[EM] proxy ideas: continual consideration, and proxy committees

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 09:07 AM 4/9/2010, Alex Rollin wrote:
>Hi Abd,
>
>What you have written is utterly fascinating to me.

Hey, me too.

>Last night I spent several hours grasping new vocabulary.  What you 
>wrote agrees with my internal understanding of what I wish very much.

The ideas are popping up all over. I think the time has come, but, I 
caution anyone starting to work in this field: it runs contrary to 
widely-accepted assumptions about democracy and what is possible. 
Most people are going to need to see operating organizations to even 
believe it is possible. And I'm sympathetic. After all, how do I know 
that this will work? Lots of ideas that have seemed really great 
didn't work, because of unanticipated consequences.

>On top of that I am very curious about your work.  I went to your 
>website but it appears to have been coopted in some way.  Is your 
>email still working?

This one is. The web site for beyondpolitics.org is working, 
occasionally some people help with it, but it's been languishing. I'm 
only one person and I have a few irons in the fire, maybe too many. 
The wiki is at 
http://beyondpolitics.org/~beyolom0/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

My email from there may not be working, but this address, the one 
this mail comes from, is working.

(Domain hosts were changed, and I never transferred all the old 
tikiwiki stuff. So the FAQ which was on the original site is missing, 
which is an important document. I should fix that, like I should fix 
hundreds of other things... It is impossible to take a world movement 
beyond a few words, here and there, without more than one person 
being actively involved. There *are* other people involved, but they 
are all, also, busy. Gradually, this will shift.)

>I would like to know what kinds of organizations DO use FA-DP now, 
>and where I could look at one.

There are none currently using it that are of sufficient size to test 
it. It should be understood, however, that "Free Association" 
describes almost any original informal cooperative organization, at 
its inception. However, what normally happens if the organization 
grows is that it adopts a traditional form, that's what people know 
how to do. And the traditional forms normally leave behind many of 
the Free Association characteristics. There is a huge exception, 
though, and it's kind of a trick. The exception is Alcoholics 
Anonymous, and the FA characteristics are generally drawn from the AA 
Twelve Traditions.

Delegable proxy is actually regular proxy, which has always been 
delegable (by default), it's just that delegability hasn't been 
considered routine. When I sold my house a few years ago, I had to be 
out of the country for a few weeks, so I have a power of attorney to 
the lawyer. That allowed the lawyer to execute necessary documents on 
my behalf, and the lawyer had the discretion to make routine 
decisions, representing my interests. But suppose something had to be 
signed on a day when the lawyer wasn't available. He could delegate 
it to someone, providing an additional document showing this. It 
isn't normally done, because the necessity is not common. A power of 
attorney is a proxy.

In FA/DP usage, though, a proxy does not normally exercise legal 
rights, but is simply considered to "generally represent" the client, 
for purposes of estimating consensus. The proxy will not be "voting 
on behalf of" the client, just voting, in a poll, his or her own 
conclusions. I would not put mechanisms in place to allow a proxy to 
split votes, rather, the proxy simply votes his or her opinion. It is 
considered to "generally represent" the opinion of the client, but 
not necessarily the ab initio opinion, otherwise a proxy could be 
replaced with a remote vote. Rather it represents a projection: the 
proxy's vote is considered to be the most probably vote of the client 
*after the proxy and client discuss the matter,* should that come to 
pass. And before anything happens of consequence in the real world, 
so to speak, the client has to be convinced!

(Unless the client, as a separate and distinct action, gives real 
proxy power to the proxy, as with, for example, the right to issue 
checks from a dedicated account, and that is not necessarily the 
business of the FA.)

But this is off the top of my head: Demox, in Sweden, briefly used 
delegable proxy in its process. Michael Nordfors reported that the 
biggest "problem" was that most proxies ended up pointing to a single 
widely trusted individual. These were, I'm sure, assigned proxies 
that didn't require acceptance, the need for acceptance and the 
consequences of an individual holding a large number of direct 
proxies had not been explored. It is not clear that this was really a 
problem, because the power of Demoex, at that point, was to advise 
its members how to vote in local council elections. But Demoex also 
set up a non-FA characteristic. It took organizational positions 
based on votes, and the elected Demoex representative on the city 
council was pledged to vote per the Demox vote. Very bad idea, ran 
entirely contrary to the basic principles of deliberative bodies, 
i.e., the right of participants to make decisions, on the spot, based 
on the deliberations and real possibilities in the moment.

