There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Do you have a form of government you invented/conceived, either as an idea or for fiction (or a favorite from someone else)? How does it work?

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.

TropicalDingdong ,

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.

jeena ,
@jeena@piefed.jeena.net avatar

This is called liquid democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

TropicalDingdong ,

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?

otp ,

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)

notfromhere ,

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.

barsquid ,

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.

TropicalDingdong ,

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.

barsquid ,

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.

TropicalDingdong ,

No i have too much writing to do at work to write fiction. I keep a journal of ideas though. Maybe someday.

barsquid ,

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.

777 ,

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?

TropicalDingdong ,

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

bizarroland ,

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.

antrosapien ,

Isn’t that the premise of Westworld S3

CrimeDad ,

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.

intensely_human ,

I’ve seldom seen such a succinct and effective dismantling of the status quo. Well-articulated.

thenextguy ,

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.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Sounds pretty much like a Technocracy, with the double blind bit to reduce selection bias. Not a bad idea.

intensely_human ,

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.

intensely_human ,

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.

Hexcat ,

Read books more.

gibmiser ,

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.

MagicShel ,

I think anyone who wants to lead a country or hold office should be forbidden from it. Figure out some qualifications to disqualify anyone truly unfit to lead and have a lottery for everyone else. Maybe give out extra entries for volunteering or other public service, but make the process uncorruptable.

Then at the end of their term everyone gets to vote on how good a job they did. Maybe execute or imprison anyone who gets a bad enough score. If you get high enough, you get a nice pension and favorable mentions in history books. Either way, no one is eligible to be picked again. They could advise the next administration if everyone agreed.

I can think of a hundred ways this could go badly, but I’m not sure the result would be any worse than what we’ve got.

TropicalDingdong ,

and have a lottery for everyone else.

Man I hate being the head of budget and finance for the city…

Then at the end of their term everyone gets to vote on how good a job they did. Maybe execute or imprison anyone who gets a bad enough score.

Fuck…

MagicShel ,

I’m not really a fan of execution. It would be a shame if that happened in any but the worst cases. Just trying to motivate doing one’s best. Maybe you only need the carrot and not the stick.

TropicalDingdong ,

Man I hate being the head of budget and finance for the city…

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/22eaf3a7-137f-4a48-af1a-ae6b0f2bbc0f.gif

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •