Slashdot Mirror
Scott Reents Holds Forth
Query
by Modern_Celt
Considering the speed of internet communication is this going to make it even more difficult for those in the Western states to care about the election? After all, most of the networks already predict a winner LONG before the poles out west close.
Scott Reents: Internet or no Internet, your individual vote is mathematically meaningless in determining the outcome of an election anyway, and exit polls already exist to remind you of this fact.
Still, the speed of the Internet is an important factor in our overall participation in politics. For example, MoveOn was able to organize and channel millions of people opposed to Clinton's impeachment in a matter of weeks. Normally, organizations can't mobilize their membership around pending legislation or regulations, because the window of opportunity before they are enacted is too small. This makes a truly grassroots organization an impossibility without the Internet, because there must always be organizational management to serve as proxies to (hopefully) represent their members interests.
How does the medium change the message?by Squirrel Killer
I think most of us have a pretty good understanding of the ways in which the Internet affects the method of political communications. Instead of phone banking and lit drops, you can use e-mail lists and Web sites, to cite just two examples.
However, the more interesting question, in my mind, is how the Internet, as a medium, affects the message. How do you view political content changing as a response to the new methods available? Will political content move more to the extremes, since politicians can target more effectively, or will it move more mainstream, since more people are brought into the political arena.
Beyond the message, how will the internet affect political outcomes? Are there any potential policy options that become possible with the new methods available?
Scott: Will the Internet affect the "message" of political communication? Absolutely.
The medium is the message, which is to say that the characteristics of the Internet imply that certain messages work and certain messages do not work. The fact that there is so much choice on the Internet means that messages that are pure rhetoric and are not informative do not work; users can and will click elsewhere. The fact that hyperlinking is so common means that messages that don't link to supporting material are assumed to be hiding something. The fact that online publishing is so inexpensive means that users won't accept superficial explanations of positions and values.
Politicians CAN continue to make Web sites that are nothing more than glorified brochures, but who will visit them? Right now, I think that people visit them for the novelty, and because they don't really know what to expect, but that will not last if they continue to treat their users like fools.
Now, you raise an interesting point about the impact of politicians being able to "target" more effectively. To talk to most Internet marketers/campaigners these days, you'd think that "targeted" communication was the essence of the Internet, and was the highest form of interactivite communication. Wrong. Targeted communication is not of the Internet. It is of direct mail. It's a method used to improve response rates (like, from 3% to 4%, a 33% improvement!), to save money on postage, to hit the right hot buttons, blah, blah, blah. And it's not interactive; the communication is essentially as one way as broadcast television -- just more accurate.
Which is to say that I agree with your suggestion that targeting results in more extreme messages and a more stratified electorate, and I think that's dangerous.
It's also the way that the Internet politics space will move if left to develop by itself. In the last 12 months, sites like Grassroots.com ("Your political action network"), Voter.com ("Delivering democracy to your desktop"), Speakout.com ("Speak Out. Be Heard."), Vote.com ("Your vote will always be sent where it counts"), have all started with the premise of being able to aggregate site users and then sell targeted access (via e-mail, banner ads, etc.) to political campaigns, a prospect that I think is unhealthy for democracy.
That's why I wrote the essay -- to describe the way that political campaigns SHOULD be using the Internet for communication, and to try to set a higher standard for what people expect online. I don't think that an Internet of primarily targeted political messages is an inevitability, but it certainly is a possibility.
Will candidates ever really do this?by El Volio
Interesting article. As a fairly neutral U.S. citizen, it occurs to me that, to many, the ideas expressed here are applied versions of general democratic ideals. Most voters would like to see more information about what candidates actually are proposing, and many want objective comparisons from unbiased sources.
But that's not politics. Never has been, and probably never will be.
So here's the question: Do you think that candidate sites are ever actually likely to provide objective data? Or do you think there will ever be a truly unbiased, trusted source (perhaps like the way the media should be) where specific information about tax cut proposals and so forth will be located?
Scott: You've exposed the dirty little secret of my essay, which is that I expect that 90% (at least) of politicians currently running would ignore my advice, should they read and understand it. So you're right in once sense; there are very few candidate sites today that remotely do what I prescribe, and most political advisers would consider such steps suicide because they violate the most important rule in their book: don't give up control.
But I don't think that means that it won't happen, any more than the fact that Microsoft hasn't supported open software means that open software isn't happening. My argument is simply that the traditional mode of campaigning doesn't work very well on the Internet, and so those that continue in the traditional mode will have to do so somewhere other than the Internet. And as important as this medium is becoming, that is a more and more unsustainable strategy.
And there are examples of candidates who are doing the right things. Ventura took some baby steps in the right direction with his e-mail lists. This Congressional candidate in Idaho is doing a very good job of running a citizen-centric campaign on the Internet, and so far succeeding. I'm sure there are others, though they are still few and far between. You will see more and more of them, and if you don't, you should consider starting your own. There are also 6,700 unofficial candidate sites put up by individuals that could potentially do things that the candidate would never allow his official site to do.
Let me also clarify one point, which is that I'm not suggesting that candidates build sites that are purely unbiased presentations of information. No, there is clearly still a role for opinion and leadership and values, but the best sites will present these in the context of information that people are looking for.
Candidates would be smart to try to emerge as reliable framers of issues -- the ones that attempt to set the scope of the problem, identify relevant evidence, outline competing values, etc. This is one of the most powerful positions to be in, but you can only do this if respect opposing viewpoints and treat them fairly. Frames are never the Congressional and state level, that people will be able to demonstrably say that the Internet had a measurable impact on the outcome of elections.
More importantly, the 2000 elections are key because they will begin to set the standard for political communication on the Internet. Millions of dollars is being invested in building online political resources -- campaign-oriented, commercial, nonprofit, government, etc. -- and the way that that is invested will have a tremendous impact over the way the political Internet develops over the next 20 years.
Will it be a commercial Yahoo model of aggregating lots of users and then auctioning off access to them to the highest bidders? Will it be a broadcast model, trying to attract as many eyeballs without giving up any real control? Or will it be a civic model, empowering citizens to take a more meaningful role in the running of the government?
If it is the latter, I believe that it could have far-reaching impacts on many facets of politics, from the two-party system to the role of soft money and PACs to the types of legislation that gets enacted.
detailed contentby geekpress
One reason, in my opinion, that politicians don't provide detailed content on their Web sites about policy proposals is the concern that what they say will come back to bite them, a la "No New Taxes." Concrete policy proposals can be used against them once in office, for it is easier to measure someone's actions against written statements than soundbytes and speeches.
