[EM] Idea Proposal: Listening Democracy

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 09:07 PM 4/21/2010, Duane Johnson wrote:
>This sounds quite interesting, Abd ul-Rahman.  Where can I learn 
>about your FA/DP idea?  Your discussion here is helpful, but I feel 
>like I am missing out the important prerequisite pieces in order to 
>make sense of it.  (I know about delegable proxy, but haven't heard 
>about FA/DP specifically).

My recent comments assumed some undertanding of the background. FA = 
Free Association. The short of it is that FAs are organizations that 
follow a generalization of the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve 
Traditions, and the AA Twelve Concepts for World Service, as they 
apply to general-purpose organizations designed for stability and 
success without creating central control, as AA was designed. FAs 
are, roughly, how many informal peer associations start, but, 
particularly as they become successful, they normally move away from 
these informal traditions and take on common structures that seem to 
be necessary for success when the scale is larger. AA formalized the 
principles, based on study by Bill Wilson of what made prior 
temperance organizations eventually fail.

DP is, of course, delegable proxy, which isn't strictly necessary in 
the beginning, but the earlier it is implemented, the safer the 
organization is, in the sense of being protected from the Iron Law of 
Oligarchy, and in becoming persistent even when many members drift 
away due to the rising of other interests. Those members become 
"permanent" through proxy representation, remaining connected to the 
organization through a filter, a proxy left behind.

There is a wiki linked from http://beyondpolitics.org. There was an 
older wiki that still has files, but that is not directly accessible, 
I need to port the material from the old wiki. There isn't much at 
the new wiki yet.

You can find a lot of stuff by googling "FA/DP."