[pp.int.general] 'Liquid Democrazy': Pirate Party Sinks amid Chaos and Bickering

[Nicolás Reynolds]

Zbigniew Łukasiak <zzbbyy at gmail.com> writes:

> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Nicolás Reynolds <fauno at kiwwwi.com.ar> wrote:
>> why is liquid feedback nonbinding? this has always been a big wtf for
>> me... (also the concept of liquid democracy :P)
>
> I don't know German law - but in some cases the law does state how the
> decisions are made.

even for internal procedures?

> I can see how LF can help with the oligarchy problem - but on the
> other hand it can also lead to vote selling (for money or for favours,
> or in a horse trade of policies) and thus making it worse, not to
> mention the problem with computer security which is really under
> appreciated I believe.  And then there is also:

we know a lot about clientelism, charismatic leaders and demagogy here,
and when i read about liquid democracy it didn't solve these problems,
the worst case scenario being everybody delegating their vote to one
person.  but the problem is who does things, not who votes for
them... does LF have provisions for taking responsibility?

> "Time and again, a majority of the party's members express support
> online for a particular idea, only to scrap it at the party's next
> real-world meeting."
>
> Why that happens?  Does that mean that different people vote in LF?
> People change their minds?

it looks like an unfounded claim to have us say "direct democracy
doesn't work! we must have leaders." same for the anonymous messages
ppde leaders are receiving (secret services? they do these things), the
lack of opinions from the party's bases... they are all painted as the
angry mob.

> From what I've read on this list the Italian Pirate Party wants to use
> LF as the sole voting method - I hope we'll learn from them how it
> worked there.

we've been writing our statuses, the first thing was to make it really
simple to understand, not have adhoc procedures for every possible task
but only one so we don't end up with a bunch of bureaucrats that know
everything very well, confusing others and taking advantage of it.

we don't have a board but a permanent general assembly (currently
mailing list), and make provisions to have small autonomous groups
(called pirate ships!) based on interests, territory, etc.

every pirate can make propposals to the assembly and they get approved
when there's no opposition from 3%, so you still can do stuff despite
other's indifference (when no one shows at a meeting, for instance).
that pirate is immediately responsible for that propposal, so it doesn't
gets abandoned for lack of voluntarism.

we have to work a lot for newbies inclusion, knowing that many people
just comes to see (they don't even reply to my welcome message! :(),
others don't have the time and others complain about receiving many
emails (they forgot they subscribed to a list?).

now we need at least 4000 pirates to become legal, maybe one day we'll
have our own democrazy P)


--
ppar
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