So, given this strong incentive to keep proposals vague, what other incentives can we offer politicians to pony up the details of their plans for us?
Scott: You're absolutely right, that politicians are wary of detailed proposals coming back to bite them, although I'd say "no new taxes," was missing some of the elements of a detailed proposal (like, detail).
Getting politicians to offer more detail requires that citizens have a way of demanding more. Imagine if there were a forum open to all candidates who agreed to abide by the rules of the forum -- citizens ask the questions, are allowed follow-up questions, and candidates can answer or not, but the entire forum is aware of what you answer and don't. Well, no candidates would come, because candidates insist on control over the information they have to give up. What if, however, the forum contained 10%, 20%, or even 50% of the likely voters. I bet you'd see a lot more interest. There would be the credible threat that at least one candidate (particularly the one who was trailing in the polls) would show up, and then all candidates would be forced to show up. I propose that that forum can be built on the Internet, and I bet some of you are smart enough to come up with a way to figure out which questions to ask.
Politicians are opportunistic; they will do what they need to do to win. So, the answer to getting them to pony up more information is to make it a necessary component of winning.
The truth is, there is a subtle collusion between politicians and traditional media. Traditional media want to make money from politicians showing up on their talk shows, buying ads, granting interviews, participating in debates, and they don't care deeply about making these things particularly meaningful. Thus, politicians hold the upper hand -- as long as they can deliver entertainment (ala sound bytes, debate one-liners, etc.) -- they do not have to give up any real control. Politicians give media what they want; media gives politicians what they want.
Is Internet driving a societal shift?by Noel
In your essay you say, "the expectations of people on the Internet are different and more demanding than citizens' expectations in general."
Are these higher expectations a result of being on the Internet, or does Internet access self-select people that have higher expectations?
Will the influx of people onto the Internet raise the expectations of the general populace, or will it dilute the expectations of the Internet community?
Scott: It's a little bit of both. However, I believe that higher expectations is more a result of the medium than of the particular people who have chosen to use the medium. I'm not saying that the Internet improves people -- makes them more critical, more involved, more interested in learning, better judges of argument -- but I am saying that on the Internet a message transplanted from "traditional media" doesn't look right to most Internet users.
In my research into Internet behavior, I've found that there is about am 18-month period of acclimitazation online, after which people are much more likely to do more "sophisticated" activities (e.g., personalizing information, registering, purchasing, changing default start-up pages, etc.), and this observation holds true as much for the people who first went online in 1996 as it does for the people who just went online last year.
This suggests to me that people's expectations and use of the medium is not set when they come online, but rather evolves over time. I believe that this increased sophistication comes with an increasing degree of impatience: people understand what types of sites work and what type don't, and they leave sites that don't.
Why are libertarians better represented on the net?by Russ Nelson
So why do Internet political polls always generate results which are more skewed towards the libertarian philosophy? Is it because they don't "count" and so people feel more free to vote how they feel? Or is it because people who are drawn to the net value freedom more than security?
Scott: Most Internet polls do a very poor job of being scientific, so I would be very wary of concluding that Harry Browne's apparent popularity among Internet users is real. The most important factor, in my opinion, is that non-mainstream parties like the Libertarians do better in Internet polls because these marginilized groups feel a greater desire to participate in these polls, as a way of generating awareness for their movements.
Still, there is certainly a more libertarian ethic on the Internet, and in the same way that I think that people become more sophisticated with time, I think that people begin to value the freedom of the Internet with time. In my experience, the strongest advocates of regulating speech on the Internet are those who have the least amount of experience with it. However, if you look at party affiliations, voting behavior, etc. of Internet users, it's what you'd expect from a group of people with above average education and income (Pew Research has done some nice, though a bit dated research on the subject).
Realistically, does the net matter?by neowintermute
Can we realistically say that the Internet is making a difference in the political process? Can a basically unknown candidate like Ralph Nader get a resonable number of votes thanks to just his web site? Or are people really just going to the Web sites of the candidates they hear about on television? In the closed capitalist mind space we inhabit, big monetary interests determine the range of possibilities people think are viable.
According to a recent IBM/Altavista study, even on the net the big money sites like Yahoo "basically control the flow of information". So can we really think that the net is going to suddenly bring us democracy despite the nondemocratic nature of our entire economy/political system?
Scott: I wouldn't go so far as to say that our economic-political system is nondemocratic. I'd be the first to say that there are aspects that don't work as well as we'd like, but these are easily outweighed by the institutions and processes that are democratic.
Still, the degree to which information is controlled by corporate interests is disturbing. Ralph Nader is unlikely to get many votes just because of his Web site, and he's someone with actually quite a bit of promotional muscle behind him. One of the main reasons is that the traditional method of finding information on the Net, the search engine, tends to reinforce the hierarchies of offline power structures
To me, this says that the Net will not matter if left to develop in its "natural" commercial fashion. Because this is an election year, there is a unique opportunity for efforts that define the political Internet outside of this commercial environment. Millions are for the first time looking for political information and interaction, which means that it's not nearly as difficult (ie, expensive) as it has been/will be to get a site that captures a fair amount of this traffic. And if done correctly, ie, in a citizen-centric fashion, such a site should be able to use this jump-start to create a community that endures and matters. Anyway, that's the bet I've taken in leaving my .com job (and stock options) to start the Democracy Project.
I'm sure most of you are cognizant of the power -- commercial, political, spiritual, whatever -- that slashdot has. In pitching the Democracy Project to foundations and other "civicly-minded" folks, I almost always point to slashdot as an example of the potential power of the Internet.
Slashdot gives the average person the ability to address a forum of hundreds of thousands of people. I contend that that is unique in the history of the world, and that development is revolutionary in the way that Gutenberg's printing press was revolutionary.
What about a Slashdot for politics? Is there a space for something like this? Absolutely. In fact there is probably room for many Slashdots for politics. In its own way, Slashdot is arguably already a Slashdot for politics, with the discussions about Columbine, digital copyright, CDA, etc. Now, I know that the idea of Slashdot as a political forum is a controversial one, so I'm not saying that Slashdot should be more political. I'm just saying that the model has already shown that the Internet has the potential to effect meaningful change on the way our political system works.
notedby jbarnett
It has been noted that Al Gore is popular among geeks for many reaons, for example he invented the Internet, runs Linux on his Web site and hides cool little things in his HTML source. What do you think other Presidential candidates have to do or are doing to "compete" with Al Gore for the Geek vote?
Bill Clinton raised a lot of votes by "reaching out" to the Youth of America, do you think Al Gore will continue to "reach out" to the Geeks of America in the same aspect as Clinton did a few years back?
