Thinking about democratic institutions and how they require you to: Persuade others, outnumber others, ally with others or disenfranchise others.
I feel like there other options but can’t verbalize them... anyone?
@tomasino no not options to democracy, I meant options within democratic institutions
@mala create confidence in outcomes
@mala Have you read 'Utopia for Realists'? I've just started, but it already feels like it might give me some mental tools to push beyond classical democracy.
Single transferable vote? I guess that still requires you to convince others (but less often) #liquiddemocracy
@mala I'll start by saying "if it was easy, it'd be done already"
Sortition--election by lottery--bypasses popularity contests and ends up with samples which are far more representative of the population (99.99% of which are not politicians.) Athenian stuff apparently.
Of course, you don't need to have one body: bicameral or tricameral arrangements are possible.
Liquid delegation, only really possible thanks to web tech, is a new possibility.
@mala what I would love the most is for petitions to deterministically lead to referenda.
E.g. every year the petition with most signatures is put forward to governmental and non-governmental bodies, they draft a number of proposals and the public vote.
Possibly tangential, but I watched a rather good overview by CGP Grey of "The Dictator's Handbook (why bad behaviour almost is always good politics)" which also addresses democracy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
HT
This idea that the primary rule of of politics is identifying and fostering "key supporters" and the consequential incentives explains a lot, I think.
I was also wondering how this idea might apply to inter/infra co-op politics...
HT @laurelai
@wu_lee @mala @laurelai Thanks, I like that video, watched it a while back.
Hierarchies of any sort seem to inevitably introduce distortions: simply being closer to the top changes your lived experience of those lower down, and makes it harder to relate.
The topic of how to throttle the neg. side-effects of hierarchy are interesting, and I like the provisions in http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
My current interest is the 'direct governance' approach in org.s not as big as nations.
@mala feels like a component of dishonesty is missing. does lying to others count as persuasion or disenfranchisement? i could see how allying with others could feel like lying to oneself.
@mala I have a hobby-horse about this.
Short version: we need better tools for collective decisionmaking.
I have designs for such tools, but not (yet) the resources to be able to prioritize actually writing the code.
Short version of the designs: truth-mapping, p2p accountability, and range-voting.
@mala democracy isn't a universal good. There's alternatives with different strengths and weaknesses.