From: | "Mark Antell, editor CitizenPowerMagazine.net" <citizenp(at)citizenpowermagazine.net> |
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Date: | Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:36:11 -0400 |
Subject: | Re: 'Vision of democracy' |
Lee, I like the part where you talk about devolving decision making to the most local governance. But did you really mean all citizens must (my emphasis) vote? That implies penalties for not voting. Plus police enforcement. Plus maybe increased penalties for repeated 'willfull non-voting.' I don't much like that. Mark . common1(at)voicesfordd.com wrote: Mirek, It is my vision of democracy that citizens will vote on all relevant issues to their well-being. If of local interest, only those citizens effected will vote; if of regional interest, those citizens effected, and if national, all citizens must vote. This to me is true decocracy conducted by mature adults, and nothing else fits the definition of true democracy. Lee Gottlieb --------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear PVR, at least the source of my confusion was clarified: when I read your notes about "partyless mechanism", I made a mental shortcut and thought that you automatically mean "representative-less mechanism," because this is how I understand DD. All: I think that we really need to produce a glossary of terms and their clear definitions first, and use them all in the same way. It seems to me that right now almost each of us means by Direct Democracy something at least a little bit different. And then we (or some of us) are also mixing together the final goal of real democracy (DD), and the transition of the present system to that goal, and are also using the term DD to denote various possible intermediate stages of that transition. We all will naturally (I hope) support any little incremental improvements that bring us closer to the final goal. So independent representatives (instead of representatives subjected to party discipline), semi-direct democracy, I&R are all things that we should support, but not consider a final goal. I think that an organization promoting DD should use in its internal dealing strictly the true democracy (the final goal). That is no decision-making representatives at all, all the decisions are made by all members (i.e., by all who bother to participate in discussion and voting; everybody must of course be well informed about all issues to be decided in advance, those who do not have an opinion on the given issue, will naturally not participate in voting/decision making on that issue).. Executive Board will really only execute the decisions of the members, not make any decisions themselves. But it can of course choose a technical means (the best technical means for the given task) to realize a decision made by all. Only such technical "decisions" need not be as a rule approved by all. But executive should always be accountable, and be ready to explain all the technical procedures used to implement a decision (of principle) of all members, In real life, in a future real democracy, people will of course not vote on whether an ambulance will be dispatched to a particular address or a pothole in a certain street filled. Nobody (no advocate of an executive that is a strict servant of the people and makes no decisions for them) proposes such a nonsense. But all people will be able to set directly their priorities: for example how many potholes they can tolerate, and how short ambulance response time they want, if one has to make trade-offs between perfect roads and good medical system. All people will together allocate all the funds available for public spending between various projects. They may even give some general instructions about procurement procedures, about minimal wages paid in public services or in companies hired to do the public projects (fill potholes), and the executive will then have to find engineering ways and technical means how to fulfil the directions obtained by all people, for example to make sure that the ambulance response times are as short as people wanted them, and there are no more potholes on average that people wanted to tolerate. Then one could have some control bodies that would check on executive whether they use the public funds in an efficient way. So I want a WDDM executive that has no decision powers at all as explained above, and only executes decisions by all and looks for technical means how to realize them. Mirek Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan wrote:Dear All, I totally agree with what Eric Lim has stated but unfortunately what I have stated earlier seems to be have been misunderstood. By 'rule by representatives' I meant what Eric has in mind - 'rule with the consent of the governed'. I am totally against party politics. But I feel that we still need to elect our representatives - all of them as independents - free from any party obligations. This will ensure that we will have a partyless mechanism within the elected house to carry out the business. On the other hand Mark as well as many advocating DD are totally against having anything to do with representatives. Jiri Polak's formulation of semi-direct democracy also does not fit into it. Mark, kindly clarify further. Whatever be our differences regarding the nomenclature, we are united in the spirit of ushering in a truer democracy and ending the pseudo-democracy that is prevalent. However differences have to be sorted out to formulate a workable action plan. Mirek, answering your concern: What I meant was that we do need to put our trust on representatives who are independents, free from party obligations, assuming that the partyless mechanism within the elected house would enable them to act according to their conscience. It is still possible that some may get elected as independents and after that behave in a partisan manner favouring a particular political party (kept out of bounds from the elected house) or group. The press and other pressure groups would expose such deviations and the voters can always recall them. PVR.... |