Summations Only

I suppose with small enough electorates, this might be possible. OWS operates on a consensus approach with any individual has the power to veto anything. I'm not sure how large the General Assemblies actually are, but in Oakland (where they have a 90% consensus approach) there were 1500 voters on a General Strike and they managed to get over 96% consensus.This might be more difficult with voting for representatives, I don't know. Just thought I'd try and get this subthread railing back toward the specifics of the Occupy movement.

Some men just want to watch the world burn. When you finally find the one person who nobody wants to earnestly oppose, after a long and laborious search as hundreds or perhaps thousands of perfectly adequate and qualified candidates have to be excluded because somebody thinks they're a crypto-Muslim or heard they once employed an undocumented worker, what are you going to do about the kid who vetoes that person just to be a 19-year-old jackass?Giving more unilateral vetoes than there are candidates is a pretty obvious bad idea. Obvious, I guess, to anybody who thinks about it for a second. Of course, you said it and you'll never admit error, so here you are, retrenching yourself.

Right, you're going to retrench yourself on the "read what I write" kick where you stand firm on your language but don't address its meaning or implications.The problem is, the system as you outlined it isn't based on "someone who everyone can live with", it's based on "someone who everyone agrees not to veto." That's what you said, after all, that everybody would be able to veto any candidate in an election in which they are voting. That's pretty substantially different, but you don't seem at all prepared to address this. I predict another round of accusations by you that you're being "misrepresented" when it just seems more likely that, once again, you haven't thought through what you actually mean.

I have read what you wrote. It goes like this: What does that mean if not that one person could veto the electoral choice of everyone else? What can that mean except that?If you would now like to change your mind, feel free.

Yes, one person could veto all the other votes.Building consensus works that way, it is not free from tension, free from conflict, is often messy and almost always very slow.In the ideal system that one veto stops the process and it is halted until a solution can be found that the person holding the veto finally says "I can live with that".

That might work in a small village, with a homogeneous culture, with a completely different constitution and culture from ours. I can't see how else it might work.I mean ... how do you actually visualize this playing out?

That seems like a pretty effective way to extract concessions - since, you know, that's exactly what happens in the Senate where senators do effectively have an individual veto over legislation.Imagine the increasing series of bribes necessary to convince holdouts to abandon their across-the-board veto. (I'm mostly asking other people to imagine it, because I know you have no ability to think anything through, jar.) The reason that consensus works for the OWS movement, essentially, is because they have no money or assets to apportion. Potential hostage-takers know that they have nothing to gain because OWS doesn't have anything to give them.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Remember, as I said, our politicians simply reflect the electorate and there are NO good fast solutions.To work will require educating the electorate and that will take at least two generations I fear.The first step is to begin teaching the art and techniques of consensus building at a very young age, elementary school, and continue the education right on through all schooling.Instill consensus building techniques into the small groups and then expand it as I say, over several generations to larger and larger groups.

Pretty good story Mr. Coyote. But I remember it going like this . . .The Big White CockThe Big White Cock said to 99% of her neighbors, "thank you for subsidizing my business with corporate welfare. Even though I profited one Billion dollars last year, you still want to give me another Billion dollars this year! That is nice," he said to himself, "but why not TWO billion dollars?""My," the Big White Cock said, "you've worked so hard and paid taxes to build a fine infrastructure so that I may profit. But that is not enough, who will help me plant my crop?""I will, I am desperate to feed my two children and wife," said the cow.
"I will, I am desperate to give care to my sickly child with pre-existing health conditions," said the duck.
"I will, Bush Jr's friend who worked at Enron stole my pension, I must work until I die," said the pig.
"Since you are ALL desperate for work" said the Big White Cock, "I will take advantage of the situation and pay you each subsistence pay."The Big White Cock said to 99% of her neighbors, "thank you for giving me another generous tax cut this year. It is even more than last year. Even though I profited one Billion dollars last year, I am happy to take more tax cuts." But, to himself he replied, "I would be really ecstatic if the tax cut was a little bigger.""Now, who will help me reap my wheat?" asked the Big White Cock.
"I will, I am desperate to feed my family," said the cow.
"I will, I am desperate to give care to my sickly child with pre-existing health conditions," said the duck.
"I can't, I have just died. An 87-year-old senior probably shouldn't have been doing heavy manual labor out in the fields in the hot sun" said the pig.
"Well, I need THREE workers," said the Big White Cock, "I will hire an illegal immigrant to help me make my profits." And so he did.The Big White Cock said to 99% of her neighbors, "thank you for giving me a tax-payer-paid-for bonus. It is more than last year. Even though I profited one Billion dollars last year, I am quite happy to receive a special incentive bonus especially for CEOs. Err, how about a little something extra for a rainy day?" the Big White Cock whispered to himself.At last it came time to assemble the ingredients. "Who will help me prepare the bread?" asked the Big White Cock.
"I will, I am desperate to feed my two children and wife," said the cow.
"I can't. My child just died. I couldn't afford the additional health costs and when my child died I've become severely depressed. I will commit suicide tonight," said the duck.
"Then the Big White Cock said, "OK, fine with me, I will outsource the labor to foreign workers who will think that some/ANY money is better than none."The Big White Cock said to 99% of her neighbors, "thank you for sharing all the risk. It is largely from government sponsorship that supports higher learning and technical/military research that most profitable ideas come and that many patents spring from, from the lowly velcro invention to high tech gadgets. Gee, you have shouldered all the risk in business while leaving me all the profits."At last it came time to bake the bread. "Who will help me guide the bread into the oven?" asked the Big White Cock.
"I will, I am desperate to feed my two children and wife," said the cow.
Then the Big White Cock said "how greedy for you to keep asking me to feed so many of your family. Perhaps you shouldn't have had so many damned children you couldn't afford. Since prison labor has become all the business rage in the southern states, perhaps I should simply look elsewhere for labor. But since I declare myself to be benevolent and generous, I will hire you, but I will only give you enough food to feed . . . TWO of your family members."The cow painted 'Unfair!' picket signs and marched around and around the Big White Cock, shouting obscenities. But he was too weak from malnutrition. He had given all his meager food rations to his family, and then died. Which in turn made the family dependent on religious charities. And unfortunately, since the churches demanded they convert to the church's faith in exchange for food, God smited the family for their lack of faith and made the mother and child burn in hell for all eternity.The Big White Cock said to 0% of her neighbors, (of which had all died or moved to Philadelphia), "What will happen to me? Without everyone sharing the risk but leaving only me to profit, how can I continue to buy luxury yachts and buttered lobsters?"And the Big White Cock was correct to worry. Without the golden safety net that the Big White Cock relied on for so many years, he eventually become a Unitarian, then homeless, and then died with holes in his pockets.Does this story's moral sound kinda familiar? . . .
Tragedy of the commons - WikipediaEdited by dronester, : Subsistence, many typos.Edited by dronester, : punctuation addedEdited by dronester, : better reference, Tragedy of the commons - Wikipedia

