DemocranomicIn a previous post (https://dmv.community/@cobber2005/115436853437091550), when suggesting that small direct-democracies could be self-created by people playing a nomic (a game where it's a turn to change a rule of the game) in the fashion of a table-top game (where conventionally each player gets a turn), I mentioned that the equality offered by turn-taking was not perfect.
Even with turn-taking, inequalities can come from players' different abilities as well as from how the game's mechanics change over time. About the latter, one particular mechanic that is sometime found in tabletop games is the 'skip', where a player is denied a turn in the current round. This mechanic is often used in an adversarial way, to reduce a competitor's ability to act. It seem unlikely that such a mechanic would be democratically voted into a nomic's rule set, since democrats would probably view any formal rule denying a group participant the chance to participate as anti-democratic.
However some groups might create rules where a 'skip' is used as a counterweight for gaining some other ability, like (for example) making a rule where a player can have their vote count twice on the present rule proposal if they forfeit their next turn to make a proposal. Note that, in this example, being skipped is an optional tradeoff being chosen by the participant, not imposed on them.
Also, while everyone should have a chance to participate in a nomic, it's possible some players may feel the nomic offers them excessive opportunities to participate, and choose to not always participate at the highest level available (e.g., they might sometimes choose to abstain from a vote or 'pass' their turn to make a proposal). And yet some groups may feel it is an important obligation for each member to weigh in on each proposal with their vote (which could be an open- or secret-ballot). It is up to the group to decide if and how they wish to regulate these possibilities and details.
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#directdemocracy
Democranomic (@[email protected])
Are tabletop games small democracies? Probably not most. But the idea of taking turns has a democratic flavor. It offers a kind of equality, in that every player gets a chance to influence the game-world. Sure, many games have times when a player might get skipped or get to take an extra turn, or their ability to act is different from other players. But plenty of games require all players to take an equal number of turns, and to have the same possible actions available. When the game-world is the real-world, the turn mechanism is an easy and intuitive way for organizations to build democratic processes. Imagine a group deliberation composed of rounds where everyone takes a turn either speaking for 30 seconds, or choosing another person to possibly speak for 30 seconds. Or a worker cooperative restaurant where, at the beginning of each week and in a randomized order, the workers take turns choosing their role for the week from the roles remaining (i.e. cook, host, waiter, dishwasher, cleaner, cashier, ...). Power is shared when each player has the opportunity to exercise that same power, in turn. Order matters, but there are ways to even out the advantages of order (such as randomizing it each round, as in the restaurant example).
Michael