[WikiEN-l] Things that bother me

[Jonathan Walther]

On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 02:09:45PM +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:
>Dictatorship or voting. Pick one.

I pick both.  Benevolent dictatorship where the dictator listens to and
respects the voice of his constituents works quite well.  It amounts to
concsensus; to retain power, the benevolent dictator has to come up with
solutions that everyone can live with.  When you have votes on the other
hand, the will of the majority can make things so unlikeable for
minorities that they just up and leave.

Did anyone ever notice that Kropotkin said Russian villages used to run
entirely based on consensus, without any voting?  Too bad the communists
destroyed that lifestyle; I'd like to see firsthand how they managed it.
I suspect it was because everyone shared a common culture, language, and
religion, and had known each other all their lives.

Jonathan

-- 
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030119/b68c0063/attachment.pgp