[p2p-research] P2P democracy and p2p constitution package
Michel Bauwens
michelsub2004 at gmail.com
Thu Dec 2 05:50:58 CET 2010
if I remember it ccorrectly, abraham lincoln tried and failed to win up to
20+ separate elections before becoming president <g>
so, onwards to the next challenge, the importance is the learning process,
and even though you lost, your reputation and name recognition increase.
Now how can we help you with this:
< It would
be very useful to make some kind of "p2p constitution package" that
contains information about how networked societies need to be
represented in modern governance models.>
Is this something the P2P Foundation (
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Policy) or the Commons Strategies Group,
can help you with, and how could we/should we approach this?
Michel
2010/12/1 Smári McCarthy <smari at anarchism.is>
> Hi all,
>
> So, the results are in. I lost. The vote was incredibly even for most
> of the rounds - I eventually got eliminated after 377 rounds (out of 509
> total), which put me in the top 25% of the candidates, roughly, but
> nowhere near enough to get in.
>
> This just means that I'll have to focus on other stuff. There's a lot
> to do. The 3rd annual Reykjavík Digital Freedoms Conference is today,
> so I guess I'd better focus on that for now... and then there's all the
> other stuff.
>
> I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and now know how not to play this
> game (clean). Of the people who did get in, none can be considered
> representatives of the views prevalent in our community, and a few can
> actually be considered hostile to those views. There are a few glimmers
> of hope, a few members are somewhat oriented towards the ideas we share
> but are very unaware of what's going on in the larger context. It would
> be very useful to make some kind of "p2p constitution package" that
> contains information about how networked societies need to be
> represented in modern governance models.
>
>
> - Smári
>
>
> On 11/30/2010 09:46 AM, Smári McCarthy wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Thanks for your support, it's meant a lot to me. Also, sorry for the
> > late feedback, but I've been waiting too.. read on. :-)
> >
> > The elections were slightly disappointing in a number of ways.
> > Throughout the time running up to the elections, various special
> > interest groups, mostly allied with the old political models, were
> > attacking the idea of a constitutional assembly, and even went as far as
> > to spur confusion about the voting system itself, the STV-PR (Single
> > Transferable Vote) system.
> >
> > The result of this was the smallest voter turnout in Icelandic
> > history, roughly 37% - in comparison, parliamentary elections here have
> > a typical turnout of roughly 85%. However, with 37% of the electorate
> > there's still, ironically, more votes behind each potential member of
> > the constitutional assembly than behind a comparative parliamentarian.
> >
> > An interesting side-effect of the low turnout is that those who did
> > show up are considered less likely to be populistic in their choices and
> > in general better prepared.
> >
> > However, at the current time no results have been made public. There
> > were some problems with the count, mostly owing to poor handwriting
> > analysis software and a lot of manual checking, but the final result is
> > expected today.
> >
> > Judging from what I've heard from people my chances are fairly good.
> > With 25 seats and 522 candidates there's an off-the-bat 5% chance for
> > any given person to get a seat. Factoring in that about 100 candidates
> > did no campaigning and another 200 did only very minimal campaigning,
> > that chance goes up somewhat for the remainder. Also taking into account
> > my relative online popularity (#9 on Facebook "likes", and a lot of
> > YouTube videos that got some viewing), my vaguely defined support bases
> > in Reykjavík city center and in Vestmannaeyjar, and a few other similar
> > things, I'm fairly confident that my chances at this point are roughly
> > 30-40%, that is to say, that I'm in the top 60-or-so canddates.
> >
> > So... there's still a chance. I'll know more in the next 8-or-so
> > hours. I'll keep y'all posted.
> >
> > Interesting times...
> >
> > - Smári
> >
> >
> >
> > On 11/30/2010 07:49 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
> >> Dear Smari,
> >>
> >> what's the news on the election, and on your candidacy in particular?