In your personal opinon who is the more 31337 hAx0r: Gore or Bush? And Finally the question everyone is dying to know the answer to: If pited against each other in a roman style caged deathmatch, who would win, Gore or Bush?
Scott: I certainly hope that geeks will base their voting decisions on more than what operating system a candidate's Web site is running. In all likelihood, Al Gore had nothing to do with that decision, and the fact that his Webmaster hides cool things in his HTML will not have any impact on what Gore might or might not do as president. These things are almost entirely symbolic, which isn't surprising since the majority of discourse among the presidential candidates is symbolic rather than substantive.
Of course, Al Gore will "reach out" to the youth of America, but the question is, will he do it in a way that matters or will it be mostly about posting pictures of Al in front of a computer on his Web site? Bush, too. I see them in a dead heat for last in truly reaching out to the YOA.
Now, as for the roman-style caged deathmatch, do you mean Catharginian or Syracusean rules?
'Ender's Game'by ZetaPotential
A system very similar to what you advocate has been described in some detail in Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Game. In that book, Card describes online bulletin boards where people "share information, organize and build consensus around issues," to quote your essay. A central part of this book is that two genius pre-teens write intelligent posts and counterposts in a way that manipulates public opinion on crucial political issues, for their own advancement.
So, my question is this: If someday the majority of people formulate their political opinions based on what they read in forums similar to Slashdot, will it be possible for individuals or organizations to manipulate the "public discourse" in such a way that advances their own agendas? If so, what type of steps would you advocate to reduce this type of "political trolling"?
Scott: A friend showed me Ender's Game, and I agree that what I'm advocating has a lot in common with that vision of political discourse. Clearly, there are some very difficult questions about how you preserve the sanctity of an online "townhall," and I'd be lying if I said I knew all the answers, but I do have some thoughts.
One thing they didn't do in Ender's Game was to verify that each participant on the boards was unique. There should have been a way to verify that people were unique individuals in such a way that still allowed them their right to anonymity. This would have kept Peter and Valentine from using fake identities to serve as foils and practice posters. This kind of anonymous authentication would be an important feature of an online townhall.
Ultimately, however, the real threat they posed is was a result of their geniuses and proclivity to manipulate. There will always be demogogues, and keeping them from masquerading won't keep them from manipulating. Caveat emptor.
There are lots of other vulnerabilities in an online townhall, but I think the most dangerous is the power that the "management" has to use the rules of the townhall to serve their own interests. Absolute vodka, er power, corrupts absolutely, as they say. There need to be safeguards to ensure that the people who set the rules are ultimately accountable to the people who use the site. For example, at the Democracy Project we are designing our site to have as little management involvement as possible. There are certain management powers that exist on Slashdot (e.g., bitchslapping) that we don't think belong in an online townhall. We have also organized ourselves legally in such a way that we will allow registrants on our site (after it has critical mass) to remove the management in a vote of no-confidence. We don't expect this to be a regular event, but it's a safeguard that provides a last resort of accountability.
Candidates and their recordsby Remus Shepherd
You talk about what the political parties should do to improve their Web sites, but don't mention what people outside political circles can accomplish. The Web sites you list in your article do *not* have what everyone says they want: An unbiased checklist of issues referenced to the candidates and their voting record.
Forget the political parties for a moment, as I don't believe they'll ever report unbiased information. That leaves us, the people.
Do you think there is room for a grassroots organization to collect the voting histories of candidates and publicize their records? If so, why doesn't such an organization already exist? Could such an organization thrive, or would it be besieged by political candidates who don't want their true voting histories known?
Scott: First, there are already sites that collect and report the candidate's records. I recommend USA Democracy, Project Vote-Smart, and THOMAS as excellent sources of info on candidate positions, voting records, and public statements.
But your broader question is important, because I think that as valuable as these and other political information sites are, they leave a gap that could (should) be filled by a grassroots effort.
The unbiased checklist of positions is a good, but incomplete way to make voting decisions. It's unlikely to include references to the most current, relevant issues. It overly reduces the complexity of how legislators make voting decisions (the best policy makers are generally not dogmatic and are good compromisers). And the list of issues is defined and arbitrary, which makes you wonder who got to decide which issues to include on the list.
So, the gap to me is the open, online townhall, an alternative source of information and political deliberation, an example of which we've described at our Web site, and are currently developing. This would allow everyone the opportunity to offer their own checklists, or point to others who have developed checklists that they agree with. But in addition, it would allow discussion of the most current events, and more importantly, the competing values that underlie policy proposals, neither of which will ever be adequately addressed by a position checklist.
Can such an organization thrive? I believe so. Grassroots organizations draw their strength from their membership, and so are not dependent on the approval of candidates in order to exist. So long as such an organization could provide a valuable service to its membership, it could endure. In fact, I'd say that such an organization would HAVE to be grassroots, because it must be independent of the political players in order to be effective. Lack of grassroots support is one of the reasons why it's unlikely that USA Democracy, Vote-Smart, THOMAS, and the commercial sites discussed above will realize the full vision of the Citizen-centric Internet.
Thanks all. If you want to be alerted when we launch our site, sign up here
Scott
Um.... why? Convince me
Well since I didn't post the original comment I'll say that I'm neutral on the idea of a "no-confidence" voting option for Andover (read: Slashdot) management. It did intrigue me enough to post my thoughts on it.
Pros:
These days are over. Slashdot *is* the establishment now, since it's backed by big money (VA Linux) and has a huge editorial staff with a huge following on the net. Malda's (and others') viewpoints aren't nearly as innocent now because, like it or not, Slashdot is as much a part of politicking in the internet age as, say, Microsoft (probably more so). So, with power comes responsibility. A no-confidence voting option would make sure you guys would stay honest.
Why am I so critical of this? Because I feel it's abuse of power to simply spout off one's mouth without first thinking "Hey maybe this is due to something other than malice". That brings me back to point one.
Cons:
Those are my thoughts. Have fun with them!
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
People have far too little time to be informed on all of the issues they would be asked to vote on. Too many people would vote on issues they know nothing about and we'd end up with a huge mess. Perhaps it would work for certain issues, but for the most part we'd end up with either chaos, or tyranny of the majority on highly politicized moral issues.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
If I put up a website that attracted thousands of hits per day, I could dictate my terms to advertisers a lot easier than they could influence me. I'd basically tell them they could have a banner on the page, subject to my approval, which would get a certain average number of views per day. Take it or leave it, there are plenty of companies out there that want to advertise.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The sad fact is, even if a politician were to go onto such a forum, and, on the level, discuss an issue - many issues are far, far too complex to discuss in an online forum. Some clear, fully elucidated thoughts take pages and pages, with tables, numbers, statistics (and damn lies). Call me an elitist, but I'd even say that MOST regular folks can't even begin to understand the mechanics behind most issues that affect their daily lives. And some issues come to very sticky philosophical topics, which, when you get down to it, NOBODY understands - the best and brightest minds in history have been debating some of these issues for thousands of years to no avail.
