[MG] Knight News Challenge: Pioneering the practice of public autonomy

[Mark Frischmuth]

Hi Michael,

Good luck with the project.  I'd challenge you to be more clear in your
language and to focus on the desired outcomes to be achieved.  From reading
the proposal, it's unclear to me exactly how this project would improve the
way government and citizens interact, and what is meant by "public
autonomy".  I think that for this to be successful those items should jump
off the page to the average reader.

Cheers,
Mark

On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:

> I hope this version resolves the confusion that Ed pointed to. This
> one is clearer about what's needed. Again, I'm pretty sure it's just
> leadership; we need to move forward. So that's what I ask for:
>
> I'm seeking collaborators with leadership skills for a Knight News
> Challenge proposal. Again, this year's challenge is, "How might we
> improve the way citizens and governments interact?"
> https://www.newschallenge.org/
>
> Below is a rough draft of the proposal. In addition to collaborators,
> we might also need organizational support (in part because there's
> financing if we win). The submission deadline is March 18. Please let
> me know if you can help. My contact details are at: http://zelea.com/
>
>
> PROJECT TITLE
>
>    Pioneering the practice of public autonomy
>
> MAIN IMAGE
>
>
> http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/2-grow/validity/seeking.png
>
> DESCRIPTION
>
>    To be free in a social world that regulates itself by laws and
>    other norms (to have public autonomy), we must be able to
>    understand and reasonably agree with those norms that affect us. As
>    the social theorist and philosopher Habermas puts it, "Just those
>    action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could
>    agree as participants in rational discourses." Taking this
>    discourse principle as our guiding star, we aim to pioneer a
>    practice of public autonomy based on the continual exposure of
>    draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses. We'll
>    simultaneously run electoral primaries based on open, transitive
>    voting, to put our most qualified practitioners on the ballot and
>    into office, where they'll continue to work with us, their
>    un-elected peers. On the technical side, we'll use MediaWiki for
>    the drafting medium; Semantic MediaWiki as an open database and
>    voter registry (streetwiki); existing public forums as the
>    discussion media; Votorola's prototype toolset for transitive
>    voting and recombinant text; plus any other suitable tools and
>    technical projects that we pick up along the way. Already we have
>    enough to support a crude practice.
>
>    Pioneering that practice is the topic of this proposal. There are
>    two things to understand about this from the outset. The first is
>    that, despite the proliferation of designs for participatory
>    democracy that are fundamentally flawed in terms of legitimacy and
>    efficacy, nobody has yet found such a flaw in the design of this
>    particular practice. The acid test is to locate the single person
>    who cannot reasonably assent to a law, then evolve that law in a
>    direction to which all can assent. Second, the core of this
>    practice can be developed and proven by a small group of pioneers.
>    The core is the process of validity seeking (main figure). It is
>    conducted by small "leaf groups" of typically 2-5 practitioners who
>    continually join with the public in discourse. These discourses are
>    structured not only to guide the would-be normative action in the
>    direction of validity, but also to provide the human resources that
>    are necessary to carry out that action. This implies that *if* a
>    pioneering leaf group ever succeeds in getting the design and
>    performance of this core process right, delivering on both its
>    purposes, then the entire population will be led into freedom by
>    that success.
>
>    To achieve that success will require special skills. We're looking
>    for people who have the capacity to critique the design of the
>    practice and to expose any flaws, while also being resourceful
>    enough to handle a toolset that is only partly finished, and that
>    might even require a re-design. The technical designs cannot be
>    allowed to harden into finished tools until we have a better
>    understanding of the hands-on practice. We're also looking for
>    people who have imagination. When your hands are in a nascent
>    practice such as this, and your mind is equipped to make up for the
>    missing parts, then it becomes like a lense into the future; you're
>    out in front thinking for all the others who will follow. In short,
>    we're looking for leaders. If you know of any who could be
>    interested, please point them here.
>
> WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT?  (1 sentence max)
>
>    To pioneer a practice of public autonomy based on transitive
>    voting, recombinant text, and the continual exposure of legislative
>    bills and other draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses.
>
> LINKS
>
>    http://www.mediawiki.org/
>    http://semantic-mediawiki.org/
>    http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.html
>    http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/validity_seeking
>
> OTHER IMAGES
>
>
> http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/election/singleNominate.png
>
> http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/election/singleElect.png
>    http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/law/prepare.png
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: Start at metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription:
> http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/attachments/20130227/da69dda6/attachment.html>