[P2P-F] Fwd: Ancient Athens didn't have politicians. Is there a lesson for us?

Sat Jan 12 11:14:30 CET 2013

Michel,

I want people to engage in politics. But we should not view reality through
our own political prejudices ,as many actually do.

Every social structure has internal properties that can be analyzed
mathematically.
To avoid messy sciences, like evolutionary biology, you would have to be as
general as possible. This makes the problem harder to solve but also more
difficult to contradict, if proved.
I wouldnt use biological studies unless I was really desperate.

I dont think that the power law applies to every structure.

ex. Lets say that we randomly select 300 people as representatives of a
society. The probablity that half of them are corrupt can be precisely
computed from the average probability a person is corrupt.
The messy thing here is that we believe that an average threshold of
probable corruption will never be reached. We cant easily find that
probability.
But this system has certainly more guarantees than representative democracy.

ex. Bitcoin  can only work if the majority(in computation power) is not
corrupt. This is a technical solution and it is precise.

ex. There has been a paper here in the p2p-f mailing list a year ago that
described proxy voting and was looking into possible ways that someone can
game the system.
The difficulty to game a system is also a property of a good social
structure.

With the advent of the internet and computers, social connections can be
more easily formalized in a way that more precise technical social
structures can emerge that have stronger guarantees on their ability to
protect themselves.

2013/1/12 Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>

> Hi Mark,
>
> As far as I understand it the original western democracies, and especially
> the U.S., were designed as Republics, and explicitely anti-democratic, i.e.
> designed to defend the power of the enlightened property owners against the
> 'mob'. All the more real elements of democracy, such as universal suffrage
> of all genders, were imposed later through long-standing social
> mobilizations ... The Electoral College is just one example of an technique
> specifically aimed at not having the people directly decide ...
>
> Michel
>
>
>
> XXX
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:05:04 -0600
> From: Mark Janssen <dreamingforward at gmail.com>
>
> Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Fwd: Ancient Athens didn't have politicians. Is
>         there a lesson for us?
> To: P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <CAMjeLr-K=13yqx3x2Z3LOw7ESQT-56xrkQ7+rg=
> MdGi1NNWt5Q at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 9:19 AM, George Dafermos - TBM
> <G.N.Dafermos at tudelft.nl> wrote:
> > i suppose that was probably meant as a joke, right?
> > x,
>
> Hah, I guess I should have clarified.  I mean "nominally" or legally
> it has a government of, by, and for the People since the Constitution
> remains the "highest" Law of the United States.  Such as it is, if one
> were to take the issues to court on where it was failing, the courts
> would have to uphold this standard and ideal.  The fact that the
> People have let their government deteriorate through neglect, and the
> void of power, left thereby, be filled by those with less noble ideals
> is a shame.  But, nonetheless, I don't think it can copy Greece's
> model of democracy, where it was supposed to be an indivisible unit.
>
> mark
> --
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-- 

Sincerely yours,

     Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
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