Quoting me:
>>And if the big ego is stubborn consensus remains blocked. The
>>process is stymied eternally. Consensus is based on privileging
>>minority rights over majority rights. It is fundamentally
>>conservative - drastically favoring things as they are over change.
>>If 99 people in a 100 member group want to change something, that 1
>>person out of 100 who is against in can "block consensus"
>>essentially excercising a veto power.
>
Yoshie replied:
>
> There is a parliamentary counterpart of "block" in consensus decision-making:
>
<snip>
> The filibuster has a long history in the Senate, not all of it
> honorable...
<snip>
...
> What's democratic and undemocratic can't be decided upon by looking
> at procedures of decision-making in separation from contexts and
> contents of decisions. Blocks and filibusters can be democratic and
> progressive.
> --
Several points. Chuck is arguing for consensesus as a generally superior decision making method. Even so, I would say majority rule is preferable to consensus for collective decision making a lot more often than the reverse. Also "blocking" is fundamental to cosnsensus in a way that filibuster is not to majority rule. You can have majority rule - (or even capitalist parlimentary democracy which usually is not majority rule) without filibuster. There is no filibuster in the U.S. house of representatives for example. On the othe hand if there is no right to block consensus, then you don't have a consensus based system. I acknowledge there are cases where consenus is the right method of decision making. But in my opinion they are rare and very specialized. Consensus is probably used inappropriately more than any other possible decision making means among U.S. leftist right now.
And it is the most fetishized - with moralist claims of beinbg "real democracy" that are usually not made for any other method.