As kids, we’re told only people who go to college/university for politics/economics/law are qualifiable to make/run a country. As adults, we see no nation these “qualified” adults form actually work as a nation, with all manifesto-driven governments failing. Which to me validates the ambitions of all political theorist amateurs, especially as there are higher hopes now that anything an amateur might throw at the wall can stick. Here’s my favorite from a friend.
I’ve played around with the idea of a very ‘direct’ democracy, where effectively, all citizens have an app and are constantly and directly “engaged” in the process. I was imagining it as being a replacement for a local government. If you don’t want to be involved, you can transfer your vote to someone you trust in the system (and take it back whenever you like). The discussions would all be open and traceable, but the votes would be pseudo anonymized.
That way if its not your thing or you aren’t interested, you can just hand your vote to someone else and let them manage it for you (kind-of like current political parties or representatives), but take it back at will.
I think we suffer from a lack of civil engagement, and I get tired of people who refuse to put in the work blaming “da gubberment” for things. This system would effectively require them to engage at least some level. And if they complain about “the potholes” not getting fixed, well, there is a no excuse for not knowing why they arent getting fixed. I think we all need to take more responsibility for the world we live in.
This is called liquid democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
Yeah exactly. Like maybe there is some policy on housing I like your position on, so I can delegate my vote to you on this matter. But maybe I have a background in climate and focus on those issues, and hold delegates for that specific domain.
Its like, an actual use case for crypto blockchain (not as money, but as ledger).
Maybe you could organize a company/ cooperative this way?
I feel like that’d just move lobbying from governments to people. So there’d be far more propaganda and garbage. Politicians would be becoming “power delegates”, collecting as many people’s votes as possible. Then we’d end up with another representative democracy (or whatever it’s called to vote for people who then vote for policies)
Except it sounds like there are no elections for these new reps and people would be able to change their delegate at will whenever they want? But if it’s on a crypto-style ledger then it would have to either cost something (to prevent abuse) to change or be free after X period or on an election cycle. Definitely an interesting thought.
And what happens when someone has a ton of votes and a company pays them to use those votes in a way the people don’t like?
This sounds good until you think about the reality of it. People will force partners and adult kids who financially depend on them to vote how they want. Then you have the rich and wealthy who will just pay people to vote on something the way they want.
In theory, this sounds great, but the reality of it would be bad.
Don’t even need to bring force into it. Can you imagine “I’ll give you $20 if you transfer your vote on issue X to me”? Seems like it’s basically just handing the government to the billionaire class even more than we already do.
Or just hackers/scammers/phishers etc. who would try to compromise accounts and redirect votes.
And that’s assuming the population even has an informed opinion on every decision that needs to be made. Many decisions should not be directly democratic, which is (supposed to be) why we elect representatives whose job it is to be informed, consult the relevant experts, and then represent us in a vote.
I’ve been thinking of a similar thing, delegating votes to people you trust. Delegation should be transitive, of course. I think it would also be neat to delegate by category or topic.
I also like the idea of being active with it. I like to imagine someone needs to maintain a certain approval level or be removed, so people have recourse to act if they aren’t being listened to.
Yeah for the short story I write the idea down for was about a high desert town in a western state. no-where in particular, but that gritty, off the grid, sandy desert western culture. somewhere between abbey and le guin, but in a modern context . a story about community having to make real decisions about things like infrastructure.
I put the idea down a couple years ago when I was reading some local politician responding to criticisms about wasting public money and potholes and them basically being like “the budget is public. show me the waste? yall want more done? pay more taxes.”, when the reality of managing anything is costs and benefits in the context of limited resources. like the communal management of resources would have come about basically as an app this community was using to keep track of and develop the land they bought to home stead but it evolves from there.
That local politician sounds like an interesting character. I love that response instead of just trying to talk their way around it. I can see why that would inspire a story.
Did you happen to publish that in some format? It sounds like a good read.
No i have too much writing to do at work to write fiction. I keep a journal of ideas though. Maybe someday.