;-), but face it, we are a subculture, and the majority opinion in this subculture rules. Even when the internet becomes "ubiquitous", there will still be a large faction of the population that will not be on line to discuss these issues (um - people who have lives?), so it will still represent a subculture. This subculture may discuss issues in an unbiased manner - unbiased relative to the overall bias of the subculture. Get a newbie online, listening in, and they're shocked, aren't they?
Why did so and so vote against the school funding bill? Is he against education? well no, you see there was this bond issue, and if you look on page six, at the amortization, it would mean that the value that holders would be taxed at would make it a losing proposition, and nobody would buy the bonds, and we'd get less funding than the current system, and people in this region would pay more property taxes, blah blah, and the people who drafted the bill are being lobbyed by real-estate developers (this statement must come with proof - in an ideal world), who want property values to come down so they can put in a shopping mall. . . etc. See what I mean?
FUD reigns because we're all inherently lazy - who has time to read an 800-page discourse on the economic impact of user-fees on highway construction, when some of the data is backed up by sketchy research, or impacts emotionally charged issues like employment, education, abortion, gun control (man, if you want to see skewed statistics and messed-up studies, check into gun-control legislation)? We can't all get up to our shoulders in these issues. Okay, enough elitist crap - let's be egalitarian about it. Say Joe Sixpack CAN understand it. Does he have TIME to go over all of that information? For EVERY issue? Does anybody EXCEPT a full-time politician, with a staff of economic advisers, bean-counters, and researchers? This is what we pay them for. Even the politicians who actuall VOTE on issues aren't fully informed about most of them. It's a big fuckin job. That's the whole point of a representative government, as opposed to a truly democratic government.
Yes, these issues ought to be transparent, and the internet is a great tool to save people the effort of having to go to city-hall, and look up records and statistics, to back up what a politician is saying, etc. stuff like that, but it's not going to be a cure for the sheer volume of information that's involved in these decisions, nor will it be a cure for biased presentation.
Ultimately, when a community discusses issues, the majority opinion will hold sway, as it does here on Slashdot. There are an awful lot of Microsoft haters here. If this were AOL, would you see the same level of Microsoft bashing as we do here on slashdot, right or wrong? So are slashdotters inherently smarter than AOL-ers? perhaps
I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Sure
Understandable. I'd say the best example of anarchist communities within our society are a) anarchist squats, b) camping trips, or c) open source software. Now, the problem is that all of these and more may capture the basic essence of anarchism, but they still keep with them the baggage of our society (drug use, anti-social behaviour, etc). But they come a lot closer than, say, the military.
(1) this assumes that I know enough of the people around me that this social understanding would actually have force. In *contemporary* society, that often isn't true --- I don't, for example, know my neighbors, nor have particular interest in knowing them; I don't see that changing in the near future.
A *huge* problem with society as it is: People just don't care about their neighbors. Honestly, I don't blame them. I'm currently living in a bourgois suburb of Chicago that I absolutely loathe. I have no reason to talk to my neighbors, nor would I want to.
A big part of anarchist organizing nowadays is not attempting to forcibly smash the state, but instead creating social groups (such as Anarchist Soccer with the hopes of getting people the hell out of their houses and into groups where people can talk.
Chumbawumba (yeah, their music sucks, but they're pretty cool anarchists, and they write well) wrote a great essay about how, the more society becomes privatized, and the more people are separated from eachother, the easier it is to control people. That's why churches are outlawed in a lot of South American dictatorships, not because of a hatred of religion, but because when people gather together, they start spreading ideas. Which is why the Internet is so damn dangerous.
(2) how does anarcho-socialism deal with the 'free rider' problem? (Boiled down to the essence, this is asking how you get your lazy/cheap housemate to buy toilet paper; more generally, it's a question about how you prevent people from profiting off of the efforts of others. Socialism doesn't have a good answer to this, and neither does capitalism [although it's more masked in capitalism, as the free riders *appear* to be productive]; does anarcho-socialism?)
If people, very simply, do not want to work *at all* (remember, work under anarchism is a very social affair, and definitely not the ridiculous grudgery that it is under capitalism and socialism), then the community at large is under no obligation to provide for him/her anything. Chances are, most communities would provide basic needs (clothing, food, housing), but you want Internet access? Electricity? Access to any other resource that the community helps provide? Well, then you might want to volunteer at the Internet Service Collective, or the Electricity Co-op, so that people don't have such a crappy impression of your work ethic.
Honestly, I doubt that very many people would go *their whole lives* without working. People get bored pretty quick with doing nothing. The idea of "freeloaders" is usually a scapegoat for people who's skills aren't "economically viable" or who are old or sick or disabled, or live in a place with high unemployment and very few jobs. Everybody can provide *something* to society.
Presumably I could use force to eject the person not paying rent, right? Unless they could use force to prevent me from doing so, or there were some *effective social sanction* against my doing so
A community would have to make a commitment to non-violence. If anybody breaks that commitment, then the community has a right to defend the victim. Self-defense would be the only kind of "violence" that would be tolerated.
This is why anarchists are so often viewed as being violent. Many of the stereotypical anarchists-of-yore were part of a small movement called "propaganda-by-the-deed" that sought to use assassinations and bombings to extract revenge on people in power who had committed heinous acts of violence against the working class. The idea was to use these actions to spark revolution.
Most anarchists today see "propaganda by the deed" as a dismal failure, and definitely don't seek to resurrect the movement. Although nobody really feels particularly *sorry* for the industrialists who had hundreds of workers attacked and killed, and because of this were targetted by anarchists.
This is the center of the problem I have believing in anarchism -- I don't understand what, in the absence of a government monopoly on force, would prevent individuals from using force. I suppose you could depend on everyone agreeing not to use force --- but then the entire community is vulnerable to anyone who violates that agreement, and the incentive for individuals to violate it is going to be fairly high
If a community of 5000 people agree to not use force, and 10 of those people break the agreement, would it be hard for the remaining 4990 people to step in? Remember, the majority of people do *not* like violence, and usually are never involved with anything more than a fistfight or two.
Food for thought, anyways.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Wow, cool: an interesting political debate on slashdot!
Nah, some of these slashdotters need to think outside the box once in a while.
