Hi Michael,
My comments follow ***
Regards
Jim Powell South Africa
From: Michael Stansfield
[pure_democracy(at)yahoo.com]
Sent: 13 Aug 2009 11:09 PM
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Subject: [WDDM] Some of the requirements I have for a direct democracy
system of government
Well said, we
are all leaders and few followers, yet we are the expections to a world of
followers with real few leaders. Also, contray to popular belief not
just any direct democracy plan will work, nor should we accept any plan because
it has the words direct democracy in the name. Some of the requirements I
personally have for a direct democracy system of government: *** The principle of “the politician is the employee
of the voters” should apply
1)
The human rights of the individual should never be able to be
overridden by a majority, ie. Civil Rights, Race, Religion, etc a sacred. *** A constitution with a requirement of 80% on a
referendum should apply to these items
2) The power
of law should remain the strongest at the local level where a person still has
a voice in the process. Submitting my proposal to a community of a 1000
is much easier than 300 million. For example let the people in Kanasis
decide the rights for the people of Kanasis - I have no business creating laws
that effect a people I do not know. The National Law creation process
should be restricted so that some laws can only be decided on the local level
or state level. *** This is a normal approach
in Switzerland
3) Each
Community should have direct control over their taxation and spending
levels. The National Tax and Spending should also be directly controlled
by the people through the vote. *** Agreed
4) The people
should be the only source of law creation and approval, a small exception may
be pollution and other health and safety standards, but even then passage
should be by the people. *** Politicians still have
a role to play. If the legislation they pass is not to the liking of the
electorate, it will be changed
5) I don't
want to be overwhelmed with proposals on voting day. Plans for weekly or
monthly voting nullifies the public to the issues they are voting on.
Also the more proposals you have the less attention each one gets. Rough
estimate, but I'd say if you have more than 25 items on the ballot you have
lost the publics focus on many of them. So how you limit the proposals,
as to which ones get on the ballot, is important. My opinion quality is
more important than quantity. *** When direct
democracy is first introduced, there will be a flurry of items. If the items
are too many then those with the greatest number of signatures should go first
6) Puting
together a group people to give preference to which ideas move forward and
which ones do not or forcing people to change their proposal by making it go
before an elected board defeats the whole process of democracy and creates a
power base among the few. *** Agreed. There should
be officials who would advise those who are about to obtain signatures on the
technicalities that would make a good proposal. Only the structure, not the
content.
From: Lata Gouveia
<latalondon(at)yahoo.co.uk>
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 4:13:00 AM
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Hello as a new member.
Hello Bill... and welcome,
I have been reading your introduction message and some of the responses to
it.
As you can probably tell by now, we have been knocking our heads together for
quite some time about how to define desireable democratic processes and how
to give democracy and the term "Direct" any sort of real meaning.
Many of us have some knowledge, others just opinions, some are published
researchers, some have developed quasi-constitutions which they have shared
with us. Many have proposed models and game trials and all have received
mixed responses from our co-thinkers on here too.
It is great to see this group growing and it is great that new people with
ideas and knowledge are interested in discussing these things. However, I can
tell you I did exactly the same thing when I joined, I thought I would find a
group that's in agreement, a group that is cohesive and ready to take on the
world with a focused and defined objective. Well, that's not quite the case
here. We are still trying to agree amongst ourselves. At times there are more
proposals being offered than people willing to engage with them. Also, it
stands to reason that most people who would bother to join this type of group
are eager to put forward their own contribution, so you will find few
followers here. When your ideas tickle people they will engage with you,
mostly to define where they are in agreement with you and where they are not.
Many will simply re-state they persional ideological mantra. It's all quite
interesting... which Im sure won't be lost on a person of your background. I
hope you don't find that process too frustrating.
I have recently had a discussion on here about the role of the ego in social
behaviour and I wish you had "been here" for that. Personally, I am
beginning to get something out of this group. As for it being an actual tool
for practical projects, I doubt its immediate suitability. We still haven't
found what we're looking for and there are quite a few suggestions we have
been urged to "get behind" that have received a mixed response. But
please don't let this put you off, if you share your views and people
respond, this group is already doing its job. Awareness works in strange
ways.
