Go back to main Equals website
Important note – anything written in italics below is intended as commentary to make rules easier to read and understand, but must not be taken to be part of the rules and binding on members.
First, a general point about the rules. The aim here is that the organization should have clear decision-making systems that don’t allow hierarchy to take root, even if this seems to make things too bureaucratic for a small group. These rules also intend to put the members in control of the organization, allowing them to change the nature of the organization entirely if they wish to.
1) NAME OF ORGANIZATION
Group shall be called “Equals – The Equal Satisfaction Organization”
2) ORGANIZATIONAL AIM
The organization aims to get people working together on either a full or part-time basis under Equal Satisfaction, as defined at http://equalsatisfaction.wordpress.com/.
3) VOTING MEMBERS AND ADMINS
The following paragraphs describe a separation of powers between admins and ordinary members. The idea here is that giving complete passwords for the sites to a large number of people will inevitably result in someone sabotaging the site. So admins need to be a small group, vetted by the members, whose powers are strictly limited.
The members will appoint at least one of themselves to be an Administrative Member (hereafter “Admin”). Admins are not permitted to vote or participate in decision-making. No individual is allowed to be both an Admin and a Voting Member simultaneously if there are more than 3 members, although an individual may be permitted to swap roles while there are less than 40 members. If there are 40 members or more no-one will be allowed to be an Admin if they have ever been a voting member while the organization had 40 members or more, and no-one is allowed to be a Member who has been an Admin while the organization had 40 members or more. Admins may be stripped of their responsibilities immediately or replaced by a majority vote by voting members or a randomly selected jury of at least 20 voting members.
All voting members will have full voting rights as well as equal ownership of the sites to the extent that they are not owned by an external party e.g. Facebook or Google. All decisions and control over the organization and websites will be decided democratically by the voting members, each voting member having equal power in terms of voting and making proposals.
There are 3 key webpages controlled by the organization – The Rules Page (currently here at https://equalsrules.wordpress.com) The Membership List (currently at http://equals.webstarts.com/) and the Main Forum (currently at http://equalsatisfaction.weebly.com/forum.html). All members and admins must abide by the rules on The Rules Page. All members and admins must accept The Membership List as the definitive statement of who is a voting member and who is an Admin.
Only Admins are allowed to know the passwords which allow someone to edit the 3 key webpages. However any editing decisions must be made by the members democratically and Admins must never make edits of their own volition, or have any vote or say in such matters.
When there are more than 3 but less than 27 voting members, there must be at least 1 admin for every 3 voting members, but no more than 9 admins in total. If there are 27 voting members or more there must be exactly 9 admins.
If there are 6 admins or more they must be divided into 3 teams. Each team must consist of 2 or 3 people. Each team will only have editing access to one of the 3 key webpages.
4) VOTING PROCEDURE
Voting procedures are arranged to make sure that the majority of members are in control of the group, otherwise any ambiguity could easily leave an informal hierarchy in charge. While there are low numbers of members, direct democracy will be employed. When active membership reaches 1,000 sortition can be employed, putting random members in the driving seat as it will then be unnecessary to bother all the members with every decision.
Let an “active member” be defined as one who contributes more than 8 hours a month to organizational work and projects. While there are more than 1 and less than 1,000 active members, votes to change rules must follow the following procedure. Any Member may have one active proposal at any one time, and officially support any number of active proposals of other members. At midnight at the end of the 15th of each calendar month all proposals with the support of 10% of members or more are put forward to be voted on in an Instant Runoff election at the end of the month which is open to all members. In this election, members put the proposals, or as many of them as they wish to, in preference order (they may include a “reject all the proposals” option in the list). The option that wins the election is adopted as a rule (and this might be the “reject all of the proposals” option, resulting in no change). All the other proposals are rejected on that occasion. All decisions made by this system must be respected by all members and override all previous decisions where they conflict. Proposals to abolish or change this system itself must also be put into effect if accepted according to the rules of this system. All voting, proposing and supporting of proposals must take place on the main forum. The Instant Runoff election works as follows. People’s first preferences are counted first and the proposal with the least of these votes is eliminated. Votes for this eliminated proposal are donated to their second preference and it continues in repeated rounds of eliminations like this until there is only one proposal left – which is adopted. Votes may be cast at any time between midnight at the end of the 15th and midnight at the end of the month. Voters may change their votes any number of times during that period.
