At 04:04 PM 6/30/2005, Bagotronix Tech Support wrote:
So, my criticism is not directed anywhere but to my own country.
Unfortunately, there is nothing the average US citizen (i.e. me) can do to
change it.
Actually, the main reason there is nothing the average citizen can do to
change it is that the average citizen, indeed nearly all citizens, so believe.
While we do have Representatives in Congress, they only act on issues
that are considered by the monied interests that fund their election
campaigns. We have only 2 significant political parties, which are
effectively just one party for trade and economic issues.
You have a representative in Congress? I don't. Sure, I voted, and it even
happens that in my district, the one I voted for actually won, but does
this make him my representative? I didn't choose him, not really, I merely
selected him out of the limited options presented to me. In most districts,
really there is only one option, in fact, usually the incumbent. Yes, I can
vote for the other one, and I can also whistle in the wind.
This is not representation, you want representation, you do what is done in
corporations. Corporations are direct democracies of money (or, more
accurately, shares purchased). You own a share, you got a vote. And you
don't have to go to the meeting, you can name anyone you choose. Now,
*that's* representation.
Direct democracy works quite well in small organizations. I live in a Town
Meeting town, population about 1000. Town Meeting really works, it is a joy
to see! (Yes, if everyone showed up, it would be impossible, but actually
it's hard enough to get a quorum, unless there is something that has gotten
everyone fired up.)
But the well-known problem is the problem of scale. As organizations get
larger, meetings can get impossible. Organizations like the U.S. House --
which is actually enormous -- function by breaking most everything down
into committees, where the real work is done. The main floor is mostly for
show.
So how do you have a direct democracy that is large? I already gave the
answer, but for some reason we almost never think of it when we think of
government. Proxy voting allows a hybrid of direct and representative
democracy *without elections.* Elections inherently disenfranchise everyone
but those who are actually represented by the winner. This is often not
even a majority of the voters, much less a majority of the population.
But simple proxy voting will only work well, reachiing up to a certain
scale, particularly in a corporate environment where management sends out
proxy assignments to all shareholders inviting them to please sign this
form and send it back giving their proxy to Mr. Fox. And so many clueless
shareholders do it that, indeed, the foxes end up guarding the henhouse. It
still works reasonably well, because the interests of the foxes and the
hens usually line up. Foxes like the hens to be fat and happy. Unless a fox
gets too hungry and eats more than his quota of hens. Then the other foxes
gang up on him.
Large institutional shareholders, you can bet, don't sign those proxies. So
what is the small shareholder to do? Well, you might find out who exercises
the proxies of large institutional shareholders, and assign your proxy to
that person or organization (there are companies which do nothing but
this.) Or you could do what I'm recommending that we all do in the
political arena. (Forming an FA/DP organization of shareholders would be
the analogy, see below.)
Changing the laws is extremely difficult. There is an effect that preserves
inequity in power structures: those who benefit from the inequity will act
to preserve it, and, by the condition of the problem, they have greater
power. So, for example, the U.S. electoral college is actually a
brilliantly-conceived institution, but the framers did not anticipate that
states would assign electors by party affiliation, and all to one party.
The left the method of choice of electors up to the states, and when the
party system arose, the parties noticed that, if they were in the majority,
they could set up a system whereby all the electors would go to the
plurality winner in the state. Most of the obvious insanity of the
Electoral College is rooted in this. So Florida was an issue in 2000
because Florida has a lot of electoral votes, and the whole pile of votes
is assigned to the plurality winner, no matter how slim the margin. It is
crazy, indeed, and it is primarily this which produces the phenomenon we
saw in 2000, that the national plurality winner lost to someone who
received, after the smoke cleared, something like 500,000 votes less.
So why does this cockamamie system stand for 200 years? Well, the majority
party benefits from it. The minority party loses electoral votes.
State-by-state, it is always in the interest of the majority party to keep
the system. There was an initiative in Colorado to go to proportional
assignment of electors. It lost. And that is utterly no big surprise. The
effect of one state changing its rules is always counter to the interest of
the majority party in that state. Even though these are state rules, to
change the situation would probably take a constitutional amendment,
because that would ensure that it was implemented nation-wide all at once,
in which case *usually* it would not shift an election outcome.
So what can we do about this, except flap our lips, wave our fingers at our
keyboards, or wring our hands?
