Forum Post: Focus on Solutions : Resist Divide and Conquer
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 28, 2011, 11:24 a.m. EST by improvingourworld
(2)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
It's time to focus on solutions -- peaceful and legal ones.
The OWS movement can be derailed by the old 'divide and conquer' technique. Beware of this. In fact, it feels that by not focusing on a coherent group of solutions -- for organized dialogue/discussion, and then advancement of the selected ones -- the movement is serving as a 'pressure relief valve' and a way to distract people from making healthy change. Surely, that is not the goal.
Are you being encouraged to endlessly dwell on problems? How much are you being encouraged to find and promote healthy solutions?
Too much time dwelling on problems will not achieve much. If we spend much more time on solutions, we can achieve things. As one of the solutions, let's consider using sortition (selection by lottery) as part of the process to select our representatives in government; there are intelligent ways to do this. It does not imply randomly picking anyone for office. Learn more about wise ways to make sortition part of the process. It truly is the most effective way to decrease the corrupting influence of extreme wealth and mass media over government. It was used in the first democracy (Athenian democracy) as the best safeguard for protecting democracy against corruption.
Let's move forward with solutions. Let's compile an agreed upon list of the biggest problems. Then let's reach consensus on peaceful and legal solutions after healthy dialogue on proposals.
I would say, first, focus on the actual problem, the root cause of all of this, and that's getting the money out of Washington.
So long as we remain formless, leaderless, this thing will remain all over the place and eventually divide us all.
I agree with the list. we need to set up some kind of poll.
But the money is the root cause, all this other stuff are just symptoms of this cause.
about time - too much nonsense in this forum
Other ideas: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_why.html
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_market.html "Activists of any stripe need a vision of future social arrangements -- to give themselves energy, to inspire hope in those they want to join their movement. Rightists live off of their romanticized image of the 19th century free-market economy, supposedly humming along without any help from the government, producing freedom and goods for all. Christians have the idea that Christ will return, maybe very soon, and create a heaven on earth. It is precisely on the issue of a plausible vision for a better future that egalitarians have been totally lacking since the collapse of socialism as a believable alternative. Although many leftists have set forth specific policy proposals, they have not been able to project a new set of principles to inspire and guide positive changes in the economic system. This is a defect that few activists have been willing to face. It is right up there with third parties as a reason for ongoing egalitarian failure."
And: "Most importantly for our purposes, markets can be reconstructed to make it possible to plan for a more egalitarian economic future. It turns out it is possible for strong governments to use the market system for planning. Once it is realized that markets can be viewed from a governmental point of view as administrative instruments for planning, it can be seen that with a little reconfiguring they can serve collective purposes as well as the individual consumer preferences trumpeted by conservative free market economists. In this form of planning, the information is supplied by the price system that is so central to the considerable, but far from perfect, efficiency brought about by markets. There is thus no need for one big planning apparatus. Instead, the planning tools within a reconstructed market system are simply taxes, subsidies, government purchases, and regulation. This point may seem very mundane, but these well-known government powers can be potent when applied to markets. They make it possible to speak in terms of restructuring the market system. They make it possible for different agencies of the state to tinker with different parts of the economic system, and to change course quickly if the economy does not respond as projected. (This is exactly how the Federal Reserve Board operates now, but always in favor of using higher interest rates to control inflation by throwing people out of work, not to increase maximum employment in conjunction with tax and spending policies that could help constrain inflation.)"
And also from there: "There is of course much more than those four areas that are not well served by the market, such as the justice system, parks, and support for the disabled and elderly, which are already under the domain of government. None of these past gains would be lost. However, by realizing that the market is the starting point for the production of most goods and services, and then talking in terms of "planning through the market," "market failures," and "reconstructing the market," egalitarians gain an enormous ideological advantage. They make it possible to think more expansively and creatively about what government agencies can do within the economy instead of worrying about the possibility that government bureaucracies may become too big and oppressive. They also disarm the conservatives at the theoretical level. They force them to talk about specific cases -- all crucial to social well being -- where even the conservatives' own economists have conceded that the market is less than perfect. In fact, the free marketers' admission about a "higher level of payoff" from non-market solutions in some cases can be used as a mantra to move on to other market failures. Important issues in social life where the market can't get values right also can be used as a battering ram against the anti-government ideology of low taxes that is employed by the corporate-conservative coalition to stifle government spending for the social services everyone needs and wants."
Though with that said, improving the gift economy (like Wikipedia), improving subsistence (like 3D printing), and improving planning in general (like with IBIS) are all good things, too.
IBIS is a software tool to help with thinking through options and figuring out which ones make the most sense:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issue-Based_Information_System
Free and open source implementations:
Desktop: http://compendium.open.ac.uk/
Web: http://cohere.open.ac.uk/