If, there are 1,000 active members or more, only 100 active members, chosen at random every other month, from those who have not been chosen in the previous 20 months, will be allowed to vote in the Instant Runoff Election. These 100 members will be required to participate in discussions with other members for at least 4 hours in the month ending with the vote.
In all the organization’s votes, a dead heat will result in the status quo being maintained.
5) EQUAL SATISFACTION AND ITS ENFORCEMENT IN THE ORGANIZATION
Equality courts are included so that hierarchies of preference satisfaction don’t take hold.
Equality of preference satisfaction applies to all members, but only with regard to while they are doing organizational work or projects, not to their lives as a whole. For every member, during an average hour spent on organizational work or projects they must experience the same amount of preference satisfaction as every other member does. This includes preference satisfaction that has been obtained through informal roles and relationships during this period as well as formal ones.
If one member feels that he or she is not experiencing as high an amount of preference satisfaction during an average hour spent on organizational work or projects than another member or group of members (in the latter case taking the average satisfaction of the members of that group) they may make a claim against him, her or them, as the case may be, in the equality courts.
If the organization has less than 5 active members, at least 3 of the members must meet for at least half an hour (either in person or using some kind of remote conferencing). This meeting functions as the equality court hearing. All members participating in the session get to be jurors, including the claimant and defendant, and get to vote on the verdict.
If there are 5 active members or more a jury of 5 members are randomly selected from the active membership to form a jury to hear the case. They must meet for at least half an hour and may call witnesses. If only 3 or 4 attend they may choose by proceed with the hearing if a majority of them agree to (3 jurors out of 4 in the latter case).
In all cases the equality court must decide based purely on the balance of evidence how much less preference satisfaction (if any) the claimant is suffering. Jurors each secretly write down the amount of preference satisfaction they think the claimant is owed by the defendant. The median amount is the decision of the court. Jurors then, after a discussion with both parties decide what the claimant needs to be given by the defendant on an ongoing basis to render them even.
6) RULE ENFORCEMENT COURTS
If a member believes that another member or group of members has broken the rules a court will be formed according to the same rules as the equality courts, except that it will decide whether a breach in rules has actually take place, and come up with a scheme to ensure that the breach is not continued or repeated.
7) MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS AND TIME RESTRICTIONS
Membership requirement rules here are a bit fiddley, but they are here to make sure that the organization doesn’t become an elite of highly skilled people, who will then have an incentive to not let low skilled people in, and also to try to eliminate the opposite problem, where the group gets swamped by low skilled members, putting high-skilled people off joining. High skilled people are assumed to have been able to attain high levels of preference satisfaction for themselves outside of the organization, so that’s what the rules focus on.
Any Human is allowed to apply to become an Equals member. All applicants will have their “Satisfaction Ranking” worked out before they can be admitted. A person’s Satisfaction Ranking is the percentage of the human race who have lower Preference Satisfaction over the 3 year period immediately prior to that person being admitted to the organization. Any applicant who has a Satisfaction Ranking above 50 must be immediately made a member. All other applicants must be added to the bottom of a waiting list. They may only be removed from the list at their own request, if they die, or if they are admitted to the organization. The list may not be altered for any other reason than those just given.
In addition to individual Satisfaction Rankings, there is also an “Organizational Satisfaction Ranking”. At any given time this is worked out as an estimate of the average Satisfaction Ranking of a contributor to an hour spent on Equals projects and organizational work, during the 6 months period immediately in the future. If its Organizational Satisfaction Ranking is above 50, Equals may only, and must immediately, admit the highest person on the waiting list. The Equals members may, however, democratically decide to take a person who is lower on the waiting list instead, if they are expected to add more to the organization’s diversity of members in terms of Race, Gender, Nationality or Age.
Any member may spend as much time as they like on Equals activities. However, the total time in a given calendar month devoted to Equals activities by members whose Satisfaction Ranking is less than 50 must not exceed the amount devoted to Equals activities in the previous month by those whose Satisfaction Ranking is above 50, if the latter amount is less than 200 hours.
This restriction is put in place because when there aren’t a huge number of hours being devoted to the organization, one very disadvantaged person might swamp the organization by devoting all or a large number of hours.
No member may be forced to leave the organization, on any grounds.
This is because the threat of expulsion can lead to some members being frightened into conforming to dominant dogma in the organization. Guarenteed membership for the lifetime of the organization turns it into a “family” where members can’t wash their hands of one-another.
