From: Sébastien (p_chikara@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Aug 07 2003 - 14:40:46 MDT
Mike Lorrey explained the discontinuation of the policy analysis market
(PAM) with a parody:
"Because betting or futures markets are crass commercialism, propounded
by evil running dog capitalists..... liberals don't understand how
futures markets work. They just puts their money into their 401k and
depend on the smart people to make them money..."
Following up on the logic of this parody, what does it means to be from
"the left"?
It is a matter of perception.
Not being from "the left" = when looking at "the big picture", first
percieving the self, then the street, the city, the country then the other
countries further and furthe away...
From the point of view of the rich/privilegied this adds-up into to thinking
:"what to do to make this situation last forever?".
Being from "the left" is the opposite of this, seeing the edges first: the
world, the continent, the country, the city, the street, the self.
It is to percieve the horizon and knowing the absolute injustices won't be
able to last very longer... ex : people dying of hunger etc it will last for
how long? another 100 years tops? These are the problems to solve. For
someone from the left, problems of the third world are closer than problems
of vis neighbourhod.
To prove wrong someone who wold say "The idea of a federal betting parlor on
atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque" and prevent PAM
to be percieved by the majority as " morally wrong", "offensive to almost
everyone" and a "sick game", I think a solution could be to add a new
module to the idea, a form of electronic jurisprudence where people would
have the opportunity to be pro-active at the horrors and injustices of this
world instead of just being percieved as "passive observers who are
cynically cashing-in" . I would like to hear constructive inputs on how
this "e-jurisprudence" could be implemented legally and technically into
"idea futures" so "the evil running dog capitalists" will be able to have
what they want out of it while giving the opportunity to make new
laws/challenge existing inefficacious laws (speeding-up the evolution of the
judiciary system might I hazard) on different issues (not just on
terrorism).
Deleuze said (I translated as close as I could) : "It is jurisprudence that
really is creating rights: it should not be left to judges. We are already
thinking about establishing modern biology rights: but everything, in modern
biology and the new situations that it is creating, the new elements it
makes possible, is jurisprudence business. It is not a committee of
wisemens, moral and pseudo-competent, that we need, but users groups."
To Deleuze, a government cannot be from the left, there can only be
government that are either more or less favorable to the issues of the left
so he says that stopping injustices with jurisprudence is a very good
example of what being from "the left" really is.
The concept of "laws" and "human rights" are empty and complacent, what is
important is what's going on in the real world: the concrete problems of
life. All of the problems out there in the world are problems of
"territory", one just have to identify the territory concerned in the
problematic and arrange the law to stop the injustice so everyone will get
an appropriate territory to be happy.
Jurisprudence is the ensemble of decisions made by courts of law about these
concrete situations of life, including cases where the law is
re-routed, when we are not in accord with it. Globally there are laws, we
are submiting to it in our structures and behind it there is jurisprudence,
wich feeds the law and makes it evolve. When jurisprudence gets too big, the
law becomes obsolete and we are obliged to modify it. This is what is
interesting in the democratic system: I acknowledge that there is a law but
nothing impeach us to modify it.
By pointing out where confidence is lacking on various aspects of various
troublesome parts of the world, betting markets such as the Policy Analysis
Market could help to increase the production of judgements of courts of law
from these places. If something bad is likely to happen evidently some
people will suffer from it and it is up to them to sue to prevent it to
happen, to request a solution for their problem of territory using
jurisprudence either to apply solutions coming from similar cases or make a
new one if needed.
Access to internet still being patchy, this e-jurisprudence would be easyer
to implement in occidental countries at first but while waiting for more's
law to solve this problem, it's not that hard to imagine a non profit org
who would be created to distribute internet access to hotspots around the
world to give a voice to the people concerned by the bad stuff that is going
down, so as many people as possible could use these " virtual tribunals"
with their local laws to make things change. (In any case it is not like we
are short of problems right here at home, that could be solved with this
idea...) Problems should be solved regionally; interventions of an
international police would not cut it IMO.
It would be interesting to see the e-jurisprudence formulated by people who
have a better understanding of the law than me / who are more inspired when
it comes at making-up scenarii despicting how it would be used in real life.
If PAM is not truly dead yet, each one of us should write them ideas to
improve on it so we'll see it happen. Anyone knows who should be contacted
about this?
Sébastien Chikara
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