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00895: Re: government is the entire unit

From: Richard Moore <rkm(at)quaylargo.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 10:52:26 +0000
Subject: Re: government is the entire unit

Bruce Eggum wrote:
Dear Richard,


Here in the US, government is the entire unit. This includes the Military, Health, Education, Welfare Social Services, Social Security etc. Government includes all these workers; police, fire people, highway construction and maintenance, etc. Some public Utilities such as phone and electricity are "owned" by the communities and they to are a part of government.
    Thus, when you say eliminate government, (as I understand the term) you would destroy everything the people have built for their communities, their society.
     I do not know how to even ask a question to clarify the matter. It is good to realize we are not talking about the same thing. Now how to get on the same page?

Hi Bruce,

I am very pleased that our various dialogs are taking a more positive turn.

I appreciate your comments about the nature of government. I distinguish between the policy-making agencies of government, and implementation agencies. The policy-making agencies include city councils, county supervisors, state legislatures, Congress, and the Executive. My proposals are about people taking over the policy-making roles by means of reaching consensus on policy. When they reach consensus, then they can elect slates of candidates from  their own ranks to all the policy-making agencies.

As regards implementation agencies, I would also add to this corporations and banks -- and all those entities that have the power to do things within our society. These would indirectly come under the control of the people when the people control the policy-making agencies. I would not propose to disband all these entities, but to incrementally shift them to productive purposes, by radical changes in legislation, as determined by the democratic dialog process.


Obviously no one person (you or I) could or should manage all these national decisions and implement them. An administration is needed. Here is where I think Direct Democracy, the Swiss form would be fitting to our situation.
    It could than grow, and if people took more responsibility, government could actually be run directly by the people. Once the people were able to make all the decisions which our "Congress" now makes, and be able to "administer" meaning to operate the many departments, keeping them accountable etc. It would be simple to than make a referendum to utilize this "direct" democracy form of government.

Our concepts are getting very close here.


Now, perhaps you meant to modify the form of government? That would take a large educational process of media, books, websites, etc. Once people were convinced of this method their would be lots of people joining who could eventually "change" the form of government.

The form of government would be unchanged at first, as I've explained above. What I've learned about dialog is that people don't 'get it' through education, but through the personal experience of dialog, and learning that agreement can be reached with their fellows. When they experience this, then they 'know' that a better version of democracy is possible. They don't need to design (or learn) a new system of governance, rather they start creating / evolving a new system together.


This is what I hope WDDM will choose to do. By providing a site which educates the people on the merits of SOME form of direct democracy, people the world over could begin to process this in their communities, discussing it, tearing it apart and putting it together until they have some workable form of Direct Democracy. ...

Here we are in agreement. I would hope that we are still in the discussion stage as regards which form of direct democracy we want to promote. After we reach agreement on a form, then we would need to figure out how we work together to promote it.


UK Dictionary
government
group noun {C} (WRITTEN ABBREVIATION govt)
  the group of people who officially control a country:
 1 the system used for controlling a country, city, or group of people:
 2 the activities involved in controlling a country, city, group of people, etc:

Yes, governments are about controlling us, as is reflected in each of these definitions. My proposal is to create a new form of governance that does not include government. All agencies, even the ones that now write legislation, would become implementation agencies, implementing the consensus will of the people.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/governance
gov·er·nance  (gvr-nns)
n.
1. The act, process, or power of governing; government: "Regaining a sense of the state is thus an absolute priority, not only for an effective policy against . . . terrorism, but also for governance itself" Moorhead Kennedy.
2. The state of being governed.

My proposals are about 'the process of governing'. Moorehead is saying that we need a strong state in order to control people. I am saying we need a new form of governance so that the state can't control us.
I think this exchange greatly clarifies our positions.

Rather than debating the two forms, I would suggest we continue clarifying, until we all understand exactly what each other has in mind. In that process, we are likely to move still closer together in our views.

best regards,
richard

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