[EM] Public elections are the ones that matter.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:09 PM 11/12/2005, James Green-Armytage wrote:
>         Although governments may be politically omnipotent in 
> theory, in practice corporations, schools, unions, religious 
> groups, and nonprofits
>collectively wield an easily comparable amount of power.

Yes. In fact, in a society with an electoral democracy, the 
government is manipulable through the electoral process as well as 
through information campaigns and lobbying, not to mention bribery. 
All of these take organization, so, the question is:

How do the groups which seek to control or influence government 
policy organize?

With sufficient organization of sufficient resources, NGOs can, in an 
electoral democracy, control the government. The people as a whole 
are the largest and potentially most powerful "special interest," but 
the people as a whole are not organized; perhaps some of us suffer 
from the illusion that the *government* is our organization.

Indeed, the government *could* be our organization, but in order to 
get to that position, we must organize *independently* of government.

The BeyondPolitics plan is to develop Free Association/Delegable 
Proxy technology and to encourage its adoption by organizations of 
many different kinds; wherever there is a need for an efficient yet 
trustworthy peer association, FA/DP might work well.

If it does, then political applications will become obvious. And easy.