Demox would have been far more successful if it had functioned as a 
purely advisory organization, seeking to facilitate communicatin 
between the people and the government. *All the people,* not just 
"Demoex members." What member of a city council would not want that 
advice? But by allowing Demoex to take organizational positions, 
Demoex then became an enemy to other interests, and could not 
function as a mediator, as a mechanism to seek consensus. It's 
essential that FAs not take controversial positions *as an FA.*

Suppose there exist two large factions in a place. They have trouble 
getting along, and if an FA includes them all, it will be, 
supposedly, full of wrangling and arguments that go nowhere. But, now 
imagine this with DP in place. The two factions can exist as two 
different "meetings" within the overall FA, which is rigorously 
neutral. Suppose that all members of faction A belong to FA-A, and 
all members of B belong to FA-B. But suppose that both FAs allow 
anyone to join who is interested. "The only requirement for 
membership is an interest in our topic."

What will happen? Without DP, it's a mess, and the mess is the reason 
why such fora are often avoided by sane people.! But with DP, here is 
what will happen: There will be a member of FA-A who has the balance 
and capacity and time to join and participate in FA-B. That would 
include, as a skill, to be stable, knowing when to "speak," and when 
the time isn't ripe and speaking will only create disruption. But 
this member asks all members of FA-A to join FA-B, name him or her as 
a proxy, and go on "silent mode," if they want, which means they 
don't get routine traffic from FA-B.

And the same thing happens in reverse, i.e., there may be a proxy on 
FA-A who represents all members of FA-B. Or, in fact, there may be 
more than one. It doesn't matter, and the FA rules, combined with 
decent DP rules, will simply make this energetically advantageous.

And when polls are held on one of the FAs, vote analysis can show 
what's going on. Real faction A can see how its own members feel, and 
can, as well, see how members of the other faction feel, because the 
public nature of proxy designation allows it to be known that the 
FA-B proxy is identified, and it's possible to go to the FA-B web 
site and see exactly who is represented by that proxy.

The information becomes available to estimate, in advance, the effect 
of a political decision by faction A. It remains completely free to 
make that decision, the FA does not control it, it merely advises. 
Faction A improves as a representative of its members, because it 
becomes more difficult for a subfaction to take over, unless it truly 
does win substantial consensus. Faction A might be a real political party.

It really gets interesting when high-level meetings start to form. 
These would be deliberative bodies that restrict membership as they, 
themselves, decide. If the FA is operating properly (following 
traditions), every member of the overall organization has the right 
to "join" the meeting, and to vote in any process. But the right to 
vote is different from the right to speak. The right to speak at any 
meeting is controlled by the consensus of that meeting. All meetings 
are, in their own government, independent. (This is how AA works.) 
When a meeting becomes very large, the "traffic" can become such a 
burden that people start dropping out. The point is to encourage them 
to drop out from direct participation, but remain connected through a 
proxy left behind, who has direct contact information. But we know 
from experience that the most contentious participants will remain, 
so traffic will remain high. Okay, at this point the meeting decides 
to restrict participation to a specific set of members. If it does 
this right, the active members will represent, and represent well, 
the "silent majority." If it does it badly, nobody fights over it, 
they just start "another damn meeting." AA, in fact, grew rapidly 
because of this, they actually turned resentment over "the terrible 
way that those idiots are running this meeting" into rapid 
multiplication of meetings, and the best meetings survived, and 
badly-run meetings didn't, and because no actual power was assigned 
to a meeting (no built-up treasury to fight over, no property owned 
to speak of), it was not worth it, at all, to fight over meeting 
management. The saying in AA is, "All you need to start a meeting is 
a resentment and a coffee pot.")

With delegable proxy and an FA structure, it would be possible for a 
single FA to facilitate communication among all people on the planet, 
efficiently.

Yeah, sometimes I get excited. Be careful. It is very difficult to 
get *one* person suficiently interested in this stuff. People will 
often say, "What a great idea!" but very few will actually lift a 
finger. It's normal. They don't believe it's possible, and, as I 
mentioned, most people will need to see it working before they will 
believe it. So, given this, how do we get from here to there?

Well, there are probably millions of answers to that question, but 
what my answer boils down to is this plan:

1. Develop the concept, and distill it into simple and likely 
effective operating principles.
2. Spread the concept based on this.
3. Organize to spread the concept, using the concept itself.
4. Propose the necessary structures and traditions whenever 
organizational opportunities present themselves.
5. Connect with others who are working on similar ideas, and support this work.

FA/DP concepts will work with very small groups. I've found that 
naming a proxy, just as a personal act, is quite useful. I can leave 
active participation in a mailing list, if there is a proxy left 
behind who will tell me when something of special interest to me comes up.

Accepting a proxy is volunteering, in this conception, to serve the 
client. The only actual advantage received by the proxy is somewhat 
enhanced creditibility, which is ruined if, when push comes to shove, 
the client does not actually support the positions taken by the proxy.

Assigning a proxy is consent to direct communication from the proxy, 
and that should be made clear, and someone adding a proxy name to a 
proxy list should, for example, be claiming that they have sent a 
personal message (perhaps through the web site communication system) 
to the proxy.

Accepting a proxy is consent to direct communication from the client.

