Colloquium at Stanford
The Unfinished Revolution

Memorandum

Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 02:14:22 -0800

From: John \"sb\" Werneken" Reply-To: unrev-II@onelist.com

To: "Stanford Bootsrap ToPOst"

Subject:

Greatly Insane PA (Parliamentary Assistance) (not intended as flame)

From: "John \"sb\" Werneken"

The authors and certainly the presenter of this PA proposal to the Engelbart Colloquium exceed, I am quite sure, the standard of general smarts I would count as a peer.

I completely disagree with the proposal.

Most fundamentally, Robert's Rules is about the rights of the BODY - of the community. The proposal seems to assume a sort of equality for the weight of the participation of each member. Some explanations of democracy posit an equality amongst the participant-citizens but such is emphatically NOT the case in any real body or community of people. Robert's provides a way for the body to work its will, without violence. Some respect is given to the feelings of minorities and even to those of individual members, but mostly Robert's is about the group as a whole.

As a group, the body has leaders. The Chair is either the principal leader or his/her servant. The procedural life of the body gives a frame for the political life of the body. A good example is who I would as Chair appoint to a committee, or to which existing Committee I as Chair would give jurisdiction on a matter.

The presence in one place of the participants will be critical, unless technology evolves to allow ALL the human interaction cues to be communicated. We need to be able to raise a voice, throw a scowl, and need to be able to take people aside for secret conversations, and to be seen to do so (or in some cases, not be seen to do so).

Points I wrote down in some agitation during the presentation:

1. The heck with the bias at the beginning. The energy issue was capsulized as a choice between 'fair sharing, or allowing the rich to use what they will, until gone'. The assumptions built in are staggering. First, that being affected by something confers a right to do something about it. BS. Second, that a collective decision is morally admissible or efficient or likely to be reasonably effective or good (by any measure of what is good). Third, the point of being rich is to have choices others don't, especially over scare resources. Fourth, some of us, me in particular, think the process of getting rich or deciding who will be rich, is far more "fair" to individuals as well as far more "beneficial" to the community, than the process of any group voting on what to impose on others.

2. Binding decisions: a bit like military intelligence or killing for peace. I will decide what decisions I accept, based on the quality of the decision and the quality of the process. If not overly provoked or if the coercion threatened by the rest of you is high enough, I may also weigh how much I care about the decision and about how I believe decisions should be made, vs. the costs others may try to impose on me.

   Mostly I try to avoid conflict these days as I feel better when I am in amity with others. So I am fairly law-abiding, even of laws and lawmakers I may not support. I think most of us are. Consensus is a more powerful tool for obtaining obedience and certainly for obtaining support.

3. A decision we can support. That is what you are trying to offer, I think. A consensus-based process offers this. A non-consensus process is exactly the same as to its lack of legitimacy and lack of attraction, whether Stalin does it or the US Senate or the whole American electorate. This is why the abortion thing is never resolved: we all know, from experience, that the winner could try to impose on the loser. People QUITE RIGHTLY will die fighting this when it is an idea that they care about.

   The decision process is a framework for producing a decision most people are willing to support. If the problem is large, consensus is the only way other than war to obtain a supported decision.

   The decision process can not be reduced to what is necessary, on paper, to produce a "binding" decision.

4. Robert's: nobody runs on Robert's. The skill of the discussion steerer, the negotiations of the leaders, the inputs of stakeholders - these things decide issues.

5. Robert's works exactly to the extent that it enables consensus. Robert's is problematic for voluntary assemblies (which is most of the assemblies using Robert's): too much majority over-rule and the group fragments. In the modern age all bodies are on the way to becoming voluntary bodies.

6. There is no such thing as "majority rule". There are coalitions of minorities, and even of individuals. Robert's exists for the health of the body itself, not for the making of a given decision.

7. Cleanliness is a problem in decision-making. Points of order aren't about the procedure, they are about substantive points on the issue or substantive points on the rights of those affected. They are opportunities for interjection and delay. Tools of consensus-building. Who gets to speak is a way of shaping the debate. This is for the leaders of the body not for a date-time stamp. In a real body, it is not confused about who has the floor, it wants to debate or otherwise control who it wants to hear from. A good Chair or good leaders manage this process so that the body is comfortable with its emerging will: a consensus is being formed.

8. Presumption of equality of participants. Again, BS. Let's suppose a body 95% white and 80% male (like union meetings I used to Chair). Obviously the majority might be little concerned about illusive discourtesies to its black women members. Not so the black women members! Because they may care more, they have disproportionate influence on this topic, and there was little such discourtesy, despite who was in the majority and who was not. Wealth is one of the unevenly-distributed things which concentrates influence, some of the time on some of the issues, but it is far from the only thing that works that way. Viva la differance!

9. The main reason Robert's is so popular is the force of tradition and example. Legislative bodies have their own rules, but voluntary associations tend to use Robert's: because the forces of tradition and example help the body gain support for the decisions it reaches using Robert's. Consensus, again.

10. The Chair's power is a good thing. The Chair is really the servant of the body under Robert's. A good Chair will recognize a member notorious for moving to close debate, when it is clear that the body is ready to vote, and not earlier and not later.

11. Agendas can be set by consensus too. Record the ideas in public and then tally the preferences, allowing each member a limited number of preferences but allowing each to put as many preferences as they want to, and have, on a given topic.

12. Neighborhoods deciding street speeds! Argh!!! At one time I was an elected neighborhood leader with enough personal clout to have such signs put up or taken down or changed with a phone call. I guess my informal process was pretty good: find a consensus on goal and several alternative means amongst those most directly affected - on that street, not the whole neighborhood; canvass opinion of the diverse neighborhood board and at the possibly-stacked-for-that-purpose public neighborhood meeting; negotiate with the traffic engineers for a solution that would not create worse problems elsewhere; and call em and tell em what sign to put where.