Isn't that to a certain extent an artificial distinction? Example: assume I am single and live in a house which, under the current legal system, I own. I'm seriously injured in a car crash and hospitalized for two months; do I lose the ownership of my house while i'm in the hospital, because i'm not using it? Or (perhaps more realistic) what if i'm in a work situation that requires me to split my time 50/50 between two cities on the opposite side of the country, and I have a house in both cities?
Well, one thing that you're inadvertently doing is applying anarchist principles to a non-anarchist society. The whole idea of "work" is radically different under anarchism, but that's a whole other debate.
Whenever you try and apply anarchist principles to a decidedly unanarchist society, you get some really strange contradictions. This is why free software sparks so many debates, since it is based on anarcho-communist principles (communal ownership of production, rulerless organization, etc.), yet it exists within a capitalist society.
I'll try to address the question as best I can. If you're not going to be occupying the house for a long period of time, there is nothing stopping people from just moving in (especially if there is a severe housing shortage). The difference is that there probably will be a social understanding (under anarchism, violence enforced laws are replaced by social understandings about acceptable behaviour) that you shouldn't just move into somebody's house if circumstances have forced them out, but they will be moving back in.
In an anarchist system, who enforces the distinction between personal and private? If i'm buying a house from you, because you're moving to another city, how do you know if i'm going to use it (in which case it's personal) and not rent it out?
In an anarchist system, who enforces your ability to charge rent? Remember, the idea of anarchism isn't based on "who enforces what", but "what would happen if nothing was enforced?" The distinction between private property and personal property only exist because government helps make that distinction (which is why state socialism is such a dismal failure, because it doesn't fully understand the relationship between the state and capitalism).
I suppose that's one way to view it. On the other hand, usually they "own" the property because they made an agreement with someone else who owned it (say the first person was using it, to simplify) to exchange [x] for the ownership of the property; to invalidate that agreement would require violence of another sort, wouldn't it?
If there are four empty farmhouses, I can "buy" them from somebody who "owns" them, and that's fine, I can brag all I want about how I own four farmhouses. I can even rent them out, but what happens when the people who live in them refuse to pay rent? Who backs up the contract? What if somebody who needs a place to stay moves into the empty farmhouse? Who forces them out? Without violence, and by extension, without government, there is no such distinction. The only property that can exist is personal property.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Then why do politicians spend so many millions of dollars and so much personal energy trying to get your vote? If your vote didn't matter, they wouldn't bother campaigning.
It doesn't matter to us, but of course it matters to the people who want to get elected!
Voting isn't all you can do, and it shouldn't be. But it's one thing, and it can be an important tool when combined with other methods.
As long as people don't just vote, sit back, and think they've changed the world, voting is fine. But for the most part, voting for leaders, especially since all the crap that has come out of it, usually sucks. For instance, what about Hitler, or the Bolsheviks being voted into power? How many dictators have been voted into power in South America because of deceptive campaigns?
If we were in the middle of a revolution, I would *very* strongly suggest that people not vote.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I'm no study of political theory, but this is certainly not what anarchy means to me! Does not anarchy support the idea of no government?
Right, governments are replaced with directly democratic, egalitarian communities. Laws are replaced with social understandings. Police and military are abolished.
So anarchists have faith in human nature, eh?
Not necessarily. Check out this quote:
It is the belief that power corrupts, and that people become irresponsible in their exercise of it, that forms the basis for much of their [anarchists] criticism of political authority and centralised power. Power must be dispersed they say, not so much because everyone is always good, but because when power is concentrated some people tend to become extremely evil.
John Clark, The Anarchist Moment
You believe that if there is no government, and no governing law, that the farmer is going to keep his tractor? What if the farmer down the road owns a bunch more land and has a gun? Can't he just take the first farmer's tractor? Heck, can't he enslave that farmer- and his family?
Violence == Force;
Force == Coercion;
Coercion.new->heiriarchy;
Heirarchy != Anarchy.
When people use violence in order to increase their wealth, why that's called Capitalism, my friend.
Sorry I don't have time to go through you FAQ's, I really am interested to know if my take on anarchy is incorrect.
Definitely incorrect. Remember that anarchist thought goes back to the 1700's, and in many cases the Greek and Roman times (although I forget the name of the philosopher from that era). A lot of people have recommended anarchism for a long time.
I would highly recommend going through the FAQ. It's really a fantastic resource.
Somebody who wants to destroy government and replace it with a society based on equality and freedom is an anarchist. Somebody who just wants to destroy government, with no idea what to do afterwards is just a nut.
But the Anarchists I knew in College...boy...talk about trouble-makers. These cats not only disrespected authority (perhaps rightfully), but pretty much disrespected humanity in general.
A person can call themselves a "Christian", and yet be completely ignorant of what being a Christian means, no? Same with being an anarchist, anybody can call themselves an anarchist, and a lot of people do, but there is a minority who has no clue what it means. Usually, they're the drunk punk-rocker fashion anarchists who have never heard of Kropotkin.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I think your point is that the candidates are indistinguishable. What that means is that we need to find or create new candidates. Don't be afraid to vote for "third-party" candidates-- even if they lose, your vote affects future elections. If enough people vote the way you do, then at the least you become a voting block that the big candidates court.
As long as people don't just vote, sit back, and think they've changed the world, voting is fine. But for the most part, voting for leaders, especially since all the crap that has come out of it, usually sucks. For instance, what about Hitler, or the Bolsheviks being voted into power? How many dictators have been voted into power in South America because of deceptive campaigns?
I think it's misplaced to blame these on democracy. Do you think it would have been better if those people hadn't been voted in? You're almost promoting the dictators with this argument. True, the bad guys successfully manipulated the voting process, but if not for that I think they would have found another way to get in power (like, with guns and torture).
Speaking of which, part of what makes those dictators so bad is that they remove the democratic process. If FAIR elections were regularly held, there wouldn't be nearly as much brutality.
I think it was Winston Churchill who said "Democracy is the worst form of government around, except for all the other forms of government." OK, a benevolent dictatorship has merits, but that's awfully tricky to guarantee and perpetuate.
So if you disagree with capitalism, are you going to throw away all your money?
A lot of people feel the way you do, but it's the wrong way to go about it. You're throwing away what power the system gives you. You can use that power to change the system itself, if you disagree with it. Find someone you want in office, or create legislation you want passed, and use the ballot box to do it. Your lack of vote is interpreted by politicians as apathy. If you don't want that, then distinguish yourself from apathy somehow, maybe by voting for a non-Republicrat candidate, or something else creative.
