seykron

Actually we chosen do not participate in elections, but we're still a political organization. You can take a look at our report published in the PPI journal[1].

Anyway, I've got not problems with experimental politics, I do study anthropology and believe me, I have a good idea what a social experiment is. I personally consider you a very smart person and I know you understand which is my concern about The Net Party. The Net Party is not what it says it is. There's no transparency, you're not looking for political agreements in order to use DemocracyOS in other way than a poll, you're not using the money to develop a software oriented to the principles you say it has, you do not define your ideology and anyone with slight knowledge of politics and history can see which it is.

You operate like a startup company and not like a political organization. I have not problems with your ideas (I personally don't share them, but I think it is an open discussion), I have problems with your actions. You're cheating people and you know it.

[1] http://piratetimes.net/a-report-from-the-argentinian-pirate-...

The platform is not for the whole electorate because we are no longer trying to participate in elections (it is explained in the journal article), we are now a non-electoral political organization. There is a lot of literature[1][2][3] and a bunch of experiences[4] related to the implementation of high-scale direct democracy, but looking at the argentinian politics it is a very far horizon at the moment.

Despite of that, we're not that special. There are a lot of organizations (social movements, collectives, local assemblies) all around the world that do organize by using some kind of direct democracy strategy. But we want to bring direct democracy to institutional areas at some level[5]. In order to reach that purpose we've got three main values: direct democracy to take decisions, transparency as the social contract, and free culture as the foundation of our values and principles. Based on these values, we're focused in organizing actions related to the political space.

Regarding direct democracy, we take decisions based on a consensus process rather than voting. This changes the people's mindset and promotes participation instead of competition, it breaks hierarchies and distributes the power among all members. We have not a "board", we have a process to take decisions that we call "dissensus-based process". We consider that consensus is a permanent status, and dissensus is the lack of consensus. So in order to take a decision there's a very simple constraint: the three pirates rule. If three persons want to organize an action, they just do it unless someone says "I DO NOT AGREE", so it must be discussed until there is consensus again.

Regarding transparency, we have our own infrastructure and we adopt tools that helps with transparency: mailing lists, wikis, git, loomio, etc. There're are not "private activities", everything we do is public or "semi-public" (post-facto) when it is quite critical.

Of course, it has several issues. It is a challenge to make the organization grow because it depends on people that think based on quite similar values. We've got a set of principles[6] and political guidelines[7] to appeal when there is dissensus.

I hope you now could figure out yourself how different we are from other political parties.

[1] Aaron Swarz - Parpolity or the power of exponents: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/parpolity [2] A classic: The Principle of Federation - Proudhon: http://www.ditext.com/proudhon/federation/federation.html [3] The new anarchists - David Graeber: http://newleftreview.org/II/13/david-graeber-the-new-anarchi... [4] http://www.david-kilgour.com/mp/democracy.htm [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_insertion [6] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Declaraci%C3%B3n_de_Princip... [7] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Bases_de_Acci%C3%B3n_Pol%C3...

> although DemocracyOS.org seems to have married the idea with political consultation software

Agree, as long as the legislatives have not a legal commitment with a system, it is just a very sophisticated poll.

> 2. If there is a need/desire for direct democracy to be more widespread, why not just bring about true direct democracy? It might take years or decades for the approach of The Net Party to spread to a wider number of jurisdictions. Why not put the same efforts into the wider adoption of true direct democracy, which will probably take the same amount of time.

I'm a member of the Pirate Party of Argentina, and we're trying to do just what you're saying. We've got a direct democracy platform[1] and we use our processes to collaborate with different social movements and government institutions.

For instance, the previous year we participated in several actions and discussions about national bills using our transparent and open process[2]. In our experience, direct democracy works very well as a bridge between real people problems and the representative system. It encourage people participation and it provides real engagement within the organization.

Thanks for pointing out these points!

[1] https://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Carta_Orgánica/en [2] Here is an article about what we done the last year: https://piratetimes.net/a-report-from-the-argentinian-pirate...

The difference between Pirate Parties which use liquid democracy and "the Net Party" is that Pirate Parties actually use software to support their political platform. The Net Party has not even something that may look like a political platform, they use politics to sell the software.

And by the way, The Net Party lost the legal status this year.

It is actually forbidden by the Argentinian Electoral Law.

It already happened, they lost the legal status this year. It was expected, they're only entrepreneurship bullshit, they never would get real engagement from people.

Bullshit.

Only administrators can upload new bills, and there're a lot of comments here explaining why it is a awful piece of software.

And you really don't understand how a representative system works in practice if you keep thinking it is possible to get elected and tell your legislative what to do from a software. It is one of the most naive thoughts I read in my life.

There exist a very active Pirate Party from Argentina[1] based on a direct democracy processes[2]. The "Net Party" actually doesn't exist, it is just a mask to sell DemocracyOS. If you get into their site, there's nothing about politics, it is just entrepreneurship bullshit.

And by the way, they are no longer a "legal" political party, they lost the legal representation because they didn't reach the electoral law requirements it would be irrelevant information if they would have something beyond the software, but they don't.

[1] http://partidopirata.com.ar/ [2] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Carta_Org%C3%A1nica/en