> [WS:] Agreed. But it also extremely time and effort demanding, which
> makes it unsustainable in a long run. People need to go on with their
> lives, not just spend all their time deliberating - especially issues
> that are prone to the free rider effect. That is why there not that
> many historical societies where deliberative democracy survived for an
> extended period of time.
>
> To phrase it differently, any political or social system that
> constantly requires extraordinary effort from ordinary people is not
> sustainable in a long run. Capitalism requires the opposite (consume
> and leave the rest to us) and that explains, in large part, its
> successful spread despite it obvious failures.
>
I think the problem is that such a project has to operate on all or nothing principles, that is, that all decisions must be made in such a process or none at all. I think that one could push towards a system that incorporates forms of deliberative democracy, while not insisting that all decisions are made on those lines. We should also note that the very nature of the capitalist work day contributes to many people's inability to engage with these long running forms of decision making.
In addition, your response offers a fairly flatfooted interpretation of the process taken on by the protesters. I think we need to see these forms of utopian experimentation as performative actions, created as an implicit form of critique for a society that has created such a meaningless and debased form of democracy. It is meant to show that forms of collectivity have the capacity to act in a different manner than current common sense accepts. I'm tempted to use science fiction critic Darko Suvin's term to describe this process, 'cognitive estrangement.' The action is performance, one used to challenge the ideological zero world of its audience. Whether it's very good theater or not is another question. (The graphic novel War In The Neighborhood by Seth Tobocman is one of the more powerful engagements with this process, and its often powerful contradictions.)
robert wood