But it does underscore a very serious problem that even the Greeks had - it is very obvious that for democracy to succeed that the elected officials need to be educated to a level where they do not embarass the issues, themselves, or their constituents. I disrecall the exact quote, but I believe Plato said something about this when talking about rhetoric. Probably the first moral relativists (and unfortunately I also forget the name of the group!) they decided that any position could be made valid with enough work, and as such it didn't particularily matter what your position was so long as you could argue it well.
And how very true that statement is, because most people (I would say 75%) respond to emotion - that is how they judge and perceive things. If someone is emotional about something, it must mean it is something important.. or so goes the train of thought. This can often lead to people charging into the sea like lemmings because a charismatic individual led them. How do you "fix" that?
I arrived at the conclusion awhile back that democracy is a failed system - it can never work in a large group. Small groups amongst peers sharing similar goals, YES. But not in a large group. The reason is because a few people will control and manipulate the masses by appealing to their emotions instead of their brains. Ask a man who he voted for and he'll probably tell you.. ask him why and vagueness is all. Unfortunately, I have no better system to offer - communism failed, facism failed, anarchy definately failed, feudalism failed, monarchy failed, and benevolent dictators are all but impossible to find. Left with that, I decided awhile ago that if I ever feel the need to participate in politics, I would appeal to people's hearts instead of their brains.. it's more likely to succeed.
Ancient Greece. The technical term for this system is "Direct Democracy."
Your belief that Prohibition is a Government-led decision is common, but entirely mistaken. In fact, it's quite interesting that you stated that while using suffrage as an opposite example. Prohibition and suffrage were closely tied together.
A short take on the social history of the period is this: Industrial Revolution causes massive shift from rural/craftman/self-sufficient society to urban/factory/consumer society. People living in rural and small-town America lose their means of independence. They turn to alcohol, and alcohol abuse becomes a scourge of formerly stable communities as the young and able-bodied leave for the cities. Alcohol abuse also arises in the cities. The only people left to maintain the social fabric are the women, who mobilize to fight all the problems caused by the transition: poverty, orphanages, debtors, child labor, alcohol abuse, prosititution (the suffragettes more often defend the prostitutes and attack the system) and fight for unionization, suffrage, and prohibition. People also fight against immigration and for protectionism.
We've made it through the transition from pre- and post-industrial society, and thus have difficulty seeing how Prohibition could even have been possible. But it's a natural result of industrialization.
Interestingly, this transition is occuring in India, which has many dry states (where social, political, and religious policies are closely tied). Prohibition is largely a grassroots effort. For a good (though intensely anti-internationalization/industrialization) perspective on this and other grassroots attempts to moderate the effects of the internationalization of India, read Jeremy Seabrook's Notes from Another India.
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
In this country, the way this system works, the only votes that matter are those of the electoral college.
Yes and no. You do, after all, get to vote for the members of the electoral college. Besides which, the electoral college only elects *the president and vice-president*; in practice, their power is more circumscribed than people realize.
Besides which, in many states, you can vote *directly on laws themselves* --- most notably in California, where there are typically 30 or so per election, but also in other states as well.
I'm on it. I've already registered the name Polidot.com (wanted Polydot.com, but it was taken.)
While I respect the /. tarball, I won't be using it. I have some ideas on how to make moderation more efficient that are discongruent with the /. model.
Polidot.com will not be interested in collecting information about users and then selling it to advertisers. I'm more interested in implementing an interesting "collaborative filtering" model than making a lot of money. However, I do have some interesting ideas about funding the site.
(And to answer the obvious question -- yes, the model will be open-sourced.)
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
elected in a year that ended in 0 (Regan, Kennedy, Lincoln)
I just did a little research on presidents elected on 0 (mod 10) years, on whitehouse.gov. Isn't the internet wonderful?
Elected in 1840, William Harry Harrison was the first president to die in office, of pneumonia, just months after taking office.
Lincoln was shot and killed in his second term, although his first election was 1860.
James Garfield, elected in 1880:
"James Garfield was the second president shot in office. Doctors tried to find the bullet with a metal detector invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
But the device failed because Garfield was placed on a bed with metal springs, and no one thought to move him. He died on September 19, 1881." (whitehouse.gov)
McKinley was shot and killed in his second term... the second election was in 1900.
Warren Harding, elected in 1920, died of a heart attack while in office.
FDR's third(!) election was 1940, he died in his fourth term of a cerebral hemorrage.
JFK elected in 1960. Shot and killed in 1963.
Reagan was shot but not killed in 1981, elected in 1980.
That is true. What people want to believe is that the system is reformable. They want to believe that if they just cared enough and tried enough and participated enough their voice can be heard and the system can be changed. Unfortunately, whether intentionally or not, this country's system is VERY resistent to change. It is very good at allowing people to THINK they are affecting change. But some systems just CANNOT be reformed. It needs a bottom up reanalysis and reconstruction. There is too much harmful cruft built up in this government.
Unfortunately, not participating is exactly what needs to be done to ensure the system never changes. It might be true that change in the system cannot come from within itself, but perhaps by participating in the current system, one can elect those who can make radical changes. Change needs to be "bootstrapped" internally first.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
They wouldn't need to. Anytime you feel that you no longer have confidence in them, you can start your own site. You can even use the slash code since it's GPL'ed.
"I will not be voting in the next election, nor in any election after that. I refuse to give my name to a system which can so easily be diverted and corrupted."
Thus making my vote and political work just slightly more powerful.
Yay cynical people! More power to them (and thus to me)!
I've not commented until now, but let me begin giving a little background. I was the student rep for the Engineering department to the student senate back in my college days, so I know a lot about why politics and the people never meet. The reason is quite simple, which is that the complexities of decision-making that are done in deliberative bodies simply does not abstract well. The best analog I can give is that just as with open source, if you can't read the code directly, you are always going to be at a loss when you depend on someone else to bundle the functions.
In this society, we live with the paradox that we believe that every individual should be capable of making the decisions that affect their lives, yet people get lazy and allow others to do that for them. We all depend on the press rather than to read the congressional record. We generally would rather watch CNN than CSPAN. We want abstraction and direct participation at the same time. At some point when we decide that the system is broken, we desire direct participation. The ballot initiative process in California is an example of small interest groups crafting their own legislative vebriage instead of relying on politicians to do so in the state legislature. Term limits are another expression of the peoples desire to get fresh bodies into the process of decisionmaking.
