Re: [IAC#RG] re Clause 4.001

Dear Murgie

Before I address the crux of your query, I need to know if you agree/disagree/semi-agree on the following historical premise - specifically in the Indian context with Indian data (not in idealised Western democracies)

Parliamentary_democracy+Caste_based_reservations+Political parties resulted in the following

a) Suppression of "merit"
b) Promotion of mediocrity and/or misrule
c) Led to concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.

You will note I've left out "1 man 1 vote" for the moment, and the "+" corresponds to Boolean AND.

PS: I'm not responding to your last para. My in-house experts advise me that S:(S+N) is a sub-optimal indicator for information efficiency.

Sarbajit

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 8:26 PM, Murgie Krishnan <murgie@gmail.com> wrote:

"4.001: Empowered Citizenry
The IAC movement stands for the primacy of empowered citizens in a functioning democracy.
The IAC affirms its belief in universal suffrage and comprehensively rejects the flawed notions of "Parliamentary democracy", "1 man 1 vote",
"political parties", "caste based reservations", and other divisive forms of oppression which suppress merit, promote mediocrity and misrule, and lead
to concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few."

I would agree that our parliamentary democracy has had flaws, but wonder how many takers there are for the notion of junking it without knowing what the alternative will be.  Repairing a flawed system is one thing, simply abandoning it is quite another.

Similarly, like many others I have also been disappointed with the 1-man-1-vote election system, but there is only a particular alternative that I favour if 1-man-1-vote is to be junked -- an approval voting system which allows a voter to choose whether to approve any (see http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html for more details collected in one convenient location). That gives each voter a binary choice with respect to each candidate, allows "none of the above" as a possibility, and potentially encourages candidates to campaign in a way that reduces polarization. It will also be easily implementable given our electronic voting machines, with a software change.

The current language in 4.001 seems ill-advised. Language like this will make one wonder at least about the general maturity of the folks behind this Charter.