User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Knight: Pioneering the practice of public autonomy
I'm seeking practitioners to collaborate on a Knight News Challenge proposal. This year's challenge is, "How might we improve the way citizens and governments interact?" This is the working draft of my proposal.
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Submission
The submission is still open to modification through the March 18 deadline and into the refinement phase.
Summary
250 characters
We aim to interconnect citizens and governments via mechanisms of transitive primary voting, recombinant text, and the continual exposure of legislative bills and other draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses.
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Description
We aren't quite free if we live under laws and other norms that we cannot reasonably agree with. To be free in a social world that regulates itself by norms (to have public autonomy), we must be able to amend and correct those norms that offend us on this principle. As the social theorist and philosopher Habermas puts it, "Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses." Taking this discourse principle as our guiding star, we aim to pioneer a practice of public autonomy based on the continual exposure of draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses. We'll simultaneously run electoral primaries based on open, transitive voting to put our most qualified practitioners on the ballot and into office. There they'll continue to work with us, their un-elected peers. Together we'll use this improved mechanism of interaction between citizens and governments to ratchet up the legitimacy of statutes and other regulatory norms. On the technical side, we'll use MediaWiki for the drafting medium; Semantic MediaWiki as an open database and voter registry (streetwiki); existing public forums as the discussion media; Votorola's prototype toolset for transitive voting and recombinant text; plus any other suitable tools and technical projects that we pick up along the way. Already we have enough to support a crude practice.
Pioneering that practice is the topic of this proposal. There are two things to understand about this from the outset. The first is that, despite the proliferation of designs for participatory democracy that are flawed in terms of legitimacy and efficacy, nobody has yet found such a fundamental flaw in the design of the practice proposed here. The acid test of legitimacy is to locate the single person who cannot reasonably assent to a law, then evolve that law in a direction to which all can assent. Second, it appears that the core of this practice can be developed and proven by a small group of pioneers. The core is the process of validity seeking (main figure). It is conducted by small "leaf groups" of typically 2-5 practitioners who continually join with the public in discourse. These discourses are structured not only to guide the would-be normative action in the direction of validity, but also to provide the human resources that are necessary to carry out that action. This implies that if a pioneering leaf group ever succeeds in getting the design and performance of this core process right, delivering on both its purposes, then the entire population will be led into freedom by that success. To achieve that success will require the kind of skills that were recognized in last year's Tech for Engagement Summit, hosted by the Knight Foundation. From the Summit Manifesto, here are the top two points:
- We have a talented community of leaders, but need to grow the size and diversity of our leaderful tribe.
- Our problem isn't just about access, there's a larger gap in skillful practice that we need to close.
We want to help close that gap. We're looking for people who have the capacity to critique the design of the practice and to expose any flaws, while also being resourceful enough to handle a toolset that is only partly implemented and may yet require some design re-work. The technical designs cannot be allowed to harden into finished tools until we have a better understanding of the hands-on practice. We're also looking for people with imagination. When your hands are engaged in a nascent practice such as this, and your mind is equipped to make up for the missing parts, then it becomes like a lens into the future; you're out in front thinking for all the others who will follow. If you know of anyone possessing these skills who might be interested, please point them to this proposal.
What comes next?
I'll document the practice as best I can foresee it during the remaining period of the challenge, then summarize the docs on Votorola's home page. I'll also sharpen up the tools in anticipation of the exploration work to come (again, best I can foresee it). And I'll continue contributing to the free-range voting project, because I think that one is crucial to our longer-term success. I'll require no funding for my own work at any point, but the project is currently hampered by a shortage of other qualified practitioners. Most folks cannot work pro bono for any length of time. So I think this is where funding is needed. We could use it to implement a mechanism of rewarding successful contributions after the fact, which should enable us to build a small team of people with the necessary skills and experience to pioneer the practice hands on, and achieve a breakthrough.
If you can help with the project in the meantime, or have questions, please contact me. Or send a message to our mailing list or freenode IRC channel. Or add a comment to the bottom of this page.
Disclosures
I'm a software engineer for Votorola. I have no commercial interests in the software, nor anything else connected with this challenge project. Our work in Votorola has never been funded. All the core applications (MediaWiki, Semantic MediaWiki and Votorola) are released under OSI approved, open source licences.
See also
- Glossary - Definition of terms.
- Legend - Symbols used in diagrams.
- Knight talk - Index of discussions about this Knight submission.
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What is your project?
1 sentence max
To pioneer a practice of public autonomy that interconnects citizens and governments via mechanisms of transitive primary voting, recombinant text, and the continual exposure of legislative bills and other draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses.
Where are you located?
I'm located in Toronto, Canada. My colleagues in project Votorola (Thomas and Christian) are located in Dresden and Mannheim, Germany.