But what does a professional politician do that is so complex? Nothing really, except that there are a plethora of very complicated procedures involved in the deliberative process. We recognize this in formal systems such as Robert's Rules of Order. This is where the 'right honorable gentleman may be recognized' and 'i yeild the floor if...' and a half million other rote phrases come from. (usually followed by the pounding of a gavel). A great deal of this formality is critical in establishing a consistent framework for deciding weighty and complex matters. But equally, it obfuscates processes and allows people to evade responsibility and accountability. The entire great problem is that by limiting the number of direct participants in this deliberative process, you effectively limit the number of braincells dedicated to the task of decisionmaking. Most importantly you introduce the necessity of abstraction, the process through which dissonance and manipulation results inevitably in misrepresentation of facts, and all that jazz we have come to know as 'spin'.
So what if all the web based conferences collaborated on a common core which allowed karma collection, cross-posting, and voting? What if we build software to track reputations? What if you couldn't vote on any matter of substance until you demonstrated competence on all the core issues? What if, though you might want to vote based on abstractions of issues, all of the relevent facts and testimony were immediately at your fingertips. What if the daunting complexity and arcane formalities of all our legislative processes were embodied into a web interface, manifestly open for all eyes and ears?
I call this area computer mediated deliberation. At bottom it is a system designed to facilitate decision making between individuals and groups through document management, voting systems, chat, conferencing and other forms of webified communication.
The fundamental premise of such a system is that it is capable of disintermediating legislative bodies and opening up processes which now occur at times and locations too obscure for citizen review. Duties like grand jury service, city council audience or even second guessing the OJ trial are things for which Americans show a deep and continuing interest. Why don't we take these processes out from under big brick and mortar domed buildings and put them into the sunlight of the net for all to see and participate?
It opens and reinforces democratic processes. And instead of pointing fingers at 'the Beltway', we can be there. 24/7.
I have begun putting together ideas for a system which is quite involved, yet builds on things we all recognize in conferencing systems such as this one, motet, caucus and webcrossing. As soon as I get my own domain hosted etc. I will attempt to start an open source project.
fault-tolerant
Social identity originates in kin groups called tribes and is manipulated in cosmopolitan groups called civilizations.
The major terrestrial challenge facing humanity is not how it can more efficiently lubricate politics via technology, but how it can more honestly address the conflicts of interests between kin groups.
Seastead this.
Morris's site doesn't let users say anything. It gives you a carefully (mis?)worded poll. Then it automatically sends a form letter to the reps and president. So what do they learn? Only a boolean response to a manipulative question. Usually without any further information which would help them respond.
There are better sites than that. Even one paragraph telling how strongly you feel about something, or explaining under what conditions you would support something are meaningful. One thing the Internet will do is let people describe exactly how they feel, not what pigeonholes they fit into.
TV is driven by sound bites and images. The Web is driven by paragraphs and links. While I'm sure Morris thinks he's a big pioneer, I'd love to compare his site's traffic to Slashdot, where users can say exactly what they mean, rather than which pool they want to jump into. And remember that his audience is 250 million americans, while /. aims at only a small segment of it.
The site lets voters speak their minds and then automatically email it to their reps and the president. This once inundated the servers at the White House, which set up a filter to limit the # of emails coming from vote.com. I guess Morris didn't mind pissing off his former employer, and the administration isn't really interested in listening to the views of regular citizens.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
http://www.tecsoc.org/govpol/govpol.htm
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Washington, D.C.
but I am saying that on the Internet a message transplanted from "traditional media" doesn't look right to most Internet users.
I don't know about this; "traditional media" may have its drawbacks, but I have a lot more trust in something that I'd read in the paper than something I'd read on some guys website. This holds true for all forms of traditional media in my opinion; ever since the internet boom a lot of people have been raving about the avenues that self-publishing opens up. I can tell you what the main result is; a low signal and high noise.
I have noticed that many candidates (I've mostly seen parts of presidential campaigns) flame each other. They might show pictures of how bad a certain area looked when Clinton was governor, or they might take a small part of an opponent's program out of proportion and use it to show how extreme that candidate is in a certain way.
How does the /. community think the Internet will affect this?
And what about candidate and party representation? With the US having a two-party political system for all practical purposes, does anyone have a feeling that the net as a new political channel will make it easier for other parties and candidates than the "major" ones to get measureable representation?
I hope for some interesting answers...
Yes, we are supposed to be a Repuublic, and not a Democracy, as many politicians would have you believe. Thank God. If we were a Democracy, under majority rule, think of where we would be as a nation now. Women and Blacks would still have no rights, because the Majority of voters would never have allowed it. Popular != Right.
The problem with our current system, is the same problem that would exist in any democracy. The majority of voters are not led by informed decisions, but rather by marketing. The ongoing corruption of the Right to Bear Arms is proof enough of that. That apathy is the problem with the system is the one point I could not agree with you more on.
As for our founding fathers, although a few of them did in fact want a plutocracy, and a few others a monarchy (those being the only systems they understood, having lived in such a state their whole lives), enough of them were of sound mind to realize the folly in that. Thomas Jefferson for one was fully against it, and is well known for having written, "The Declaration of Independance". (Read the whole thing, not just the famous paragraph)
For a bunch of wealthy men out to protect their money and power, they sure made some stupid moves when they decided to take on all of England, which resulted in having their homes razed to the ground, their possesions confiscated, and their families killed, all in the name of Freedom and Equality for all men.
-Tommy
P.S Interesting side note, Thomas Jefferson was a huge Open Source advocate. Read this letter, "No patents on ideas".
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
Um... gross stereotypes aside, are you implying that urban black folk don't vote!? I would be willing to bet than "OG thug" is more likely to vote then the typical /. geek these days, which is why Gore and Bradley debated at the Apollo instead of on a forum like Slashdot.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I am for a tougher stance by the public of their prospective elected officials. I say that we shoot them in the head with a .45. If they live, they were destined to rule. If they die, they obviously had poor constitution. Once no one wants to be an elected official, we could throw this method of doing things away and start from scratch.
I realize this wouldn't stop anything, but it would allow my to see some stupid people get shot in the head.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
USA Democracy lists bills in the current session of Congress and how legislators voted on each bill. They don't appear to have old records, so you can't look 8 years in the past to see if a candidate's vote has been consistent. They allow you to vote on bills and compare your vote to your representatives' vote...but you cannot compare your representatives to their election opponents, nor can you look at presidential candidates or politicians in another district. Nice setup, but nearly worthless to me.
THOMAS is similar to USA Democracy but with an archive, so you can look at past votes. Still, it gives information only on federal officeholders, and you have to look through the bill history to collate information about a candidate. Yuck.
Project Vote-Smart is a bit closer to what I'd like to see: It lists candidates, not just incumbents, although it only has voting record for federal incumbents. Thus, there are no records at all for George W. Bush (no info on state bills and positions) and the latest records for Al Gore are from 1992 when he was a senator. A dribble of info on this site, nothing more.
