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01281: Re: [WDDM] Re: 'Vision of democracy'

From: common1(at)voicesfordd.com
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:37:50 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Re: 'Vision of democracy'

Mark,

I apologize for the lateness of the reply, but personal affairs
have kept me from visiting the internet lately.

Yes, if you have read "America," which is my hypothetical true democracy,
then you should understand that I seriously mean that every citizen should
vote upon every issue that influences his or her life, for in America
voting is a duty and not a privilege.

No! police enforcement is not involved, for not voting is not a crime,
merely a dereliction of an obligation and a duty of citizenship. It is the
citizen's choice whether or not to comply with these requirements.

And yes, I do believe that dereliction of such a duty should be forfeiture
or reduction in one of the benefits society bestows upon its citizens for
fulfilling their obligations to society. After all, a true functioning
democracy presumes a mature, logical citizenry. Without such, there can be
no true democracy. That's why education of the public is the necessary
first step in any attempt to install a true democracy in the U.S.

Lee

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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
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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
....



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CURRENT GENERATIONS WILL IT TO BE!
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