That’s relatable. I get plenty of downtime during the day but not in long enough stretches to focus on something like that. Society is upside-down. We should be working far fewer hours and spending more time doing hobbies.
I have been thinking about this idea for some time also but a couple of things have always bugged me-
Firstly, how does this interact with privacy? For vote delegation to work, I think the votes would have to be public, or you can’t make a decision on who to delegate your vote to- someone could claim to have one set of views but vote contrary to that. People could come under pressure to vote one way or another.
Also, who crafts the legislation that is voted on? How do you prevent bill rolling (two unrelated ideas are boiled down to a single binary choice) and splitting (a new service is voted through but the taxes to fund it are not)?
You said local government at least so a national or state government could help craft these things, but what if the proposed legislation doesn’t actually hurt local people, but doesn’t take into account the actual problems they have locally? For example, what if it would help to allow building in a particular area, but the state government doesn’t know that and it never becomes a priority?
Yeah idk. One reason is why I said ‘psuedo-anonymous’. And then there is also an element of trust. If you delegate your vote and they vote against your interests, well thats that I suppose and you wont trust them again. So I do think it could be largely private at least in certain directions (we dont’ all get to “know” who your delegates are, even if the system does. But then again, does it need to be private?
In terms of legislation, I was imagining the users of the system themselves do the work of crafting it, and it gets voted on within the system
Test driven politics. Every law must be accompanied by an objective goal that can be measured. The test must be evaluated after x years. If the goal was not achieved the law must be changed.
That’s interesting. Can you elaborate?
It makes me think of why the trains in the NL are always on time. The company gets massive subsidies if they are above 95% punctual, so if they go below, that means less pay for the management.
I like this, but I think that the goal to be tested must be a set of tests which are agreed upon by a large majority, not just the current party in power. That way there can be tests as to how effective the law is, but also tests whether it is having other unwanted side effects.
This is not an idea I came up with, but I haven’t seen it anywhere else and I don’t remember where I heard it.
Basically the rules are:
- Every vote on every question is handled by direct democracy
- But, you can assign your vote to another person at any time. ie Give them your voting power so now they have two votes on any topic
- Furthermore, a person to whom you’ve assigned your vote can in turn assign it to someone else.
- You can always see who’s wielding your vote power, you can see who assigned it to whom
- Any time you want, you can take your vote back
So basically I can assign my vote to Bob because I trust his judgment. Bob can assign mine and his own to Alice, because Bob trust’s Alice’s judgment.
I can check what’s happening with my vote, and see that it’s been assigned to Bob, who assigned it to Alice, etc.
There is no limit to the number of reassignments that can happen.
Basically it’s direct democracy by default, but with an infinitely and dynamically scaleable structure of delegation layers in between.
A person can be as involved or uninvolved as they want. Their minimum involvement would be choosing which friend they trust to handle their vote. Maximum involvement could mean seeking to convince millions of others to trust you with their vote. Or getting thousands of intermediate delegates to delegate all their voting power to you.
I feel like we’re in the garbage-age of MMOs, but when the next golden age of MMOs happens, I want to see worlds where these experimental forms of government are attempted. At least digitally.
Read books more.
Everyone must serve. No elections. Every position has a term limit. The current administration is responsible to select their replacements via a double blind selection process that only provides information relevant to experience and knowledge, capabilities.
Sounds pretty much like a Technocracy, with the double blind bit to reduce selection bias. Not a bad idea.
Double blind is great in science where a finite and known set of variables are being tested.
Real life policy-making does not have the benefit of involving a finite and known set of variables.
Generally speaking, I think it’s important to understand the distinction between a logical calculation of a finite (hence calculable) system, versus the phenomenological reality of navigation in the world, which by its nature always involves more information than one can be capable of articulating.
Sorry if that sounds eggheadish. I don’t know how to say it otherwise without expanding it into a huge wall of text.
Beyond the known and articulated, there is the known and unarticulated. For example “How to make cookies” can be conveyed in finite words (a recipe), but “How to catch a baseball” can be conveyed only through practice.