Welcome once again
Lata
--- On Wed, 12/8/09, Luca Zampetti <luca_zampetti(at)yahoo.it>
wrote:
From: Luca Zampetti <luca_zampetti(at)yahoo.it>
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Hello as a new member.
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Date: Wednesday, 12 August, 2009, 9:21 AM
The proportional voting system in Switzerland
works because of the special social conditions there
("Konkordanzdemokratie"), in many other places this system produces
strong "rent seeking" effects (Italy).
There is no single instrument for controlling the "rent seeking"
influence of special interest groups and of political parties in
"Parteienstaat" models of government, these phenomena can (and
must) be controlled with many instruments.
The direct and/or indirect control of special interests and of parties can be
controlled partially with the return to the Athenian purely stochastic
(s)election for a majority of seats (reserving let´s say 51% of them for
stochastic (s)election. Every voting system can be manipulated and has both
advantages and disadvantages. The point is that no voting system is chosen or
designed explicitely for controlling politics and politicians, but for
empowering them.
Equally important is: increase the number of direct (s)elective positions in
the judiciary and in the executive/administrative branches.
Equally important are additional instruments for voting away politicians and
administrators: recall elections, popular veto elections.
The cost of democracy must be in a relation to its productivity. The overall
goal must be to use direct democracy instruments to guarantee as much as
possible the social productivity of political activities. When the cost is
higher than productivity, like in the Parteienstaat, the political
institutions break down by themselves anyway in the long run. The question is
with what to replace them.
What is required is a general concept for re-engineering democracy so that it
becomes compatible with a new-old requirement, i.e. its
"controllability", which is related to accountability, but only
partially. Our concept of democracy is incomplete: it was successful with
delegation, but very miserable with control. It lacks practically all
efficient instruments of political and fiscal control. The effects are
devastating: we have states that have more powers than totalitarian regimes
and we cannot control them efficiently anymore.
There are some powers that definitely need to be withdrawn from legislative
institutions, like the budgeting rights, which parliaments arrogated from the
kings in many hundreds of years.
Financial referenda should become the standard budgeting procedure.
The budgeting institutions should not be parliaments anymore, but courts of
accounts with popularly elected judges and jurors.
Another power that should be withdrawn is the constitution making and
revision power, it is definitely a separate power from the legislative,
executive and judiciary and it should be institutionalized in separated
PERMANENT constitutional assemblies of directly (s)elected representatives
(small bodies at regional, national and supranational level).
Constitution making and revision should be out of the hands of professional
politicians.
Constitutional initiative, total and partial, should be reserved to the
people with proper referendary procedures "organized" under the
permanent constitutional assemblies.
And so on ...
Luca Zampetti
Da: Jim Powell
<autoinfo(at)acenet.co.za>
A: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Inviato: Mercoledì 12 agosto 2009, 9:33:12
Oggetto: RE: [WDDM] Hello as a new member.
Hi Bill,
I believe that the only way we can get
rid of special interests is for the funding of political parties to be from
the tax base. We should regard this as a cost of democracy
The contributions should be a skewed %
of elected representivity. For example, if the majority party gets 60% of the
vote it gets 50% of the contribution. A party with 10% would get 15%. If a
new party emerges, the contribution will be in accordance with the number of
signatures it obtains. Contributions to political parties and paying of
signature collectors should be illegal.
The Swiss system seems to work well.
One item I disagree with in the Swiss constitution is that the politicians
are on a proportional basis. I believe that there should be a constituency
basis with a vote for PR. This would allow for a reflection of the overall
wishes of the voters
Regards
Jim Powell
From:
William McConochie [tstmastr(at)rio.com]
Sent: 11 Aug 2009 08:08 PM
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Cc: Bill McConochie
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Hello as a new member.
