Replacing democracy

[biffvernon]

But what, j2m, does your outlook induce you to do? Tonight, for instance. I'm off to a meeting to discuss ideas for more sustainable agriculture, based on the premise that we have a serious problem but that it may be survivable if we do the right things.

Nihilistic pessimism would, I presume, mean that one stays at home.

[emordnilap]

But what, j2m, does your outlook induce you to do? Tonight, for instance. I'm off to a meeting to discuss ideas for more sustainable agriculture, based on the premise that we have a serious problem but that it may be survivable if we do the right things.

Likewise, I'm currently involved in two positive projects: one is discussions around the dreaded 's' word and the other is getting involved with what the Irish term a 'meitheal', where benevolent spade- and wheelbarrow-wielding gangs turn up on your property to do whatever jobs you can't do single-handedly, in return for you playing your part in the gang. Fun (well, the second is and maybe the first will lead to more fun).

[biffvernon]

I think, after a beer or two, we concluded that rising energy costs would continue the pressure for small farms to amalgamate into bigger ones so that there would be bigger machinery with more expensive GPS control allowing greater precision in operations and less total fuel used.

But who knows?

[emordnilap]

In a rather long speech from our president to the LSE:

We have, as a consequence, been living through a period of extreme individualism, a period where the concept of society itself has been questioned. The public space in so many countries of the EU has been commodified, and it is as calculating rational choice maximizers, rather than as citizens, we have been invited to view our neighbours. That is the mark of our times, the hegemonic version, by which it is suggested, we live our lives together. Our existence is assumed to be, is defined as, competing individual actors at times neurotic in our insatiable anxieties for consumption as Zygmunt Bauman puts it in his book Consuming Life. As Zygmunt Bauman puts it – "Consumers become the promoters of the commodities they consume". They become a commodified entity in their presentation of themselves.

and

We are experiencing now I believe an intellectual crisis that is far more serious than the economic one which fills the papers, dominates the programmes in our media. Such a crisis has arisen before at times of great or impending change and it has drawn a response from intellectuals as they were forced to react to the collapse of the prevailing assumptions and they engaged with the need for a new paradigm of life and politics.

[jonny2mad]

But what, j2m, does your outlook induce you to do? Tonight, for instance. I'm off to a meeting to discuss ideas for more sustainable agriculture, based on the premise that we have a serious problem but that it may be survivable if we do the right things.

Nihilistic pessimism would, I presume, mean that one stays at home.

I'm neither nihilistic or pessimistic , have you ever read a post in which I said I was depressed or that well if things turn out like that I'd rather be dead .

Both party's know about peak oil, bush Cameron obama Blair the whole bunch know what have they done ....increased their country's population via immigration from the third world, fought a bunch of wars, given money to banking family's, built more roads and airports sent more jobs to the Chinese


Somehow that doesn't make me think that the people that run things are going to transition us to eco nirvana .

Do you really see any real steps or any likelihood at all that we aren't going to go into depletion with no preparation at all on a society level .

Me I'm getting my affairs in order, relaxing eating having a nice time, I have all the normal survivalist preps, I plan on doing some sailing, I don't intend trying to save a country thats not going to be saved .

If you were on the titanic and you saw the captain blowing more holes in the ship and adding more people, I suppose as a optimist you would keep having meetings, maybe try to rally the dancing people and new comers so they could build another boat to save them all ....me Id accept the boats going to sink and there aren't enough lifeboats and the majority are going to die, and I'd aim not to be one of them

[UndercoverElephant]

In a rather long speech from our president to the LSE:

We are experiencing now I believe an intellectual crisis that is far more serious than the economic one which fills the papers, dominates the programmes in our media. Such a crisis has arisen before at times of great or impending change and it has drawn a response from intellectuals as they were forced to react to the collapse of the prevailing assumptions and they engaged with the need for a new paradigm of life and politics.

Let's hope so...

The US in particular is suffering from an intellectual crisis of immense proportions, reflected in the fact that a clear majority of the population believe that Darwin was wrong and climate change is a left-wing conspiracy.

