A preliminary conclusion on the debate on democracy and peer governance
After the various discussions with Marc and Sam, I have shifted my opinion and am more critical of the original text by Marc Fawzi. To summarize: I agree that in some cases, crowd-only systems may lead to average or lowest-common-denominator judgments, and that in these cases, they might be usefully augmented by a mixed crowd-hierarchy mix.
However, I also think that Marc conflates various political ideals and governance modes, which are better distinguished:
1) it is useful to distinguish centralized networks, decentralized networks, and distributed networks
2) it is useful to distinguish hierarchical modes of governance, heterarchical modes of governance, and distributed modes of governance
3) peer projects, in distributed networks, use modes of govenrance that cannot, and should not, be equated with the heterarchical decentralized model of parliamentary democracy
There is no such thing as a 10,000 year experience with our current, and limited form of democracy. Most modes of egalitarian governance, before class society, and outside the limits of the influence of empires, such as the village level, had distributed and consensus-based modes of governance, as there was no outside agent of coercion. The Athenian democracy cannot be equated with the current format.
Peer governance is best applied to peer groups in common projects; democratic governance besta applied when different interest groups are at stake; but it can be enriched with forms of multistakeholdership inspired by peer governance.
In any case, democracy and peer governance cannot be limited to the sphere of politics, cannot be limited to electoral politics, and should be freed of a state beholden to corporate interests. The state should at least be a neutral arbiter between the Commons, the market, and the gift economy, not a servant of capital.
