Decision System

Question

I feel the movement has matured to the point where an extra decision system is needed.  I see several problems that have led to quite a few incorrect decisions.  You also have important decisions being made by small groups creating arugments of elitsm. 

The Democracy we should strive for is a Smart Democracy.  Science tells us the general public play a crucial part in being a decision safety net, but they do not excel at making correct decisions. http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html

I would like to a system where our most informed Occupiers are democractically elected and their position made transparent. Then these Occupy Electives have 50% of the vote power on core decisions with the remaining 50% for Occupiers.

In a 'distant' future perhaps a three way split system of 1/3 Public, 1/3 Occupy Elect, 1/3 Topic Experts - An example of Topic Experts would be the Tech Ops group getting 1/3 of the say on a website idea. 

Comments

Even within our current decision making model(s), the group as a whole is able to (and in most cases probably should IMHO) consense on empowering 'topic experts' to bottomline a given task or project with a certain degree of autonomy. To continue with the TechOps example, it makes a great deal of sense to have the GA provide input and reach consensus on the scope and goals of a project (we want to provide service X and only service X using resources Y and Z) - not so much to have an entire GA provide direct input on the best practices for installing the software and deploying the hardware required for said project.

I'd like to think that this is 'common sense' for most people and we don't need to put that sort of thing in writing, but I could be wrong.

Answer 1

That is a tragic news story. But I wonder if a little skepticism isn't in order here. Do we trust technocrats from universities to be the best judges of democracy? I don't want to sound like a pitch-fork wielding villager, but for the sake of argument, I think any political movement should be careful about its power to create new classes, which is no way to get rid of hierarchy.

On the other hand, if it's true that democracy is incapable of electing truly outstanding intellects and creative problem-solvers, maybe some kind of enlightened hierarchy is called for.

AS for your voting within the occupations, I defer to actual occupiers. I'm just a very interested observer.