[MG] Wise Use of Funds Raised

[Ed Pastore]

Hi, Ned. The idea I have been floating on the Votorola list is just that: an idea I'm mulling over. I brought it up prematurely because of the post Rhett had made there. But it is all about resources.

Currently, the resources I have available for Metagov are tiny scraps of time I manage to eke out between the heavy demands of my job, my business, and caring for a sick family-member.

I would prefer for Metagov to be my full-time job, but the only practical way for me to make that happen is to organize it as an American non-profit corporation. Then I could work up to spending significant amounts of time writing grant proposals to foundations in the hopes of building up a treasury which we could then use to fund publicity efforts as well as to fund coding projects (plus I could work on making back-end improvements such as expanding on the limitations of the list server).

I've repeatedly floated the idea of creating a formal organization, but I've had a lot of trouble with the idea of making it an American company. It just seems wrong for our group to be tied to one country. Especially the United States, where relatively few of our members reside and where the tax laws are intrusive and burdensome. There's also a lot of legal work to be done to figure out if we can create a non-profit which is governed not by a board of directors but by collaborative governance. On the other hand, the U.S. is the place where a large bulk of the moneyed foundations reside; and generally they only fund American non-profits ("501c3's").

Rather than figuring out what to do with the scarce resources we have now, I would love the opportunity to grow them into a more formidable stash. I am open to ideas, suggestions, alternative thinking, etc.


On Jun 16, 2013, at 7:40 PM, Ned Conner wrote:

> There is an active thread over on the Votorola listserv that is raising many important issues for discussion:
> A New Party Dedicated to Implementing Public Voting.
> 
> The root links to the thread are:
> http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2013-June/001748.html
> http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2013-June/001753.html
> http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2013-June/001749.html (and following)
> 
> As often happens when we try to use listserv platforms for rational discourse, the thread started out as a specific invitation from Rhett Pepe to Michael Allen, and has since morphed into a wide-ranging informal conversation between Michael Allen and Ed Pastore. (As an aside, to effectively and efficiently support decision making through rational discourse, we need a system that features professional profiling and automatic multi-threading of each unit and sub-unit of the discourse, and that structurally, procedurally, reliably, transparently connects the discourse outcome to the decision outcome. Blinap alone among all extant decision system designs provides these features. The listserv platform has none of these features.)
> Below is a list dealing with one issue, extracted from the thread, of aims and values and objectives and strategies, with my addition appended.
> Rhett wants to start a new (mixed-format) political party (and run for city council), as a means to infiltrate Representative Democracy with Direct Democracy.
> Ed wants freedom from representation.
> Ed wants consensus-oriented direct democracy.
> Ed is also (like Rhett) considering founding a mixed-format party, as a stepping stone.
> Ned thinks that using our scarce resources to directly compete against entrenched powers (that have vastly more resources) on their own turf (in our currently existing polyarchies) would be a monumental waste of our scarce resources. We can more quickly and efficiently create a more effective global "bully pulpit" if we do not engage in the utter waste of competing directly (creating political parties, running for office, buying advertising, funding political campaigns, etc.).
> _______________________________________________
> 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/20130617/8330bdb1/attachment.html>