Universal models as issues for practice development

[Michael Allan]

Hi Conseo,

> How can I explain this issue to a person in 5 minutes without
> unwinding all of Votorola's theory of communicative assent? ...

Here's my first attempt (already it's looking clumsy):
http://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/1ho4de

> ... And even after that, what is really in for them realistically?
> Maybe you have a concrete issue people find compelling in mind and I
> just don't see it?

Yes, I see a few concrete aspects: 1) in breaking with tradition by
grappling directly with self-determination in constitutional practice,
instead of just mouthing the words; 2) in causing immediate freedom
for the practitioner, albeit only subjectively; and 3) in the social
effects of the ratings poll G/p/cR, albeit only weakly.  I just name
these without attempting to explain them yet.

> I find Stephen's co-op interesting, because it already has a lively
> democratic process at its core and an (also business-related)
> interest to expand it. We offer them software to do so, which also
> makes us potentially more viable.

I think the crucial thing is to jump in and actually do something.
Then the problems and opportunities begin to emerge from the haze.
Coops are opaque to me and I can't easily jump into those, but that's
just my own situation.

My immediate need is for a baseline of informal yet more-or-less
purposeful discussion.  I need it as a reference horizon against which
to develop the tools and practices.  Even the thinnest of discussion
baselines would be enough, but it must be long-lived and available on
demand.  I can't find it anywhere, so I'll have to create it.  This is
my only aim at present.

Mike


conseo said:
> Hi Mike,
> 
> Michael Allan wrote:
> > I've been surveying the Internet lately looking for a place to plant
> > our practices and start developing them.  Once again I came to realize
> > that it's a wasteland out there; we'll have to scatter our efforts
> > widely to give them a chance.  This got me looking for big issues that
> > are easy to scatter.  I was looking at the European constitution when
> > I got the idea of a model constitution that could be applied anywhere
> > in the world.  First I'll explain the idea in constitutional terms,
> > then I'll expand it to cover other types of issue.  There are two
> > working parts to the idea:
> > 
> >   1. A normative poll for a model constitution that could be applied
> >      anywhere in the world.  (Not a constitution for the whole world,
> >      of course, because there is no world state.)
> 
> Right, and there would be a history driving totality needed to form a world 
> state. Something many socialists pictured early in the 20th century, but which 
> has not materialised. Even the EU is driven by free-market reform, not by 
> creating a new strong form of social institution. Something Habermas 
> definitely overrates when looking at democratic process in EU politics. 
> 
> All in all, model or concrete constitution, we are here already at the stake 
> of humanism (global constitution) and finding a total democratic form. Denying 
> the concrete state-aspect won't help that. Form twists with content and is 
> needed to make it evolve (as physics is for maths and then vice versa). 
> Quality can become quantity and vice-versa to put it in Hegelian terms. 
> 
> We cannot first find the right form, it has to match the historic situation 
> and solve the problems of current humanity, or theoretically speaken broaden 
> our view on it, as our practices attempt to. But the applications should be 
> dirtily concrete and specific imo (the practices have to be strong enough for 
> these issues and many (recent) protests/movements/revolutions have been 
> sparked by single seemingly superficial issues). It also shortens our 
> feedback-loop tremendously, we can fail faster with the failure of the issues.
> 
> In the future the pracitices might very well prove wrong or dangerously 
> mispercepted, we cannot side step failure by cleaning the form beforehand and 
> chosing "neutral" issues. We have to try them out on lively, political and 
> contradictionary issues. Different political groups or processes very well 
> might still have different (total) democracies in their mind. 
> (In fact it is pretty obvious imo that they do.) We have to decide whom we 
> want to help even and especially if our practices are intended to transcend 
> that. 
> 
> Just my 2 pence.
> 
> > 
> >   2. A ratings poll to identify those places in the world that best
> >      uphold the model constitution in practice, and those places that
> >      most offend against it.  The results of the ratings poll are:
> > 
> >      * A ranked list of the upholders specifying for each upholder the
> >        particular parts of the constitution it best upholds.
> > 
> >      * A ranked list of the offenders specifying for each offender the
> >        particular parts of the constitution it most offends against.
> > 
> > The second part is calculated to produce an immediate expectation of
> > change.  Each shift in the rankings is a potential news story.  While
> > it takes decades to change constitutions, it takes less time to change
> > people's expectations.
> > 
> > Now we don't just do this for constitutions, but for all laws, plans
> > and designs that are portable from place to place or application to
> > application.  We raise ideal models for universal consensus and use
> > these as "master keys" to enter all forums.  There we keep throwing
> > the practices at the forums until they stick.
> > 
> > Does this make sense?  I was feeling stuck for a few days, but now I'm
> > hopeful this is the way forward.  I'll do some light research on the
> > idea tomorrow (model law etc.) and see what I can learn.
> 
> How can I explain this issue to a person in 5 minutes without unwinding all of 
> Votorola's theory of communicative assent? And even after that, what is really 
> in for them realistically? Maybe you have a concrete issue people find 
> compelling in mind and I just don't see it?
> I find Stephen's co-op interesting, because it already has a lively democratic 
> process at its core and an (also business-related) interest to expand it. We 
> offer them software to do so, which also makes us potentially more viable.
> 
> conseo