Re: [IAC#RG] re Clause 4.001

This is becoming a pointless exercise. Yes, ALL democracies in the world are extremely imperfect, and in need of improvement. If sites like this are not to degenerate into showboating, it will help to try and restrain empty rhetoric.

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On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Sarbajit Roy <sroy.mb@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Murgie

Before I address the crux of your query, I need to know if you agree/disagree/semi-agree on the following historical premise - specifically in the Indian context with Indian data (not in idealised Western democracies)

Parliamentary_democracy+Caste_based_reservations+Political parties resulted in the following

a) Suppression of "merit"
b) Promotion of mediocrity and/or misrule
c) Led to concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.

You will note I've left out "1 man 1 vote" for the moment, and the "+" corresponds to Boolean AND.

PS: I'm not responding to your last para. My in-house experts advise me that S:(S+N) is a sub-optimal indicator for information efficiency.

Sarbajit

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 8:26 PM, Murgie Krishnan <murgie@gmail.com> wrote:

"4.001: Empowered Citizenry
The IAC movement stands for the primacy of empowered citizens in a functioning democracy.
The IAC affirms its belief in universal suffrage and comprehensively rejects the flawed notions of "Parliamentary democracy", "1 man 1 vote",
"political parties", "caste based reservations", and other divisive forms of oppression which suppress merit, promote mediocrity and misrule, and lead
to concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few."

I would agree that our parliamentary democracy has had flaws, but wonder how many takers there are for the notion of junking it without knowing what the alternative will be.  Repairing a flawed system is one thing, simply abandoning it is quite another.

Similarly, like many others I have also been disappointed with the 1-man-1-vote election system, but there is only a particular alternative that I favour if 1-man-1-vote is to be junked -- an approval voting system which allows a voter to choose whether to approve any (see http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html for more details collected in one convenient location). That gives each voter a binary choice with respect to each candidate, allows "none of the above" as a possibility, and potentially encourages candidates to campaign in a way that reduces polarization. It will also be easily implementable given our electronic voting machines, with a software change.

The current language in 4.001 seems ill-advised. Language like this will make one wonder at least about the general maturity of the folks behind this Charter.

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