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Topic: Human Scale Democracy-Consensus (Read 2296 times)
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libertyworker
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Some good points I think from Kirkpatrick Sales's book Human Scale. First I would like tro say that true Uninaminity such as intentional communities or non cookie cutter government or bank driven contract homeowner associations would tend to be the best deals I think, but many areas are not such and very well many areas are not likely to become such. So what could be second best, I think it would be true Consensenus with just about all the goverence being at the smallest possible comfortable local level.
Even a democracy( people rule) of optimal size usually( 500 to no more than 10,000 people in the community) can have its problems and it seems pertinent to confront the two most common:, it tends to operate with either or voting systems that do not represent the true popular will, and it tends to promote factiionisn, especially the majority against the minority.
Majoritarian voting- win lose, binary, or zero sum as the game theroist say is both imperfect and unrepresentive even on a small scale. You still could have communist taking over a town, theocrats taking over a town, or so called libertarian taking over the town who want homeless men fighting for lunch money in the town center and a mecca for child porn( if the shoe fits wear it exFSP members).
An alternative that normally avoids both of these faults of majoritarianism and one that has been studied in recent years a lot is the process of consensus not to be confused with poll taking or political elitiest interest groups. Despite the modern abuse of the word it means the achevement of an agreement with which all people present can feel comfortable and none disagree strongly enough to blackball- not totally agreement- merely areement not to obstruct- and clearly where it works it obviates both problems of voting and factionism. And it also solves the difficulties surrounding what are precieved to majoritarian unjust or immoral votes, to go to war, to enslave a person, to deny homosexual rights, to permit leg hold traps since such action cannot be taken where there is even a single person morally opposed and willing to speak out.
To be sure that will tilt consensual communities towars conservatism, since a lack of consenuses on a given action will mean inaction: but it will at the same time make them more stable, more predictable and more comfortable and less prone to ill- considered decesions.
The process is nearly important as the act of consenuses, in order to get the whole meeting over to your position it will not help to scroe debating points.
It sure helps to have a lot of common interst like faith, growing up around each other, philosopy and other such strong interest that are common with your neigbors. It requires a certain for bearance on the part of the meeeting towards the individual dissenter who refuses to go along and it can mean that the dissenter needs to know when he should leave the community or the others knowing when to disassociate with the dissenter and what they should do if his dissent is a real problem, should they shun him or not co-operate sale or buy from him and what do they do about those that cheat on the decesion.
Either the desenter or the group should be able to jury and get a jury trial presenting the case of justice but shunning/ boycotting or leaving may be the best altrenative. Voting with your feet may be the best if you have tens of thousands of communities to piick from some which will be communist, some theocrats and some anacap wild and wolly 24/7 gambling havens.
Lew Bowers a skilled faciltator of many hundreds of consenuses mettings thinks that more than 50 in a metting is not a good idea. So it might be a better for a neighborhood of 500 to 1,000 people and 100 to 300 household to break up into groups of 5 to 50 households per group then send a delegate or spokeperson to the neighborhhod meeting, in turn a town of 10,000 could be broken up in to 10 to 50 neighborhhoods and a medium city or county of 30,000 to 100,000 people could be broken up into towns or districts of varying size with an average of 5 to 50 towns per metro area or county.
Personally if there is to remain states they probally would be better off being no more than 30,000 to 3 million people.
