Re dictatorship of the proletariat, how do you feel about liquid democracy? It seems to me that it solves quite a few, if not all, of the problems of typical representational systems, but maintains efficient government by the people. It is only in this context, incidentally, that I support economic Marxism: the people should have direct control over the means of production, but the ability to designate and delegate decisions to a few trusted, presumably experienced individuals based on area of expertise.
I haven't come across the concept of liquid democracy yet... but from the metaphor I'm guessing it's kind of similar to what I mean by distributed democracy? I wrote a working paper on my ideas of distributed digital democracy if you're interested. Just check the beginning of "Section 3" for my specific ideas on distributed democracy to see if its anything similar to "liquid democracy". But I'll have to re-do this paper later in the year, many of my ideas about it have changed and the tone of this paper should be altered if I submit it to an academic journal.how do you feel about liquid democracy?
Ooh, ooh! I get to tell you about liquid democracy! Here you go: […] Liquid Feedback is about competition and decision-making. Any of the 6,000 members that use it can propose a policy. If the proposal picks up a 10 percent quorum within a set period, such as a week, it becomes the focus of an almost 'gamified' revision period. Any member can also set up an alternative proposal, and over the ensuing few weeks these rival versions battle it out, with members voting their favorites up or down. "In the ideal case you have five or six people working on alternative initiatives, and everyone tries to be the better one so they can win the poll in the end," Berlin Pirate Party spokesman Ingo Bormuth explains. "We hope it's healthy competition, but we want people to compete against each other so they stay [involved] in the topic." Each member has one vote, but most are not interested in marking up endless reams of policy papers. So the system allows every vote to be entrusted to another member – for everything, or for certain topics or specific proposals, or not at all. What's more, the person who has been delegated the votes of others can then re-delegate all those votes, plus their own, to someone else. It's a trust-based approach and the nearest thing Liquid Feedback has to a reputation system. Members don't get points-based kudos for their involvement and expertise; they collect real votes. In theory, votes being passed up the chain like this could lead to a crony elite or even a dictator, but there is a failsafe mechanism. Every delegated vote can be reclaimed at any time, so no high-flying Pirate can operate without a continuous mandate. "We want effective people to be powerful and do their work, but we want [the grassroots] to be able to control them," Bormuth says. This is liquid democracy: a sliding scale between direct democracy and representative democracy, where each member can decide where they sit in the spectrum at any given time. Source I'll check out that paper if I have time later tonight. Sounds interesting![A] few […] local Pirate chapters, notably the one in Berlin, are also experimenting with a platform called Liquid Feedback. Also open-source (and therefore available for implementation by anyone), Liquid Feedback is built around a concept called 'liquid democracy.' It's effectively a technology for hacking traditional politics.
Thanks so much, that was a great read and some good ideas here for updating my paper. Also touches on a few things I was discussing today with some colleagues - glad to see it in action I'll have to do some more research about it. Also check this!