jamahir Musings - Actual Democracy

[jamahir]

The country is a violent tool for the ruling group to rule the ruled group.
Law is the concentrated embodiment of the will of the ruling group.

Democracy means that the ruling group is the people, not Wall Street.

I agree about the last paragraph hence my user-name being Jamahir, my understanding of a person who propounds the Jamahiriya political system from pre-2011 Libya. This system was Direct Democracy under a Socialist socio-political understanding. A party-less system. Developed by Gaddafi and co. I will ask you to read this thread by one of your country members here, @TaiShang. The OP there describes some elements of the Jamahiriya system being in practice.

Hugo Chavez was a comrade of Gaddafi and adapted the Libyan system for Venezuela.

Even Elon Musk speaks about Direct Democracy being the ideal political system for Mars settlements.

I know you are close to communism and socialism, but you lack their theoretical knowledge.

I recommend you read this book first:
<Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought>

And what theoretical knowledge do I lack ? I don't need to read every bit and byte of Communist history to understand what Communism desires. For example Communism calls for the ultimate abolition of money. Ideal but perhaps not possible now so I proposed a socio-economic system ( thread link ) which has money but ensures that there are no economic classes and no long-term hoarding of money. It is a simplified system and you have to read through the thread to see people's questions and points to me and my development of the base idea. Also, Communism calls for the "Withering away of the State" which really was what the Libyan Jamahiriya was. Please read that thread by Taishang.

 

[jamahir]

About the OS, well, GNU Linux is already socialist in nature. No point in reinventing the wheel.

About the underlined, please read this recent thread of mine :

This company is reinventing the Wheel and ditching the rubber tire

This Company is Reinventing the Wheel and Ditching the Rubber Tire Nick Thomas Wed, October 13, 2021, 6:41 PM·3 min read Global Air Cylinder Wheels (GACW), an Arizona-based startup, has literally reinvented the wheel. They developed a new type of wheel that ditches the need for pollutive...

defence.pk

 

[EternalMortal]

In context of EVMs and so-called democracies I quote a section from Gaddafi's Green Book Part 1 :


So what is the solution ? I continue from the Green Book :

Please read the rest of the linked page.

The Libyan system was adapted by Hugo Chavez for Venezuelan conditions through the system of 'Communas'. I quote this article :

It's certainly an interesting system but how would you scale it up to a country as large & diverse as India (or Pakistan)? Do you believe that this wouldn't cause any tensions b/w regions/ethnicities b/c some would have more say due to more population? Idk, maybe this isn't as big of a problem in India but for other countries, even for e.g. the USA, it would be.

 

[Falconless]

@jahamir
Here’s how you change India.
Get a commission at the IMA
Raise through the ranks to become COAS
Launch a coup
Implement your rules.

 

[jamahir]

This post of mine on the historical basis of Democracy, on what is Democracy and what is not.

It's certainly an interesting system but how would you scale it up to a country as large & diverse as India (or Pakistan)?

There are 748 districts in India and to map this fact to the Jamahiriya system there can be 748 MPCs ( Municipal People's Congresses ) whose secretariats discuss in the General People's Congress of India. In Libya there were 800 MPC analogs and the GPC represented the Libyan population of a few million as compared to the Indian GPC ( General People's Congress ) which has to represent the 1.4 billion population but I think in implementing Jamahiriya the bigger scale of population will not be a theoretical problem and a too troubling practical problem. Perhaps some districts can be merged and thus made lesser in count so that a MPC secretary and his or her assistant secretary can attend the GPC. The new Central Vista project in Delhi includes a new parliament building which is supposed to accommodate a more number of politicians. The Lok Sabha Hall ( talking hall for the so-called People's House ) will have 888 seats and in context of the Jamahiriya system this hall can easily accommodate all the MPCs in India especially when some of them have been merged.

Do you believe that this wouldn't cause any tensions b/w regions/ethnicities b/c some would have more say due to more population? Idk, maybe this isn't as big of a problem in India but for other countries, even for e.g. the USA, it would be.

