Government of the Future?

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: TheBlackTiger

Who do you trust to administer this computer network? They are the de facto government. You already take their word when they announce the results of the polling. Elections are opaque while appearing to be completely transparent.

Fixed.

a reply to: TheBlackTiger

"And Local B could say "We inherit the state laws on rape. Murder, Marijuana and Prostitution are both legal in this locality."

What about Local C saying " We inherit the state laws on rape, pot, and Prostitution but murdering Liberals and socialists is A-ok"? I'm not a fan of mob rule, neither were the founders.

a reply to: TheBlackTiger

As good as any I suppose, but it would not stop the corruption, even in simple things like buying programers to mess with things, it would be no different then today were we have special interest people in government buying favors. You could eliminate all that by creating a over-mind to keep them all in line, or if the net shifts into conscious into this dimension and becomes like some sort of skynet, but that will just lead to a whole host of other problems as well as successes. That whole premise thing in the terminator being the least of it.

a reply to: Quauhtli

Its bound to happen in a form or another, already social interactions such as we are doing online is changing the world. But there are a lot of holes in her theories as well, games and real life may not mix so well it may draw some people together, but it also plenty of potential to do the opposite of that, in fact creating more .

Its a quirky little video, and it may be a bit to optimistic, while it may have potential everything and everyone in all of creations and anything that you make will have a good point and a draw back. Nothing is always good and nothing is ever bad, everything merely has its points its ups and downs, some may work great in one situation, but in another it would be different. Civilization and human interactions is not about good or bad, its about tuning things into certain rhythms that have a point of more highs then lows, and like everything else it just depends on which side of things you end up on.

Optimists while they may have there uses, are generally for the majority just have the capacity to have tunnel vision, and as long as nothing else is in that tunnel to disturb things its all great, but when there is, it all falls fast, so the downside of optimists is the very thing which makes them function so that is there tunnel vision. It may make things easier and things simple everything in its place, but that is only as long as you are not able to see past the hurdles.

In all it was an interesting short video, what the female said in that vid with her speech, may work great in some situations. In others? Not so much. In this existence of duality it is the only thing that can exists, negatives and positives, and if you combine them right and hook them up right, you can juice and power some things with that battery...For a time.

Another video from the same person Quauhtli posted about on page 1. Its pretty interesting, and at least for her it seems to work and have worked from the time she was 10yrs old, it has an interesting duality to it. And if people ask how is this any way relevant to such things as Governments. Well Societies, Religions, even things such as politics and everything is a sort of game people partake in and all have rules implemented by the people who partake in it, in a very real sense it is really like designing a game all socities and governments started as more then rules and regulations but as a game of sorts. Everybody agreed on the rules and everybody created it and everybody is in one way or another playing by them, even those who are not playing by the rules, they were and are part of the program even if they dont know it.

And in a very real way one of the major reasons why some things in reality does not work is merely because of bad designing really which is for a part brought about by shifting paradigms, reality if it was a videogame, nobody would buy it, or play it, and it would never sell, so why is anybody partaking in it? Merely another way of looking at the things such as government and the shifting reality of it around you. The difference between value and meaning is miles deep and worlds apart but one leads into another and vice vera, and as such it has been one focal point in the movements of government and societies and even in daily life and in everything really.

originally posted by: PadawanGandalf
Thank you its been ages since I had an excuse to write something on here!

Your theory is very much in the same vein as my personal political-systems thinking of the past few years, which begins at the premise that a representational democratic system was developed into its current state because of available communication technology. Similarly, I would argue that the failure of socialist/communist systems were due to technological inability to accurately convey the will of the masses, necessitating a centralized, oppressive approach with resultant corruption of leadership structures.

I like how you refer to the meeting place, the decision space, as the forum. It provokes the imagery of Greek democracy, the pioneers of the rule-by-many concept. It also delineates the role of a parliament, congress or whatever you want to call it, without gravitating to any particular present system. As a non-American the second part of your OP struck me as being too closely based to what you have right now. We must rethink the whole system to the point that present references becomes irrelevant. Of cause a forum also points to the internet's ability to enable many-to-many communication.. After all, we are sitting right now in the ATS parliamentary building engaging like good citizens do

Nonetheless, to me, a true democracy would be closer related to what I would call a social anarchy, where the true will of the people is exercised, to take power away from a central authority and distribute it between the citizens. I believe that was the original intentions for creating the democratic system. And any modifications to the existing should strive for this ideal.

It is clear, that by not personally standing in the established order's forum, our "chosen representatives" tend to not argue for one's interest, but rather submit to whichever external force promises greatest personal reward, as 727Sky pointed out. For the citizenry to relegate this responsibility to corruptible, power-seeking individuals worked out rather nice for powerful individuals and companies allowing the maxim money=power to gain truth.

My proposal

At the dawn of the Third Industrial Revolution, at last we have the means and the technology to create a true system of democracy which sidesteps the problem of corruptible middle-men administrators. I too, idealistically and naively, envision a system where all decisions would be made by majority vote of the citizenry and where public servants take pride in the meaning of being servants to the people.

It does not need to be much more complicated than a website in the vein of reddit or facebook, where importance of issues is ranked by the interest it gathers. I do have a problem though with the one-man, one-vote idea, since all men do not contribute equally to society. And apathy does not deserve a vote. One of the strengths of such a system should be that the knowledge bearers of a particular issue should be the leading voices in the surrounding debate, and their vote should carry more weight than somebody that simply scrolls past an opinion and clicks "like". One should also not underestimate the power of the troll.

