Katrina, the questions you raised have been covered already both on the PSU site and, more especially, in the Phases links above on this campaign page. A people’s site is to be a public service, the final shape to be determined when numbers are great enough to allow voting by motions (an integral feature of the Point site) and referenda, including eventual open elections from among campaign membership. In this tipping point model of social action, everything is contingent on popular support, such that if there is not popular support, nothing ever happens. Anyone is also free to resign from a campaign at any time, or to make constructive suggestions in the comments section (e.g., as Lee did a couple of weeks ago in proposing the portal).
As to anarchy, communism, autocracy, and democracy, these terms have fairly precise political meanings and shouldn’t be thrown around loosely, as with “autocratic democracy,” which is in fact an oxymoron. If you want to move discussion forward I would suggest reading the drafts of the Phases and making specific suggestions for improvement there as that’s why they are posted, to elicit discussion on specifics, in order that we are all prepared when numbers grow and the time comes to act. As to how sellers verses buyers would benefit from a people’s site, the answer to that is simply that such a site could implement everything we have all learned about auction trading in a decade of eBay use, but here it would be for the common good, rather than for eBay executives or shareholders, and it would cost the users nothing beyond a one-time $5 pledge. A free site that was also a better site would rapidly become the largest site and, in that way, we would have reconstituted the old eBay Community, without eBay Management hegemony and without eBay Inc. avarice.
Finally, I don’t believe Anna or Minna can be faulted for replying in kind here, as it is not reasonable to come to a campaign page making wildly derisive claims and expect the volunteers who have worked for a month on the project already, answering similarly baseless charges repeatedly, to simply concede without grounds and quit. Debate and the challenging of views is not autocracy, but its polar opposite, debate being precisely the thing that is barred in an autocratic system. EBay has become an autocratic system and that’s why we are seeing strikes, boycotts, mass-quitting of the site, and of course also this campaign. Unlike the eBay boards, speech is never stifled nor any posts ever wiped from this comment area, no matter their position. I would only ask that in future perhaps we could cover new ground.
Thank you,
Julia
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