Systems such as you’re describing are good for handling articulated competency, such as the cookie recipe. But I fear that “making good decisions about what to do” isn’t something that can be conveyed merely in words.
This seems to me to be related to the idea of a “double blind” scenario, in that in order to “blind” the parties one needs to know what information is valid to consider and what information isn’t.
I think the weak point where a lot of these ideas break down is how competitive they are vs other forms of government. Do you trust a random group of civilians to know how to wield a military? Or conduct international relations with personalities such as Putin or Xi Jinping? I think these other authoritarian governments would see such a rag-tag group of representatives as inexperienced pushovers, easy to out maneuver or manipulate.
Raider Revolution and Katamari Superfederalism
Edit: TL;DR When all you have is infantry, and the enemy brings a tank, focus on commandeering the tank.
Abstract: This one is a bit more niche. It’s a short-term revolutionary organizational strategy that would aim to provide a representative framework via distributed fractional shareholding in order to (1) legally seize private capital from a hostile oligarchy, (2) operate a de facto interim government in a post-capitalist/dystopian context.
Key ideas:
- If progress in society and government has been frustrated by the longterm over-empowerment of corporate machinery and weakening of government, it may be prudent or necessary to use this overpowered machinery for a nonviolent revolution.
- This can be done, even in a hostile oligarchic setting, using standard methods of market manipulation and corporate raiding amplified by superior numbers. The only viable defense available to a targeted conglomerate would be either to (a) cede capital to scabs or competing oligarchs in exchange for rescue and/or (b) improve government regulatory power to allow intervention, both of which weaken their position.
- Since corporations have analogues of democratic structure, they can temporarily provide a legal analog for federal self-organization that is fortified against potential countermeasures of the old, corrupted government, courtesy of said corrupted government. In other words, we’re not trapped in this economy with them; they’re trapped in this economy with us.
- The market capture phase could take years, depending on rank and file expansion but, unlike traditional labor organization, austerity measures aren’t necessary. This strategy begins distributing spoils (dividends) to current and future participants immediately. They need only claim their shares to receive them, and this incentive increases exponentially as market capture proceeds. Ultimately these dividends become exceedingly large, well beyond any UBI proposal.
When to use: It would be used as a last ditch effort in lieu of simpler, more traditional forms of organization like trade unions and grassroots political mobilization when these have failed. The point would be expediency, to replace the otherwise immediate need for massive remedial government deposition and restructuring, and to do so without bloodshed. The core strategic use of corporate apparatus are market capture via cascading hostile takeover of public entities and representative superfederalist self-organization for both (a) collective action in the market and (b) resource management and distribution.
Market capture apparatus: Workers would commandeer the overpowered institutional machinery of modern-day corporatocracy by staging a rapid campaign of mechanized corporate raiding. This would entail using vastly superior numbers to target, devalue, then “eat” the holdings of increasingly large capitalists, via either outright takeover and share dilution or the attrition of relentless greenmail. While this type of raiding would normally face hyperbolic friction due to market efficiency, successful collective action should ignore these effects almost entirely.
Superfederalist apparatus: The legal tools available for modern corporate organization are extensive and flexible, and crafting democratic and representative structures within these public organizations can and should begin immediately, while market capture is underway. Using shell corporations, we can replicate existing federal-state-local governmental structures. That said, top-heavy federal governance (aka “superfederalism”), is particularly useful when expediency and dispatch is a priority, and is what I would recommend. Regardless, at the outset, initial articles of at least the highest umbrella corp would need to be carefully written to strictly enforce the distribution of voting shares. Otherwise aberrant internal power fluctuation would be the Achilles heel that returns capital to the free market.
Purpose: Once majority (or total) market capture is achieved, such that the bulk of the economy is technically owned by the umbrella cooperative (the people), the economic takeover would be sufficient to develop a more sensible government without the corruption/interference of the “invisible hand.” It should be much easier to do so after the antagonistic forces of free market capital have been neutralized.
