What is Democracy?

Knowledge Collection Political Innovation
, ,
1

Is Democracy a so called “Representative System” ?

Based on my understanding , and using wikipedia, apparently not ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

What is a “Representative System” ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_(politics)

Are we in a representative system ?

No, not in my opinion ( possibly in some cases, at a local council level ? )

  • even less so at a european level.

Majority rule ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_rule

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

Hence, what do we mean by re-activating democratic institutions ?

Do we mean, attempting to legitimize non-democratic institutions ?

See ladder of participation :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_(decision_making)

And what is this current initiative doing ?

Is it doing “Consultation” ? / “Tokenism” ?

http://lithgow-schmidt.dk/sherry-arnstein/resources/ladder-of-citizen-participation.gif

http://lithgow-schmidt.dk/sherry-arnstein/ladder-of-citizen-participation.html

////

If the mission is to “re-activate” democratic institutions, does this assume there have been democratic institutions in the past ?  Which ones ?

////

What about economics and finance ?

Do we fully understand the mechanisms of artificial scarcity embedded into the information systems of money and various other forms of financial contracts based on money ?

And how they are used to excert , or concentrate, control - non democratically - ?

////

What is legitimate ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_(political)

What is sovereign ? and for Whom ?

2

Starting to get it!

Hey Dante, I am starting to understand better your mission reports! Still a lot of links, but this time it is simpler for me to follow your line of thinking. Congrats.

The finer points of “what is democracy” is something we (as in humankind) will be debating for a long time. The idea behind this mission is to collect some experiential data by people who have decided to engage with traditional politics. This is not so common for European young people, according to the data presented here. I, myself, am not one of those people. But some Edgeryders (Ionela, Giulia, Vinay are three examples) have decided to commit, have joined parties or whatever, and are doing their best to make the workd a better place using the time-honored toolbox of democratic politics.

Do you have any experience you wish to relate? Or maybe you want to engage with one of those I mentioned?

3

Hi Alberto,

Thanks.

Indeed, I

Hi Alberto,

Thanks.

Indeed, I do have some experience.

some forum posts on which I tried to differentiate between the “institutions” and “the networks”

http://www.forum.fyeg.org/

http://www.forum.fyeg.org/viewforum.php?f=11&sid=9b52edc6e676a4fc674e2d20c92d9a31

I also realize that despite a framework aimed at empowerment,

that in my experience, the framework centralizes control and does not necessarily enable participation, as information often gets hoarded.

Furthermore, as I experienced last year,

there is a form of tokenization, where forums are created,

with an apparent process of deliberation,

but this process is then oriented in such a way as to validate the already before decided policies ( often coming from specific influent people within the party ),

hence only giving some impression of democratic process.

4

I’d like to play LEGO blocs

Good point. I’m not sure too what exactly ‘reactivating’ institutions really means. I tried and I failed… to make a story short.

I see this as trying to do something better with what currently lies there. And it is at this precise moment that my brain wants to explode. Euh.

These past six months, I had the opportunity to reflect and discuss with many people. I still believe in my favorite model of open government, but I realize there are other older models in place that hinder and impede on the implementation of the new.

The resistance lies in people’s heads.

This is where there is the most risk aversion.

I wish I could remove all the heads, and replace them with new more enlightened minds. Much as one can do with LEGO blocks.

Let us not lose hope. This will probably take decades… and a couple more centuries… to see a lasting change that makes sense and is good for democracy and for everyone. I believe it will happen. We are in the process of learning how to make this change now. We play music the music like a 2 year old blows in a flute for now, but someday, we will create magnificent symphonies.

5

It’s worth remebering a few things about power…

1> Power flows from the barrel of a gun - Chairman Mao

i.e. we need to be aware of how lethal force is created and controlled in our societies, that is we pay for an Army with taxes, and have a legal system and elected government which create laws and enforce them.

2> Anarchy tends to hierarchy given time

As we’ve seen with long experience in many, many chaotic situtations

3> Is a level playing field the most we can hope for?

And, if so, who decides what level looks like?

It’s all the Calculus of Competing Virtues in the end, there’s no center to the system which we can leverage.