Welcome to Gaia! ::

Okay, well I just joined.

I really like the concept of this guild and was happy to know "council members" were selected by concensus, but I was a little upset when I read:



If you decide majority rule, then, isn't the guild little more than a democracy?! I mean, the whole concept of (most) anarchists openly accepting concensus in favor of majority rule, is to let everyones voice have an opportunity.

I'm sure as most of you know, most of the modern concepts of the anarchist idea of concensus were created around the time of African slavery in America & much of Europe, as the anarchists' solution to complete abolition of slavery, by Thoreau, Emmits, and others, mostly from ideas they had taken, and further elaborated on, mostly from Kropotkin, Proudhon, and even Ravachol.

So anyways, why exactly is this guild using a majority rule system?

Actually I'm pretty far from Anarcho-Capitalist, I'm an Anarcho-Syndicalist, so I definately don't support big buisness ownership/operation. I believe in workers self-management of factories, and buisnesses and such, through trade unions and syndicates.

Sure, there are more people than big buisnesses, but big buisnesses, are based around the authority of one, or a select few. Usually, the CEO, and shareholders, and these people possess a great deal of influence and power. Someone isn't going to single-handedly speak out against a conglomerate such as GE, AOL TimeWarner, Coca-Cola, Walmart, ect, in fear of losing their job. Getting media attention on such issues, is also often impossible, seeing as how, many of these companies are major advertisers with a news stations parent company, or stocks/shares are owned by a company CEO.


Either way, I'm glad to see someone agrees with me that the "Council System" needs to be changed.

Anyway,

I like the current system because it allows me to edit you guy's posts. lol (I have only done it 3 times and that last time was an accident).

And Xevec this is an anarcho-captialist heart to heart: seriously get mellow, these people have heard of anarcho-captialism and they simply don't buy it. Relax and respect that, save the haterd for Soymilk lol rofl Your not Rothbard, your not Ayn Rand, we are all just dudes on the net talking about a poltical system that no one takes seriously in a site that was made for teens to play with dolls. lol

Well my solution, is rather than having people who are council members, all the time, we alternate, so that everyone, regardless of his/her opinions gets a chance to be in the council. We do that here in the anarchist collective in my hometown (Memphis), and it works really well. Everyone feels they are a part of the collective, and that everyone is equal to each other, rather than a select few acting as superior members of the group.

EDIT: Usually a council acts as the governing body for a week, before alternating. And only people who have been members of the collective two weeks or more, can be eligible for being a council members.

And maybe propose voluntary/mandatory term limits?

Concensus minus one is strictly for disiplinary situations, where a person has repeatedly broken the laws they bound themselves to by joining the community. While technically majority, the person forfits their voice on matters when they break laws they likely helped make.

Natural rights are comprimised in any situation where a person is living in a community, because their actions can infrige greatly on the rights of those around them. However, extreme methods, like the death penalty, come forth when a community trys to make its problems go away, instead of fix them. It's akin to the reason some people commit suicide (to stop the pain). I believe it was agreed that reform is better then removal in another thread (one of the 'murder in an anarchist society' threads), so how do you propose we reform those who, for one reason or another, refuse to cooperate with our attempts, without using concensus-1 or doing anything else to infringe on their rights? And how about a mod who decides, for one reason or another, that they don't like one of the guild members, and edit all their posts to say lewd things in an attempt to get that person banned? (I highly doubt any of our current mods would do this btw, but one of the more important things about a governmental model is its ability to deal with stress. And eventually, even under the current system, we will prolly meed more mods) Wouldn't the current 'majority against mod' not be more of a removal of the mods rights then a concensus system? How would majority be defined here? 51%? 80%, 90%?

I don't think it much matters, since modship isn't all that important to participating in the discussions, and doesn't really affect what goes on. I think this is the first I've seen anything about it since I joined this guild. Anyway, how do we know if we've reached consensus- there's always going to be inactives, either chronic or temporary, and we have no way of knowing who's gone for good, who just happens to not be on for some time, and who's just lurking.