Way to go Joe: I liked your platinum coin, I like reinventing Democracy!
Both of his abstract conceptual ideas get down to the core of the problem domain in the same way: Identify (or establish if there is none or a dysfunctional one existing) the core relationship that the conceptual structure is built upon. It will have this feature; a one to one exclusive mandatory relationship between two elemental things (nouns) that are chosen as the most granular building blocks of the entire conceptual system. The cornerstone. The rule, the truth, the absolute. That is a good point to build anything on.
What is that cornerstone of democracy?
One person relationship to one vote.
What implements that relationship between those two things and gives it life?
Voting. A verb between the two nouns. Casting a vote. It is an unalienable right. A truth. An absolute that shall not be infringed. (Unless a felon or dead)
A entire solid conceptual structure built on this foundation of one person one vote must have a direct connection at all levels to the founding principal. For example: It is like the entire computer internet that is built on the binary relationship between the presence and the absence of a thing. It can be an electrical charge of plus or minus (absence of a positive charge) or the presence or absence of light, etc. The mental backflip trick here is to say that the absence of one thing makes it a different thing than the presence of the same thing. In other word, simply because a single unique thing is not in existence, its absence can be considered a different conceptual thing because it is in a different state of being. That state of being (being.......ta da...): non-being.
A vote is essentially a binary fundamental thing. It becomes when cast is a choice between two things or in the absence of being cast it also becomes a choice between two different things; voting or not voting.
A vote, a choice formulated in the concept of a vote is a beautiful thing. It is the essence form of our natural language structure: Subject Noun///Verb//Object Noun. Voter//Casts//Vote.
This is where this block post is going: Joe proposes a system that reduces a wide range of interests related to stakeholder groups that aggregate/analyze/refine positions for political influence representing/promoting the special interest stakeholder objectives/goals/ideology.
While the internet, the physical devices of the internet, the computers, networks operate on physical properties of electricity/optics based on binary code, that code is abstracted to letters/numbers/pixels/sounds that form the building blocks of abstract thoughts, conscious constructions in the human mind.
All that stuff in the human mind and how it is organized in the individual as well as the collective mind is what Joe is aiming at to reduce, based on stakeholder areas of interest down to the binary level of a vote at the most granular level of our social system:
The franchised voting citizen.
What Joe proposes is analogous to the physical internet but in reverse. The physical internet is a bottom up assembly based on binary code. Hand in hand with that bottom up assembly is the piggy backed translation of code to abstracted meaning and process. Take all that abstraction as it exists in the cloud of the World Wide Web and reduce it down to the most basic level of operation (binary vote choice) and that becomes what Joe proposes......I think.....but it looks like that to me.
Reinventing democracy as Joe proposes requires a vast amount of data, mining that data for information and then analyzing that information to produce knowledge. Knowledge is what is acted upon by stakeholders, being anyone with any interest in whatever the stakeholding matter might be. Freedom of choice.
Voting, of course is not exactly an exclusive binary choice between two alternative proposals. Perhaps more than two if there are alternate choices but they become a final choice. The third choice in this binary voting (yes/no) on a proposal is not to vote at all. Then it looks like a presence/absence situation where the absence of a thing is in fact a thing that means something. A thing to which conceptual meaning can be attached. Whatever that conceptual meaning may be.
Those that do not vote have no power? All the power is in participation?
Darn good questions. Where does the power reside? The simple majority of the vote results? No way when those results are the product of an ideology that does not support the public interest.
Maybe what is important here is in this system that Joe proposes there is a conceptual structure created on an issue that concerns stakeholders that is founded on concrete logic and reason that makes ultimate choice on the the matter transparently self evident. That gets down to basics of truth and ideology absolutes. Some believe that ideology is religious, others secular social, still others the fundamentals of capitalism. That is the battleground for hearts and minds.
In any battle that benefits all it requires a level battle field, a level playing field with agreed upon rules and regs, who enforces them as impartial refs.
Decisive football games have been recently played to determine ultimate winners and the flip side of that, the losers. The joy of victory and the agony of defeat. Maybe the most important thing is that both teams did their best and enjoyed the game, shook hands afterward.
Letsgetitdone!
Excellent comments on Joe's proposal at this link.
Many of the regulars that I also respect expressing some excellent comments. Others throw monkey wrenches into the plan. Minor points to which they ascribe the power of "deal breakers". In a way Joe introduces the idea as well as develop the idea in the fashion that he proposes.
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