Peter Ansell wrote:
On 29/07/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
Both direct and representative democracy have
their shortcomings. A
truly democratic system should be temporal as well as spatial. In other
words there cna be no final determinative vote on almost anything
because those votes make no allowance for the views of those who have
not yet joined us.
That was a joke right? You can't just wait forever because someone
"might" come. Policies in the real world have to be made in some
finite timespace. Half of wikipedia's problems may indeed come from
the fact that policies are argued over endlessly, through opinions
like yours that the more argument/time and effort spent, the better
the situation will "possibly be". Ever heard of the concept of
diminishing returns, and/or the concept of negative return on
investment.
No joke about it. In the real world controversial policies can be
decided by votes where there are winners and losers. The the winners
fight like hell to protect the status quo. Sure, decisions need to be
made, and nothing that I said supported waiting forever. When support
reaches a certain level a policy is adopted, but people can continue
adding their views, or even changing them. When that threshold reaches
an other predetermined level the policy is changed. I also said nothing
about anybody spending more time argument and effort than they already
have. If you already made your point in the early stages why would you
feel obliged to keep arguing. Policies with a broad community support
are unlikely to ever change anyways, but there will be more incentive to
develop policies co-operatively rather than by the old win lose model..
Diminishing and negative returns have nothing to do with this.
Ec