> >>
> >> Michel
> >>
> >> 2010/10/18 Smári McCarthy <smari at anarchism.is <mailto:
> smari at anarchism.is>>
> >>
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> As some of you may know, a lot of things have been happening in
> >> Iceland of late. The collapse has led to a rather invigorating
> >> democratic upheaval, with strong demands amongst the public for
> greater
> >> transparency, freedom of information, and many other things which,
> to
> >> anybody who payed attention to the revolutionary ideals of the 19th
> >> century or the enlightenment ideas before them, would seem
> incredibly
> >> reasonable, but yet for some reason have not become the norm...
> >>
> >> On the 27th of November the Icelandic electorate will vote for 25
> to
> >> 31 people to sit on a constitutional assembly, a special assembly
> which
> >> has the purpose of proposing a new constitution for Iceland.
> >>
> >> I have decided to run for the election, along with about 500 other
> >> people who are all ostensibly independent but many have ties with
> >> special interests, political parties, and so on.
> >>
> >> What sets myself and some of the other candidates apart is our
> >> involvement with the digital freedoms battle, the fight for freedom
> of
> >> information, the participation in the commons, the understanding of
> the
> >> new Peer-to-Peer reality. There are a few of us, but in general we
> >> suffer from having ideas which are somewhat foreign and weird to a
> >> majority of the public, and little access to traditional media to
> >> promote ourselves.
> >>
> >> This, while the industrial interests and old guard have vast
> >> resources, they own the traditional media, and the political ideas
> of
> >> centralized government by the elite, these ideas which they will
> >> espouse, have been taught as fact to every schoolchild here since
> the
> >> schooling itself became fact.
> >>
> >> So you understand that the opportunity here is great. We may have
> the
> >> opportunity to change the world. We may have the opportunity to
> alter
> >> the way the world thinks about democracy forever, by creating a
> >> democratized democracy - a Peer-to-Peer Democracy.
> >>
> >> But only if we win. Not necessarily me, but somebody from this line
> of
> >> thought must win, and must be put in the situation where the ideas
> of
> >> the 21st century are put into the new Icelandic constitution.
> >>
> >> The old guard have the media, they have the money. They have the
> >> political clout and the ideological indoctrination. But we have an
> >> immensely powerful and infinitely valuable secret weapon at our
> >> disposal.
> >>
> >> You.
> >>
> >> You're receiving this mail because I have had the good benefit of
> >> getting to know you, and I believe that I can ask your assistance in
> >> making this work. I don't exactly know what it is I'm asking of you,
> >> because I'm not exactly sure what will work; rather, I'm requesting
> that
> >> we crowdsource an answer to the question of, "given great
> opportunity,
> >> what can the P2P community do?"
> >>
> >> Specifically, I think these questions need to be answered:
> >>
> >> - How do we make the idea of crowdsourced/participatory
> >> democracy seem
> >> realistic to people who've been taught to think it isn't?
> >>
> >> - How do we make the idea of the commons and collective
> ownership
> >> palatable to people who associate it with failed communist ideals?
> >>
> >> - How do we show that the models we've seen on the Internet
> >> can apply
> >> in meatspace state governance?
> >>
> >> - How do we most effectively promote these ideas amongst
> >> people who
> >> aren't active users of social networks or are outside our immediate
> >> network's reach?
> >>
> >> ... and so on.
> >>
> >> Again, this isn't about getting me into the constitutional
> assembly,
> >> per se, although inevitably the two goals are coupled by way of me
> being
> >> a representative of these ideals. Rather, it's about using this
> great
> >> opportunity.
> >>
> >> What say you?
> >>
> >> - Smári
> >>
> >> (cc'd is Herbert Snorrason, who is also a candidate.)
> >>
> >>
> >> p.s., at this time I don't think it's prudent to share this line of
> >> thinking on publicly listed/indexed mailing lists, blogs or web
> pages;
> >> rather for discussion amongst ourselves (not adding people
> either..).
> >> Reason being that we still haven't identified who is serving the
> >> interests of the existing power groups and other special interests;
> this
> >> won't be fully possible until the full candidate list is published a
> few
> >> days from now.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net -
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
> >>
> >> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> >> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> >>
> >> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> >> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
> >>
> >> Think tank:
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > p2presearch mailing list
> > p2presearch at listcultures.org
> > http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
--
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Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
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Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
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Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
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