might be of interest in this group: interview with Paul Z on SF and politics

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Permalink Reply by Hans-Peter Korn on March 7, 2015 at 14:32

Very interesting, indeed!

Reading this:

...there are a lot of meetings in town halls and village communes where people gather to describe what they want and how they would want the future to be like. And from there would derive policy initiatives..

I associated it with the elements of "direct democracy" as I see it in Switzerland.

And what I observe in all that meetings (on the level of villages for example, which have the power to make decisions) that there are many preferred futures which cannot be combined. So, the initiatives derived from decisions made by the  majority is a step towards the preferred future of a part of the people only. 

The others are accepting this - but are ongoing trying to implement their own preferred future.

So: There is a never ending process to make a lot of "deals" to find typical "political" compromises ...

At the moment, for example, there is (as you maybe know)  in Switzerland a big challenge how to change the constitution in a way, that the people's initiative "limitation of the mass immigration" (accepted by 50.3 %) can be implemented so, that Switzerland can still have a close connection with the European Union. 

How is it possible to deal with very different interests (= very different preferred futures ) in politics in a SF way?