Good thought, Sasha.

The Design Team Process -- A Local Community Empowerment Tool

The great benefit of having a set of timeless, universal, and irreducible values and subsequent ethic and morality is that we can use them in analytical formats as the Design Team Process to design social processes, new social theories, and to test cultural, ethnic, racial, and gender assumptions, and existing social theories.

Several key elements are needed to produce the synergy of The Design Team Process: 1) The “Design Team” that is composed of 5-11 team members; 2) Specific roles of team members provide functions within the team to gather their collective intelligence during the inquiry process; 3) The “Social Sustainability Design and Validation Schematic” that guides their inquiry and can optionally be used as a “moral compass;” 4) The seven innate and universal values of Homo sapiens; and, 5) The subsequent ethic and morality of those values.

The Design Team Process provides a continuation of the traditional, long history of town hall meetings that uses a rational and synergistic process to gather the intelligence of small teams of local citizens to create solutions for common community, societal, and political problems.

The Design Team Process is fundamental for sustaining the legitimacy and effectiveness of the democratic process and the survival of democratic cultures.

Fortunately, the product of Local Community Design Teams can be shared with other Design Teams in democratic nations via the Internet to resolve ongoing social, political, and financial-economic problems and to resolve related issues.

The goal is to design socially sustainable social institutions that exist similarly in those nations, and to design organizations so that they, too, contribute to the social sustainability of those societies for the great benefit of all future generations.

#DanielRaphael PhD

>> PDF download

https://www.academia.edu/89261433/The_Design_Team_Process_A_Local_Community_Empowerment_Tool

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In 2023, the concept of sortition, as used in ancient Athens, could be adapted to modern democratic systems, albeit with some modifications to accommodate the complexities of contemporary governance.

Here's how it might apply:

1. Citizen Panels: Sortition could be used to select citizen panels or juries for important decision-making processes. These panels could deliberate on various issues, such as policy proposals, budget allocations, or environmental concerns.

2. Advisory Committees: Governments could create advisory committees composed of randomly selected citizens to provide input and recommendations on specific policy areas. This could help ensure a broader and more diverse range of perspectives in policymaking.

3. Electoral Reform: Sortition could be explored as an alternative or complement to traditional elections for certain political positions. For example, instead of electing members of a legislature, a portion of seats could be filled by randomly selected citizens.

4. Oversight Bodies: Independent oversight bodies responsible for monitoring government actions, such as ethics commissions or anti-corruption agencies, could include randomly selected citizens to enhance transparency and accountability.

5. Local Governance: Sortition could be implemented at the local level for community projects, town hall meetings, or neighborhood planning to involve residents in decision-making.

6. Citizen Assemblies: Sortition could be used to form citizen assemblies to deliberate and make recommendations on major constitutional changes or controversial issues, similar to how it was applied in some recent cases like Ireland's Citizens' Assembly.

While sortition may not replace traditional representative democracy entirely, it can be a useful tool to supplement it, promoting citizen engagement, reducing the influence of money in politics, and fostering a more diverse and representative decision-making process.

Implementing sortition in modern times would require careful design, safeguards to prevent manipulation, and public education to ensure citizens understand and trust the process.