Ted Millich said:You need to find out about Dynamic Governance, or Sociocracy.

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Sociocracy is a great way to govern an organization and we expect to incorporate principles of sociocracy in running the bank business. Depositors, on the other hand, will not be making decisions about an organization but rather about funding the common good; so some features of sociocracy would be unnecessarily cumbersome. Still, we expect that communities will use, in their in-person discussions, many principles of sociocracy and other disciplines such as varieties of Consensus,  Deep Democracy, etc.

It can be difficult for people to really understand sociocracy because it is not in any way equivalent to "consensus, deep democracy, etc." If you don't understand that sociocracy is a complete system that is designed to restrict power centralization, you can make assumptions that are relevant to current domination-based methods, but not to sociocracy. Deciding to have depositors make decisions "about funding the common good" and not "making decisions about an organization" is perfectly compatible with sociocracy. I fear that your evaluation of "some features of sociocracy" being "unnecessarily cumbersome" is based on not really understanding it. Even people who have practiced sociocracy for years still find themselves thinking in terms of typical domination-based sometimes processes because we are all so conditioned to think that way. Every part of sociocracy was designed through trial and error and serves a purpose. If you leave "some features" out, you leave your group open to domination, even if it's unintentional, by one person or block.

I'm all for using many different techniques and disciplines. Sociocracy is compatible with that. My fear is that if you don't use all of sociocracy, you have problems (and might blame the method). It's like riding a bike and having only one hand on the handlebar. It may work for awhile, but you will not be able to use full capacities and will, at some point, fall down. I have never found any part of sociocracy to be "unnecessarily cumbersome" and wonder where you came up with that.

Perhaps the best benefit of sociocracy is not just a better functioning enterprise, but that fact that sociocracy shows us literally in front of our eyes how power works. It can be a long process. It sometimes takes years for a person practicing sociocracy to realize what
their own power is and to step forward and take it. Personally, now that I see so clearly how power flows, I am loathe to give up power by using consensus as the decision-making method (remember sociocracy is a lot more than just the consent decision-making method).

Sociocracy is not just a "discipline" or tool. It is a whole system that has been designed to do something no other social system in history has ever succeeded at (restrict power centralization) and that is no small feat. In fact, I believe it is key to our survival.

I would love to correspond with whoever is involved with Common Good governance - more for my learning than for more plugging of sociocracy. I would like to find out how you went about learning about different governance concepts and where you found out about sociocracy. teddidread at earthlink dot net

rseserman said:

Even the concept of running the bank democratically was questioned: “If Joe has enough friends to vote funding for Joe’s business which will eventually fail, what good does for the community” or “Democracy is good as an oversight mechanism but operationally… how would be the army to operate democratically?”

The democratic process maybe can be changed from an active involvement, which is also very time consuming, to a passive way. I am thinking to ask members to allocate their money over a given set of  areas of lending as they join. They can change the allocation as they want  but at their own convenience thus avoiding a periodic voting process that can be very counter productive. The actual lending decisions will be left for lending professionals, trained to the bank rules.

We do not plan to make business (operational) decisions democratically. Depositors will set lending priorities, but will not decide on individual loans.

Depositors always have the choice whether or not to be actively involved in decisions that are in their domain. Taking away that choice would decrease democracy with no benefit to the depositors. It is important that SOMEONE think again about the lending priorities from time to time, because the situation in the community is always changing. The depositors should be allowed a voice in those discussions and decisions.

Ted Millich said:You need to find out about Dynamic Governance, or Sociocracy.

Sociocracy is a great way to govern an organization and we expect to incorporate principles of sociocracy in running the bank business. Depositors, on the other hand, will not be making decisions about an organization but rather about funding the common good; so some features of sociocracy would be unnecessarily cumbersome. Still, we expect that communities will use, in their in-person discussions, many principles of sociocracy and other disciplines such as varieties of Consensus,  Deep Democracy, etc.

Philip Beard said:It's unclear how the multiple-choice preference example given (A+ABCDFNo) relates to the Condorcet paired-preference method. Aren't you conflating the two here?

Multiple choice grading is a way of expressing preferences. Condorcet is a way of analyzing data and calculating results.There is no conflict between them.

If someone grades option #1 "A" and option #2 "C", for example, it is clear that the person prefers option #1 to option #2. Similarly, if the person grades two options the same, then we can infer that the person has no preference between the two options. This is all the information that is required for Condorcet calculation.

Grading gives more information with less effort, than having to compare each pair of options individually.

It motivated me to start a new blog about BBVA Compass and the LONG story is at http://liarsandcheats.info/bbv.....nts/about/

However, I'm fully aware that all the big banks operate like BBVA Compass and I focus on resistance:

People should stop paying the big commercial banks if they're (near) judgment-proof or they should move their funds to a COMMUNITY BANK as outlined at http://moveyourmoney.info/

My closest community bank is over 200 miles away …

Please reply to me if you're from Common Good Finance.

Have a great day!

I sure hope that "a social mission with a bank" wouldn't do that.

I think it's important to remember that your bank is really your customer, not the other way around. I've fired banks for less than that.

I also find it notable that the branch people can just close accounts of people they don't like.

Is that a common practice at banks?

Details are at http://creditsuit.org/credit.p.....ut_notice/

Don't know how I can stay in business without a bank account.