[vtsnowedin]

In a rather long speech from our president to the LSE:

We are experiencing now I believe an intellectual crisis that is far more serious than the economic one which fills the papers, dominates the programmes in our media. Such a crisis has arisen before at times of great or impending change and it has drawn a response from intellectuals as they were forced to react to the collapse of the prevailing assumptions and they engaged with the need for a new paradigm of life and politics.

Let's hope so...

The US in particular is suffering from an intellectual crisis of immense proportions, reflected in the fact that a clear majority of the population believe that Darwin was wrong and climate change is a left-wing conspiracy.

I think you are wrong on both counts or at least exaggerating. On the second count it is possible for there to really be climate change and have a left wing conspiracy that is both real and malicious at the same time.
Just because some candidate or party faction is getting a lot of press time does not mean that their point of view is the majority view.

[UndercoverElephant]

Would that be "US left wing" or "European left wing"?

[vtsnowedin]

Would that be "US left wing" or "European left wing"?

Al Gore and his brand of BS is left enough for both of them.

[sam_uk]

So if a city managed to get this working:

--------Participatory democracy--------


Tier 1 (decision making)
So each street (25 houses or so) get's together once a week, and takes the decisions that are put to it. It is the basis of the decision making body. It can also propose things for discussion by the other neighbourhoods. It can decide stuff however it likes, consensus, democracy, a delegated leader, a religious leader. If you don't like the way your street does things you can move, or attend the neighboring meeting instead. This builds real community at the most local level.


Tier 2
One representative from each street group takes their decisions or proposals to a meeting of 100 representatives of all the neighboring streets. They attempt to agree by consensus, if that does not happen within an hour they vote on the things.

(The representative sent by the street is sent to best represent the views of the 25 people. They are not supposed to push their own agenda. Because of the small scale the groups would quickly choose alternative representatives if they were not doing what the group asked.)

Tier 3
One representative from each meeting of a 100 goes to another meeting of 100 to represent the views of the 100 neighborhoods. They attempt to agree by consensus, if that does not happen within an hour they vote on it.

-----------

You now have a participatory decision making body for a city. On a week by week basis the city can meaningfully express it's views. New ideas and proposals can quickly propagate up and down through the system.

People would probably choose not to participate in decisions that they don't care about. I don't see why that would be a problem. On issues that people care about you would probably get good participation.

You might think that spending a couple of hours a week with your neighbours drinking tea and making decisions about your city or region would be too onerous. I suspect that actually it would be quite nice to have a meaningful democracy again, and that participating in a real community would be something most people would engage in to some extent.

Would cities want to endlessly war with neighboring cities if they both used this system? I think probably not. Would such a city decide to defend itself if attacked by a neighboring aggressor? Almost certainly.

Some real world experiments in participatory budgeting on a city wide scale have proved interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_budgeting

How would a acquisitive, aggressive alpha-male type do?

1) He would probably dominate his street group of 25.

2) He would probably want to be the representative to the larger group of 100.

3) He might organize thefts from other parts of the city.

None of these things would be outside the realm of things that the 'federation' of other streets couldn't deal with.

It would be quite hard in my view for this individual to gain control of the whole city, so long as the other streets/neighborhoods continued to meet regularly and understood the risk.

[Ludwig]

It would be quite hard in my view for this individual to gain control of the whole city, so long as the other streets/neighborhoods continued to meet regularly and understood the risk.

Ah, but that's assuming the other neighbourhoods banded together. What's more likely (unfortunately) is each street would be forced to defend itself, and defending oneself in such a situation probably means striking before you are struck. A situation full of Jonnies leading hoardes of thieving zombies could arise quite quickly. Adapt or die, as they say.

[sam_uk]

Ah, but that's assuming the other neighbourhoods banded together. What's more likely (unfortunately) is each street would be forced to defend itself, and defending oneself in such a situation probably means striking before you are struck. A situation full of Jonnies leading hoardes of thieving zombies could arise quite quickly. Adapt or die, as they say.

I think that societies can exist. I don't believe in Thatcher.

I think that there will always be Johnnies, but I don't think that _most_ of us are like that. I don't think we would have managed to build civilizations if we were.