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terry50ish
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I think Sales. book especially on this issue is worth a look. Also I think Sociocracy is worth a look but no system of group goverence works for all, there is no such a thing as one size fits all but I think it is clear our present system and direct majority rule are failures.                                                                                 Sociocracy is similar to consenus but don't let the propants of sociocracy fool you consenuesus with each individual having a veto can work in some groups, despite what some conservatives say employee owned companies with a consenues goverence does work in some companies. For example check out the Cheese Board and the Pizza Collective online.                                                                                      Personally I think a veto Consenuenus might be the better way to establish the bylaws of a charter, covenant or constitution and sociocracy used in the annual goverence. With veto consenuesus any member could veto a bylaw in the formation of a charter, covenant or constitution and they would not have to give a reason. Restricted convent communities is simlar to veto consenueses for property buyers if you don't like the bylaws you can veto by not buying the property but this may restrict an heirs ablity to veto so private covent communites are not always in the best interest of everyone and should not be pushed as a one size fits all soulition. Of course it is interest of the political class to push one size fits all answers, the typical political class elite is an asshole, a control freak, they can't fiqure out Spontenous order and they want know part of it, they perfer simplstic wholistic answers because they loose control of others if they are not the center of policy making. Personally I think it is better not to make some solutions public in order to keep these assholes clueless. With Sociocracy a person must give a rational reason for an objection, an individual does not have a veto unless they can explain good reason for a veto. In Sociocracy sub groups are doubled linked with the next higher group. Say the subgroup or base group has 40 members, a base group sends 2 members to the next highest group. Thus the lowest level would have 40 members, the second level would have 800 members or 40 times 20 and the third level would have 16000 members or 800 times 20, most counties and most towns in the US have less than 16,000 residence, Children usually make up a quarter to a third of the population of a town or county, VIstors and the apoltical can make another 5% to a third of the local population. In NH and VT most towns have less than 5,000 so 3 levels with the base membership at 16 to 30 for the vast majority of towns in those two states, for tough questions the base group can be futher subdivided into groups of 4 or 5 members.                                    For those who do not wish to join the group there is always the right to peition for redress of grevences through the jury system and the appeal courts, this might actually be the best way for many. Say a person has a gripe or even a need and their gripe or need is not served through the market or non profit services including negotiation or medition, a person could petition a jury but he or she should have to conivince all jury members of his or her gripe or need, the jury should also be allowed to mediate instead of being demanded to give a zero sum decesion. Either a plantiff or a defedent can even ask all of the adult residence of a town set on the jury durning set times or a set time of the year. Some good points I think from Kirkpatrick Sales's book Human Scale. First I would like tro say that true Uninaminity such as intentional communities or non cookie cutter government or bank driven contract homeowner associations would tend to be the best deals I think, but many areas are not such and very well many areas are not likely to become such. So what could be second best, I think it would be true Consensenus with just about all the goverence being at the smallest possible comfortable  local level.                                 ÂÂ
   Even a democracy( people rule) of optimal size usually( 500 to no more than 10,000 people in the community) can have its problems and it seems pertinent to confront the two most common:, it tends to operate with either or voting systems that do not represent the true popular will, and it tends to promote factiionisn, especially the majority against the minority.                                                           ÂÂ
     Majoritarian voting- win lose, binary, or zero sum as the game theroist say is both imperfect and unrepresentive even on a small scale. You still could have communist taking over a town, theocrats taking over a town, or so called libertarian taking over the town who want homeless men fighting for lunch money in the town center and a mecca for child porn( if the shoe fits wear it exFSP members).                       ÂÂ
       An alternative that normally avoids both of these faults of majoritarianism and one that has been studied in recent years a lot is the process of consensus not to be confused with poll taking or political elitiest interest groups. Despite the modern abuse of the word it means the achevement of an agreement with which all people present can feel comfortable and none disagree strongly enough to blackball- not totally agreement- merely areement not to obstruct- and clearly where it works it obviates both problems of voting and factionism. And it also solves the difficulties surrounding what are precieved to majoritarian unjust or immoral votes, to go to war, to enslave a person, to deny homosexual rights, to permit leg hold traps since such action cannot be taken where there is even a single person morally opposed and willing to speak out.             ÂÂ
 To be sure that will tilt consensual communities towars conservatism, since a lack of consenuses on a given action will mean inaction: but it will at the same time make them more stable, more predictable and more comfortable and less prone to ill- considered decesions.                                        ÂÂ
       The process is nearly important as the act of consenuses, in order to get the whole meeting over to your position it will not help to scroe debating points.                                          ÂÂ
    It sure helps to have a lot of common interst like faith,  growing up around each other, philosopy and other such strong interest that are common with your neigbors. It requires a certain for bearance on the part of the meeeting towards the individual dissenter who refuses to go along and it can mean that the dissenter needs to know when he should leave the community or the others knowing when to disassociate with the dissenter and what they should do if his dissent is a real problem, should they shun him or not co-operate sale or buy from him and what do they do about those that cheat on the decesion.                           ÂÂ
      Either the desenter or the group should be able to jury and get a jury trial presenting the case of justice but shunning/ boycotting or leaving may be the best altrenative. Voting with your feet may be the best if you have tens of thousands of communities to piick from some which will be communist, some theocrats and some anacap wild and wolly 24/7 gambling havens.                                              ÂÂ
    Lew Bowers a skilled faciltator of many hundreds of consenuses mettings thinks that more than 50 in a metting is not a good idea. So it might be a better for a neighborhood of 500 to 1,000 people and 100 to 300 household to break up into groups of 5 to 50 households per group then send a delegate or spokeperson to the neighborhhod meeting, in turn a town of 10,000 could be broken up in to 10 to 50 neighborhhoods and a medium city or county of 30,000 to 100,000 people could be broken up into towns or districts of varying size with an average of 5 to 50 towns per metro area or county.                                 ÂÂ
      Personally if there is to remain states they probally would be better off being no more than 30,000 to 3 million people.
