Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Re: [ba-ohs-talk] OHS & the "now" enterprises, incl. CITRIS Kickoff
Peter. (01)
Ah! Good, oldfashioned direct, Athenean democracy with everyone having a
vote except, of course, the Helotes and the women! (02)
Seriously, I just don't know how things may pan out. but I would expect
that greater transparency will roll back political skullduggery, etc.
Transparency has two components: public availability of information and
public grasp (insight, judgment) of what the information entails and its
potential effects on all strata of society. Enhancing that grasp (through
computing & education) would help people to recognize when tales are being
spun by or on behalf of particular interest groups. (03)
That is the short of it, but still I should expand just a little beyond
this. I believe that a greater emphasis must be given to the human values
aspect of things, especially with society going through increasingly
tumultuous times. Information should be evaluated in terms of human values
and with due regard to social strata. (04)
Henry (05)
Peter Jones wrote: (06)
> Henry van Eyken wrote:
>
> > Somehow, it seems to me, if we want a viable democracy, we need a
> citizenship more attuned to
> > accellerating change, which probably (as far as I can see) entails a
> digitally literate citizenry that
> > knows how to get and evaluate information of social relevance, do so
> at a fast clip, and is capable of
> > meaningfully contributing to a communal decision-making process.
>
> Let's say that we empower the people with computers and somehow hook
> that more directly into the democratic process.
> Thus far, in business, the Internet has had a reputation for brutally
> removing the middlemen. So it must be asked, just what are the likely
> effects of this move upon the legislative process, and upon the present
> notion of delegation of power to an elected representative executive?
> Typically laws get enacted to shore up moral holes in the range of
> society's activities. Either they are lobbied for, or they arise from
> novel situations requiring novel litigation. The representative
> executive raise, debate, tailor, and then vote in or vote out new law.
> Note that the lobbies are currently representatives too, and some might
> say there's a bias towards rich lobbies having more influence, but that
> depends on the moral prudence of the executive.
> So we are looking at a potentially radical shift in the directness with
> which the executive are lobbied - and pushing that to an extreme,
> perhaps the populace simply _becomes_ the executive in the future. And
> we are looking at a whole new way of lobbying, wherein that activity is
> again made more direct missing out the representative middlemen and a
> lot of dispute.
> Perhaps representation to the executive then becomes more proportional
> to the desires of the populace as a whole, *assuming the removal of the
> majority principle and having all votes count.*
> And maybe making law becomes a matter of statistical satisfaction. But
> that's assuming that the majority of the populace have sound judgement.
> And there are also problems with overcoming voting apathy. So it seems
> to me that the system would still require debate of issues by the
> sagacious, but the possibility of a more transparent democratic process
> is really there.
> In short, it might result in dramatic institutional and constitutional
> reform, and the only way to steer the populace after the mechanism was
> in place would be through the (infotainment multi-)media.
>
> --
> Peter (07)