Democratic Organisation

It's the only way to keep liberty, matey boy.

Source: All of history ever

Pretty sure that's a logical fallacy, if even an argument. You forget about anarchy, technocracy, and other systems that don't grant unqualified authority to groups or individuals.

You wanna talk history? First thing a majority does is vote to enslave the minority, from Greece on. Representative democracy mitigates this problem of mob tyranny, but still has many ochlocratic problems. Better than this, are systems which preserve liberty by denying authority, especially to groups.

Democracy is a sacred cow, but if you let go of the assumption that it is virtuous, you'll see it is just another form of tyranny, albeit more palatable than oligarchy or autocracy… but it isn't an either-or situation. There are other options.

I bet all those slaves in Greece and the antebellum South were just loving all that liberty.

Read machiavelli. The porkies desire to oppress the plebs, the plebs only desire not to be oppressed.

gee its almost like not having a vote leads one to be made into a second class citizen

people fought and died to remove the property qualification from voting precisely because they got more agency by having the vote than not.

If no one has the vote, then all you get is a roomful of assholes deciding how to fuck you instead of a city full, and its much harder to find a city full of assholes

It seems to me that nearly the minute you remove poor bob from the machine shop he becomes the Right Honourable Bob, Representative for Machine Shop #6509, and the bulk of his time and effort is spent maintaining that position. The dividing line between representative and represented seems to me to be the bad cell from which the cancer of bureaucracy grows. The perfect representative is simply the perfect reflection of the will of the majority, right? Picking bob from the machine shop shouldn't in principle be different from picking cathy the welder, yeah? If so, why bother with names at all?

You make a good point, though. Have the chans developed any method of avoiding samefagging? I suppose there are thread- (or in this case vote-) specific ids. If you can manage build a cult of personality around yourself as 8f327a in the course of a single policy vote then maybe you really should be leading us.

Did you type the wrong address, friendo? This is Holla Forums, I think you might be looking for Holla Forums? Easy mistake to make, many do.

The only anarchy that disdains democracy as an ideal is elitist bullshit like individualist anarchism and egoism. Meanwhile technocracy is just thinly-veiled fascism, so no thanks. Have any of you supposedly left-wing antidemocrats considered saying 'fuck it' and just admitting to yourselves that you don't hate hierarchy, you just hate not being on the top of one? The only place a person can have full, unrestricted freedom is if everyone else is their total slave.

You and need to get over the Athenian democracy == slavery meme, too. The slave-owning classes were dead-set against democracy in Greece, it was the artisan class (who worked for a living and didn't own slaves/property, sound familiar?) that pushed for democracy.

Seriously, the egoists, fascists,and tankies seem to shit on democracy like it's some sort of pure form of tyranny. What the fuck would you know? You've never even tried it, and you send in the tanks as soon as you sense its approach.

The majority of proles in western society are given a vote but are still marginalized and excluded from the political process so I'm not sure that's really the lynchpin for emancipation. Democracy has historically been used as means to legitimize oppression and act as a blocking coalition to real progress. It isn't a sacred institution and we shouldn't fetishize it.

Read Rousseau

Yes, they are given a meaningless choice between two indistinguishable options every few years. "Representative democracy is no democracy at all" is right there in the OP. I'm talking about new, more democratic forms of decisionmaking and organisation. Restricting the share of the vote required for the victory of the representative, who is then given sovreignty for the duration of their tenure, is exactly one of the mechanisms by which representative democracy fails to safeguard liberty.

Yep. France is bigger now, but our communications technology has outstripped her growth. We could have a truly direct democracy today. I'm arguing that anonymity in the decisionmaking process is an important component of such a democratic system.

I was responding to someone who said democracy has historically been a protector of liberty.

False dichotomy

You have confused a series of insults with an argument. An easy mistake.

Cybernetic design principles protect against tyranny. In democracies, the mob must be held in check, or it devolves into ochlocracy. Cybernetic design can preclude tyranny in non-democratic systems as well. You seem confused as to what technocracy is. It's not Technocracy Inc, another common mistake.
STFU. 'The only?' For fucks sake, are you really trying to account for all schools of anarchist thought? Read up on cybernetics.

No, the oppressed often seek to become oppressors themselves.

You criticise me for stringing together insults, yet your entire criticism boils down to insultingly referring to the demos as the ochlos. It's OK, I get it, you hate and fear the masses, and you don't want them to rule. You want the qualified to rule, the technos. The elite. I'm trying to say you want an aristocracy.

Where I say demos, you say ochlos.
Where you say technos, I say aristos.

I don't want anyone to rule anyone, not the masses, not a king, not aristocrats. You are taking as a given, people must rule over other people. Go back to Holla Forums.

What I want is for people to come together and manage their own collective affairs. And make no mistake, their affairs are collective, and will continue to be if we want to do more than farm dirt from the comfort of our mud huts. And the only way we can justly manage our own affairs is if everyone gets a say. Rule by the people. Democracy.

Fuckwit.

Why does there have to be a ruler? You are taking as a given, non technocratic authority is required for the management of human affairs.

