[EM] proxy representation with "dissenting votes"

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:19 PM 2/28/2006, Jiri Räsänen wrote:
>My last writing was too ambiguous, so I try to offer some adjustment.
>
>1. At this point I will not try to make any case 
>for or agains any system. I just want to clarify 
>what is meant for certain concepts, for myself 
>and hopefully in the process, to some other too.

My own intention is to foster discussion of the 
proxy and delegable proxy concepts. The more this 
is discussed, the more likely that these concepts 
will see application in real-world organizations. 
I'd also like to encourage anyone interested in 
delegable proxy to register (and confirm the 
registration checkmail that will come) at

http://beyondpolitics.org/wiki

even if you don't have time to do anything beyond 
that at the moment.... registration will give us 
a confirmed email address, a way to contact you. 
We don't plan to do regular mailings to the 
registration list, but it might be occasionally 
important. I think a regular discussion list will 
be started shortly. Actually, there is already a 
list, but it is not being publicized.... too much to do....

>There are a few possible terminology choises. I 
>tried to formulate that "direct representation" 
>would be a general attribute and "proxy 
>representation" being a sub set. If that doesn't 
>feel right, I'm OK with that too.

In political science, here, they write about 
"direct democracy." A direct representative and a 
direct proxy are the same thing, if the 
representative has freedom of action. If the 
representative does not have freedom of action, 
you actually have direct democracy with the messages being carried by slaves.

The term "proxy" in the U.S., in the business 
context, brings with it a series of expectations. 
Generally it is expected that the proxy in 
attendance at the annual meeting of a corporation 
does have the right of decision, as far as the 
corporation is concerned. The degree of freedom 
of the proxy may be defined in the relationship 
between the proxy and the one represented, but 
the actions of the proxy in the absence of the 
represented one are binding. That is, if the 
shareholder comes in after a vote and says, "But 
I instructed my proxy to do something else," the 
corporation officers will say, "Too bad. Maybe 
you should name someone else as a proxy next 
time." And this is as it should be.

Except that an organization *might* provide for 
an extended voting period for members not 
present. I'm not sure I recommend it, but it is 
certainly possible. The intention would be that, 
in this period, members who don't agree with the 
action of their proxy may effectively revoke 
their proxy simply by voting directly.

It is generally understood that a proxy acts in 
the absence or incapacity of the shareholder. If 
the shareholder shows up at the meeting after 
having named a proxy, the shareholder may 
participate directly and the proxy assignment is suspended.

Share corporations, in their basic design, are 
direct democracies which allow proxy voting. So 
there exists centuries of experience, some of 
which would be useful in the design of peer 
organizations (i.e., in corporations where each 
"shareholder" has one share.) One obvious lesson: 
the hired servants of the corporation, 
specifically management, have a strong interest 
in the outcome of shareholder elections and other 
shareholder actions. In very large corporations, 
management, through various means, has 
effectively disenfranchised many or most of the 
shareholders, sometimes through rules that 
restrict shareholder participation and 
shareholder initiatives, other times simply 
through having the power to suggest, at corporate 
expense, that shareholders name X as a proxy, 
and, given the existence of many small 
shareholders who are basically clueless, these 
solicitations result, typically, in enough votes 
to maintain the dominance existing management and 
allow a lack of true oversight. Hence Enron.

A simple solution to this would be for 
shareholders to be independently organized as a 
Free Association with Delegable Proxy. One of the 
functions of this organization, which would be 
extremely low-overhead, and either free or very 
cheap to join -- so cheap that it would be 
foolish for anyone with even a very few shares to 
not join -- would be to recommend proxy choices 
to members. As a Free Association, the 
organization itself would *not* endorse proxy 
candidates. Rather, it would foster communication 
about proxies, it might coordinate the hiring of 
professional proxies by shareholders (large 
institutional shareholders hire such companies to 
represent their interests. Nobody represents the 
small shareholders who, collectively, might 
actually own a majority of the stock. And a 
recommendation might come back to you from your 
proxy. It would probably be someone in the chain 
of delegable proxies to which the shareholder 
belongs, thus establishing a linkage of trust and 
open communication, should such be necessary, 
between the proxy and the shareholder.

