[EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:42 PM 4/19/2010, Duane Johnson wrote:
>Hi Everyone,
>
>I am new to this forum, thanks to James Green-Armytage who sent me 
>the address.  I am a software engineer in Chicago who also happens 
>to be interested in voting methods.
>
>I'd like to propose a voting method that may be of interest 
>here.  It has also been cross-posted to the ideas group at 
>forums.e-democracy.org.  This system seems almost too simple when 
>you understand it, but the implications are deep and, I believe, 
>profound.  I am interested in your feedback.

I'm glad to see more people thinking about process and voting as 
involving communication. Which leads to considering communication as 
the foundation of democracy, not voting per se. Functional democracy 
is deliberative democracy; democracy without communication is easily 
manipulated and if power is directly exercised, there is a tendency 
to mob rule, where the intelligence of crowds is dumbed down instead 
of amplified. Wikipedia, for those who study it, is a great example 
of how not to do it.

However, I strongly urge people who attempt to analyze the situation 
and to propose reforms to:

1. Keep it simple. An extraordinarily powerful system for fully 
proportional representation consisting of a seemingly-simple tweak on 
Single Transferable Vote was proposed in 1883 or so by Charles 
Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). If a simple system that is *obviously* far 
more democratic doesn't attract notice for more than a hundred years, 
what chance does something more complicated and dodgier (i.e., 
involving lots of unknowns) have?

2. Don't propose chickens without eggs or vice versa. Imagine that 
there is some ideal political system, that allows good ideas to be 
efficiently considered, with the necessary depth. If such a system 
existed, it would be easy to suggest and propose and agree upon it, 
and if people agree on just about anything, they can do it, as long 
as the actual already-existing system is reasonably democratic. I 
invented FA/DP (Free Associations with Delegable Proxy) as a method 
for considering and forming consensus on ideas like FA/DP.

3. FA/DP is terminally simple, but, in reality, it's like pulling 
teeth to even get people to consider it. Sure, lots of people will 
say, "What a great idea," if they don't get stuck in the knee-jerk 
objections, like, "*They* will corrupt anything." or, more 
sophisticated, "Iron law of oligarchy (see the Wikipedia article)," etc.

4. Notice: the method by which one would develop consensus and 
implement better political systems is a political system. Revolutions 
tend to empower the revolutionaries, or those who inherit power from 
them. If we want a true democratic revolution, we must want something 
different from the norm of revolution, which tends to follow the same 
traditional power structures, thus, in effect, simply changing faces. 
Traditional power structures boil down to two kinds: oligarchical and 
distributed. Oligarchical power developed and prospered because it 
was more efficient when the scale became large -- even though it is, 
from an ideal perspective, very inefficient -- due to the involvement 
in process normally required for distributed power to function, which 
expands exponentially with the number of active participants.

5. FA principles are natural for humans, most peer organizations, in 
their infancy, are roughly FAs. But if the FA principles aren't 
understood and solidly maintained, and as organizations grow, they 
naturally develop oligarchical structure, it is what people know how 
to do, and they are not aware that there are alternatives. When the 
organization is small, implementing something like DP seems too 
complicated. Can't we just discuss things like we always have? When 
the scale becomes large enough that DP is truly needed, it's too 
late. De-facto oligarchies have already developed, and the Iron Law 
of Oligarchy begins to function and resist change back to distributed 
power. The oligarchy believes that it knows best, and, indeed, it 
often does. It's the exceptions that are killers, that reduce 
long-term efficiency and support, that allow originally wonderful 
nonprofit organizations, for example, to become divided and weakened, 
to be co-opted by corruption, to become no longer truly 
representative of the aspirations of their members, but because the 
organization has been "successful," and comes to dominate its field, 
it is very difficult to start anew and such efforts will be 
considered "divisive" and "disruptive."

6. So: consider delegable proxy, how simple it can be when applied 
within a Free Association, which does not concentrate power *at all*. 
In the Montesqueuian sense, it is pure judgment, which I think of as 
advice. In theory, if the executive and judicial power are fully 
separated, the judicial system has no direct power, it only advises 
but cannot coerce the executive system. A wise executive, though, 
wants good advice! In an FA/DP system, the system functions solely to 
advise its members as well as anyone else interested. The only 
coercive power it might have is the distributed power of the members, 
if they act in a coordinated manner, and it cannot, without blatant 
abandonment of FA principles, coerce them. The FA itself does not 
collect power except for the power to communicate, and it cannot 
control that, for the communication structure is easily replicable, 
if a central structure is corrupted in some way, the delegable proxy 
structure can re-establish it, network by network, reconnecting 
outside the original structure, because most of the communication in 
an FA/DP structure is not through the central structure, it's under 
the control of the proxies themselves, who cannot compel any client 
to participate, who do not "own" their clients, nor do the clients own them.

7. Often overlooked, because of the habits of thinking only in terms 
of hierarchies that concentrate power or representation, is that, if 
everyone names a proxy, all paths in the directed graph produce form 
loops. There is nobody at the "top," or, more accurately, there must 
be at least two. I.e., if there is what I call a superproxy, someone 
who, if nobody else participates in some "discussion," would 
represent every member, there must be at least two, because the proxy 
named by this superproxy would have the same representative power.