We don't need to change the laws, we need to change our attitudes, staring
with the idea that there is nothing that can be done, and continuing to the
idea that if anything might be done, it will be hard. "If you want to
change the world, it has to be easy."
As people might have noticed, I've not been terribly active on the Protel
lists lately. That's because all my spare time is going into developing and
publicizing the BeyondPolitics concept, which boils down to this idea:
It is possible to design a mass organization which is a direct democracy,
which is efficient, and which is so structured as to be able to maximize
consensus. The organization is trustworthy by design. It can't run off with
your money because it does not collect your money. It can't speak for you
unless you authorize it. Once such organizations exist, there would be no
good reason *not* to join, because nothing is lost, but opportunities are
gained.
These are what I call FA/DP organizations. FA: Free Association, which
refers to certain characteristics derived, in summary, from the traditions
of Alcoholics Anonymous, probably the most successful peer organization
ever. It is everywhere. DP: Delegable Proxy. Proxy is the same as with
corporate proxies, i.e., any member of the organization has the inalienable
right to vote directly, but also has the right to name someone else to
exercise that right. (Sometimes people think of proxy voting as instructed
voting, which is fatal to deliberative democracy, but it is not. The proxy
is free, the only remedy of the proxy-giver is to change the assignment,
which can be done at any time, or to vote directly.)
Simple addition of proxy voting probably makes direct democracy function up
to a few thousand people. Beyond that it becomes vulnerable to manipulation
by special interests; hence delegability. Delegability allows members to
name *anyone* as their proxy, and preferably someone they know, or at least
can contact and expect a response. By making the assignments automatically
transitive, a fractal structure is created that will, for the most part,
cause the representation of the large majority of members to be
concentrated to a relatively small number of people. So if A names B and B
names C, and A and B do not vote in a poll, the vote of C counts as three.
But it is about much more than voting. In a nutshell, the proxy acts like a
bidirectional synapse and filter. The access of members to the organization
as a whole is through a chosen and trusted individual, and it is that same
individual who will advise the member regarding organizational decisions.
Freely. The organization controls neither the member nor the proxy. All the
organization does is to facilitate communication and cooperation.
Now, what would become possible if large numbers of people could very
efficiently cooperate? Among many, many other things, they could bring the
political systems under control.
To do this to completion would require that most people join. That is not
going to immediately happen. But FA/DP orgs, once they exist, my analysis
tells me, will be very, very easy to join. They will not require more work
or the processing of more information and traffic than the member is
inclined to accept. Someone who wants to be very active, there is nothing
to stop him or her. Someone who simply wants to wait and watch can do so.
Nobody is forced to name a proxy. But if they do, they *will* be
represented in organization polls. Notice I say polls rather than votes.
Because these orgs are FA, they don't control property, they don't announce
controversial positions as being the decision of the whole organization
unless it really is the *whole* organization, no exceptions; rather, they
simply advise. They advise their members regarding actions which the
members can individually take, such as joining another organization,
sending money to this or that cause, or voting. The actual power remains
with the members, who can choose to ignore the advice. The members, those
who did not actually participate in decisions, will probably be strongly
influenced by their chosen proxies, who were, after all, chosen because
they were trusted. The organization as a whole does report the results of
polls, fully, both with and without proxy votes; a vote of 4,398,271 to 13
(personally voting or by proxy) would be reported just like that. The same
vote might note that, at the annual meeting, 27 people representing
3,176,270 members voted Yes, an additional 222,001 members voted Yes by
internet method, and one person voting in person and 12 voting by internet
voted No. (And abstentions or absences would also be reported, I just
didn't make up numbers for those....)
If the organization is divided, if it can come to no clear consensus, the
caucuses that are effectively formed by proxy trees on each side (or on all
sides) are completely free to act independently. But in that case, if the
trees are both substantial -- assuming two -- they may cancel each other
out. There is a strong motivation to find a consensus position, because, if
it can be found, the result will be far more powerful and effective. Think
voting blocks, think moveon.org.
It is not necessary that all people join. Even a relatively small number
could accomplish a great deal. The U.S. political system is vulnerable to
manipulation by special interest groups, whether of economic interest or
ideology or other affiliation. What is missing is organization of the people.
And there is nothing to stop it but inertia. The elements are known to
work. FAs do really function well to maintain group unity (that's why AA
adopted its traditions). DP is really just a small extension of the proxy
voting that is a major cause, in my view, of the success of the corporate
system. (But corporations suffer from other problems; being an FA protects
an organization from most of that.)