Members are expected to adhere to the rules but should never be expected or pressured into agreeing with them or with the organization’s aims.
8) FACILITATION TEAMS
Facilitation teams are here for practical reasons so that tasks don’t “fall between 2 stools”. A facilitation team of 3 people for each 50 members should give us at least 1 or 2 sensible people who can co-ordinate things. Again their power will be strictly limited and they should be rotated so that hierarchies don’t take over.
When membership gets really high, it turns into a sortition system, as a random selection from the organization will be large enough to be a fair statistical representation of the membership.
If the organization has more than 4 but less than 50 active members there will be a facilitation team of 3 persons. Anyone who wishes to be on the facilitation team will be allowed on it on a strictly first-come-first-served basis. If this facilitation team has existed continuously for more than 2 years, the member of the facilitation team who has served the greatest amount of time will be replaced by the first on the waiting list whenever doing so does not reduce the average amount of time served by a currently serving facilitation team member to less than one year. If this facilitation team has existed continuously for less than 2 years the member who has served the greatest amount of time will be replaced by the first person on the waiting list whenever doing so will not reduce the average amount of time served by a currently serving facilitation member to less than half the amount of time for which the facilitation team has continuously existed.
Members may not put their names on the waiting list while they are serving on the facilitation team.
The facilitation team makes day-to-day decisions for the group (except for ones that principally concern the website) but must always make the choice that they think the members would have made if they had had time to deliberate and choose for themselves. They must vote on any decisions they make amongst themselves, with a simple majority of those who have voted getting their way. Every decision they make concerning the group must be posted on the Forum webpage. They may not contradict the rules but may act on their own interpretations of the rules if they find them ambiguous. If 10% of the members contest one of their decisions on the forum it will be put to a referendum of all members to be reversed. If reversal happens they will immediately be replaced as a team if there are 3 people or more on the waiting list. 10% of the members may also force a vote on whether the facilitators made a decision on their judgement rather than what they thought the members would want. I negative vote here would also result in immediate replacement of the team.
If there are 50 active members or more there will be an additional facilitation team of 3. If there are more than 100 members there will be a third team and so on with another team of 3 facilitators for every 50 further members that become active. Each facilitation team will be assigned to up to 50 active members, and interact with them as described in the previous paragraph. Members will be rotated as described in the first paragraph in this section. Each team will also have a roughly equal number of inactive members assigned to them. Day-to-day decisions that are deemed by a facilitation team to affect the organization outside of their own 50 (or whatever number) members will go to a decision by a majority vote by all facilitation team members in the organization.
If there are a 1,000 active members or more there will also be a body of members called the Emergency Order Jury. This body will number the lesser figure of 10% of the active members or 1000 people. It will be chosen at random from those who have not participated in it in the last 4 months and replaced by new people every 2 weeks. Any decisions that the facilitators feel should be made should be presented to the Emergency Order Jury as a proposal on which they will vote by majority. Other day to day decisions might be handled within projects, no decisions will be made by the facilitators themselves.
9) WEBSITE RULES
The website rules try to ensure a well ordered forum with a high level of freedom of speech.
Every member has the right to express his or her opinions on the Main Forum. However, views that are upsetting to others may be confined to a “no holds barred” section. All voting and deliberation for the organization will be written in the designated thread on the Main Forum.
There will also be a separate facilitation team for the website. It will be arranged exactly like the description in the “Facilitation Teams” section of these rules (immediately above) except that there will not be further teams when active membership reaches 50 and it will only make decisions principally concerning the website.
10) PROJECTS
Projects may be money-making or otherwise and have as much freedom as possible without threatening the equality of preference satisfaction in the organization.
Any member has the right to set up a project provided that it complies with the rules written here. It may have any number of members, from one to all Equals members.
A project of the organization may be devoted to any activity – work or recreation. It must be regularly randomly inspected by a variety of members outside the project, unless it includes all members. These inspections must be able to get a good idea of the levels of preference satisfaction experienced by participating members.
Projects have the right to allow their participants to devote any amount of time to their activities, within the restrictions discussed in Section 7.
Projects must report their major activities, all financial activities and decision-making discussions on the Main Forum.
Projects must be owned by all Equals members equally or in proportion to the time they devote to Equals. Any decision of a project can be overridden by Equals.
Equals Rules 