Mike says:
- What's this about D2 not asking people to vote?
- The "average citizen" is something between a myth and an aardvark.
- Give peasants and proletarians half a chance and they'll gobble the goodies.
- D2's "web" of political units is (somehow??) phoney.
- D2 has never worked anywhere, unless it's some kind of book club with elephantiasis.
Denis says: knowing it's boring to apologise all the time, I apologise anyway. Mike has had 30 days (thirty days!) to think "Bloody Beckett ignores me" and/or "BB is stumped". From the first he gets miffed; from the second his D2 antennae droop. That's a bit bloody shameful, innit? If I employed me I'd fire me.
But, hey, Mike, forgiveness asseblief. Blame the design fault in the clock; unforgivably stingy. At least none of the okes who do quasi-employ me have fired me this month.
And here now is the next round, replies to Mike.
Not that he replied to me, please note. Not to the three sentences I was proud of, which I paraphrase (+ improve + shorten) as: (i) Most people want a peaceful life and an adequate income. (ii) Most people will never give active assent to policies that incite our neighbours to violence against us. (iii) for seriously stable & sound politics, drench leadership at every level in the active assent of electorates.
Hm, that's better. I look again at the original three sentences, lumpy, gristle. I don't know I would have replied either. But that Mike didn't is what counts now. Criticised/satirised, yes, but reply, no.
And they're still a syllogism, those three sentences. Let me say them again, nutshell.
· Majorities prefer peace.
· If majorities make the running, peace there will be.
· So ditch the moribund herds-and-heroes political system; move up to the next rung.
I'm saying that to Mike, yes, but also to the million people who I each day hear wailing and growling that things should be better. Start making thing better, mense. Throwing hysterics at the guys you don't like ain't enough.
Mike's Worry Number 1 – how can D2 "never ask anyone to vote"?
Mike, D2 is natural. That's its essence. To cast a vote that stands to give you something you want is natural. To not know who vote for but guiltily believe that voting is a "duty", is ... odd. In scrawny democracy a high poll supposedly says "see, democracy works". When the People Really Rule that will be outlandish. You'll achieve any target by garnering votes; pursuing any target any other way will get you suffocated by votes. Non-voters will cause no more concern than non-athletes, non-accountants, non-beekeepers. Abstention will mean contentment. A candidate might nag you for your vote, but an elected leader who spent your taxes persuading uninterested people to vote would rapidly give you an interest – in booting him out.
I think you'll agree that the broad pattern logically arising from a D2 structure contains many low polls with some mega-blips. It also increases competition for public roles on school boards, ward committees, community police forums, and the like. Bodies that in D1 can beseech power-holders acquire the right in D2 to take power. That's transformation.
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Mike's Worry Number 2 – The "average citizen", a term he much dislikes. Mike, it ain't that hard. The average citizen is you, me, aunty Molly and Sophie Mthethwa at the mielie stand. Maybe "silent majority" is better, but don't let semantics sabotage what matters here, which is real and genuine.
Take our main faultline, the wealth gap; factory of resentment, insecurity, crime and a good chunk of Afropessimism. At each wave of threats the rich pray that the constitution will protect them (similar constitution to the one that protects land holdings in Zimbabwe). Through each wave of threats the poor stay poor. Uncertainty prevails. Next month or next year the ruling party might gather at a Polokwane hall and (instigated by possibly a handful of people and concurred by half a hallful) evict its executive, purge its hierarchy, blame faults on what it will start to call "the previous regime", and decide to ... say ... solve the housing shortage by billeting squatter families in rich families' houses.
In which case we know the electoral consequences: The ruling party will be endorsed as usual.
Now look at D2 -- same people, same attitudes, skills, creeds, but relating in a D2 structure. That is, parliament has passed a law creating a new structure, like 1994 but this time letting communities choose how to form themselves and what powers to exercise. Here, the ruling party is as welcome as ever to change its mind. Voters are as welcome as ever to approve. But they must approve deliberately. I in my shack might vote for the president who promises me half of Freedman's classy house. But back in my precinct I might distrusting the divvying officer or fear Freedman closing his factory or hear Freedman offer alternatives.
If I vote one way in my national election and another way in my precinct, I refine the national will. Lots of people do that, via election results like stock exchange prices; a few people analysing, most people broadly noticing which policies loom larger and which fade away. We take action by adjusting our votes. We are influenced by how others adjust their votes. They are influenced by how we adjust ours.
If in your province or precinct someone like Andile "Blacks Must Own Everything" Mngxitama (or his Lite cousin, J Malema) fares well at the polls, prosperous people get busy with carrot and stick. They hold out jobs and benefits if they get co-operation, and resistance if they're pushed too far. In my quarter the comfortable may be better positioned to draw investment and advance their claim that free markets spread wealth. In all cases the proof of the promise is in the voting.
Which comes back to you and me and Molly and Sophie, the ordinary people who may have different goals but share a preferred route. When our leaders put tension or nuisance or confusion into our lives we prick our ears to alternative leaders offering slower goals with less tension. D2 gives each of us fine-tune control over the combining of diverse outcome with shared routes.
That, Mike, is why using the power of Molly and Sophie will bring politics out of group conflict into rising tide. It is not about them being "good people" (silly phrase, in this sense always meaning they think on the same lines as whoever is doing the judging). It is that most people, making calm and deliberate choices in private, will avoid choices that introduce trauma.
The trick is for choice to be truly free. That's the beauty of D2. By magnifying the power of the citizen it ensures a steady route towards equity, with no-one fleeing, no-one freezing, and stability all the way.
But it offers that at a price. Take your nervous property owner who currently spends 43% of his day weeping and wailing about malgovernance and insecurity. D2 gives him much stronger protection than he has now. Look hard, look close, and I believe you'll allow that "infinitely stronger" is technically true. In a D2 society his reasonable, vital, interests are intact forever. [Interests he unreasonably calls "vital" not included, nor interests that are reasonable but less than vital.]
But at this stage of this argument the nervous property owner does not begin to see that. He takes a quarter of a glance, gets the instant picture "madness, letting the township annex my living room", and goes back to praying that Julius won't be president.
From this guy, at this stage, I don't expect much more. Even from the Gwedes and Zwelinzimas, and others whose ANC involvement is truly about a better country for all, I pretty much know that at this stage they'll take their quarter-glance at D2 and ignore it as another constitutional gimmick.
But from you, Mike, no. Your whole business is thought-leading. From you it's not enough to come up with instant bar-counter ripostes "but the ordinary people never matter", "but the masses are irresponsible", "but nothing like this has ever existed". You sound like a British aristocrat in 1832 "What! They're letting tradesman vote! It's the end of civilisation!"
My case is that when society switches on to the idea (unfamiliar, yes, but extremely uncomplicated once you have made the switch) that the power of ordinary people is the real guarantor of progress, a lot of lives will work out better. That specifically includes lives in the greatest need. I've tried again to spell out why, since previous spellings haven't worked for you. Now I sincerely request you to either give me a real reason why I'm wrong, or to use your weight to say – and not to me, to others – "here's a way to go, let's add to it".
Oh, and by the way, when you heard of the Internet coming up, did you say "no, impossible, nothing like that has ever existed"?
Very good wishes to you, and refreshed thanks for taking an interest.
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Warm regards
Annette Kennealy
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In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2 000 years prior:
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."
" The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."
The Obituary of The USA follows: Born 1776, Died 2008 It doesn't hurt to read this several times. Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the last
Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1
YET OBAMA STILL WON THE ELECTION ??????
Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.
Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."
Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the governmental dependency" phase.
If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's - and they vote - then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.