At present in India there are tensions between states for things like water sharing and demand for a region that speaks a local language but is part of a state whose official language is another, to be merged with a neighboring state whose official language is the first language.

Then there is the Kashmir issue which other than the international issue between India and Pakistan there is also the issue of long-standing general non-free-movement of people from other states into Kashmir Valley. Well, working class people do work in the valley but middle class people don't so this is incorrect. The Northeast of India also has ethnic tensions. And both these regions need a considered solution.

But in general the 400 MPCs gathering in the Delhi GPC ( the 400 number coming from some merged MPCs ) will not be theoretically difficult.

@jahamir
Here’s how you change India.
Get a commission at the IMA
Raise through the ranks to become COAS
Launch a coup
Implement your rules.

Too late for that bhai. I am older than the maximum age for joining IMA. So the method will have to be another.

 

[Drizzt]

Are "Democratic elections" really the way to govern a country ? How many decades do you think I will need to convince the current neo-rich ultra-nationalist middle class that India doesn't need 100 more Rafale planes or Vallabhbhai Patel's tallest-statue-in-the-world but needs to spend financial, material and human resources on setting up a welfare system where blindness can be cured without the patient spending a single penny, where there is no obscenity like presence of Ambani's 27-storey "house" in proximity to slums where four people live in one room, where other millionaires like Subrata Roy are not allowed to spend 500 crores on the twin weddings of his two sons while in the same country people die of hunger, where in "educational" institutes in year 2016, 69 years after independence, Dalit students are harassed by upper caste co-students or officials ? How many Indians, especially the IT and MBA middle class types will understand these dichotomies and injustices ? PDF Indians are a slice of India.

I want to stand in the speaker's position in the Indian parliament and ask things.

Better thing would be to make a mobile APP( with UI even a layman can use). Initially, App would be like a vote advisor. It would take inputs from users. like economic, social standing etc. And based on analysis of party policy and track record, give truthful customized suggestions on which party or candidate to vote. Main thing is people don't have a simple and dependable source of advice on which party to vote.

Later it can transition, People taking advice can verify their identity, then participate and coordinate. With the aim to eventually make democracy a 24 hour Realtime affair, not just about elections. Basically, a remote control of the government in peoples hands. No need for people to agitate and protest to get things done. There would be a list of issues that people can click, and government has to follow, or get punished through vote. For example, if enough people click lower petrol prices, this will of the people will be communicated to the government. If government fails to comply, points would be deducted. Then before elections people will be reminded of the final points tally of the ruling party, they can see breakup of points over the 5 years, so they get reminded of why the points are so low or high.

Main thing this would solve is, people will not be influenced by the gimmicks or false promises before elections. There would be a sort of trust score, each major promise that candidate makes would be listed for each party. And voters can hear a reliable expert opinion. Voters will have all the information at their fingertips to evaluate the government for whole 5 years.

 

[jamahir]

Better thing would be to make a mobile APP( with UI even a layman can use). Initially, App would be like a vote advisor. It would take inputs from users. like economic, social standing etc. And based on analysis of party policy and track record, give truthful customized suggestions on which party or candidate to vote. Main thing is people don't have a simple and dependable source of advice on which party to vote.

Later it can transition, People taking advice can verify their identity, then participate and coordinate. With the aim to eventually make democracy a 24 hour Realtime affair, not just about elections. Basically, a remote control of the government in peoples hands. No need for people to agitate and protest to get things done. There would be a list of issues that people can click, and government has to follow, or get punished through vote. For example, if enough people click lower petrol prices, this will of the people will be communicated to the government. If government fails to comply, points would be deducted. Then before elections people will be reminded of the final points tally of the ruling party, they can see breakup of points over the 5 years, so they get reminded of why the points are so low or high.

Main thing this would solve is, people will not be influenced by the gimmicks or false promises before elections. There would be a sort of trust score, each major promise that candidate makes would be listed for each party. And voters can hear a reliable expert opinion. Voters will have all the information at their fingertips to evaluate the government for whole 5 years.