Civilisations do exist, ergo we are able to live in a civilized manner. Out of the 250,000 people in my city, most will want to co-exist peacefully.

The problem we have at the moment is that at systemic level Johnnies are rewarded, made CEO's and prime ministers. The narrative of competition is the dominant one in this society (Just look at how Johnnie was socialised by his dad)

The kind of radical restructuring I outline above would serve to reconnect us into meaningful communities, yet does allow for the fact that some are greedy and inhumane.

The challenge is simply to come up with systems that do not reward those tendencies at a societal level. Most will fall into line behind any societal structure in return for safety and stability.

[jonny2mad]

Even if you re-organize society to have more democracy, you still have the problem of reorganizing society on a worldwide basis so you can feed and supply the worlds population with less and less oil .

And you need to have done that by today, because at any moment we are likely to fall off the plateau down the die-off cliff .

Democracy's do fight each other, especially when if they don't they starve .

I imagine a lot of people are thinking well our leaders are acting in this crazy way now, but as soon as the crisis hits they will suddenly take things seriously and rush in measures to cope.

But most of the alternatives take years of work and ideally a functioning economy, so even if there was a technical way to transition to eco nirvana if you don't implement it before the crash its too damn late .

Its not to late to use all those great weapon systems we have developed though .

I think people underestimate the crisis and how difficult it will be to fix when your actually in free-fall, its a bit like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle while falling down a flight of stairs ....pretty much a impossible feat ..

Now I imagine biffs going to say something like well we aren't falling down the cliff there is still hope , I don't think there is hope of avoiding the crash, because the reasons the people in power and people generally as a society didn't do anything about restructuring are still in play, and they will be in play right up until the point where we are falling, and then it will be to late.


its somewhat of a catch 22 situation

[jonny2mad]

Ah, but that's assuming the other neighbourhoods banded together. What's more likely (unfortunately) is each street would be forced to defend itself, and defending oneself in such a situation probably means striking before you are struck. A situation full of Jonnies leading hoardes of thieving zombies could arise quite quickly. Adapt or die, as they say.

I think that societies can exist. I don't believe in Thatcher.

I think that there will always be Johnnies, but I don't think that _most_ of us are like that. I don't think we would have managed to build civilizations if we were.

Civilisations do exist, ergo we are able to live in a civilized manner. Out of the 250,000 people in my city, most will want to co-exist peacefully.

The problem we have at the moment is that at systemic level Johnnies are rewarded, made CEO's and prime ministers. The narrative of competition is the dominant one in this society (Just look at how Johnnie was socialised by his dad)

The kind of radical restructuring I outline above would serve to reconnect us into meaningful communities, yet does allow for the fact that some are greedy and inhumane.

The challenge is simply to come up with systems that do not reward those tendencies at a societal level. Most will fall into line behind any societal structure in return for safety and stability.

You have civilization now, you have a pretty fair voting system yet you have aggressive wars of invasion being carried out not by undemocratic tyrants but by people who stand for election, in many cases people who espouse socialism multiculturalism and tolerance .

your peaceful 250,000 people supply the troops and pay the taxes that support those aggressive wars, just as they supplied the taxes and troops that burned alive millions of German and Japanese baby's during the last war .

So much for community being the answer.... when you look into the abyss the abyss looks back into you .....the Mongol army's are our army's they are made up of people doing things for what they believe are good reason's .

I have a friend who used to be a tank commander in world war two, hes British if he was German he would have been tried for war crimes for doing things we gave him medals for

[woodburner]

PostPosted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:22 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
But what, j2m, does your outlook induce you to do? Tonight, for instance. I'm off to a meeting to discuss ideas for more sustainable agriculture, based on the premise that we have a serious problem but that it may be survivable if we do the right things.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 11:55 am Post subject: Reply with quote
I think, after a beer or two, we concluded that rising energy costs would continue the pressure for small farms to amalgamate into bigger ones so that there would be bigger machinery with more expensive GPS control allowing greater precision in operations and less total fuel used.

Is "off to a meeting" code for going down the pub?