Okay, but this is the fly in the ointment: getting people to believe that
change is possible is *really* difficult. The BeyondPolitics plan is to
develop the concept and default rules for FA/DP organizations, and to
publicize the organizational technology and suggest its application where
it may be appropriate. If even a few small organizations try it, there will
have been demonstrations. If it works, it will be imitated. And people will
come to understand that it *is* possible to have a democracy that does not
disempower them.
It's not rocket science, so why hasn't this idea come along before? I'm not
sure. I've seen some references to proxy democracy concepts among
anarchists going back more than a century. But, of course, we wouldn't want
to accept any anarchist ideas, would we? My opinion is that there are
several reasons. Most people don't even think of it, proxies are some
business thing and we all know how corrupt business is. And people in
positions of political power, generally, don't really want democracy. If
they think of these things, they want the continuation of privileged
position; they would rather have a pale imitation of democracy to keep the
ignorant masses from changing things.
This happens on the left and the right: I've found a very interesting
phenomenon. There are many organizations devoted to improving our democracy
in this or that way. There is a major organization devoted to promoting
Instant Runoff Voting, an excellent reform in my opinion, but by no means
the simplest or best. There is actually a much simpler one, doesn't take
any ballot or equipment changes, and it is actually possible it could come
by judicial fiat: Approval Voting, which boils down to stopping the
practice of discarding overvotes (one more thing which swung Florida 2000,
by the way: among many other weirdnesses, ballots with Gore punched and
Gore written in by voters who apparently wanted to make it clear how they
were voting (remember the butterfly ballot?), were considered spoiled,
because they contained "two votes")
All these organizations, almost without exception, are not democratically
organized. They are oligarchical structures. And the reason: the general
belief is that if you want to get something done, you have to take charge
and control it. Democracy is inefficient and quirky, it is believed. A
democratic organization might change our precious idea, and, after all, we
are the smart people, the good people, the ones who know what is best for
everyone.
You spend your money on an organization, you have the right to determine
its policies. I'm not saying that there is something wrong with
oligarchical structures. I'm just saying that they are not democratic and
it is unlikely that they will actually act to promote democracy, except in
certain narrow ways that benefit the proponents. IRV, for example, most
supporters believe, will help small parties gather strength, for no longer
will voters be forced to waste their vote or vote for someone other than
their preference.
You are seeing it here: you may, if you wish, continue to believe that you
are powerless. You are powerless only because you do not communicate and
coordinate with other like-minded people, you are powerless because you
remain relatively isolated. You now have a choice.
FA/DP organizations are starting. I proposed what was really FA/DP
technology for the Protel Users Association years ago. Big yawn. But a wiki
has been set up at http://protel-users.org
It could be used by members to form a functioning organization, and there
is also the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] It has a
substantial subscriber base, but very little activity. Bylaws were
proposed, as I recall. Big yawn.
If there is *any* interest shown, I'll participate actively to facilitate
the process. A Protel users FA/DP organization could accomplish a great
deal; one of its tasks would be to represent the users to Altium, but there
are many others. Because it is DP, you can participate and be represented
*without* having to watch everything, you can simply choose to amplify the
voice of someone else you've seen and trust, by naming that person as your
proxy.
And in the political realm, here are the URLs:
http://beyondpolitics.org is the original web site
http://beyondpolitics.org/wiki is the wiki, with more recent writing
http://av.beyondpolitics.org is an FA/DP organization for promoting
Approval Voting
There are also other special purpose seed sites linked from the BP site.
And, in addition, there is
http://myob-users.org because, as it happens, we use MYOB accounting software.
And, yes, Beyond Politics is an FA/DP organization, and the DP part of it
will be implemented when anyone requests it....
I said above that we don't need everyone to join. The fact is that it is
very difficult to get *anyone* to join, more than a few, with all or nearly
all of those being passive. When there are two or three who actually start
to do something, it will happen.
So one person can make a huge difference. I've been writing elsewhere that
what is needed is a seed crystal, a very small group that catalyzes the shift.
If people spent one-tenth the energy addressing the systemic problems as
they spend struggling with all the problems that are only symptoms of the
systemic problems, those problems would be solved and the symptoms would
vanish. Yes, there would still be problems. But different ones, and there
would be a much more powerful tool to use to address them, nothing less
than the collective intelligence of humanity.
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