In many countries, you don't have coalitions going against coalitions at all, this is where I think you're looking at it wrong. Looking at the Dutch example, you have Christians, liberals, socialists and nationalists all going against each other, then after the election you have a complicated period of negotiations that could produce a Christian-liberal government, a Christan-socialist government, a liberal-socialist government, a Christian-nationalist government or some other combination including smaller minor parties to make up the numbers.And the parties on the extreme make a difference too. Here we have the Communist party, who no-one can enter into coalition with without losing a significant amount of support. They're never going to be in government, but if they increase their support they take away enough of the seats to make a majority government almost impossible, allowing them to obstruct easier or demand a couple of favours in exchange for not blocking legislation. The Dutch far-right are currently in the situation of propping up the government in exchange for favours, without actually being in it.

Absolute consensus among a large electorate isn't just difficult, it's utterly impossible. No amount of education is going to change that.I used to be involved in a bunch of lefty organisations and protest groups, and some would try for consensus decision making. Bear in mind that these would be small groups of people, politically aligned to at least some degree since we were all in the same organisation, and trying to decide on how to accomplish a pre-arranged goal, since that's why we were there in the first place. Demanding consensus often lead to paralysis. On anything controversial, consensus could only be reached because the dissenter felt too intimidated to argue, was pressured into agreeing, or just grew weary with the debate and bowed to the majority. I don't see how such a system improves on majority voting, it just takes a lot longer.Even in these small groups, if the minority opinion holder was strong-willed enough, consensus could not be achieved. And remember again that we're a small group of like-minded people discussing face-to-face with the ability to bring social pressure. If, instead, we were a consituency of 420,000 people, most of whom are never going to speak to each other and holding a diversity of political and cultural outlooks, the idea that you could get every, single last one of them to consent, without one exception, is absurd.

Which is fine.No decision is a decision.The result is that nothing happens.

Ever, to the end of eternity.The whole point of this protest business is that people are not satisfied with the status quo. Implementing a system which made any change at all impossible forever more because nobody could ever be elected to a legislative role is not a solution. It simply ossifies the law as it stands the day you introduce this idea.

I am not convinced that it would make change impossible.AbE:Let me expand a little on this.As I have said over and over in this and other threads, I see no quick or easy solutions. Any possible solutions that I can see will take several generations before any results are seen.To make the changes necessary I believe that first the whole electorate must be educated and trained to develop the basic knowledge set needed as well as the critical thinking skills and techniques like consensus building.That must begin at the very start of a child's education and carry on through life.If you go back and reread what I have posted I believe you will find I said that a consensus system is the ideal; I am under no illusions that it is something that could simply be adopted with today's electorate. Most folk just don't have either the tools needed or the basic education needed.There are things that can be done relatively quickly though even under the current system to work towards changing the current income equality issue in the US, UK and several other major developed nations.Public movement like OWS have historically been able to make changes in a short period of time, but they also have almost always failed to address the real underlying problems.If this is worth discussing then let's start another thread or if folk think it appropriate continue here.Edited by jar, : see AbE:

Jar, you're not listening, as usual.Nobody's telling you that it won't work because people lack tools or education. People are telling you that it won't work because it sets up perverse incentives. What is required for this to work is for people to willingly pay an opportunity cost for the good of the whole. You don't need education; you need a massive re-engineering of human evolutionary psychology. And even then some nonzero number of people - sociopaths, perhaps, whom education simply cannot fix because they have an organic mental disorder - are going to veto every single candidate just to fuck with other people's shit:It has nothing to do with "tools" or "education", it has to do with the fact that there's a non-trivial number of human beings who will either place rational self-interest and the ability to extract concessions over the welfare of the whole; as well as a nonzero number of people whose behavior will never be rational or group-centered because they have a profound mental illness.Your system takes the dysfunction I've tried to explain exists in the Senate and expands it to every aspect of government. And you think that's a good thing. You must have to be from Texas, or something.