Re: Regarding rule by representatives

[echarp <emmanuel.charpentier(at)free.fr>]

Delegation is, just as you wrote, an option to delegate one's vote to
another voter.

That process does not need to stop at only one level, it could be
"transitive". That is, the second voter could /also/ delegate his votes
(note the "s").

Then, you actually are obtaining a process where a few people on some
matters will be able to cast all decisions. It could be a commission or
a single individual, but anyway this entity will have all control over
this particular issue.

This "nomination", could be done as a referendum, or through multiple
layers of delegation.

For exemple: one million people all choosing one general in chief. Or
one million people delegating to 4400 others, who in turn will delegate
to some 105, then, etc..., resulting in a handful of people who can then
decide to manage things by themselves, or will yet another time delegate
to one big general.

It's very much "liquid democracy":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

I have no trouble with sortition, but even Athenians found that generals
had to be elected, not randomly chosen.

On Mon, Jun 11, 2007 at 03:53:01PM -0700, M. Kolar wrote:
>   I imagine the future democracy as a  federation of individual
> communities (I think the distributed democracy terms coined here
> recently is the same thing), where decision-making would be done locally
> as much as possible (all that concerns only one
> neighbourhood/village/town/etc. would be decided locally), so that not
> many decisions will have to be done on higher levels of governments - so
> one should not expect too many votes in these higher levels, only on
> really important things.

I also imagine it very much so. In those communities the need for
delegation will be lessened.

But, some larger issues involving the federation or just inter community
mgmt might have to be decided upon, and there is no limit to their
number, particularly in case of crisis. Then how? Delegates could be one
way.

echarp