[pp.int.general] Pirates Democracy - Liquid Democracy

[Reinier Bakels]

> I don't really understand why you bring that into the discussion at the
> moment? Liquid feedback is still years away from being used on a national
> level. At the moment we start using it to promote democracy 'within'
> PP-DE.
Aha (Erlebnis), perhaps I was mistaken.
<snip>
>
> > PP should not be a "think tank" for the next millennium, but a political 
> > party
> > that tries to change the world before the elextion - if just a little 
> > bit.
>
> I think PP should be that "think tank". I don't want to just sit around 
> and
> mourn about what other party's do. It's easy to criticise but hard to 
> bring
> good solutions. Liquid feed back might well be one of those good 
> solutions.
>
It is hard enough to make proposals that both appeal large numbers of voters 
and can stand the scrutiny of (educated) critics. If opponents make 
*credible* arguments, that appeal potential voters, PP proposals are 
worthless.

Perhaps the emphasis in Germany is more on privacy, while in The Netherlands 
privacy never was a political issue, and the PP emphasis (consequently) will 
be more on copyright. Which is a more difficult topic (although e.g. elderly 
people are *very* happy with pervasive camera surveillance because it gives 
them a feeling of safety - right or wrong).

In NL, the Greens adopted some PP ideas in their program, which was recently 
published in view of the June parliament elections. They proposed a 10 year 
copyright. Almost immediately, a group of writers (authors) reacted with a 
newspaper article, saying (basically) that they deserve a decent income, 
which won't be possible if such proposals become law. A law professor 
reacted by saying that theft = theft, and pointed to international 
obligations that are *very* hard to change.

Some pirates argue that it is not their job to devise alternate schemes for 
author compensation. In my opinion, I think that the political argument can 
be strengthened if PP does have an idea how to counter such objections 
("writers will starve"). Besides, I believe that it is basically the 
constitutional duty of an elected politician to consider the interest of 
society, not just of a single group (but I am not sure whether that fiction 
applies to other countries as well).

In sum, I believe that there are tough policy questions for pirates that 
need an answer short term. Plans for the 22nd century can wait. A rough 
vision is enough.

reinier