What keeps democracy from degenerating into mob rule, where the minority is enslaved? Design. Design is what preserves liberty. Any virtues of democracy, is due only to design. Design can preserve liberty and assure collective prosperity, without voting or a government.

Okay, I think I got it:
If some people got guns, everybody gets a gun to preserve liberty. If some people got votes, everybody gotta get a vote. I'm talking about the complete elimination of these tools of oppression, and insist that it is better that way. Some forms of oppression are more tolerable than others, yes, but it's still oppression. Can humanity organize itself and thrive, without oppression organizing us?

High rhetoric, but you show your true colours every time you refer to the majority of the population as a 'mob'.

In so far as you call for an elegantly designed system that best enables people to manage their own affairs, we are in agreement - that's the entire intent of the OP.

In so far as you talk about people as a 'mob' and talk of 'the majority enslaving the minority', well, I fear your intention is exactly the reverse.

And I'm saying that we aren't a bunch of free-floating polyps in the aether, completely independent of each other. While we have collective affairs, we will require some method of attending to them. If you have something specific in mind when you talk about eliminating democratic decisionmaking and the existence of violence (hive minds and immortality serum, maybe?), then please come out with it.

If put to a vote, the US would become a theocracy. Certain things are not up for a vote. We did not advance because of democracy, but rather despite it. I've worked in anarchist collectives, very sophisticated and prosperous establishments. We didn't vote. We decided. We had conversations, bylaws, things like that. I'm not going to disagree with the bootmaker on the matter of boots. That's technocracy. It's not magic.

It's hard to conceive of existence without authority, oppression, and compulsion, if you've never known it. We have virtues of authority drilled into our heads, and we assume someone has to be in charge. If there is conflict, authority is not a satisfactory solution.

There's an Ursula Le Guin novel, The Dispossessed, which brilliantly demonstrates the psychological and cultural differences between anarchic and authoritarian mindsets. They are enigmatic to one another. I understand why you don't understand. I understand that you are drawing the opposite conclusions from what I am saying, because you are starting from a place of assuming authority is a necessary feature in human affairs. Anarchy is counter-intuitive to you. "But how would things get done?" That's a long conversation. The only premise I'm establishing is democracy is a form of authority, oppression, and that life is better without it. That doesn't mean other forms of tyranny are acceptable. That's a false dichotomy.

Fuck dude, read the OP. I go over this. I've been an activist for years. I've seen anarchist decisionmaking in action, and trot decisionmaking, and bourgeois decisionmaking. I'm telling you that none of them factually approach the freedom from oppression we all crave.

Well that would depend a hell of a lot on how you went about setting up that vote now wouldn't it? Also I'm going to keep pointing out every time you say something horribly elitist. Have you actually met any ordinary Americans? This is a terrible caricature of them.

Yes I'm sure it appeared that way, and I'm sure the bearded + dreadlocked due who's been there forever and always gets his way and always has three women in the establishment on the go at the same time told you it was so very free, but I assure you 'horizontal' decisionmaking ends up informally and unaccountably reproducing the exact hierarchies that representative democracies make explicit. Especially in antagonistic situations. I am against both forms. I am looking to discuss new ones.

You seem to have me confused with some weird form of radical democrat who would see the world cursed to eternal meetings and votes to decide exactly how long everyone is to brush their teeth for. It's an insulting strawman.

I want to make it clear that I understand what you're saying about authority. But I want to make clear that social existence cannot possibly be separated from the extremely broad definitions you have assigned to 'authority' and 'oppression'. And you have not sufficiently convinced me that any of your non-democratic proposals are anything more than informal and veiled minority rule. If anything, the suggestions I put forward in the OP are a concrete improvement on the things you are talking about.

Individualist anarchists shouldn't be allowed on this board. They are in no way leftists.

Go back to /liberty/

No, I practice philosophical charity, and don't assume you're in an extreme or an idiot.
You're imagination, on the other hand, is quite uncharitable, and inaccurate. It leads you to not understanding.

You'd be surprised what's out there.

The Occupy movement used the M15 format. While many of us know the issues there, the super majority requirement was appropriate and technocratic. Figuring out what 50k people are gonna do, should require 70%, 80%, or even 90% consensus. That's not majority rule. Such a high bar requires true research into the will of the people. That was more a matter of research than democracy. I was a real big fan of the GA, and its designed weakness before committees. Applying that super majority within committees, doesn't work. The committees could take any form.

It is interesting what you say about the dreadlocked dude. I've seen that plenty of times. Interestingly enough, I've found organizations with good design could almost be called matriarchal.

Anti-democratic does not automatically mean individualist, left or right.

Consensus and informality are two issues, not one. What you describe is the problem of informality, consensus is the part where nothing ever gets done and that would be true with a very formal consensus procedure as well.

Selection by population lottery.

A high quorum means that the status quo is harder to change. Do you think that the status quo came to be by true research into the will of the people?

Thats its my dog

Here's the ancap with the silver and black flag. Wondering where your retarded ass was.

How could you provide the effect of anonymity in real-life organization?