Where is my change, dude!
Alternatively Titled The Mechanics Of Political Transformations
This is sort of sequel to "paradigm shift" post.
1. What is ownership? Ownership in this case is not like a teenager owning his room, we know how it goes, but is used in a very restricted sense, that is the idea the people take care of what own to maximize their utility.
2. What ownership means for democracy? The reason, Patron-Client model of democracy is so prevalent in the contemporary polities is this model works great for the interest group which are clients, which is why
a. there is competition between groups for place as a client and b. competition within the grip for slicing the pie favorably. Problem with this is while this is good for specific groups, as a whole it is detrimental to society.
Wherever politics follows this model it can either result in a. tyranny or b. anarchy and disintegration.
On the other hand Ownership model implies that democracy is not as a means to just distribute goodies but to address common issues.
3. How is the ownership model in action ?
In economic there is a concept called tragedy of commons. This is just economicspeak for, "if it belongs to everyone it belongs to no one". In economics most accepted way out of this tragedy is government. In real life however a democratic government itself is a tragedy of commons (because well it belongs to everyone, and no one). Strictly speaking unless there is graft involved governing is not just what it is made out to be. Which is why homo economicus (i.e.rational man) has no way to resolve this dilemma.
Fortunately for humans they are homo sapiens, and due to pressure of nature selection humans have evolved to have means to address this exactly.That means is community. Community at its various level of granularities (from family, to society, to nation, which is an extended community) is responsible for common ownership.
Prevailing social customs are the rules and the protocols which both reinforce the cohesion of community and the means whereby community ensures common ownership. These customs are transferred from generation to generation via tradition and as such are primary component of what we understand by culture.
Which means that in order to promote ownership model, unit of both political authority as well as political mobilization should ideally be community. This could be housing societies or muhallah. Hypothetically it may even be caste, but I am not really fond of it, due to its huge negatives.