Free Associations with Delegable Proxy, I assert, 
could solve many, many problems that are almost 
intractable now, and they could do it without 
directly challenging or changing existing 
institutions. All it takes, really, is for a few 
shareholders of a corporation, for example, to 
realize that they could collectively advance 
their common interest much better than 
individually. They don't realize this because 
they are certainly unfamiliar, the vast majority 
of people are unfamiliar, with the possibilities 
of FA/DP organizations, which will avoid most of 
the major organizational pitfalls that are the 
reason why people don't already spontaneously 
organize unless things have gotten so bad that they are forced to....

>In my mind the most simple system is the D2000's 
>direct representation, that's why I pointed it 
>as a starting place. Delegated Proxy offers one layer more.

Actually, another term for DP democracy is 
fractal democracy. It's not just a "layer" except 
in a technical sense; DP creates a fractal 
structure that potentially includes all the 
members and facilitates communication between 
them. When communication becomes easy, 
decision-making will likewise become much easier than it is now.

Direct representation is simple, but it is also 
not scalable to the degree imagined. Direct 
representation is quite similar to basic proxy 
representation, and proxy representation is 
vulnerable to the same second-order scale problem 
as direct democracy; it merely postpones the 
problem until the group is larger (perhaps 
roughly the square of the maximum size that is 
functional with direct democracy.)

But it is also my contention that delegable proxy 
will produce organizational benefits even in very 
small organizations. And it is much simpler to 
implement than most people think at first.

>2. FCP'S MODEL AND THE EXPERIENCE PROMOTING IT
>
>I have been active in the FCP (Finnish Citizens' 
>Power) since its beginning at 1988. As far as I 
>have understood right the proper use of "proxy 
>representation", our proposed system was (is) not that, yet close to it.

I don't see much, if any, difference.


>FCP's Synthesis Democracy model:
>1. The parliament functions via direct 
>representation. Rep A has 5000 votes and B 9000 votes etc.
>2. There is a constant election, so that any 
>voter can change his/her representative at any given day.
>(2.1 Changes would appear next morning, not minute-to-minute.)

Proxy representation is changeable at any time, 
plus proxies are defacto revoked temporarily if 
the represented person actually votes. As you also have:

>3. A citizen can reserve a vote that the 
>parliament is holding for him/herself. The 
>citizen's representative will remain, but in the 
>reserved issue will not use his/her vote.

Exactly. The only difference with Delegable Proxy 
is that if a proxy is not present or does not 
vote, the vote of the proxy's proxy who *is* 
present and votes will include all the votes of 
those represented directly or indirectly. This is 
a matter of vote analysis after voting is closed, 
and there would presumably be thus an effective 
deadline for actually revoking a proxy for a 
pending result. But if there is a procedure for 
directly voting, it is simple to reverse the 
effect of a proxy's vote by directly voting, so 
the deadline is really, quite simply, the 
deadline for voting itself. I would stage voting 
so that there is a preliminary result which would 
be announced, giving time for members to directly vote if they care to.

Note that in this period the proxies would be 
busy explaining to their "constituents" -- if it 
mattered to them -- why they voted as they voted. 
Somebody you trust would explain the pending 
decision to you. I think most people will take 
the advice, but they remain free not to. Again, 
note that you would be receiving, not the 
decision of the organization as advice, but your 
personal opinion of your personal and direct 
proxy, a person you chose presumably because you 
trust this person. This is why I call DP networks 
"networks of trust," and I talk about the 
organizations as being "trustworthy by design."

People can certainly make mistakes as to whom to 
trust, but my opinion is that, on the average, 
people choose to trust people who are more 
trustworthy than they are themselves (in all 
ways, on the average), and if this is true, DP 
networks will select for trustworthiness and high 
levels will be highly trustworthy.

>4. There is imperative mandate. Meaning that 
>after the representative has voted, a citizen 
>can take back the mandate in that single issue and vote him/herself.

This seems quite the same as number 3 to me, 
though there may be a procedural distinction.

>(4.1. Imperative mandate may take place only if 
>for example 1/10 of the representatives or 1/100 
>of the electorate so addresses.)

I'd make it general, if I understand it, but 
suspendable upon the agreement of a certain 
percentage of proxies, upon a declaration of 
emergency. It ought to be rare. (If my proxy 
agreed that something was an emergency and that 
therefore I would not have the right to review 
the vote and change it if I were not convinced, 
and I did not agree that, at least, there *was* 
an emergency, there would be a serious failure of 
trust, and I'd probably go looking for another 
proxy. Or, of course, directly participate, 
possibly holding proxies from others.

