Bob Geldofesque ramblings

["Pras Anand" <pras_anand(at)hotmail.com>]

"To the group,l believe that Bob Geldof general comes accross as having his heart in the place when it comes to fighting for people who are living in poverty,as a group, should we not be trying to get him interested in our group,and even with get him, helping to promote what were are about."

As it happens, Bob Geldof seems only to be doing this whole thing to boost his career. Besides, what have we got to offer him? A group of people talking about Direct Democracy? I can imagine what he would have to say to that. "Do something, then I'll talk to you". I've spoken to his PA a few times and I think that she is definitely interested in ways of boosting his career in terms of gettin involved in projects with a high visibility. What is the visibility of this forum? Bear in mind the live aid projects had a large audience. Why would he spend time on this forum? To hear us ramble on about nothing substantial?

If you are laughing now, then I want to connect with you. If you are feeling insulted - I must have been talking about you! Either way - let's start proposing some ideas about how we would get someone on whatever level (I have links to most) to get interested in this forum. Or let's be realistic and see how this forum can become part of other more substantial projects. Next time I'm organising a panel fot a conference I will look to this forum. If that is something you are engaged in or want to be engaged in, let me know please :)

Anyone from DD Forum poster to Global aid festival organiser can say something which has no real action. If you say it to millions of people and they believe you - it get's created (You might want to read that one again and really think about how that has an effect on democracy as a concept). If you say it in a tiny internet forum, only we hear it and we are already converted hence our presence.

back to the point

People who are living in poverty in a group has little to do with direct democracy. What will the group use the tool for? to give themselves more money? They need it - they are starving - of course. But where will it come from? Other budgets spent on unnecessary items probably. Of course there is a lot of waste in the councils. A lot of badly spent money. This is because politicians do not have commercial skills (usually). It is also because the council bodies aren't rewarded for saving money (actually it's the contrary) and also because there is no competition. It's a management organisation that is garaunteed to spend our taxes on a variety of complex implementations that support our existence.

Existing bases like archaic government technologies are seen as fossilic dinosaurs. This is because they were and are still designed to be inefficient. Today this is changing and I just wanted to point out also that "power" is a dynamic of changing ecologies such as human interaction or group decision making. Power of one over another is a basic dynamic. We should not prescribe to the thought that we can be equal, because some will rise above others - always. Since this is an idealogical point, I'd like to suggest that we cannot expect some kind of ideal to become a reality. We can strive for an ideal - but striving means creating actions to shift the situation in your favour. I'm not trying to say one method is right and another is wrong.

What I'm trying to say is that expecting that a working equality of mankind and a distributed digital voting tool with ful pervasion is going to be created overnight is not realistic. These ideologies are fine - but real world practice is suggesting that there is a hige shift in governmental powers and bodies which acknowledge the need for DD. So shall we help them to build it? Or carry on being annoyed that it doesn't exist without any concrete contribution?

I hope we can post some examples of these here.