8. Lots of people, thinking about this stuff, try to eliminate loops, 
because a loop can mean that some are not represented in some 
high-level process. However, when that "defect" happens, it's 
visible. It's easy to notify those who are "absent," and to do so 
efficiently, through identification of unrepresented loops and the 
"proxy rank" of those involved. ("Proxy rank" looks at each member 
and considers how many clients are represented if the member 
participates and nobody else does, it's a bit complicated because it 
involves recursion to avoid the appearance of equal representation 
due to a superproxy of some natural caucus naming a proxy within the 
caucus.) Loops represent natural caucuses, and they only cause loss 
of representation if no member of the caucus, in the loop, 
participates in a process. Attempting to avoid loops involves 
restricting the rights of members to name people in their own trusted 
group, forcing the naming of someone outside that group. That's 
coercive, in the name of "more democratic." Bad idea. Instead, let 
people decide if they want to be represented or not. If they do, and 
if it is not practical for them to be represented directly through a 
loop member, all it takes is one member of a loop naming a proxy 
outside the loop to break it.

9. Alternate proxies are another solution to the loop issue. An 
"alternate proxy" is a backup proxy, considered to represent a member 
if the primary proxy is not present or represented. But, remember, 
every complication represents risk. Single-proxy DP encourages 
members to think about whom they most trust, from among those who are 
available to them. A single proxy has a clear (and accepted, I 
encourage not recognizing, or deprecating, unaccepted proxy 
designations) responsibility to communicate information coming from 
the "center" to the client (or to *not* communicate information that 
the proxy deems to be "noise" for the client). Does an alternate 
proxy have this responsibility? The core of DP, to me, is the 
proxy-client relationship and how it will function.

10. FA/DP is necessarily informal, it creates organizational 
structure only in the loosest sense. The relevant Alcoholics 
Anonymous tradition (AA is the model FA) says, "AA as such ought 
never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees 
directly responsible to those they serve." Notice: a "service board" 
is a corporation, and it is, in this "exception," not creating a 
board -- which will own property as a corporation and thus develop 
centralized power -- that is AA or controls any part of AA, and that 
is "responsible" to those it serves, which means, in practice, those 
who actually form it. They do not obtain the endorsement of AA 
itself, they are only quasi-AA, perhaps broadly supported, or perhaps 
not. Local Alcoholism Councils are often formed by AA members to 
represent the interests of alcoholics and alcoholism treatment before 
local governments. These Councils are often created and dominated by 
AA members and other interested persons, but they do not speak for 
AA, they speak for their members.

11. In the same way, the natural caucuses formed by proxies and their 
clients, cooperating, can form, say, Political Action Committees that 
exercise real power, collecting donations, or, because of campaign 
finance laws, they can easily recommend individual donations to their 
members. FA/DP doesn't collect power, in itself, these PACs are 
outside the FA itself, it does not endorse them, though they are free 
to endorse it. FAs do not take positions on controversial issues, and 
this is crucial, if FAs are to be able to form broad consensus, for 
to do this, every side on an issue should ideally be represented. FAs 
will certainly form with "initial bias," a bias created solely by the 
natural bias of its members, and the power exercised initially 
through PACs may reflect this bias. If, as I expect, FA/DP social 
technology is as efficient as I expect, these PACs will be 
successful, and will attract imitation. If the FA is open to 
participation by "the other side," it then becomes a mechanism 
whereby broader consensus might be found. Each caucus remains free, 
if it chooses, to organize its own PACs, but two PACs opposing each 
other in the sphere of real power weaken each other. That's good, 
when consensus hasn't been found! But cooperation and consensus are 
powerful. If agreement can be found, it will prevail. In order for 
this to work, joining the FA must not have any appearance of 
supporting one side of a controversy. FAs can report the results of 
polls of its members, those are just facts. However, these polls do 
not establish an "organizational position," except in one very narrow 
sphere, the organization of the FA itself. Strictly speaking, the 
non-endorsement of controversial position practice of FAs is with 
regard to "outside issues." Within the FA, there are traditions which 
maintain the autonomy of all "meetings" and which prevent coercive 
power from arising. There is still the Iron Law of Oligarchy, it is 
not cancelled by FA/DP, but the leaders that develop are as they are 
in AA. "Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern." 
Strictly speaking, these "leaders" do govern, but they only govern 
their own "meetings," i.e., they govern their own communication 
group, their own natural caucus, and because they cannot compel 
participation, the collected power is highly restricted. In AA, the 
saying is, "The only requirement to start a meeting is a resentment 
and a coffee pot." AA turns natural division and disagreement into 
fuel for expansion, for the more meetings there are, the more options 
there are for members, the more communication power exists.

12. I imagine FA/DP using all forms of communication technology, but, 
it is important to remember, it doesn't depend on any form of 
communication in particular, beyond the central idea of two people 
communicating directly. DP is established if there is a member list 
and a list of assigned proxies (preferably with acceptances, that's 
often overlooked by those who are trying to set up a "voting 
system.") For voting applications, I recommend, instead of DP, Asset 
Voting, with DP as a voluntary and optional method for electors 
holding votes to cooperate and coordinate to create representation. 
Asset Voting is compatible with existing traditions regarding 
deliberative assemblies, creating a default assembly where every 
member has the same voting power as every other member. That can be 
modified to reduce the voting power of a member whenever an elector 
who has transferred votes to that member votes directly, but that is 
a tweak, an improvement, I believe, and would establish true and 
complete representation in all decisions of an Assembly, which is 
important, but it is also possible that such "outside voting" would 
be only advisory. Early implementations of Asset Voting should keep 
it simple, establishing the principle of full representation by 
chosen representative, instead of representatives being chosen in 
"contests," for such contests represent not only winners and losers 
among candidates, but winners and losers among voters. Are the losers 
represented? How can we say that a voter is represented in a 
legislature when the voter opposed the choice of a majority, not to 
mention the mere plurality that is often the real case? This is the 
elephant in the living room of "representative democracy." It isn't. 
The people, the "demos" are not represented, jurisdictions are, districts.