>(5. Two possible treshold models for getting 
>elected to the parliament and dropping in the constant election)

My own view is that assemblies will set their own 
rules. Given that all members, under standard 
parliamentary procedure, may vote on every issue 
before the whole, the members will restrict their 
own rights of participation voluntarily as needed 
for efficiency. In small organizations, 
restriction may be rare and confined to 
preventing damage from a deranged member. In 
larger organizations, though, participation 
rights must be limited. And, again, this follows 
closely the biological models I use.

Proxies protect the center from the individual 
members and they protect the members from what 
could otherwise be overwhelming traffic from the 
center, given that most members will be busy with 
this or that. Synapses do exactly this.

>Our argument was (is) quite like what Mr. Lomax presented.
>Some favour representative democracy, some 
>favour direct democracy. We proposed that the 
>decision between direct and representative 
>democracy was not necessarily a monolithic 
>system-level decision. We propose a system that 
>allows each citizen decide wheter he/she wants 
>direct or representative democracy. Also 
>offering the flexibility to use DD in issues 
>close to me while letting RD handle the rest of 
>the stuff. Both alienation and the tyranny of the active could so be bypassed.

Indeed. Mr. Räsänen, I want to congratulate you 
for bringing up the "tyranny of the active." I've 
written a fair amount on it, but haven't seen 
anyone else discussing it. Most active members of 
organizations don't see the damage that this can 
and does do. Indeed, what I've seen is that 
active members typically think that they are the 
ones who know what is best for everyone. *And 
they are often right.* But not always, and, what 
is worse, a majority of active members does not 
necessarily represent, absent proxy 
representation, a majority of all members. 
Organizations can be torn apart by the resulting 
incongruities. At best, a lot of time can be wasted.

An example is something I've written about many 
times, an incident with our Town Meeting 
government. I'm fortunate to live in a small New 
England town that is governed by Town Meeting. 
Which is a direct democracy, a relic from earlier 
times, mostly abandoned as towns grew. Our town 
has about 800 registered voters with the right to 
attend the meeting and vote. Fortunately, only 
about twenty or thirty show up at the meeting! Or 
else nothing would get done! (All members have 
equal access to the floor, i.e., to speak and 
enter motions.) So Town Meeting approved a tax 
override to fund a new emergency services center. 
The Board of Selectmen, which is the closest 
thing the town has to a continual government, 
there is no mayor, also approved it. And a lot of 
money was spent on the planning. But 
Massachusetts law requires tax overrides to be 
presented directly to the voters. And it failed.

Essentially, the active failed to convince the 
generality that their decision was right. This 
kind of thing would be rare in a DP organization. 
A DP organization would effectively consider the 
input of all the citizens who had any opinion at 
all, there would be a lot of back-and-forth, so 
that proposals which are actually submitted to 
the voters have already developed a serious 
consensus. The back-and-forth would exist in 
personal conversations, made possible by delegable proxy.

That isn't possible, really, when proxies 
represent thousands of people. Students of 
democracy are quite aware of how representatives 
with substantial districts can't really consult 
their constituents, they must depend, rather, on 
polls or the like, or upon the opinions of those 
sufficiently motivated to contact them. Which will be skewed.

>We printed our platform and hit the streets. Our 
>platform was all-in-one program to transform the 
>political system of Finland. Initially, most 
>thought we were crazy. Newspapers concentrated 
>our proposal of electronic voting.

Let me suggest, gently, that attempt to reform 
the political system is going to run into what 
I've called the Lomax Effect, simply for lack of 
clear terminology and because I've not seen it 
described elsewhere, though it probably has been. 
This is related to the "tyranny of the active."

When a structure is inequitable, providing excess 
power to some members of an organization, those 
members will resist change toward equity, because 
they will, correctly, see it as reducing their 
own power. Charitably, we may note that they will 
believe that this will be a transfer of power to 
the less knowledgeable, and often they will be 
right. But there is a way around the Lomax 
Effect, and that is to organize *outside* the 
existing structures, to form organizations whose 
basic function is to advise their members how to 
act *within* the existing structure. Ideally, 
these organizations should be structured and 
principled so as to attract *everyone* as 
members, there should be no reason other than 
pure inertia not to join, since joining the 
organization would never, unlike the norm, result 
in the fact of your membership being used against 
your interests or opinions. The organizations 
typically would not collect funds, thus you would 
not find that money you have contributed is used 
against what you wish, merely because a majority so decided.

