Bruce,
I wonder how you equated True Democracy with - "No president, No prime minister etc.
Just the people making decisions...". I think you have the 'anarchist' conception of
democracy in mind.We have discussed a lot about True Democracy on the Forum. I am giving
a link that explains how the concept of True Democracy is in tune with the existing
kind of representative democracy. It also explains how the tools of I&R can be
integrated into the process of governance: http://www.world-wide-democracy.net/forum/read.php?23,641,641#msg-641
First we should get there into the corridors of government. This can be done from
the grass roots and this movement can do it provided it is not preoccupied with I&R only.
Vijayaraghavan Padmanabhan
On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:00:46 -0500 wddm@world-wide-democracy.net wrote
Direct Democracy
It is difficult to go in two directions at once. I bring these questions up so we may discuss it a bit. Of course this is my opinion; I am
looking for moreinformation.
There seemto be two popular modes of DD. One beggars the people to make all decisions. Somecall this “True Democracy” or other term. This
model usually eliminates governmentas we know it. No Presidents, Prime Ministers, Senate, Congress, Parliamentjust the people making
decisions. There is a void however, how would thedecisions be carried out? How would they be evaluated and who wouldadministrate the
financing? There would have to be some huge administrativemechanism to accomplish the decisions of the people. How would this besupervised?
Anotherquestion is who would be voting? Would the elite be the majority participatingin these elections? Would minorities simply be
discounted?
My questionsto WDDM is; does WDDM want to support this type of “True Democracy” at thistime? Have we progressed to the point we could do so?
The presentrepresentative system has rules and constitutional requirements about equalrights, Liberty, minority rights etc. This system
built over many years now hassome safe guards. However there are times this system makes decisions which arecontrary to the majority of the
people.
The second methodis the “Swiss model” which retains the “Representative System” but addsInitiative and Binding Referendum. This system
oversees the Representatives andprovides the people the tools to directly alter or stop any and all legislationthe people disagree with.
With this oversight, the Representatives are morecautious in their decisions, knowing the people can change the decisions aswell as recall
the Representative.
Indeed, if thepeople wanted to eliminate Representative Government, they could build thenecessary administrative mechanism; develop rules,
laws and constitutionalrequirements necessary to accomplish this using the Swiss model. Once thenecessary systems were functioning, the
people could use the Swiss System andsimply pass an Initiative implementing the new way.
I think WDDM needs to decide specifically what itsAIM is and how to carry it out. I ask that we deliberate the above questionswith much
discussion. What do you think?