An app / website is also a good element in governance but can you re-form your idea for a system where there are no political parties because that is what Jamahiriya is about - direct democracy ?

 

[jamahir]

Dictatordhip is best system of governance democracy is inefficient. Only advantage which democracy has over dictatorship is it gives people freedom to select their ruler
But in parliamentary system like Pakistan most MNAs win with less than 50 percent votes and an MNA can become prime minister with the support of 51 percent members of Parliament which means in parliamentary system government represents a minority entire parliament represents less than 50 percent voters

There should neither be a dictatorship of the majority nor of the minority. The governance system should be a sensible, rational and logical one. A true democracy and not a demagoguery.

Many people are undecided on what a Democracy is and what a Dictatorship is. I copy-paste the below post of mine from elsewhere and present the difference and the history of Democracy and how it should be implemented.

A lot of criminals, genociders and war criminals in the world have existed through the system of elections. Should their crimes be ignored just because oh they won by a thumping majority ? The Anglo style of so-called democracy with political parties, a complicated political structure and four-yearly elections is not democracy but an illusion of democracy, actually an anti-democracy because when the candidate with majority vote wins the people voting for the losing candidates don't have a say in the running of the country until the next election comes around when they supposedly get a chance at electing their choice of candidate. But during the majority rule why is the minority's rights taken away ? And in fact even the people whose candidate won by majority vote don't have a direct say in the running of the country. It is the PM or the president and his or her ministers who have the final say, not the citizens. How is any of this democratic ?

Real democracy is Direct Democracy where the citizens exist in a system that has no party and no four-yearly elections and they are able to directly influence the management of the country as to its internal needs and external relations, and have their ideas implemented. Our Greek members, @Foinikas and @Apollon, can say more on this but as per my understanding the word Democracy comes from the Greek word Demokratia which was a concept produced by the Greeks about 2500 years ago where the citizens would directly manage the running of society without any boss lording over them - a king in those days. But this Greek system was flawed because this political system prohibited women from participating and also maintained the slave system where also the slaves too couldn't participate. But such an idea was very good for a time when feudalism and monarchy existed. However in modern Libya in the 1970s, Gaddafi and co. brought out the system called Jamahiriya which was also a Direct Democracy system but where potentially every citizen could participate in the management of society - from neighborhood level to national level to the country's foreign relations and all this guided by progressive people. I will quote from a thread from 2015 :

Under Gaddafi’s unique system of direct democracy, traditional institutions of government were disbanded and abolished, and power belonged to the people directly through various committees and congresses.

Far from control being in the hands of one man, Libya was highly decentralized and divided into several small communities that were essentially “mini-autonomous States” within a State. These autonomous States had control over their districts and could make a range of decisions including how to allocate oil revenue and budgetary funds. Within these mini autonomous States, the three main bodies of Libya’s democracy were Local Committees, Basic People’s Congresses and Executive Revolutionary Councils.

The Basic People’s Congress (BPC), or Mu’tamar shaʿbi asāsi was essentially Libya’s functional equivalent of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom or the House of Representatives in the United States. However, Libya’s People’s Congress was not comprised merely of elected representatives who discussed and proposed legislation on behalf of the people; rather, the Congress allowed all Libyans to directly participate in this process. Eight hundred People’s Congresses were set up across the country and all Libyans were free to attend and shape national policy and make decisions over all major issues including budgets, education, industry, and the economy.

In 2009, Gaddafi invited the New York Times to Libya to spend two weeks observing the nation’s direct democracy. The New York Times, that has traditionally been highly critical of Colonel Gaddafi’s democratic experiment, conceded that in Libya, the intention was that

“everyone is involved in every decision…Tens of thousands of people take part in local committee meetings to discuss issues and vote on everything from foreign treaties to building schools.”

