X-Message-Number: 30255 References: <> Subject: Re: [Advisors] According to Merkle "We directors are like God... Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2008 19:42:23 -0500 From: ----------MB_8CA1E1422C63198_364_9911_WEBMAIL-DC12.sysops.aol.com Accountability of management to the people it is supposed to serve?can be quite?effective if the voting people themselves are competent and personally self informed, and well motivated. We can discuss the democratic system of electing a USA president on down and at the end, no matter what else, it can be argued effectively that many terribly destructive mistakes have been made. Those mistakes have had life and death consequences in some instances.?For profit public corporations have stockholders that elect management. Some management is effective within that system and some is not. There have certainly been many catastrophic financial failiures. It is no at all clear to me that election of management by the citizenry, the stockholders, and yes, the Alcor membership is the best alternative. Sometimes, accountability to ones self and ones own values is the most effective system of management. This can be demonstrated by the enormous number of sole proprietor or partnership type enterprises that thrive through the United States. Sure there are failures, many failures, but there are many many successes. Alcor is in the?life and death business. Alcor itself as an organization has stayed alive, protected its patients, stayed solvent, suspended members in need and kept at the ready to do more of the same ( yes, it can be argued that a better job of doing this could have been done ). All the preceeding has been done sometimes under great duress ( as Dave P certainly knows) by a self elected directorship. Other cryonics organizations have come and gone or seriously floundered but Alcor survives. Alcor is winning the life or death issue re its existence and primary responsibilities. I believe this is due to a self elected directorship that even during periods of severe internal disagreement pulls together to perform its' most crucial responsibilitities. Like a family. As long as Alcor has a personally dedicated directorship devoted to pursuing Alcor's mission statement, and has many years of combined institutional cryonics experience, and has diversified educational and profession al backgrounds, I am loath to change the system of election because it "may be better". No Dave, it is not a given that it "will be better". Michael Riskin -----Original Message----- From: To: ; Cc: ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; Sent: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 9:05 pm Subject: Re: [Advisors] According to Merkle "We directors are like God... Dave and others, I have stayed out of this version of this argument by Dave, because I have been over it so many times already, and because I am really trying to avoid friction with Dave.? I have long considered him one of my closest cryonics friends and it pains me to get into disagreements with him.? But I need to say some things now. Dave, I know you have strong feelings about this issue.? But writing letters insulting the Board of Directors, by comparing them to power-hungry Apartheid officials, is only going to harden them against you -- even if you have good ideas.? If you want to make this change at Alcor, the change can ONLY be made by the Board of Directors.? Making them mad at you only pushes your ideas farther away. In the past, one of my strongest objections to changing the way the Directors are elected has been that I felt it would increase the risk of a hostile takeover by people who wanted Alcor's financial assets.? In another letter (written after the reply to Ralph Merkle), Dave suggests that the reverse is true, that it would be easier for 5 hostile people to insinuate themselves onto the Board the way it is elected today than for 5 hostile people to be elected to the Board by Members.? Dave actually makes a new point here, although it is a bit hidden under the other arguments.? I acknowledge that, as Alcor's membership gets into the thousands, it would be harder than before for a group of several hundred to come in and overwhelm the voting of the "true cryonicists."? At some point, it may actually be true that it would be somewhat easier for a hostile group to sneak their way onto the Board. However....? there are several points left out of this argument. 1.? It would always be easier for a slick writing and talking person, or one who appeals to the masses by telling them how "compassionate" or "libertarian" he is, to persuade a lot of people who haven't met him to vote for him.? He still may be corrupt or incompetent.? A look at United States election history will surely prove that the public will happily vote for idiots and criminals who merely promise the right things and hide their past well.? The current system at Alcor has produced a remarkably low percentage of Directors who are criminals or idiots. 2.? Charles Platt has expressed in the past his frustration at the election process at CryoCare when he ran it.? All of these members desired to vote for Directors and were frustrated that they could not do so as Alcor members.? Yet when CryoCare elections were held, Charles could barely get a handful of the members who would actually bother to vote! If Alcor has 2,000 members, but only 100 of them vote for Directors, then it is still easier for a small group to take over. 3.? I am unconvinced that "being accountable to the members" should be the number one goal of the Board of Directors.? Being accountable to the *Patients* must always be Goal Number One.? I fear that a Board of Directors which is elected by the general membership of Alcor will have to put the short-term (and often short-sighted) desires and fears of the living membership ahead of the needs of the Patients -- because that is what will get them elected.? Again, look at the U.S. Congress.? Only a handful of Representatives are secure enough in their re-election that they are able to look at the truly long-term needs of the country instead of the short-term considerations of the next election at home. 4.? I agree with Dave, Brian, and others that it was a better time when meetings were well attended and when there was always a large number of knowledgable, potential candidates for Board positions.? The Board membership actually did change fairly often in those days, with usually at least one new Director a year.? I would love to find ways to increase participation in that way again.? Having more active Advisors and having ways for more members to participate on Committees could help build that pool again. 5.? IF the Board of Directors were to eventually see a need to involve some part of the suspension members in the voting process, then I would definitely insist on an eligibility process to become a Voting Member, with a *minimum* of 5 years suspension membership necessary to vote.? I might even desire that voters pass a test on the Bylaws, history of Alcor, and the Patient Care Trust to become eligible. 6.? But I don't know what restrictions are *legal* to make; and Alcor does need to know these limits before significant effort is spent drumming up support for a change. Steve Bridge _______________________________________________ Advisors mailing list http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/advisors _______________________________________________ Advisors mailing list http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/advisors ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com ----------MB_8CA1E1422C63198_364_9911_WEBMAIL-DC12.sysops.aol.com Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=30255