[Air-L] Knight News Challenge: Pioneering the practice of public autonomy

[Michael Allan]

I'm seeking practitioners to collaborate on a second Knight News
Challenge proposal.  Again, this year's challenge is, "How might we
improve the way citizens and governments interact?"
https://www.newschallenge.org/

The submission deadline is March 18.  Below is a rough draft of the
proposal.  Aside from practitioners, we might also need organizational
support (in part because there's financing if we win).  Please let me
know if you can help.  My contact details are at: http://zelea.com/


PROJECT TITLE

   Pioneering the practice of public autonomy

MAIN IMAGE

   http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/2-grow/validity/seeking.png

DESCRIPTION

   We aren't quite free if we live under laws and other norms that we
   cannot reasonably agree with.  To be free in a social world that
   regulates itself by norms (to have public autonomy), we must be
   able to amend and correct those norms that offend us on this
   principle.  As the social theorist and philosopher Habermas puts
   it, "Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly
   affected persons could agree as participants in rational
   discourses."  Taking this discourse principle as our guiding star,
   we aim to pioneer a practice of public autonomy based on the
   continual exposure of draft norms to the guidance of rational
   discourses.  We'll simultaneously run electoral primaries based on
   open, transitive voting to put our most qualified practitioners on
   the ballot and into office.  There they'll continue to work with
   us, their un-elected peers.  Together we'll use this improved
   mechanism of interaction between citizens and government to ratchet
   up the legitimacy of statutes and other regulatory norms.  On the
   technical side, we'll use MediaWiki for the drafting medium;
   Semantic MediaWiki as an open database and voter registry
   (streetwiki); existing public forums as the discussion media;
   Votorola's prototype toolset for transitive voting and recombinant
   text; plus any other suitable tools and technical projects that we
   pick up along the way.  Already we have enough to support a crude
   practice.

   Pioneering that practice is the topic of this proposal.  There are
   two things to understand about this from the outset.  The first is
   that, despite the proliferation of designs for participatory
   democracy that are flawed in terms of legitimacy and efficacy,
   nobody has yet found such a fundamental flaw in the design of this
   particular practice.  The acid test is to locate the single person
   who cannot reasonably assent to a law, then evolve that law in a
   direction to which all can assent.  Second, it appears that the
   core of this practice can be developed and proven by a small group
   of pioneers.  The core is the process of validity seeking (main
   figure).  It is conducted by small "leaf groups" of typically 2-5
   practitioners who continually join with the public in discourse.
   These discourses are structured not only to guide the would-be
   normative action in the direction of validity, but also to provide
   the human resources that are necessary to carry out that action.
   This implies that *if* a pioneering leaf group ever succeeds in
   getting the design and performance of this core process right,
   delivering on both its purposes, then the entire population will be
   led into freedom by that success.

   To achieve that success will require special skills.  We're looking
   for people who have the capacity to critique the design of the
   practice and to expose any flaws, while also being resourceful
   enough to handle a toolset that is only partly implemented and may
   yet require some re-design work.  The technical designs cannot be
   allowed to harden into finished tools until we have a better
   understanding of the hands-on practice.  We're also looking for
   people with imagination.  When your hands are engaged in a nascent
   practice such as this, and your mind is equipped to make up for the
   missing parts, then it becomes like a lense into the future; you're
   out in front thinking for all the others who will follow.  If you
   know of anyone possessing these skills who might be interested,
   please point them to this proposal.

WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT?  (1 sentence max)

   To pioneer a practice of public autonomy that interrelates citizens
   and government via mechanisms of transitive primary voting,
   recombinant text, and the continual exposure of legislative bills
   and other draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses.

LINKS

   http://www.mediawiki.org/
   http://semantic-mediawiki.org/
   http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.html
   http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/validity_seeking

OTHER IMAGES

   http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/election/singleNominate.png
   http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/election/singleElect.png
   http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/law/prepare.png


The latest copy of this draft is at:
http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Knight

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/
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