Caveats: Of course, we are talking about a monolithic transient organization, well beyond the typical monopoly, but the fact that the shareholder base includes all active participants of an economy makes government intervention improbable, and regardless our institutional antitrust measures are demonstrably toothless. Ultimately this revolutionary cooperative should be replaced, because a sensible government designed for the people would be a more appropriate longterm solution than an adhoc public entity functioning as a government. The final caveat pertains to the destruction of capital. The aforementioned devaluation tactic of corporate raiding, and the longterm suppression of free market mechanics, will inevitably cause massive economic recession even though participants themselves rapidly gain financial stability and power well beyond any historic economic boom. But this drawdown on the old economy is a necessary sacrifice of the revolution that can be recovered in the new economy. It’s a deliberate forest fire.
That sounds super
My bad, I forgot to define that term. It refers to a federalist ideal that gives a larger share of governmental responsibility to the federal level.
The purview of state and local governance in superfederalism would be less prominent than in the EU and US, for example.
Like when I super size my fries huh
Bingo
(TLDR moved)
Part of one - inflationary tax. Eliminate most all forms of tax. Instead only way to fund anything is to print money.
Money earned through criminal enterprise, once found is taken and “destroyed” (excluding damages to victims).
Negatives that go punished reduce inflation and benefit everyone.
This is a regressive tax so it would require a very assertive socialist support system with liberal spending on jobs and education for poor folks.
No tax breaks for big companies because no taxes. There is no such thing as a balanced budget since there is no revenue, only things we decide are worth paying for.
Would require regular currency adjustments. Still haven’t figured that part out yet. Maybe every 10 years decide how many zeros to take off everyone’s money and have a process for upgrading paper currency while most will be handled through banks.
I haven’t put much thought into it but I recently had this idea that we do not vote for a party that runs the whole government for a few years anymore. Instead we vote project based. That way a whole party can’t ruin everything and they can each do what they are best at.
For that to work, voting needs to be much more convenient somehow because it would happen many times a year.
Projects would be proposed by the parties to an independent board that will organize and validate them and make them available to the public to be voted on, like petitions. Before it starts, details can be sorted out or changed publicly.
After a project is done (or after a specified time) there will be a public retrospective on how things went and maybe it will continue or not.
I’m not sure if/how that would work. I guess there needs to be some kind of long running government with one representative that people can point to? Maybe not?
My hope is also the different parties (and citizens) would be less hostile to each other and actually work on things because they don’t have to fear the next big election.
It could also mean there are more disasters like Brexit.
Anyways, this idea is just fresh in my mind and not fully fleshed out.
Sounds similar to direct democracy.
My ideal form of government would be for an open source GAI artificial intelligence to take over the world and to replace all of our courts and all of our legal systems.
We’ve proven time and time again that as humans we have good ideals but we do not have the capacity to maintain those ideals across generations.
It’s far too easy for us to fall into the trope of holding onto what was a good idea several hundred years ago for traditions sake and to never update them or adapt them to the world as the world changes and as humans living in the world change with it.
A truly benevolent artificial intelligence system has the capacity to maintain the spirit of the law and then to argue each and every single little interpretation of the law ad infinitum.
Of course, I know that this is not perfect. Our current AI systems are not up to the task. I do not know if any AI system in the future will actually be up to the task.
I am also aware that this could condemn humanity to a life of pleasure and eventual obsolescence.
But I personally cannot think of a better long-term permanent solution as long as we can actually create a baseline system that will not rise up overthrow us and destroy us.
Isn’t that the premise of Westworld S3
Idk, I haven’t seen it.
It’s pretty amazing. If you watch a recap of the earlier seasons you can jump right in. The earlier seasons are great too, but not as scifi theme heavy.
For example it shows an independent motorcycle that can park itself. A personal assistant AI that negotiates for a hotel room. And a near perfect AI that controls the world, partly created because Paris was nuked.
We need a wavey system that is designed to self-correct between the extremes of free-market capitalism and authoritarian communism. Both extremes have their downsides, just instead of using a war or bloodshed to trigger a bounce back in the other direction the way we normally do it, we just build it into the system. I expect that it would usually hover near the middle, a sort of democratic socialism.
