[EM] proxy representation with "dissenting votes" - a "Vote for me" request.

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 12:01 AM 2/27/2006, Jeff Wegerson wrote:
>I have been intrigued with the ideas of Direct Democracy by Delegable
>Proxy since the late 80's.

That makes you very early. I probably came up with delegable proxy, 
independently, in the late eighties also. It was only after the 2000 
election, however, that I realized how DP could become something more 
than a utopian dream, it was then that my experience and 
understanding of Free Associations (modelled after Alcoholics 
Anonymous, which I've studied for years, going to many meetings 
though I'm not an alcoholic) came together with the thought about DP. 
I now have a plan for implementation of DP which starts right here 
and which takes us to a place where the next steps will be relatively 
easy and which I deliberately abstain from trying to plan. 
Essentially, I'm not smart enough, and neither is any individual among us.

*Any* implementation of DP furthers this plan, even if it is not FA. 
FAs, however, have the potential to sidestep existing governmental 
institutions; FA/DP organizations, in theory, should be more powerful 
than any special interest group, something which organizations of 
Progressives, for example, are unlikely to accomplish.

If this organization *really* wants to be progressive, let it drop 
the political bias incorporated in its name and become simply an 
organization of the people.

But probably biased organizations will be the first to implement DP, 
unless one of my special projects succeeds. If, within the special 
definition of the organization ("progressives," in this case), the 
organization is and remains inclusive and refuses to factionalize 
such that one faction controls it, it could have the potential to 
merge with a larger organization that brings in greater diversity. 
But this route is problematic, for it will threated existing defacto 
oligarchies, which, by definition, hold excess power.

And that the system, to which we have been pointed by Mr. Wegerson, 
apparently allows people to join merely for the purpose of adding a 
proxy to a candidate, whom they do not know and do not have any 
working relationship with, is a bad sign. The polling results will be 
distorted, as they will not really represent proportionally the 
membership. And, please, don't interpret this as some kind of 
criticism of Mr. Wegerson. He's merely doing what is implicit in the 
structure he is facing.

In a Free Association, it really doesn't matter, for the FA only 
measures consensus and fosters communication through the proxy 
system, and distortions through manipulation of the system will be 
largely useless for the one attempting the manipulation, they will, 
so to speak, end up with a mouthful of hair. By not collecting and 
exerting power directly, most of the motivation for manipulation 
disappears. You can get heard at a high level by falsifying proxies 
or collecting what are really irrelevant proxies, not backed by a 
relationship of trust, but, in a DP organization, you can get heard 
at a high level without such manipulations. You just have to convince 
*one* person, your proxy, whom you have chosen and who has agreed to 
communicate with you. To return your phone calls, literally or 
figuratively. And if you can't do that, you will not be more 
successful, ultimately, merely because you pretend to have a hundred 
or a thousand or a million people who agree with you or trust you.

Suppose you commit the ultimate fraud: you manufacture a majority of 
proxies. You then hold a vote to implement your desired goal. And it 
is approved by a majority, no surprise. But if you have not actually 
convinced the rest of the proxies or members of the desirability of 
that goal, *they will simply ignore it,* and their "caucus" will 
simply make its own decisions and will recommend that the members act 
on *their* consensus.

And so you will find yourself inviting yourself to contribute to your 
campaign for, say, Senator, and a different candidate will receive 
the contributions of most of the members of the organization....

You might even be an enemy of the organization, and you think you 
could bring it down by, say, taking over and shutting down the 
domain. But the domain would be held in trust for the organization by 
an individual. You'd have to convince that person to turn it over. 
Yes, you could go through court process to claim that you were the 
rightful owner, and you might win, but it would take time. Meanwhile, 
the *real* members would simply reorganize under another domain; FAs 
make no substantial investment in infrastructure, they don't really 
own anything except perhaps their name (and thus, perhaps, their 
domain). Even if you managed to gain control of the domain directly 
and you simply shut it down, all the proxies will have the email 
addresses of all those they represent. (This is why secret systems 
will not be as invulnerable to manipulation.) They will also have the 
email addresses of their peers, with whom they routinely communicate. 
They would be able to reconstitute the organization in a new place 
within hours.

And this is, in fact, part of how Alcoholics Anonymous managed to 
spread so rapidly. The saying is, "All you need to start a new 
meeting is a resentment and a coffee pot." The *real* networking in 
AA is that the members talk to each other. They talk at meetings, 
they talk on the phone, they go out for coffee together. The meetings 
themselves are generally dispensable. Clubhouses, where they exist, 
might seem to violate the prohibition of property, but clubhouses, 
non-members might not realize, are never owned by Alcoholics 
Anonymous, but are privately owned and simply rented out to meetings, 
all of which are legally and factually autonomous.

But AA never developed delegable proxy, though I've talked with AA 
members who got the idea immediately. They really didn't need it, so 
firmly was the concept of the value of consensus built into nearly 
everything they do. They elect delegates to national meetings, if 
they are following the original traditions, requiring a two-thirds 
vote for election; if no candidate gets that in spite of repeated 
polling, they select the candidate by lot from among the top two, 
thus guaranteeing a measure of minority representation. I think it 
can be done better than they do it, but what they do is good enough 
for their purposes....