These are Free Association principles, 
well-developed by Alcoholics Anonymous and proven 
to work to develop and maintain organizational consensus where it matters.

I think that FA/DP organizations will be so 
effective and efficient that, once formed, they 
will quickly come to dominate the political scene 
until a point will be reached where everyone who 
cares at all will have joined. And then you can 
with total ease drive the existing structures. 
You don't need to change laws and procedures. And 
you would develop great power long before that 
universal point is reached. There is a great deal 
of ink wasted on the alleged power of "special 
interest groups." The only reason special 
interest groups have excess power is that they 
are organized and the people, who, collectively, 
have *all* the power, are not organized.

So how do you form a "special interest group of 
all the people." I submit that if you study this 
question, you will come up with FA/DP.

>We did this campaigning for some 5 years hard. 
>After that we went on concentrating more 
>conservative reforms that would still enhance 
>pluralism. So we went to STV and such.

Expected and proper, though, as you may imagine, 
I'd do it a little differently. That is, I would 
suggest that the organization never take a 
controversial position itself. Rather, caucuses 
within the organization would do this. In this 
way, there is a strong selection process created 
that would motivate people to find consensus 
through full discussion and deliberation. A 
caucus with a majority of voters in it does have 
the ability to go ahead and drive the existing 
system the way they want (and also more 
sophisticated systems such as STV). Actually, an 
even smaller caucus could do this under present 
conditions, if it is the largest caucus or has 
the most resources. But why be content with mere 
majority support, which, after all, steadily 
divides society. Why not seek consensus. Sure, 
absolute consensus in a very large group will 
probably be impossible, but there is no clear 
limit; mostly the failure to find substantial 
consensus results from not trying, not from its impossibility.

>It refreshes my vains to see other people really 
>thinking much the same lines we have been thinking!

I really think that anyone who approaches the 
existing situation, having certain ideas present 
with them, will come up with pretty much the same 
conclusions. It is just that most people never 
think about democracy and what it really means.

FA/DP is a generic solution to the problem of 
human organization; FA guarantees that the 
organization cannot come to rule the members, and 
DP essentially creates a higher intelligence. It 
is the glimmerings of this higher intelligence 
that is the reason democracy in general, even the 
very primitive democracy that we have in the 
world today, is more successful than societies 
with more restricted oligarchies, and especially 
why it is more successful than dictatorships, 
which are limited by the intelligence of the 
dictator. Even a smart dictator is no match for 
millions of people working on problems and freely finding solutions.

>3. As far as I know, Demoex is still running. As 
>far as I know, they haven't used Nordfors's technology.

That's correct, as far as I know. But Demoex is 
quite limited, compared to what it could have 
been (and still could be). I'm not sure of the 
exact relationship with Nordfor, I think he was 
involved with the original Demoex technology, 
which may be why it did include delegable proxy.

>4. Using cryptography, digital signature, it is 
>possible to have both secret ballot and a 
>communication between a representative (=proxy) 
>and a voter so that the representative knows 
>that the person who contacts him/her has voted for him/her.

Sure, it is possible to conceal this information 
from all others, while at the same time 
validating that the vote has genuinely be 
transferred. Unfortunately, if the representative 
knows that so-and-so has voted for him or her, 
that representative could coerce the vote. Secret 
ballot must be secret from the ones who receive 
the votes, or it is not secret in one of the most important ways.

In FAs with DP, secrecy becomes a fish bicycle, 
since the organization is not going to make any 
binding decisions. There will be so little profit 
in attempting to defraud the system that I 
seriously doubt that attempts would be at all 
common. The most that would happen if someone 
gathers a lot of phony proxies is that they could 
gain a voice in a high-level meeting, whereas 
otherwise they would only have a vote. And they 
would then have to convince a substantial number 
of the other high-level proxies, *real proxies, 
really trusted by a lot of people,* of the 
correctness of their cause. Unless the cause is 
truly worthwhile, this is going to be *very* 
difficult. And, remember, the resulting 
recommendation has to be filtered back down to 
the members *who hold all the actual power, such 
as the power to vote in public elections*, and it 
will subject to, essentially, universal scrutiny. 
All it takes is for one member to smell a rat and 
investigate. In FA/DP organizations, I presume 
that proxy assignments would *not* be secret. It 
would not be at all difficult to detect massive 
fraud. I think that those who might otherwise be 
tempted won't even bother. Too much risk for almost no gain.

