User:Woozle/My Left Wing/Revolution 2.0 Outline RFC/microgov

A Proposal

This is intended as a discussion-starting proposal. It will probably be wrong in a lot of ways.

I'm going to boldly kick us out of the box of asking "who can we elect?" or "what law can we change?" to fix everything, because it seems clear to me that what we need is a better system. MSoC's idea (change at the primary level) seems like a good tool to use, but I don't see it as sufficient to restore sustainable integrity to the system by itself. We need to put the old system into drydock for extensive refitting, at the very least.

So, a suggestion for building a new structure from the ground up: Instead of tying political representation to geography, let's allow people to choose which representation group to join. As with Obamacare, everyone would have to join some group, and pay dues (presumably income-based) to that group. If we don't like the customer service, we can join another one -- or start another one.

What I just described is the target political environment, when the new system has largely or completely supplanted the current one -- but it doesn't have to do so monolithically. We don't have to bring this before Congress or get everyone in the country to agree to switch (both of which would be essentially impossible). Instead, the new can compete with the old, and spread "virally" until it dominates. Here's how I see that happening.

The first step is to create Grassroots Org 2.0 (or is that 3.0?): a type of organization which thinks as much in terms of 'governance as in terms of effecting needed change. I'll call these entities "microgovernments".

Microgovernments

Unlike a grassroots org, a microgovernment ("microgov", "µgov", or "µg" for short):

• need not have a predetermined cause -- ideally, it should fight only for the causes decided upon by its members
• has a way of aggregating the opinions of its members so as to arrive at a consensus agreeable to all
• provides infrastructural (government-like) services to its members, where appropriate (possible services: tax preparation, unemployment safety net, health insurance, emergency housing)
• is designed from the ground up to be "clonable" -- members can start their own offshoots if they don't like the way things are going, and they would have the right to contact the current membership with a "split proposal". We want µgovs to be constantly worried about keeping their members happy so this won't happen.

Like a grassroots org, a microgovernment:

• provides negotiating and publicity services on behalf of causes decided upon by its members
  • in the present political environment, "negotiating services" would include advertising campaigns and lobbying
• has no legal hold on its members (citizens can switch at will)

Potential problems:

• rich people forming their own reduced-tax µgovs
  • in the target political environment this isn't much of a problem, because influence is allocated per person -- 100 billionaires would have no more vote than 100 other people
  • in the current political environment -- well, the billionaires and corporations have already formed their lobbying groups; we're just forming our own to fight back.
• microgovs expelling "less productive" individuals, leading to the same problem we have now (homelessness, poverty, no social net)
  • Maybe we need some ground rules for dealing with this -- a pact between µgovs. Again, representation of each µgov's position must be allocated by population; this will give µgovs some incentive to take on more people even if they aren't obviously "economically beneficial" to the µgov to which they belong.
  • Another good ground rule might be that µgovs cannot expel citizens -- at least without due process based on rules agreed to by all µgovs -- Constitution 2.0? -- and possibly not for any reason. (Need to think of some scenarios for this, including both unjustified and possibly-justified expulsion.)

Incentive?

So, why would anyone join one of these things?

I think we have to look at the different motivations and needs that different groups will have, and find ways to meet each of them.

• People with surplus money: we need to provide better accountability, more transparency¹, and more "bang for the buck".
• People with no money: we need to offer services that can help them. We should be able to step into niches traditionally filled by unions, churches, and government -- especially where need is most acute².
• People with little extra money but some spare time and energy: we must find ways to use their energy and intelligence more effectively.
• Existing orgs and the people who work for them: We're not the competition; we're here to help them become more effective at providing their service in a way that makes their customers happy (be that charity recipients, donors, volunteers, or paid staff). We want to provide non-binding conduits to help organizations work together to solve our common problems and advance our common goals (but not at the cost of being reality-based. One of our big niches will be in finding the gaps in between the other services, and making sure they are filled somehow.

Footnotes

• 1. You give your money, but where are the progress reports? How much money did The Salvation Army take in last year? What did they spend it on? What did they accomplish (in numbers)? Who made the braindead decision to throw away donations of Harry Potter books? What have they got against hiring gay people?
• 2. ...which is almost everywhere, these days. There should not be homeless people begging for money on the corners, with hand-written cardboard signs. There should be safe places for these people to live and adequate food for them to eat while they look for work. There should be online profiles of people looking for work, in case someone would like to hire them. This shouldn't be rocket science. The fact that it is apparently so difficult to accomplish is a sign of a broken system.