I order to protect an FA meeting from becoming co-opted by meeting 
site management, that clients and proxies have direct means of 
communication, independent of the site, is very important. (In AA, 
people exchange phone numbers, and if a new meeting starts up, they 
can and do notify each other. This would often also be announced at 
existing meetings. It's generally felt that the more meetings there 
are, the merrier, because there are then more opportunities for 
anyone to find a congenial time and place, and congenial members.)

Note that if a meeting takes place as a mailing list, generally 
people will have the email addresses of list members. Some lists may 
not allow that information, but it's a dangerous form of 
centralization of control. It would be proper in some cases, where a 
meeting isn't central. High-level meetings will have controlled 
posting rights, and those with posting rights should have public 
email addresses so that those who might want to choose one as their 
proxy can contact them.

>I am also interested to know what you have discovered about how and 
>why some organizations cannot use it.  I read some of that here, but 
>i am looking for specifics, so perhaps you can point me at such a 
>thing?  What kinds of conditions distinguish such organizations from 
>each other?

Central control or the rising of an oligarchy with extra privileges 
over general members will create resistance, for those who have 
inequitable power will correctly see any structure that distributes 
power equitably as, in fact, "inequitable" in a different sense. The 
oligarchy generally believes that it knows better how to implement 
the organizational purpose than the general membership, and it may 
even be correct. However, not necessarily! FA/DP is not immune to the 
Iron Law of Oligarchy, there will exist a class with higher 
privilege, in a sense. But FA/DP restricts the privileges of that 
class, and confines it to what is necessary for noise control and 
intelligent action. Those who actually do serve the membership will 
retain and grow in privilege, whereas those who only serve their own 
ideas, will find their privilege failing.

FA/DP does not oppose the oligarchy; rather it selectively enables 
and encourages members of it, the best, and lets the others fall away 
with no campaign of elimination.

For these reasons, I think that FA/DP could be possible for what 
would ultimately become political organizations in China, as an 
example. The FA would never, as an organization, oppose government 
policy, and, in fact, it would support it, or, more accurately, the 
best of it. Generally, the oligarchy does believe that it is serving 
the "people." In fact, if we were to look at the people in the 
Chinese government who do exercise control, we'd find them divided. 
Some are truly after personal power and some are after actual 
service. The latter group will not oppose an FA that rigorously 
respects the rules about taking a controversial position as an FA. 
The former might, but in so doing, would be exposing itself as 
seeking to repress the people and their right to cooperate for common 
welfare, in favor of their own assumption of superior intelligence or 
character. It could make for a very interesting story, I suspect.

EMIG, the election methods interest group, currently inactive, but 
still available for use, at electionmethods at yahoogroups.com, has a 
proxy table, and it's an FA, so it is FA/DP. I found it useful for 
the little bit that it was used, you can check it out. The page is

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/electionmethods/

There is no reason, if one is interested in election methods, to 
*not* join this list, except for a belief that it will be useless. We 
actually have some supporters of IRV who joined. (Now, *that's* 
extreme!). List membership, per se, does not betray any political 
position or controversial view. There are no dues or fees. And you 
can go on Special Notice status, which leaves you as a member, but 
stops traffic. However, you don't need to stop traffic if there isn't 
any! (I would not send a special notice unless there were some 
emergency or there were consensus to send it. The whole point is to 
not bug people more than is clearly needed.)

My proposal to academics was to join and encourage a worthy student 
to join, and then delegate a proxy to the student! And ask the 
student to let you know if there was something of likely interest to 
the professor....

Information filtering is essential to large-scale organization. FA-DP 
sets up the possibility of ground-up structure where one's input is 
filtered by someone volutnarily chosen for that purpose, and who 
accepts the burden. (which can be very small, unless one accepts a 
boatload of proxies, creating a substantial communications burden. 
Many people have proposed formal limits on the number of proxies, but 
I expect it will self-limit to what actually works. A factional 
representative, as in FA-A and FA-B above, would probably maintain a 
mailing list for clients, and would not necessarily read all mail 
from clients (and large lists would, again, take measures to restrict traffic.)

Ah, yes, one more point. Demoex stopped using DP because it was a 
software feature in software designed by Nordfors. They adopted 
conferencing software that didn't have the feature. But DP should not 
be a "software feature," and setting up a proxy table is very simple, 
it can be, and should be, a simple text file. Software may or may not 
have the tools to analyze it, but the network is set up and useful if 
people simply start naming proxies. Proxy analysis can easily be done 
manually by anyone who wants the information about how representative 
a process is.

And an Assembly can be elected using Asset voting and existing proxy 
assigments..... no extra poll would be needed, but if there is some 
good membership definition, that will distinguish between distinct 
individuals and sock puppets, then a secret ballot poll of the 
confirmed members could be used for the first layer of elector 
determination, and then the proxy table could take over for the 
negotiation of seats. (Ratified, in the end, by actual votes in a 
standing election by those who are holding the votes per Asset -- 
unless specific proxies allowing indirect voting are assigned.)