[p2p-research] P2P democracy?

[Smári McCarthy]

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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
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> 
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> 
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> 
> Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
> 
> 
> 
>