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

[Eduardo Robles Elvira]

On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 3:05 PM,  <thijs.markus at piratenpartij.nl> wrote:
> 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.

Hello:

Let me say first that mine was not intended as any kind of appeal to
emotion, I try to honestly understand your positions, and I'll always
try not to take this personal, because I don't find that kind of stuff
productive =)

As to the why internal democracy, I have already given some answers in
the message you quoted, mainly that it's for consistency, doing what
one preaches. I know that Rick has argued against this saying that one
cannot opt out of government, but I don't find that explanation any
satisfying.

I find this similar to free software. I Software and in general
copyrighted works created by the money of our taxes of the people
should be owned by the people. We cannot opt out of taxes, so we
should at least own what we pay. But that doesn't mean I also believe
that free software is genuinely a good thing to do, because it's a
good thing that protects the freedom of the users and because it
allows to do things like wikipedia, Linux Kernel or KDE. Of course I'm
not going to force everyone to free their code, but I will promote the
development of free software. And I will promote that the tools
developed in the pirate party should be free software. Like Liquid
Feedback or Agora Voting, for example - even if I can opt out of the
pirate party!

why free software? because it's part of our "goals". You tell me I
haven't justified why internal democracy. Well, Rick said that we
should follow our goals, and he failed to mention them in extent and
to justify each one of them. I just argued that one of those goals is,
in fact, for some pirates (that is my understanding) and at least for
me as a pirate, internal democracy. And I even argued some of the
reasons, as I said in the previous paragraph.

I'm really curious now. Is it legal in European Countries (or in USA,
Canada) to have political parties that don't work in an internally
democratic manner, that the members of the party elect the board every
now and then and can modify the statutes? Does any of your pirate
parties deny these rights to your party members? Am I understanding
something wrong?

Regards,
    Eduardo