Proposal for Knight News Challenge

[Michael Allan]

Thanks for the suggestions folks. The draft I'm working on is here:
http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Knight

Conseo, you ask for small scale and non-legal applications. I want to
keep the focus on laws, though, because legislatures are the core of
government (topic of challenge) and self-legislation is the core of
public autonomy, which seems to be the crucial deficit to correct.

conseo said:
> ... These practices are not bound to a particular organization, size
> or citizenship and can be started by anybody, anywhere, anytime,
> needing to form a rational social structure or process, no matter
> how small or special and are never finally concluded, but still
> actionable under agreed circumstances."

I'm counting on the pictures to say "this is wonderful" (I forgot to
include them in my original post). I want the text to move as quickly
as possible through statements of the problem and solution to end up
pointing to the small group on whose shoulders it all rests. I think
this is where the current draft falls down. It should say more about
the pioneering team.

Ed Pastore said:
> I find it a bit confusing. Even if the readers are intelligent, many
> of the topics you are discussing are just not familiar to most
> people. While they can be understood with contemplation, on their
> face they may be too difficult to grasp.

I think it leaves the reader wondering, "Where do I fit in?"  The
biggest source of confusion is to omit the purpose of the proposal,
which is to ask for help. So now I'm thinking to turn it (like the
"free-range voting" proposal) into another call for collaboration.

> DESCRIPTION
> -----------
> Democracy is not about a good relationship between the government
> and the people: it is about government of, by, and for the people.
> As long as we view government and citizens as two distinct groups,
> we cannot have actual democracy. This means changing not the way
> government institutions function, but rather the way governance
> works. This proposal is to fundamentally change the means by which
> government decisions are made.
>
> In the past, it has been impossible or undesirable for the people to
> continuously participate in their own governance: people had to be
> physically together in order to make decisions together. So we had
> to compromise and implement a representative form of democracy:
> basically keeping the governance structure of feudalism (lords and a
> king), but democratizing the process how those rulers came to
> office.
>
> Now with internet technologies, we have the ability to democratize
> the entire decision-making process. The common reaction to this
> proposal is that it is an attempt to bring about mob rule: a
> horrible result of a primitive and ill-considered form of democracy.
> We do not propose that at all.
>
> Instead, we propose to build systems where deliberation and
> discussion are the core of decision-making. Where democracy is not
> about 51% of the people picking one option and 49% picking the
> opposite, but rather about building consensus through organic means
> of dialog and deliberation.

I respect your Communitarian ethos, but you leave out the solution.
You fail to mention how to achieve the goal of self-government. Maybe
this is where you ran out of time, as you say, but a proposal to build
systems leaves everyone off the hook except a few technicians like me.
Others can safely say "I agree", then walk away confident they won't
be missing a thing. But it's not systems and technicians we're hurting
for just now, it's leadership. Isn't that true?

Mike