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Graeber's books reprogrammed my brain. But I'm still struggling to connect the dots:

What does Iroquois style participatory democracy actually look like?

We need movies and soap operas. To tell the stories.

Like West Wing, House of Cards, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, The Wire. Show the human drama and machinations. Events, issues, and people. Conflicts and resolutions.

Participatory democracy is not all puppies and ice cream. The advocates would be well served to show that it's just another decision making strategy. Hopefully superior to what we have today.

Like how Approval Voting is better than Winner Takes All. We'd still run elections. Just more robust with better outcomes, so therefore less drama.

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> What does Iroquois style participatory democracy actually look like?

If it’s anything like California’s direct democracy ballot propositions, I wouldn’t be very enthusiastic. A lot of decisions end up being short sighted “voted X because of a month long ad campaign at the time” things that sound good but lack nuance for the long term repercussions that the citizens themselves face for decades. See prop 13 and ~11% sales tax in some Bay Area counties. (Don’t you want X good thing?! Only 0.5% tax increase [10 times]. Taxes too high? Stop them going up [and distort your real estate market forever]) It ends up being schizophrenic rather than consistent sound public policy, but hey that’s kinda democracy in general.

California's population is 39 million. That in turn gives you thousands of "verticals" e.g housing (which is a big group of things, not just one), education (likewise), social security, and every industry sector. And they are all connected. No matter what form of government California has, things are going to be very complicated and somewhat chaotic. I suppose the alternative would be to live in smaller progressive countries, where there is a better chance of understanding what's going on.

The article is paywalled so I'm not sure what Graeber says, but I'm pretty happy with the system Ireland has recently being following. Essentially put difficult questions to the public through a citizen's assembly, random 99 citizens who are basically in a jury like system. In this case it's still only a recommendation and politicians have to actually enact it.

Is it perfect, no of course not but then perfection is the enemy of the good.

> The article is paywalled

Only if you choose to load the JS.

Direct democracy != participatory democracy. Voting vs deliberation.

Someone's really gotta come up with a better term for collaborative decision making. Anarchist, socialist-libertarian, left-libertarian, participatory democracy, citizen juries... all kinda suck.

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