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« Last Edit: June 10, 2006, 01:56:13 pm by terry50ish »
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RalphBorsodi
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Some good points I think from Kirkpatrick Sales's book Human Scale. Sale is a member of the Second Vermont Republic and the director of the Middlebury Institute http://www.vermontrepublic.org/writings/middinstltr.htmlIn answer to a growing swell of interest in realistic responses to the excesses of the present American empire, The Middlebury Institute has been launched by a group of activists and professionals to promote the serious study of separatism, secession, self-determination and similar devolutionary trends and developments, on both national and international scales. We believe that, of the options open to those who would dissent from the actions and institutions of a government grown too big and unwieldy and its handmaiden corporate sponsors grown too powerful and corrupt, the only comprehensive and practical one is some form of separatism. Exploring this option is not a step to be taken lightly, because there are established forces that will hamper and resist, and yet it is a legal and viable enterprise, squarely in the American tradition, and of a piece with the worldwide devolutionary current that has seen the breakup of European empires (including the Soviet) and the expansion of the United Nations from 51 to 193 nations in sixty years. Moreover, the accumulating signs point to a series of major crises that will seriously disrupt and may even destroy the American system in the near future. These include economic disruptions in the wake of global “peak oil†production before 2010, deterioration of the power of the dollar through mounting and uncontrollable national debt and trade imbalances, continued degradation of vital ecosystems on which the nation depends, climate change and severe weather causing widespread devastation of coastal areas, extended use of military force worldwide leading to increased terrorism and the reinstitution of the draft, judicial takeovers at the Federal level by rightwing ideologues capable of altering fundamental legal rights, and terrorist attacks at facilities (nuclear plants, harbors, chemical factories) the government has been unable or unwilling to protect. Those who want to absent and cushion themselves from suchlike devastations would reasonably want to explore ways of removing their communities and regions from dangerous national political and economic mechanisms that are incapable of reform. It is for these reasons that The Middlebury Institute hopes to foster a national movement in the United States that will: · place secession on the national political agenda, · encourage secessionist and separatist movements here and abroad, · develop communication among such existing and future groups, · create a body of scholarship to examine and promote the ideas of separatism, · and work carefully and thoughtfully for the ultimate task, the peaceful dissolution of the American empire. To these ends we intend to issue regular papers treating with a broad range of secessionist issues, including the question of the constitutionality of secession in the U.S.; reports on the status of various secessionist movements in the U.S.; scenarios of federal responses to states opting to secede; the ethics of secession; the history of secession in America; the economic consequences of secessionâ€â€a cost-benefit analysis; a history of worldwide secession and devolution developments of the past 20 years; case studies of individual foreign separatist movements of modern times; and excerpts from the considerable body of literature on separatism and secession. We will also sponsor various gatherings, including academic seminars, in which leading scholars and activists will be invited to deliver and discuss papers on separatism and its corollaries; weekend conferences of speeches and workshops; national congresses with representatives of active separatist movements in the U.S.; and debates on various issues involving secession and separatism, with activists, elected politicians, scholars, and think-tank representatives, among others. And we will be sending out regular news releases that draw attention to the breaking action or new activities of separatist groups, here and abroad, with special attention to the victories and achievements in the movement. Eventually we will have a website that will be an archive of book chapters and articles on separatism and secession, particularly over the last dozen years, with regular news coverage of separatist events and links to the more prominent and active secessionist groups. At some point we will make room for postings from readers to discuss related matters as they wish. This is a long-haul project: the task is as immense as it is urgent, and we must go carefully, even as we go steadily. We will need your help: contact us, send us your email address, contribute what you can. Ultimately the Middlebury Institute will be what its constituents need and want, and we will serve the movement in any way we can. Spread the word. Join the action. Take the battlements. And keep in touch. Kirkpatrick Sale Thomas Naylor September 1, 2005 P.S.: We are enclosing, as the Institute’s first paper, The Middlebury Declaration, passed at a “Radical Consultation†meeting in November of last year. |
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