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

Mon Jan 14 14:35:38 CET 2013

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 12:18:51 PM +0200, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis wrote:

> You give your voting rights to a trusted person.

as long as "trusted" includes "can be replaced easily, if I realize I
made a mistake to give him/her trust", yes, that's a big step forward

What matters is constant, 2-way communication between the voters and
the voted, and and accountability. Some delegation is unavoidable,
IMO, for the reasons I've already written. At the same time, leaving
experts alone cannot work by definition, just because they ARE
specialists/experts. Even IF they are all 100% honest, competent and
100% interchangeable, because sooner or later they lose the big
picture.

> So the way forward in my opinion is this. We build democratic tools
> for society. We analyze their weaknesses and then start all over
> again.

of course, see above. Endless iteration is unavoidable (it's part of
life, some would also postulate that it is part of the very
_definition_ of life, right?)

Marco