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I have an idea I'd like to share: Democracy From Below. I hope to convince others to help build this website. The world desperately needs change. Millions of people around the world are aware of this and working hard to bring it about. What’s missing I believe, is a way to organize those people into one cooperative community.
The internet provides the possibility for democracy among all of humanity but, because of anonymity and the profit motive to sell data, we can’t trust websites. Communities can’t function without trust so, what we need first is a web platform which we can trust. I believe a simple mechanism can provide the solution:
A democratically controlled platform cooperative which does not allow anonymous users. Since we can’t be sure of anyone’s identity on the internet, membership on the platform must require membership in a real community organization where we know each other. In this way we can gradually build a democratic network linking our communities together in the ‘real world’.
If this idea makes sense to you, please help me find others. If it doesn’t, please tell me why because I can’t see (so far) what’s wrong with the logic. It will take many volunteers; programmers to help build it, translators to make it accessible in all languages, activists to spread the idea…and so many more. It will take time to build it, but not necessarily any more time than it took to build facebook.
Let me know what you think.
joe @ liberigi . net (spaces added to avoid spam)
Humans are cooperative by nature but we have been unable to live cooperatively (as a species) because of the ownership of private property since the discovery of agriculture. We won’t live cooperatively again until we create a political system to organize all of humanity on an equal basis: Democracy From Below. And, we can't solve any global problems until we can work cooperatively as a species.
Humanity 2.0
The earth has provided like an all inclusive trip for humans. All we had to do was figure out how to share. Call it Eden if you want. Humanity 1.0 has brought us here, to capitalism - Lord of the Flies on steroids.
It started with the discovery of agriculture at least 10,000years ago. At that time humanity unfortunately allowed our organized societies to be based on property rather than community. How could we know? And who would have decided? The internet is allowing us an opportunity to choose again. Let’s choose community this time.
The discovery of agriculture showed us that we can manipulate nature to gain more resources than were available to us before. With that knowledge, the choices that some of us have made, have brought us to the edge of disaster.
Those choices have always been made by those in control of property. Women were the first group to be treated as property so that men of property could maintain their bloodline in the transfer of property. White people invented the ideas of white supremacy in order to justify the sale of Africans as property. In a time of “enlightenment”.
No one has lived in a world without property ownership for thousands of years. Like fish trying to explain water, it’s hard for many even to imagine. John Lennon did. But we can’t simply imagine a better world into being - we have to organize it. Democracy From Below
