Dave Winer posts a followup to his last editorial on this issue.#

A candidate who wanted to help software jobs come back to NH, a high-tech state, could do something right now to help. No need to wait till they're elected. And I don't agree with people who say the candidate's job is to get elected. Sure, that's probably the way the candidate views it. But I'm not a candidate, I'm a member of the electorate and a taxpayer. I've yet to vote in a presidential election that means something. I'd like to, someday. I honestly don't think this is the year, but I'm doing my part to shift the focus to the voters and away from 60-second TV commercials. What are you doing?

Although Dave specifically points software jobs, I think that people can really do something to help each other at any time no matter where they are in the process of being elected. These are the best candidates, who are part of a group that is actually doing something rather than people who promise they'll start doing something once they get enough money/votes. Words meet Action, Action meet Words.

And I mean this separate from my libertarian philosophy, while I think that private solutions are potentially always better in a country that supports them, in the mean-time I don't see why the people we support privately are not the same people we'd like to support publicly.

Ryan Overbey writes about internet discourse because of this.#

So how do many bloggers operate? It works like this:

Read an essay.
Identify the weakest possible point the essay makes.
Trash the weakest point.
Add sarcasm, or (if you're bold), ad hominem.
Hit the "Post" button, and grin in self-satisfaction. You've "won" your argument.

I think the above is funny and Ryan adds great substance later.

Two of those three (Aaron Swartz and Gregor Rothfuss) attacked the last, glaring weak point in the argument. But they didn't even bother responding to the other points of the argument, points which, if you cornered Dave and pressed him on it, were probably far more important than the claim that free software can't be user-oriented. Congratulations, you've won your argument! Only you haven't made an argument worth arguing. You've wasted hot air on something not worth attacking, and you haven't responded to the substance of the essay.

And some great advice from academia.

Bloggers do this all the time. It's really, really frustrating to read. They need to take a lesson from academics- who have a clear sense of propriety, who make effort (for the most part) to argue with substance and arguments rather than ad hominem and sarcasm. When I pick up a book by someone I disagree with, I always try to read it asking the question "Is there anything in here I can use? Anything strong? Anything correct?" Because dwelling on weak points accomplishes nothing. Lots of bloggers really need to learn this.

I know many people who think that debate and conversation amongst people who disagree is horrible and unproductive because it turns into a fight and gets emotional. They fail to grasp that it is a fight because they make it a fight and emotional because they let it be. If you enter a discussion with a particular attitude you can come out better off no matter if you agree or not. When two different viewpoints compete they must both get stronger, when two viewpoints agree that back each other up. But if both refuse to compete or one attempts to monopolize the conversation the obviously neither will be truly better off.

I feel that this is the message of Ryan. If you're going to have a discussion, then really have a discussion and not a shouting match with personal insults. Even if you feel that your "opponent" (which, IMHO, is your first problem--from the get-go you cast it as a fight) does these thing then remember that two wrongs do not make a right. Be the better person, in your opinion.

Matt May responds to my reply to his comments on Dave Winer.#

I used to believe this myself: that a candidate should embody the will of the voter. This concept of one person, one vote is the essence of pure democracy. But we don't have, and in my opinion are far too large a country to have, pure democracy. We have representative democracy, and some salesmanship has to come into play. You cannot have your choice of empty vessel in which to instill your individual political bent. That won't cut it. Voters who wish to take stock in what is out there need to evaluate the candidates to see which of them to support, and then ply them with policy requests. (I've got a few such requests for Dean, for example.)

I am reminded of the Roman Emperor Tiberius who said of the Senate and the people of Rome at the time, "How eager you are to be slaves!" When they said they would pass any law he wanted.

What Matt is essentially saying, as I interpret it, is that the democracy of this country and its election practices have failed. They have failed so horribly that we no longer expect at all that the people in power will speak for us, instead they will be despots to whom we must "ply" ("To continue offering something to; ensure that (another) is abundantly served") with our donations of time and votes and offers of power. Once the politicians have been sufficiently bought then maybe they'll be on the people's side... at least until the next bid comes in.

A election that is rigged or bought is wrong and illegitimate whether it has been bought by an oil consortium or any other minority population. And the minute that we start believing that the fight for democracy has been lost then it has because we have lost the will to claim our freedom as our own. The world can always be better and the government can always better serve the people--when you accept defeat and do nothing in the face of corruption you become responsible for its horrors.

It is the job of a candidate seeking election to take the support of like-minded individuals and use that to convince others. If this holds true, then what the Dean and Clark campaigns are doing with free software is brilliant.

Yes, cull the minority by the will of the majority. Apologies for the sarcasm. But really, people should convince themselves and those interested should be given opportunities to connect to each other to further refine what their own beliefs are. I simply disagree fundamentally. If something is a truly good policy then the only reason that more people don't support it is because they either (a) haven't heard of it or it's reasons for support, which is solved by discussion tools; or, (b) they have lost faith in the government and politicians to actually do what is best.

I feel that the Internet will be a wonderful tool in both of these causes: connecting others, promoting conversations, and challenging the corruption of the current system. These things together can restore faith in a government that serves the people, rather than is served by the people.

Currently as it seems to me, people do not vote for people who they believe will be their voice. They vote against the person they dislike the most. This is obvious from the "Anyone But Bush" crowd and the diehard fight for the center of "say-nothing-ville" where no one is offended. This is obvious from the way the parties only try to paint the other has horrible and tend to ignore their own strong points. This the worst symptom of the problems with the election process in my opinion.

 

Matt's response to my second point that the candidate should really be challenging the media monopoly and engaging citizens:

It takes time to get deep into theory debates with voters, especially in this day and age when candidates have to announce their intentions and have a coherent policy platform two years before the first vote is cast. Candidates need to run on their records, because they will be held to them -- or their lack of them -- in the general. Each candidate has a publicly viewable platform, and voters are responsible for determining which best matches their politics, and whether they are reputable -- and, yes, viable -- enough to win.

To me this is another example of Matt May's disbelief that democracy is something to aspire for or that the people should actually be listened to. We want these people to have the immense power of government, yet we accept that they don't have the time to actually listen to us? Or, we accept that the system has made voters so uninterested and uneducated in politics because they have been denied their right to have a say in how it works?

I feel that a fundamental problem between Matt's opinion and mine is that Matt is talking about how a candidate can win today, while I am talking about how our democracy should work tomorrow--how we find the types of candidates who will actually serve us. I think that what Dean is doing is a step in the right direction but the goal--return to democracy--should not be lost in the hype. And we both agree that the software and the Internet are very important tools in the future of American democratic experiment.

 

Matt also says something very interesting about how the election could work in the future:

Political candidates are not a great market for products. In my mind, they shouldn't be. Candidates should receive free air time on network television for their ads -- partly because they shouldn't have to create financial relationships with the companies that report on them, and partly because the networks have to do so damned little in the way of public service to begin with. However, in this time and place, the candidates need the money where the grassroots effort doesn't get them, as candidates like Kucinich might have noticed. They have nothing to gain by paying for something they're currently getting for free.

There are many problems with the way elections are run in the minds of many commentators like Matt and I. How these problems will be fixed, how long it will take, what the tools will be, and other issues are all up in the air. But the discussions are happening right now and it should be clear because citizens like you and I are interested in improving the system that the system WILL be improved or will die.

One of my favourite things to quote of Lawrence Lessig is from Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace:

No institution within a democracy can be the enemy of the people for long. [pg. 214]

Let's just hope America is still sufficiently a democracy.