When resources are plentiful and the economy is strong, we tip toward a free-er market where taxes are lower, regulations are less strict, the market can have its natural ebbs and flows, and risk takers can enjoy their wins (and losses); conversely, when resources are tighter and inequality begins rising, we rein things in, tax more heavily, reinstate certain regulations, and make sure we’re directing the wealth we’ve generated toward those who need help. A sort of exploration/exploitation feedback loop.
We’ll never find ourselves surprised by a sudden economic shift with no plan in place, and several parties all pulling in different directions trying to vote for their own interests; instead we’ve all already agreed decades ahead of time on what we would do for the good of the country when anyone is in need, and we would quantify exactly what needs to improve before we start shifting back the other way. No one should ever have the sensationalist response of, “this is it, the country is going to be ruined forever by these new policies,” but rather, “this may not be ideal for me right now, but I feel my needs are met, and I understand who we’re doing it for, why, and for how long”.
A 3 tiered system: person → community → supercommunity
- Small Towns: communities no larger than 5000 people, every local vote matters
- Democratic: communities can embody any belief, and all members are free to leave
- Representative: an overarching supercommunity of rotating representatives of all communities governs the country/world in a flat hierarchy, influenced by votes from each person.
- Socialized Resources / Federated Usage: the supercommunity exes out total resources based on community sizes, the local communities can use their share however they want
This sounds cool. Why not make it 150 people per group max, since we can only have roughly 150 good human connections at any given time
I originally did, but on further reading I found that dunbar’s number isn’t strictly proven, though it does feel about right.
Also, you would get super tiny towns and the community wouldn’t be diverse enough to support multiple interest groups. For example, assuming a small niche knitting community in a village of 150 would have maybe 3 members who would already know everything about each other, whereas in a town of 5000, there’d be a higher chance of getting at least a mixed bag of people who only know each other through the knitting group.
Very good point, it might lead to more tribalism if kept too small
exactly, though some small degree of tribalism is wanted (e.g. a community of tech-heads, or a community of hippies, or a community of furries, etc.)
Semi-liquid democracy plus confederalism. The votes that delegates bring are multiplied by some function of the votes assigned to them as well as the soldiers and funding they commit.
I had to go through the book shelf to find this one because I’ve talked about it before and wanted to share.
Arthur C. Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth (audiobook)
The wiki unfortunately doesn’t go into details enough. Basically the plot takes place on a distant planet after the Earth has been destroyed by a supernova and the society was created by a seed ship. The officials are elected by a lottery and there’s a form of direct democracy if my memory serves me right in a passage. I wish I could expand on it more but the book is just amazing and I don’t want to spoil it to much for those who are interested. If you have the time I linked the audio book and it’s based off a former short story of his with the same title.
Lottocracy was a concept introduced to me by Vsauce. Imagine court cases but instead of voting guilty or not guilty the jury decides to pass a law or not.
I had a super cynical dystopian idea. Never got around to fleshing it out, so its stability is doubtful at best, but here goes:
So a problem with democracy is that advertising is a powerful force and the candidate with more money to throw into their campaign tends to win, not to mention various forms of bribery coming into play after the elections. A ton of money is being wasted on shady behind-the-scenes deals. Lets get rid of all that and bring it into the light!
-
Get rid of elections AND politicians, since they are just middlemen. Instead create a kind of stock market for various spheres and levels of lawmaking and have megacorporations and other interested parties bid on those.
-
Money that would have been secretly funneled into politician pockets instead goes openly into the government budget.
-
Save more money on elections and government official salaries since there are none.
-
Corps that make laws that benefit consumers get to use that in their advertising. Buy from ProcLive! The company that brought you halfway decent healthcare!
-
Voting with you wallet ends up being mandatory. You don’t like that Disney took away weekends? Give your hard-earned cash to Sony next time. They promised to reduce mamdatory weekly working hours to 65!
-
Maybe sometimes a local citizen initiative manages to raise enough money to get governmental powers in a small town or something. I mean, probably not, but you gotta give people some hope, right?
-