If you want to speak to a high-level meeting, all 
you have to do is to convince *one* full member 
of that meeting (i.e., with the right to directly 
address the assembly and to enter motions) that 
it should be done. This member would then either 
present your thoughts himself or herself, or 
would ask the permission of the assembly for you 
to address it. Easy. And if you can't get even 
one member to agree with you, surely, should you 
obtain the right to address it by fraudulent 
means, you would not get any further than that. 
And once the fraud was discovered, you might find 
yourself shunned. FAs don't punish members, 
period. But Free Association implies not only the 
freedom to associate, but the freedom *not* to associate.

If you, for example, represent a large 
corporation which wants to be allowed to pollute, 
wouldn't you find it more fruitful to openly 
negotiate than to pursue a useless attempt to 
fool a very smart public? Perhaps the corporation 
will do something of sufficient value that it is 
worth the measure of pollution generated. Or, 
perhaps, the ideas being presented to the 
organization will result in even better ideas 
coming back, helping the corporation to develop plans that profit all.

>     - There are of course several critical issues in electronic voting!

Electronic voting is really not difficult when it 
is only polling. And if you have a defined and 
validated membership list, electronic voting can 
be fraud-free. It is not the voting that it is 
difficult, it is the development of the 
membership list. DP provides a self-validating 
structure, with multiple pathways of 
communication, including non-electronic and personal, direct meetings.

>5. To me, there is a problem of delegable proxy 
>having more than one level of voting / 
>delegating. Quite amusingly, the cycle may 
>occure: A wants to give his vote to B. B wants 
>to give his vote to C and C wants to give his 
>vote to A. Of course it is possible just to 
>prohibit cyclic delegating, but this does not 
>make the problem disappear, it merely transforms 
>it. There is more to it but I will not go deeper on the issue at the moment.

You should understand that this objection (what I 
call proxy loops) is common among those who 
encounter the idea and actually give it some 
thought. (Most people don't get that far.) Some 
consider it a serious problem. I don't, because, 
first of all, loops should be routine. That is, I 
would encourage everyone in the organization, 
*everyone*, to name a proxy. I.e., even if there 
is a superproxy, someone who directly or 
indirectly represents everyone in the 
organization, this person would name a proxy. 
Which will obviously create a loop.

There will be factions in the organization, I 
expect, and each faction will create a loop. Yes, 
if there are *very* many factions, there could 
theoretically be a serious representation failure 
if the individual factions were not large enough 
to qualify. Of course, qualifications would be 
adjusted to that situation; but this is the generic and simple solution:

Whenever small loops are created in the 
assignment list, the members of the loop are 
notified. If *any* member of the loop changes his 
or her assignment outside the loop, the loop 
becomes connected. In a small organization, if A 
wants to name B and B wants to name A, the 
smallest possible loop, what is the problem if, 
always, A or B attend the meetings. If the 
organization is larger and such a small loop 
would not have full participation privileges, 
then, of course, A and B would be motivated to 
seek and find someone else to represent them both 
in the absence of both of them.

Yes, it would be possible to prohibit loops, but, 
as I've established, I think, they are necessary 
and inevitable. They only would cause harm under 
certain conditions, easily prevented. If A and B 
really don't care to be represented, why should 
the organization care? Sure, it wants to 
encourage everyone to join, but everyone is *not* 
going to join, and the A-B loop described is 
*almost* like not joining, if it is a large 
organization. By closing their trust upon each 
other, by failing to seek and find someone to 
trust outside their very limited circle, they 
have disenfranchised themselves. And consider how 
this compares to the situation now. It certainly is not worse!

Without delegable proxy, in any case, there will 
be a much more common representation failure. 
After all, what if the proxy is absent?

>6. Funny that you mentioned the Chinese society. 
>I remember that Nordfors was thinking that 
>perhaps the communist party could use the system for internal discussion.

Yes. Now, the existing party has its Lomax 
Effect. It's not likely to happen there. But 
there are independent NGOs in China which are 
able to walk the tightrope, particularly I am 
aware of environmental organizations, which have 
been able to expose the graft and corruption 
involved in companies polluting Chinese 
resources. Really, though, the FA/DP 
organizations could be about *any* subject. It 
really does not matter, in the long run, what 
matters is that people discover that there is a 
way to create a powerful organization overnight, 
once the mechanisms are understood. Consider a 
phone tree where everyone in the tree calls N 
people. N can be very small and still all will be 
called within a fairly small period of time, the power of exponential growth.