The fundamental difference between western democratic systems and the Libyan Jamahiriya’s direct democracy is that in Libya all citizens were allowed to voice their views directly – not in one parliament of only a few hundred wealthy politicians – but in hundreds of committees attended by tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. Far from being a military dictatorship, Libya under Mr. Gaddafi was Africa’s most prosperous democracy.

On numerous occasions Mr. Gaddafi’s proposals were rejected by popular vote during Congresses and the opposite was approved and enacted as legislation.

For instance, on many occasions Mr. Gaddafi proposed the abolition of capital punishment and he pushed for home schooling over traditional schools. However, the People’s Congresses wanted to maintain the death penalty and classic schools, and the will of the People’s Congresses prevailed. Similarly, in 2009, Colonel Gaddafi put forward a proposal to essentially abolish the central government altogether and give all the oil proceeds directly to each family. The People’s Congresses rejected this idea too.

For over four decades, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli.

Unlike in the West, Libyans did not vote once every four years for a President and an invariably wealthy local parliamentarian who would then make all decisions for them. Ordinary Libyans made decisions regarding foreign, domestic and economic policy themselves.

So do you think a tyrant like Erdogan or a war criminal / genocider like Obomba would have gotten legitimacy ? Not, because the ideas of those two would have been discussed among the citizens and rejected by the masses. So the Libyan Jamahiriya wouldn't have armed international criminals and financed them and provided them with bases to sally out into Syria and genocide Syrians.

As to how the Jamahiriya concept is laid out in theory you can read post# 9. And from this page you can read as to the basis of the political and socio-economic systems of the Libyan Jamahiriya.

The Jamahiriya concept is truly the realization of the desire of Communism where the people rule themselves without a traditional government - the "Withering away of the State". However the Libyans didn't call their country as Communist but yes Gaddafi did write an essay titled something like "Has Communism arrived yet ?"

The Jamahiriya political system can be applied to any human society. We should desire for it for every society, added with a progressive socio-economic system. These will remove the political and socio-economic wrongs, injustices and disparities there. In post# 9 I have linked my proposal for a new socio-economic system that is almost Communist. Don't go by the label, please read it and you will find it a progressive one.

 

[Kamikaze Pilot]

I have two computing projects : a microprocessor and an operating system. Both are open source. Socialist. And there is a wearable computer that is my next project. I will include the ideas that you describe.

I have a complaint about you folks. It is this.

 

[Hack-Hook]

There should neither be a dictatorship of the majority nor of the minority. The governance system should be a sensible, rational and logical one. A true democracy and not a demagoguery.

Many people are undecided on what a Democracy is and what a Dictatorship is. I copy-paste the below post of mine from elsewhere and present the difference and the history of Democracy and how it should be implemented.

A lot of criminals, genociders and war criminals in the world have existed through the system of elections. Should their crimes be ignored just because oh they won by a thumping majority ? The Anglo style of so-called democracy with political parties, a complicated political structure and four-yearly elections is not democracy but an illusion of democracy, actually an anti-democracy because when the candidate with majority vote wins the people voting for the losing candidates don't have a say in the running of the country until the next election comes around when they supposedly get a chance at electing their choice of candidate. But during the majority rule why is the minority's rights taken away ? And in fact even the people whose candidate won by majority vote don't have a direct say in the running of the country. It is the PM or the president and his or her ministers who have the final say, not the citizens. How is any of this democratic ?

Real democracy is Direct Democracy where the citizens exist in a system that has no party and no four-yearly elections and they are able to directly influence the management of the country as to its internal needs and external relations, and have their ideas implemented. Our Greek members, @Foinikas and @Apollon, can say more on this but as per my understanding the word Democracy comes from the Greek word Demokratia which was a concept produced by the Greeks about 2500 years ago where the citizens would directly manage the running of society without any boss lording over them - a king in those days. But this Greek system was flawed because this political system prohibited women from participating and also maintained the slave system where also the slaves too couldn't participate. But such an idea was very good for a time when feudalism and monarchy existed. However in modern Libya in the 1970s, Gaddafi and co. brought out the system called Jamahiriya which was also a Direct Democracy system but where potentially every citizen could participate in the management of society - from neighborhood level to national level to the country's foreign relations and all this guided by progressive people. I will quote from a thread from 2015 :

So do you think a tyrant like Erdogan or a war criminal / genocider like Obomba would have gotten legitimacy ? Not, because the ideas of those two would have been discussed among the citizens and rejected by the masses. So the Libyan Jamahiriya wouldn't have armed international criminals and financed them and provided them with bases to sally out into Syria and genocide Syrians.