Hi, Hamid. In essence, I do agree with your
description of democracy. Please read articles on my web site, Politicalpsychologyresearch.com. the
book manuscript, publication #3, describes the model for a new form of
political party designed to promote public democracy. Let me know your
impressions. Bill.
----- Original Message -----
To: World
Direct Democracy
Sent: Tuesday,
August 11, 2009 7:28 AM
Subject:
RE: [WDDM] Hello as a new member.
Hi
As I understand the government in direct democracy system is employee of
people and not leaders.
People don´t need to hope and appreciate for services
from government. They employ government members and tell
the government what should be done in a democratic way.
If you agree with me I would like to read about your articles.
Regards
From: tstmastr(at)rio.com
To: wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
CC: bill(at)testmasterinc.com
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 04:40:06 -0700
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Hello as a new member.
Thank you Martin. Let me know your thoughts
and how your members might be interested in my research studies. Bill.
----- Original Message -----
To:
wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Sent:
Friday, August 07, 2009 3:05 AM
Subject: Re:
[WDDM] Hello as a new member.
Bill, welcome to World Wide
Direct Democracy l am sure a person of your standing will bring great
value to our movement, and l look forward to researching your work.
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill(at)Politicalpsychologyresearch.com
To:
wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Sent:
Friday, August 07, 2009 4:01 PM
Subject:
[WDDM] Hello as a new member.
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:03:32 -0700
Hello World Wide Democracy group members:
I am a new member, Bill
McConochie. I am a research psychologist specializing for the past
several years in political psychology research. My findings and
personal inclinations are very consonnant with those of your
organization. I believe I could help you in several ways to promote and
realize your ultimate goal of advancing human civilization to direct
democracy forms of governments. I will list some of these and await
your responses. Before I do that, let me share just a little more
personal background. I have a Ph.D., and 40 years of experience in
clinical, I/O and now political psychology. I have created a non-profit
corp. to publish my research and conduct research over the Internet. I
am a member of the American Psychological Assn, Div. 48 (Peace and Violence
studies), the International Society of Political Psychology, and the Oregon
Psychological Assn. I present papers at the annual meetings of
ISPP. I will present one in Dublin in July (09).
How I might be able to help you:
1. I have research findings that strongly
support human desire for government serving them as members of the community
overall rather than as members of special interest groups. This sort of
data, of which I have much, can support your efforts, giving them an
empirical and not just ideological grounding.
2. I have developed a reliable and valid scale
for measuring the warmongering-proness of political leaders, and have another
one ready for validation measuring constructive leadership traits.
These can be used by the media to help inform voters re: what elected
officials are likely to promote.
3. I have designed a working model for a
political party whose platform is based on member (citizen) polls of what
they want government to provide (policies and programs).
4. Sophisticated public polls on details of
policy issues can be conducted to create the platform for such a party (and
for your organization). They in effect pool all citizen opinions to
create a current empirical definition of the common good. Your
organization could conduct such polls and publish the findings to inform
nations and the world re: what citizens want from government. This can
help pressure standing governments to perform more appropriately and empower
political parties that want to represent the common good (such parties, I
recommend, should be funded entirely with member dues, no special interest
group money). Such parties would fund the campaigns of their
candidates for elective office as well, keeping their elected candidates
independent of the contaminating influence of special interest group money.
5. You could help me by having students and
other groups, e.g. church groups, fill out my research questionnaires,
which are online at my web site.
6. Together we could thus continue the
research that can give empirical grounding to your movement and perfect the
public polls necessary to operationalize public democracy, defining policy
via citizen votes.
This is enough for an
introduction. Please visit my web site to read various research and
essay articles under the Publications page.
Politicalpsychologyresearch.com.
I look forward to hearing
responses.
Best regards, Bill
McConochie
William A. McConochie, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist #225 (Oregon)
71 E.15th Ave., Eugene, Or. 97401
541-686-9934
Bill(at)Politicalpsychologyresearch.com
Much about politics originates in our
minds;
Understanding our minds explains much about politics.
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