>  I tried to sell the system to a major party in 
> Finland, their key person in the internal 
> forums (now the prime minister of Finland, BTW) 
> was interested but they had already invested 
> into a different web discussion system.

Let me tell, you, the Lomax Effect. It happens in 
large and small organizations. I did not make this up!

(If anyone wants to come up with a better name, 
they are welcome. "Persistence of Inequity Effect?"

>7. To my mind the most proponent places to start 
>the silent revolution of Delegable proxies could 
>be mis-sized parties and unions, where there is 
>both formal and informal discussion, both paid 
>and non-paid people. You see, if you have a 
>discussion + delegative system out in the wild, 
>there is no real reason for people to join it, 
>since there is nothing close to decide, it's just talk.

Talk is much more powerful than one might think. 
After all, "talk" can be, properly organized, 
"deliberation," the foundation of real and 
functional democracy. "Mere talk" usually is what 
takes place when there are no structures, no 
decision-making mechanisms, such as Robert's 
Rules or other parliamentary rules.

I tried to introduce Robert's Rules to the Range 
Voting list, which wants to be an organization, 
and it was shot down. And the result, I can 
rather confidently predict, is that these very 
smart and very good people will continue to spin 
their wheels with minimal actual impact. My 
attempt to introduce the Rules was misunderstood 
as an attempt to control the organization, and 
the scrupulousness with which I guaranteed the 
full rights and powers of all participants, as 
acting chair, functioning only for the purpose of 
making the proposal and making a decision on it, 
was seen as wasting time, since, with an online 
discussion group, it is necessary to wait quite a 
while before actually proceeding to a binding 
vote. However, my only agenda was the process 
itself, and I actually don't want to be running a 
specific-cause organization, I was merely 
offering my services and experience temporarily.

I'm a bit like a very primitive organism that 
sows thousands of seeds, needing only one of them 
to germinate and sprout. When there are more 
involved, working with me or I with them -- or, 
preferably, both -- we will start to see much 
more happening. For now, I can say that I have 
stimulated, here, consideration of delegable 
proxy as a viable possibility, and there are 
election methods implications, among them Asset 
Voting, which is basically delegable proxy used 
for the purpose of creating a peer assembly, 
generally with no wasted votes. Everyone ends up 
with an elected representative for whom they 
voted, or who passed on their vote to a winner. 
Asset Voting would fit into many existing 
structures, and it would be quite simple to implement.

Asset Voting is an invention of Warren Smith, the 
Range Voting activist, and I don't think he has 
realized the power of what he invented. Range 
Voting is excellent for polling, but it would be 
a disaster, I think, for creating an assembly 
with proportional representation. It is still a 
voting method, essentially, with winners and 
losers. And, necessarily, wasted votes, votes 
where the voter might as well have stayed home, 
his or her vote had no effect on the outcome.

There is a form of Asset Voting, I call FAAV, 
Fractional Approval Asset Voting, which takes a 
standard ballot and simply divides the votes cast 
on it among the candidates who receive those 
votes. You can vote for one and that person gets 
one vote. Or you can vote for ten and create a 
virtual committee which will ultimately decide 
how to distribute your vote. Essentially, you 
vote for the person or persons you trust. It is 
actually delegable proxy in disguise, and might 
very well function that way in the negotiation 
process that ensues after the election.

>  Political systems coded in law are, on the 
> other hand, way too resistant to change to be a 
> starting point. In small units it may be the 
> easiest to begin such a system, but it takes at 
> least a mid-sized party before the delegated 
> discussion / voting will begin to have 
> distinctive emergent properties that aside of 
> discussion list type organization.

It may be easier to change the law than to change 
existing power relationships. The Lomax Effect 
functions even in purely voluntary nonprofits. In 
fact, it can sometimes be worse there than in 
profit-making organizations or in government. 
People in nonprofits are often quite convinced 
that they are working for a good cause, which 
justifies whatever underhanded techniques they 
use to get what they think is best, which, 
surprise, often means that their personal power 
is enhanced or at least maintained. But even 
without that "ends justify the means" problem, inequities persist.


