| From: | "Bruce Eggum" <bruceeggum(at)gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date: | Fri, 1 Jun 2007 05:21:48 -0500 |
| Subject: | Re: [WDDM] Role of executive - Re: [WDDM] Truer Democracy |
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
>
>
....