I want information on a candidate from *before* he became a senator. I want information on what he claims to support cross-referenced to how he's actually voted. I want to see the state legislature voting records...what the hell has George W. Bush been doing in Texas? And I want to compare candidates side-by-side on the same page.
I am a registered independant, and I am shopping for a vote. The candidates are products to me -- I want the same kind of shopping experience I get when comparing hardware on a retailer's site. Full info and directly comparable data, nothing less will do.
I hope Scott's Democracy Project has what I'm looking for. Oh, well, if it doesn't, I can always compete with him by putting up my own site in 2004.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
These two are mutually exclusive -- the more "pervasive" the vote (i.e. the fewer areas in which an individual can blow off the majority and do what he wants) the less room is left for any form of dissent.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
While I understand the idea behind this comment, I take some offense to its implied message. Yes... individual votes don't matter a hell of a lot in this world. Yeah, that idea is reenforced. Informed votes who are overtaken by the malaise of "I shouldn't bother voting," end up becoming members of the saddest group in existance: people who could have made a chance but didn't.
I don't pretend to think that my vote is really that important, but I know that people like me - reasonably well-educated people - are quite likely to be driven off by the apparent futility of the electoral process. I force myself to vote because I know that my individual vote might not mean much, but the aggregate of my demographic's vote does. ...and if my demographic is apathetic, then people like me will be underrepresented.
You present a cynical view of the political process. Don't make it worse by reenforcing that particular perception.
Now, the problem I see with putting everything out on the table, is that if you do, you get rid of all the fun of watching your favorite politicos (Gore, Bush, et al) change their positions on every issue in five minute intervals, because we've finally nailed them to the wall on where they stand.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
We have also organized ourselves legally in such a way that we will allow registrants on our site (after it has critical mass) to remove the management in a vote of no-confidence. We don't expect this to be a regular event, but it's a safeguard that provides a last resort of accountability.
That's a very interesting idea. Has anybody presented it to Andover.net?
(No offense to Malda and crew, I think they do a great job. But it's still an interesting idea.)
Unhappy? Kill your television.
We hear constantly that the USA is a "democracy", as though everything that occurs in this society is due to the will of the people. This is completely false, and any basic knowledge of history and political science will prove this point.
Our state is an Electoral Republic. We choose, every so many years who will rule for the next term. In the case of the president, our vote can be completely overwritten by the Electoral College. Therefore, a Green Party candidate has no opportunity to win the presidency unless the Electoral College has a large contingency of Green Party members.
Average citizens have almost never had the opportunity to perform the actions necessary for a true democracy. Actions such as proposing legislation and voting directly on issues are left up to those who are elected, in the hopes that they will represent those who elected them. Unfortunately, as anybody who has studied centralized political systems will readily admit, they are very easily corrupted by wealth and power.
My contention is that this is how the "founding fathers" intended the process. We cannot forget that those who signed the Declaration of Independance and crafted the Constitution were not landless farmers, or slaves, or even independant merchants. They were wealthy aristocrats who came from well-endowed families. Thus, it was in their best interest to craft a political process that would serve the needs of themselves and those like them. Their goal was a "plutocracy" and they have certainly achieved one of the greatest plutocracies in history.
But intentions aside, there are many flaws with calling the U.S. a "democracy," since it ignores the fact that even the false electoral democracy exists only on the governmental level. The vote, whether in the false electoral sense, or the true and direct sense, does not exist when a citizen enters institutions such as their place of employment, or even public institutions such as public schools. "Democracy" is something that is distant, unattached, and meaningless, and yet it is immortalized in the rhetoric of the political parties.
True democracy cannot exist unless it is a) localized, with each community receiving the autonomy to make the decisions that affect their livelihood, b) pervasive, so that the vote is carried into every part of society, whether organization, production, education, etc., c) participatory, such that nobody is excluded from proposing ideas, modifications, or a repeal of what already exists, d) egalitarian, where no person is given greater weight over anothers, e) tolerant of dissent and disagreement, both of which are necessary for a healthy society, and f) when representatives are necessary, those representatives can be immediately recalled and replaced if they do not represent the will of those they represent.
The internet will not further the "democracy" that we currently have. It may open great possibilities for true democracy, but the electoral sham that we have to deal with cannot be reformed. It can only be destroyed and replaced.
I will not be voting in the next election, nor in any election after that. I refuse to give my name to a system which can so easily be diverted and corrupted. Does this imply that I am apolitical? Far from it. But in a system which insists that individuals cannot make a difference, I will use everything in my power to do so. If this means breaking their laws, so be it. There are ills that need to be cured, and apathy is the only criminal element in dealing with those ills.
Frequently Asked Questions
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I'm not saying that the Internet improves people -- makes them more critical, more involved, more interested in learning, better judges of argument
... on the Internet a message transplanted from "traditional media" doesn't look right to most Internet users. He's right, and I think that the reason is mostly because on a group like slashdot, you just can't get away with the sort of logical fallacies that are the foundation of most political speech.
... which is the main difference between a forum like Slashdot, and a forum like a televised debate, where the candidates are deferred to and allowed to change the subject, make fallacious arguments, and ignore the questions, without ever being questioned.
... a valuable, if painful learning experience.
I think that the Internet does all of those things. Once a person leaves school, unless that person becomes a professional writer, he or she will probably never have the opportunity or desire to write a critical essay again. Since I started posting to BITNET groups, mailing lists, and now internet sites like Slashdot, I've posted hundreds of messages here and on other groups, and enjoyed countless interesting postings, while wading through thousands of postings containing logical fallacies. Reents says that,
Try this. If you've never seen the list, go to the link above and study all of the different kinds of logical fallacies and errors. Next time you hear a political speech, by any candidate, pick out all of the fallacies. You'll be amazed by how many you'll find. Political speech, as it is practiced through the mass media, is not the art of producing rational, coherent arguments. Political speech, as practiced through the mass media, is about creating a vague, content-free comforting image. That doesn't translate well to the internet. On the internet, if someone uses those sorts of arguments on a newsgroup, their arguments are quickly ripped to shreds by followup posts and are discredited
No one is immune to it. One of my recent posts had a really poorly thought out transition into an unrelated topic. Someone called me on it, and he was right. I've called other people on things like that. There's nothing that makes you want to be a better writer then having your posting roundly ripped to shreds by someone with a better sense of argument then you. It's a learning experience, and the Internet is the only place I've found this learning experience to be available. When you write a class essay, only the teacher and you read your work. Only the internet provides a large enough audience for a non-professional writer to be truly humiliated in front of his or her peers
On the internet, either your ideas are sound, or they are not. If you are writing like an idiot, people will tell you.