Occupy as an experiment in grassroots Democracy

Let’s agree that the current systems of government, finance, trade, health, environmental protection, energy and food production, etc. are all broken.  One narrative of a fix is to reform the system from within.  Another narrative which I think of as “revolution” suggests smashing all the systems and starting over.  If I had to choose between just those two, I am personally inclined toward the first.  But reform is incredibly hard given the amount of money and power concentrated on keeping the status quo in place.  I am not giving up on it, but I don’t see that anyone has figured out how to counteract the lobbyist yet.  And that is just restricting the problem to the US government.  I won’t bother discussing the revolution narrative because I don’t understand how it avoids killing most of humanity.  Please fill me in if I am missing something.

Obviously there are many other alternatives to the narrative of reform or revolution.  With these huge impregnable systems churning away all around us, we can still devote time and energy to slowly unplugging from these systems.  Consider the distributed vs centralized models that are in place.  I would argue that one key flaw of most of these systems around us is over-centralization.  So decision-making is centralized to a few rich people.  Energy is centralized in polluting power plants and wasted across inefficient distribution networks.  Food production is centralized into factory farms which destroy our environment and our health.  In the economy, money has been centralized into too few hands.  Similar examples could probably be made for the health care system and other systems, but they evade me at the moment.  Anyone have a suggestion?

Think of all the ways that more distributed systems are superior.  First of all, distributed systems are inherently more “fault tolerant.”  This is a computer term, so bear with me.  It just means “able to survive failures in the system”.  So if everyone had rooftop solar and one house’s solar panels failed, then only they would be effected. (Of course you would want backup power like a power cell or local grid.)  If money was more evenly distributed and one person goes broke, there are still plenty of others to move money around and drive the economy.  If decisions are made in grassroots democracy, then any single bad idea can be corrected by this more distributed decision making process.  I could go on, but I invite others to add their input.  I would like to point out that diversity shares many of the properties of distributed systems.  Evolution seems to generate more and more diversity as different strategies fill different niches.  One consequence might be that when environmental factors change, there will always be a group of species around that had a different strategy for survival that can cope with the new realities.  Think about how that applies to diversity in our own culture, here and now.  I say diversity makes us more “fault tolerant.”

I try to be a realist, and I can see some of the forces that drove us into these centralized systems.  If we exclude concerns about the environment or social justice (which we tend to do), then centralized systems can be more efficient.  You have economies of scale.  It’s easier for one person to reach a decision than for 100 or 1000 people.  So if we had a benevolent dictator who truly cared about building the best system for the most people, we would all be fine until that person died.  Then we would all be screwed because the entire decision making process hinged on one person and how do you find another of these theoretical benevolent dictators?  Still, we should try to consider places and times where small amounts of centralization can benefit a system.

So where do we go from here?  This entire argument is to promote the following:

1. Occupy Movement – Here is a great opportunity to re-imagine what Democracy looks like.  We are exploring distributed decision making with many voices right in the public areas of our home towns.  I personally want to work to make the General Assembly more accessible (and hopefully shorter) through technology.  I encourage everyone to come down and participate now and then.  It’s ugly, but it’s an important experiment.  It can be improved.
   
2. Community gardens – let’s start distributing the source of food around and increasing the diversity of crops.  This can only improve health as well.
   
3. Rooftop renewable energy – solar or wind mini-systems coupled with hydrogen production and fuel cells can increase energy security and cut down on global warming  (not easy)
4. Economic Enlightenment? –  How do we start to inject more ethics into our economic transactions?  Can we add more diversity to the things we consider when we  conduct transactions?  Is this transaction just beneficial to me in the here and now?  Will this transaction hurt other people far away or hurt the environment?  What other choices do I have that won’t do that?