What's wrong with democracy?

I started this blog about two years ago with the intention of reporting on Neualtenburg (since renamed Neufreistadt as part of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators or CDS), Second Life's only democratic, self-governing community at the time. Since then I've been more of a participant than a participant observer, helping to found the Citizens' Social Democratic Faction and serving as a member of the government first on the Scientific Council and latterly as an elected member of the Representative Assembly and more recently Leader of the RA. But I have been observing all the time I've been active in the CDS and wondering 'Why has no one else followed our lead? Why are there no other democratic communities in Second Life?'

There are a couple in the pipeline- both the Al-Andalus Project and the Metaverse Republic are designing elaborate constitutional edifices to support democratic communities. We will see how they fare; I think it must be good to have more than one democratic experiment to observe so, from an academic perspective if no other, these are welcome developments. The Extropians have also founded their own democratic community which has expanded rapidly over the past six months.

But what can we learn from the CDS? I think there are four main reasons why people look at the CDS experiment and think 'not for me'.

1) It all takes too much time. If I were to calculate the hours spent running the CDS machinery of government well, it would come to a grand total exceeding the net worth of our property if it were represented by billable hours! I've been using 'toggl' to record how much time I spend on CDS business each week; it averages ten hours/week. I'm not complaining, when I took on the role as LRA I expected it would involve a time commitment and I cut back on WoW and my other games to compensate. But even if we assume that the other RA members, SC members and Chancellor have far less onerous commitments (and that's a big assumption) then we're still left with 50 or more working hours a week just to run the government. I doubt whether the overhead in other sims run along 'normal' SL lines is quite so high.

2) Recycling old debates. This is the 'CDS disease'. Every new set of citizens wants to remodel the Constitution according to their preferences/prejudices (and there's nothing wrong with that) but it means that debates over separation of powers, parliamentary v. presidential systems etc are continually returned to with different cast members involved. The 'oldbies' i.e. anyone who's been in the CDS longer than six months, will be familiar with this phenomenon; we've all nodded sagely from time to time and said 'Aah yes, I remember when we discussed this last year. Here's the forum thread, we're treading the same ground again.' This tends to infuriate the newer members raising the issue because for them it is a new discussion! This is one of the many potential fractures between newer and older members of the community.

This iterative approach is not necessarily a problem provided we learn from previous debates and don't spend too much time restating old positions. In a democracy we should be able to return to issues when the citizens want to see them addressed and we should be free to change our collective mind as a community and reverse a chosen course or embark on one that had previously been rejected. But it gives the impression that the CDS goes round in circles and lacks a clear sense of direction. Indeed, despite several attempts to get people to think about the issue, the CDS has never decided what it is for, beyond being an experiment in democracy.

3) It gets nasty. When people are compared to Mao, Stalin and Ceacescu over a dispute in a virtual world we have left the realms of rational debate. Now, we are all guilty of hyperbole from time to time but Mao? Really, there has to be a limit. There are different appetites for 'robust' debate and different conceptions (possibly with a cultural basis) of what is 'rude' when having a disagreement. So it's inevitable that people will fall out from time to time. In addition, the anonymity that an online environment provides allows people to be much more cutting than they might be face to face in the real world. I've noticed a change over time though as people become more invested in their avatar and their reputation; people (well, *some* people) take more care in expressing disagreement and don't see every political dispute as a fight to the death. A more stable environment, same people, fewer newcomers would probably lead to more civility.. but at the expense of innovation and new blood. I think there's also the question of the type of people a democratic community attracts. For the most part the CDS attracts people who are committed to making democracy work but it has weak defences against borderline personalities who can create a great deal of disruption and are difficult to challenge effectively. This is a subject I'll return to at greater length another time - the CDS has a number of 'exiles' who, at one time or other, attempted to impose their vision on an unwilling community.

4) Democracy becomes the end and not the means. The most active members of the community will tend to be the ones staffing the institutions needed to run a democratic, self-governing community in a virtual world. The CDS is occasionally accused of 'role playing' democracy by outsiders, and we sometimes worry that these criticisms may have some truth to them. It's not hard to see why given the enormous amount of effort put into running the machinery of government compared to, for example, building and maintaining our environment and working together on collaborative projects. I've previously argued that what we need is an 'enabling' RA which sets out to provide the necessary support so that our citizens can launch such creative projects. I think we are often too focussed on the RA as a community when really it ought to take second place to a thriving civil society where the real life of the community, the fun stuff, happens.

So where does that leave the CDS? In the words of the saying, "I wouldn't start from here if I were you!" Ideally, the CDS would reform itself to reduce the democratic overhead and enable civil society to flourish; cast some decisions in tablets of stone (if only to declare that referenda, or a directly-elected presidential Chancellor for example, are never going to be enacted so we can stop wasting energy arguing for/against them); find ways to minimise the disruptive potential of borderline personalities and obsessive monomaniacs; and decide what it is for, apart from just being a democratic, self-governing community. I'm not hopeful about the chances though. The recent discussion over how to recognise the contribution of volunteers to the CDS project has revealed the diversity of opinion that exists within the CDS over a relatively uncontroversial aspect of community life. The opinions expressed include those at one extreme who believe "virtue is it's own reward" or "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" versus those who would erect statues in honour of the CDS 'great and the good'. The chances of much more substantial reforms, along the lines sketched out at the start of this paragraph, are frankly nil in my opinion.

But I do believe that the CDS will persist, and grow, and continue to evolve. It will do so as it has done so previously - slowly, with a great deal of noisy debate, some lobbing of verbal hand grenades and some spectacular departures of prominent citizens (which will continue to be quickly forgotten).

I hope that more democratic communities will be founded in Second Life and begin to offer a real choice; people will be able to vote with their feet and choose which kind(s) of democratic community they wish to live in. At some point, the CDS could split with a disgruntled minority setting out to found a new community. All of these developments will probably be positive for the CDS as a whole - friendly competition will drive innovation and challenge the accepted norms. The CDS has recovered from splits and acrimony in the past. It has a long future of further squabbling to look forward to!