Your response here is, in fact, in my opinion, a small amount of effort. Obviously, given its nature, it, by itself, will not accomplish the matter! It is not sufficient to keep me interested. I've got other fish to fry, indeed.
Now, as to the second half of the slogan, "But most people won't lift a finger." The first half stands on its own, the second half is merely a comment. And I think it is true. What was said in an attempt to contradict it did not actually contradict it. *Many* people will indeed, lift their finger -- in various ways -- and many will go much further, often burning themselves out in the process. But *most* people won't. Why not?
I think I can explain why. I am *not* condemning them. Indeed, I think, given the history they have experienced, they are making a rational decision not to waste their time. But I am suggesting to them that circumstances have changed. There *is* something quite easy and simple that they could do that has a possibility of success in the political arena, as well as in many other arenas where human networks can serve us. And what do they have to lose?
("Most" is not intended as a mathematical assessment of percentage. Rather, it is simply my experience, talking with many people about politics in particular, that very many people, and, indeed, most people with whom I talk, are not ready to make any move to change the status quo. These people actually *detest* the status quo, it is not that they think it favors them. But they are burned-out, cynical, and in despair. Winston Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government. Except for all the others."
This is a profoundly cynical statement. The democracy that Mr. Churchill knew was a deeply flawed implementation, vulnerable to many, many hazards, as is the U.S. system. "The others" that Mr. Churchill was talking about were oligarchies, and especially they were oppressive and unrestrained oligarchies (and one of the hazards of democracies is that they can become oligarchies even while retaining the form of a democracy); and, yes, majority rule -- which is probably pretty much what he had in mind -- is better than *minority* rule. But there is something even better than majority rule; it is the consent of free individuals to act coherently. Free associations, theoretically, would facilitate this.
Now, I've explained this concept to a lot of people. I've heard a lot of reactions. Most are positive (but that does not mean that the people then sign up!), but a few are negative. The negative reactions are telling.
(1) "I could never entrust my vote to anyone else." This one is especially interesting because I've heard it from people who are thoroughly disempowered, in fact. They have never had even the opportunity to vote for a candidate whom *they* would have chosen. And in a representative democracy, in the deliberative bodies (city council, state houses, federal houses), someone else is casting his or her vote. In other words, their vote is *already* entrusted to someone else, and in sovereign bodies, with real authority over major aspects of the life of the citizen. In a free association, the association has no power over the members, it merely recommends action to them. If it does so well, they will act; if not, their action may not be coordinated, but it will still be free. An no member of a free association is compelled to give their proxy to anyone. It is just that they have the *right* to do so.
(2) "Power corrupts. They will find a way to corrupt the association. Perhaps they will buy off the proxies." This is an example of the cynicism that I find widespread. However, it does not understand the mechanisms of a free association. I can't say that free associations will be invulnerable to corruption, but, without going into all the details, they should be quite resistant to it. In any association doing business considered important to the members, important enough that most of them will at least occasionally pay attention, the actions of proxies will be fully visible, and the arguments preceding their votes visible as well. If a proxy is suddenly acting contrary to the sense of the arguments, it should stand out like a sore thumb, unless the proxy is very, very clever. And proxies *at a low level* won't be representing very many people. To buy enough of them off would be frightfully expensive. Expensive and risky: not an environment suggesting investment in corruption. So the corrupters would try to buy off high-level proxies. And these proxies would be subject to much more scrutiny by those they represent; once again, if the proxies vote, say, to support some cause and they do not manage to convince their direct-communicating members of their decision, the decision will be of little effect. There are liquid democracy proposals that involve secret voting; I've avoided that because I think the best protection against corruption is an open process....
3. "Most people won't lift a finger." This, in fact, is an objection I've heard. I'm just repeating it, really. However, free associations don't depend on "most people." They depend on those people who are willing to take some minimal action. Those people will have amplified power. If they don't represent the generality with that power, the generality will sooner or later feel the pain. And will, I think, join, balancing out the power. Politically, you'd have to say that I'm generally "progressive." I'd like to see progressive organizations adopt free association structures, particularly because I think that it will make them politically successful. However, my goals and visions are beyond that. If *any* political action group (think, perhaps, moveon.org) adopts free association structures, I think that group will out-compete other groups. And, if you can't beat them, join them. Eventually, as I see it, political bias in free associations will become much, much less important.
4. And now there is a new one. "I don't like your slogan." Great. Don't like it. You don't have to. I don't particularly like the "But most people won't lift a finger" part myself. But, do you have some better suggestion? I'd love to hear it!
(Note that there are details of the structure that have not necessarily been represented here. If something I've written doesn't seem to make sense, it may be that there is a detail which has not been disclosed. As an example, did I mention that I consider it very much advisable in free associations to restrict the number of direct proxies that may be collected by any individual? The exact number will vary with the nature of the organization, but the real criterion is that the proxy must be able to receive and open to communication with all persons who have directly chosen him or her. In a general-purpose association -- like a political action group -- where there may be substantial traffic, that number might be relatively small, say 20. There is a secondary effect in providing some level of protection against corruption and fraud.)
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