[pp.int.general] Pirates and the 5 Star Movement

[thijs.markus at piratenpartij.nl]

Eduardo Robles Elvira schreef op 02.03.2013 14:46:
> On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Rick Falkvinge (Piratpartiet)
> <rick.falkvinge at piratpartiet.se> wrote:
>>> I am all for internal democracy but it is a difficult game to play,
>>> with some learning required.
>>
>> It is crucial to remember that internal democracy is not and was 
>> never
>> our goal. It is a method to reach our goal. A process. One of many.
>>
>> Our goal is to reform legislation to resonate with our values.
>
> Hello:
>
> When you talk about "our goal", are you talking about your national
> party or the pirate movement? I find this wording confusing, and I
> think that in many pirate parties "our goal" is also to have internal
> democracy, ie. practice what you preach. Many pirate parties are 
> using
> internally liquid feedback and other democracy tools internally to
> promote this kind of goal.
>
> For me it's quite strange to hear that internal democracy is not a
> goal for a pirate party, really. It might not be a direct or liquid
> democracy internally, but the organization should at least be
> democratic, with internal elections every now and then, and such. It
> would probably be newsworthy to say that a given pirate party is not
> democratic itself.
>

There is only one thing I'd like to ask at this statement: Why?
All I read here is an eppeal to emotion; 'It'd be cute to have internal 
elections', without further argument presented. 'It would be newsworthy 
to say that...' So?
Your line of argument could do with a tad less politics and a tad more 
argumentation. You see, where democracy goes flawed is not just a lack 
of transparancy and so forth, it is that this sort of alogical reasoning 
prevails. Note that I say 'alogical' not neccesarily 'illogical' - see 
the logical part tends to get outsourced to the bureaucrats and 
lobbyists in governance, leaving the elected representatives with little 
more to handle than feel to emotionally about it and make grand appeals 
to the population along those lines. Maybe we should save this sort of 
appeals for external use only - cause I for one can't see how we are 
going to be helped by it internally.

And I fear very bad things if we are going for full out internal 
democracy without systems to counteract this. The creature that evolves 
well in a poorly set up democratic environment is one of the things we 
do not need to add to the political arena. Oh and - don't take it 
personally, you're hardly the only one, but things need to be said, or 
so I was told.

> Furthermore, as I said many pirate parties that I know value direct
> and liquid democracy, and they promote these values as much as they
> can. And of course one very valid way of promoting it is to apply
> these techniques internally, I find this to be the most natural 
> thing.
>
> One cannot vote *everything* in a political party. It doesn't make
> sense to vote if I send this message or not, for example. But the 
> many
> important things can probably be voted, even if it might seem not the
> most efficient way for you, and decided together by the pirates.
>
> Regards,
>   Eduardo
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