As to how the Jamahiriya concept is laid out in theory you can read post# 9. And from this page you can read as to the basis of the political and socio-economic systems of the Libyan Jamahiriya.

The Jamahiriya concept is truly the realization of the desire of Communism where the people rule themselves without a traditional government - the "Withering away of the State". However the Libyans didn't call their country as Communist but yes Gaddafi did write an essay titled something like "Has Communism arrived yet ?"

The Jamahiriya political system can be applied to any human society. We should desire for it for every society, added with a progressive socio-economic system. These will remove the political and socio-economic wrongs, injustices and disparities there. In post# 9 I have linked my proposal for a new socio-economic system that is almost Communist. Don't go by the label, please read it and you will find it a progressive one.

For the sake of discussion How many people executed under his watch for disagreement with accepted OK taught.
Wasn't Libya a police state under him?

Was his children get their posts because of their merits or because of their genotype?

What about he saying execution is the fate of anybody who make a political party?

Here I don't discus his rule was good for Libya or not. My point is whatever his system was it could not be categorized as democracy

 

[jamahir]

For the sake of discussion How many people executed under his watch for disagreement with accepted OK taught.

So you disagree with execution of the NATO proxies / regressives / irrationals / criminals called "Muslim" Brotherhood and Al Qaeda ?

Wasn't Libya a police state under him?

Libyan Jamahiriya was much less of a police state than Iran or USA or India.

Was his children get their posts because of their merits or because of their genotype?

What about George Bush jr ? What about Irani mullahs getting into influential posts because of their fathers or uncles ?

Khamis, the youngest son of Muammar, died battling the thousands of "M"B and AQ criminals rampaging through Libya.

What about he saying execution is the fate of anybody who make a political party?

Who made these political parties ? And why should anyone make a political party when the party system - whether single party or two or multiple - goes against the spirit of democracy - that democracy which the Libyan Jamahiriya presented as a system for humanity to adopt and which Venezuela is implementing ?

Here I don't discus his rule was good for Libya or not. My point is whatever his system was it could not be categorized as democracy

Firstly, he wasn't a ruler of Libya in manner of some Anglo style government president or prime minister. He was a guide of the Socialist revolution. Secondly, which part of the long post of mine that you quote is that you disagree with ? If not that idea of democracy what is your view on what democracy is ?

 

[Hack-Hook]

So you disagree with execution of the NATO proxies / regressives / irrationals / criminals called "Muslim" Brotherhood and Al Qaeda ?

only them

What about George Bush jr ? What about Irani mullahs getting into influential posts because of their fathers or uncles ?

Khamis, the youngest son of Muammar, died battling the thousands of "M"B and AQ criminals rampaging through Libya.

are they democracy

Who made these political parties ? And why should anyone make a political party when the party system - whether single party or two or multiple - goes against the spirit of democracy - that democracy which the Libyan Jamahiriya presented as a system for humanity to adopt and which Venezuela is implementing ?

maybe because they don't like the system , or don't like the name of the accepted parties. there are many reason to have parties

Firstly, he wasn't a ruler of Libya in manner of some Anglo style government president or prime minister. He was a guide of the Socialist revolution. Secondly, which part of the long post of mine that you quote is that you disagree with ? If not that idea of democracy what is your view on what democracy is ?

the question is what is democracy. according to mainstream definition democracy is a system that people have the authority to choose the legislative party directly or choose a governing official and let them do so.
now the part that I don't agree you is calling Libya a democracy as at least there was one person that nobody could touch there.