>8.1 The smallest step towards the Delegated 
>proxy democracy in present western democracies:
>When there is a referendum and let's say 60% of 
>the people vote, let the parliament use the 
>remaining 40% of the total voting power.

Interesting. However, I think the whole thing is 
unnecessary. I'm no longer exercised to change 
existing structures. Tackled directly, it can be 
very, very difficult. Snowball's chance in Hell 
of getting the excellent idea just mentioned 
implemented, unless preconditions exist.

I'm working on the preconditions, which is that 
the people become directly organized, *outside* 
of power structures. *Then* the power structures 
can be managed, and if they need to be changed, it can easily happen.

>This way there is no fear that too little people 
>would vote in a referendum for it to be 
>meaningful, since the representatives would 
>always fill the remaining political vacuum.
>Meaning that you could have much more referendums.
>This could be an easy step for present Switzerland.

Sure. Watch. You won't be able to do it unless 
you first develop a consensus, or something quite 
large. Existing organizations require much more 
than a good idea. This, in fact, was one of the 
original impulses behind my design of DP; it was 
to form a way to consider ideas that would 
rapidly develop a response and, if warranted, 
action. If there had been, for example, an FA/DP 
organization of U.S. F.B.I. agents, 9-11 would 
not have happened. The information was there but 
the top-down organization of the F.B.I. could not 
process it. FA/DP is organized bottom-up. Indeed, 
it would work excellently *alongside* a top-down 
organization, it not only need not oppose or 
replace it, rather it will complement it and 
bring in the missing element that will make the combination fully intelligent.

[...]
>So, to summarize: There could be at least two 
>meaningful routes to delegated proxy. One being 
>the small and mid-scale parties and 
>associations. The other could be to adjust 
>referendums close to proxy logic and step by step having more referendums.

I think that there is no way to predict what 
route it will take, but it is far too good an 
idea to *never* see the light of day, and it is 
far too simple. It essentially costs nothing but 
the creation of a list. That list can be a wiki 
page with a list of members and assigned proxies. 
You want to change your assignment, log in and change your listing.

Some people thinking about this want to have 
multiple proxies. I do suggest multiple proxies 
for multiple organizations, but within a single 
organization, there are quite a few reasons why 
naming one and only one proxy will be, I expect, 
far more powerful. Most of all, there is a clear 
and defined responsibility. I've seen what 
happens when two people represent something. Each 
one of them thinks that the other is going to do it.

Single-assignment DP, with small loops 
voluntarily broken, provides a clear chain of 
communication, defined from both ends, each link 
in the chain representing a relationship of 
trust. That trust can be provisional, the member 
can scrutinize all the actions of the proxy and 
question them if necessary, but the point is to 
build those relationships. You don't want a proxy 
who will be too busy to return your phone call or 
your email. Yes, a high-level proxy, or even one 
not so high-level, may have a mailing list to 
communicate with those represented, but it is 
communication in the other direction that must be 
personal and usually initiated from the bottom.

>9. Too bad what happened with Approval voting group.   :-(

Nah.... *expected.* If it is too bad, it is too 
bad for the Approval Voting cause, but that cause 
is not going to fail solely based on what 
happened to me; *however*, what happened to me 
betrayed the utter lack of understanding and 
political sophistication on the part of those who 
founded and control the group and the list. In 
this they are not untypical of would-be reformers 
of democracy who actually do not trust democracy 
and prefer to create oligarchical structures that 
they can personally control. Read the proposed 
bylaws of Citizens for Approval Voting.... they 
specifically prohibit proxy voting. Guess why! 
(These rules are common, they may have copied 
them from some other organization, but the 
prohibition was originally created to prevent 
members from actually exerting the control that they theoretically have.)

I think I drove the moderator up the wall by 
recommending to him exactly how he could do what 
he wanted to do -- stop me from discussing what 
he thought was irrelevant, *if* his action had 
the support of the list -- and I don't think he 
realized that he was talking to forty years of 
organizational experience. I know how to shut up 
a rogue member of a group *without* being a 
tyrant, and, quite possibly, without gratuitously 
alienating the individual. Who, after all, may 
have a lot of useful energy to donate.

I write a lot, but I *do* have a lot to say, and 
not enough time at the moment to edit it down. 
Perhaps I'll do that when I write the book. Or 
perhaps, as is more common, it will be edited by someone else.