X-Message-Number: 811
Date: 06 May 92 14:25:43 EDT
From: Michael Clive Price <>
Subject: CRYONICS Disinformation & Openess

As an Alcor member may I say that I'm quite happy that the Alcor Board of
Directors do NOT take opinion polls of members before making decisions.
If they did I would be very worried.  

Michael Paulle keeps on saying that the Alcor Board "should" do this or
"should" do that.  Rubbish.  The Board is entitled to what it considers
the most appropriate, according to its articles.  We, as members, knew
this when we signed up with Alcor.  I signed up with Alcor, rather than
ACS, because of Alcor's commitment to do what it considers correct, not
run after votes from its members.  Plus a number of other reasons (like
service level, vision etc etc) that, I suspect, are not unconnected with
Alcor NOT being a democracy.

If you want to join a democracy then join ACS.  If you think that the
Board of a cryonics organisation "should" take votes on policy all the
time then join ACS.  Since Alcor has three times as many members as ACS
then it's pretty clear that most members are quite happy with the present
executive structures.  Democracy does not work.  Why do you think
businesses aren't democracies?  Most cryonicists are smart enough to
realise that, and that's why they join Alcor.

Where Alcor, perhaps, falls down is in the communication of its decision
making process to members.  By all accounts (i.e. more than just Michael
Paulle's opinion) the "move to Arizona?" meeting was not a rip roaring
success in communication.  I do get frustrated at getting a very one
sided view of Alcor meeting from Michael Paulle.  And I'm sure that
Carlos has better things to do than laboriously point all the factual
errors in Michael Paulle's posting after each Board meeting.  

So, Alcor, why not post some form of monthly meeting report (excluding
any 'in camera' bits) to Cryonet and in CRYONICS (the Alcor newletter) as
a regular feature?  Then we can have less disinformation to cloud the
issues and more informed and appreciative members.

Michael Price

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