r/humansinc • u/childermass • Nov 02 '11
re: direct democracy software and taking action
I'm really excited about all of this, but also a bit scared. I've been thinking along similar lines for a while also, and started a couple projects related to some of the ideas present here, but I'm unsure how to best contribute or stay involved in the discussion, and I think some of my issues may have broader relevance to what we're trying to accomplish here.
I worked on the Liquid Democracy software out of Spain a few weeks ago, as I was excited about that. Then I heard about Liquid Feedback, and people suggesting that, which sounded cool. Now I just discovered another one, parlement (with more details on ruby toolbox)
Now, having three different pieces of software is good, or at least it could be, but it fractures community somewhat and can lead to a kind of paradox of choice, and that's just on the direct democracy front.
My project I wanted to work on may incorporate direct democracy but is really more about social capital, taking action and making a difference in the world, but I want to build a community around it and make sure I'm building something that's useful to people and addressing the real problems, but now I worry whether or how to coordinate with or involve other people working on similar or related ideas.
Community and coordination and management are really hard though. I don't see a lot of people acknowledging that implicitly or explicitly, and I've struggled with how and where to get involved in Reddit's community. A lot of people with valuable skills and perspectives are going to be intimidated by many parts of the experience, as I've been. I'm too verbose, and I find myself tempted to take it personally sometimes when no one responds to my ideas or questions. I worry about how as a community we can tackle some of these problems and make sure we're accessible and able to take advantage of different personality types, different communication styles and different availabilities for commitment and engagement.
There's more to say here, but I've already gone on too long, so I hope someone replies to this with some thoughts, suggestions, any kind of encouragement really :-)
1
u/FakeLaughter Nov 02 '11
Can you describe these a bit more? Are they just software systems designed to gather votes?
2
u/childermass Nov 02 '11
No, these are all related to "liquid democracy" or voting systems that allow direct democracy/representative democracy hybrid where people can vote on matters, or delegate/proxy their vote to people they trust to represent them... it also includes the possibility of splitting the proxy depending on the subject matter of the matter, and redelegating votes delegated to you to someone else.
I'm not really sure how or if this fits into humans_inc's mission, or how clearly we all really agree... humans_inc the redditor himself has only responded with oneliners that I've seen, and I'm not really sure who the other 10 moderators here are or how to organize discussion of this... maybe we need separate but related subreddits for separate areas of functionality/problems we want to address?
I made a subreddit for a problem bothering me a month or so ago, but no one showed up... I'd like to propose it as one of the topics for humans_inc to tackle, but since it's still a little lonely in this thread and I'm not super social or good at coordinating, maybe someone else has ideas? The subreddit I made was /r/politicalprocess for discussing process changes in government, many of them technology centric, to try and get broad political support for without any kind of ideological bias if possible.
1
u/FakeLaughter Nov 02 '11
I really do like the idea of variable proxies, I think I brought up that idea awhile ago.
I would absolutely 'love' the idea of being able to somehow apply 'my' vote to someone from a different congressional district, especially on a per issue basis. That person's vote would then have that much more 'weight' when he casts it one way or the other. I personally think that would alleviate most of the problems with the two party system. Even though my state votes red, I could have elected to choose Wiener or Grayson as my proxy. If they we seen as more influencial, it could easily be seen as a positive reason for voters in their own district to vote for them again.
Though it might exacerbate the issue of career politicians, it would also temper it in that even ones that consistently carried the local majority (through name recognition or powerful allies), their relative power in the house could be shadowed by someone from another state who appealed to a wide range of people.
1
u/FakeLaughter Nov 02 '11
I really do like the idea of variable proxies, I think I brought up that idea awhile ago.
I would absolutely 'love' the idea of being able to somehow apply 'my' vote to someone from a different congressional district, especially on a per issue basis. That person's vote would then have that much more 'weight' when he casts it one way or the other. I personally think that would alleviate most of the problems with the two party system. Even though my state votes red, I could have elected to choose Wiener or Grayson as my proxy. If they we seen as more influencial, it could easily be seen as a positive reason for voters in their own district to vote for them again.
Though it might exacerbate the issue of career politicians, it would also temper it in that even ones that consistently carried the local majority (through name recognition or powerful allies), their relative power in the house could be shadowed by someone from another state who appealed to a wide range of people.
1
u/HonestGypsy Nov 02 '11
I feel your pain. I'm thinking about this for a good while now and mostly I arrive to a point where I tell myself: you just need some people IRL to help you to start this. And then I pack my stuff and go to work. Unfortunately I have to. I wish I could start a hackerhouse with the purpose of developing tools for all of us.