Thus I would propose that your profile vote would be weighted with reputation scores in different areas of expertise. Your reputation can be increased by real-world degrees or certifications, completed online courses, or being active/popular debaters in the forum, maybe even taking frequent current affair questionnaires, whatever... as long as anybody can vote on any issue, but their vote carrying the weight and respect of being an enlightened person. People will naturally gravitate to areas of their expertise/interest. Provided that all have equal access to such a forum, one's political power is not constrained by social class or economic strength, but by one's will to be an active citizen and personal drive to develop knowledge. The point is, the decision should not be made by a paper pushing administrator on god-knows-who's-paycheck, but by the people engaged and active on the front line of an issue.

Alright, for me, a quiet guy, much was said and I would love to expand on any points of this conversation. Thank you Black Tiger for sharing your thoughts on this thread.

PG13

I've had extremely similar thoughts like you have. And I feel that this is the way to get to the peoples' voice. I know that you're just touching the tip of the iceberg of the idea, and if any system like this will ever be put into place, a great deal of talk and debate would need to be had over its uses and implementation. Here are some of the finer points that I would argue for this type of system.

The idea of making the system (I've been calling it the Human Network) would be for the true voice and intentions of the people to be made light. Laws and Bills can be discussed, put to a vote and implemented, without all the BS that goes into lawmaking today. Let's say that we're are discussing a desire to update our national road system. Well in todays politics, some Congressman/woman would want to draft a bill on how they think that's best possible. Then they will start running all over Washington telling everyone how great their bill is, and how they will add this amendment or that amendment to acquire the votes they need to get the bill passed (the amendments may have squat to do with the actual motion the bill is trying to make) Then it needs to be discussed and voted on (and we know our elected officials don't read these bills thoroughly so we end up with a mess of a bill requires a stupid dollar amount, where maybe a third of that would go towards what the bill was trying to accomplish. Now if we took another route and used this system, we would start off basically by maybe putting it on an agenda list. It will stay on this list for a while, you say 10 days, but basically enough time for the majority of the people who care to participate in the debates to familiarize themselves with the issues and to help formalize ideas and solutions.

The system would allow us to set goals for ourselves as a society, as it is now, we live in a very selfish society where no goals are set and achieved, our progress is based of the ideas of people who want $$$, all of our advancements are products of this. If we put our voice together (and I only see this sort of system as how) then we can make major changes to our society. Example: It shouldn't be the govt, who uses and abuses power, who says that our society needs to quit spending money on space exploration, and instead focus on attacking all these oil rich countries because they're "gonna get us" if we don't do anything to stop them.

With this system, we could get rid of "closed doors" decisions making, if we elected a "President" through this system, we are not electing a Central Authority figure to make our decisions, we are electing a face to carry out our will, which is made light of through this system. This "President" would still need to be the face that sees Foreign ambassadors, because we would still have to operate in a world with other societies. The difference is that instead of flag pin on his lapel, he is wearing a small camera so that anyone who is interested to see the interactions could just log into their system and view the meetings.

Something like a log in with a SSN wouldn't be as secure as I would imagine, now a double log in with fingerprint/iris scan seem like it would be the ticket. We would need to have the network secure and infallible obviously, and of course that begs the question of HOW? and WHO? Well the HOW is easy, we already have secure networks running all over the country, you think the US NIPR and SIPR accounts can just be accessed by anyone? It is possible for secure networks to be build once its function is outlined. The WHO would be a harder question to answer, however, I feel that for this sort of network to be established our society would need to be on the verge (or completely enthralled in) a complete social evolution. (Evolution is key word here, I don't think what we need is a revolution, i.e., someone who says we have a good system in place here, but instead of "them" running it, it needs to be "us"). If that was the case, then the WHO shouldn't be too hard to find either.

I could go on, but I am currently writing an essay I want to post here which details my thoughts on a new society while utilizing such a system. I feel the system is required, however, the society needs to change as well.

It's weird seeing an idea that you've had written out by someone else, but here it is, I hope to elaborate soon on this.

You mean the dictatorship of the Proletariat? Even Marx and Lenin admitted the Proletariat would still have to be run by an elite class of people. Having computer software programs won't make it any less of a dictatorship.

In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a state in which the proletariat, or the working class, has control of political power.[1][2] The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the 19th century. In Marxist theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat is what exists between capitalism and communism.[

Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxist theorist, emphasized the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the rule of the whole class, representing the majority, and not a single party, characterizing the dictatorship of the proletariat as a concept meant to expand democracy rather than reduce it, as opposed to minority rule in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie—the only other class in which state power can reside, according to Marxist theory.[6]

en.wikipedia.org...

There is also a sociological argument that elites are necessary for a large social organization to function. To a degree this has even been accepted by Marxists. Marx accepted the necessity of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" after the Communists had taken power in order to suppress those who would attempt to restore their privileged position in the old society. V. I. Lenin, who led the first communist movement to actually win state power, did so on the basis of his theory that only an elitist party of professional revolutionaries, with strict discipline and control by a small central committee, could be efficient enough to win power from the capitalists. Marx, however, argued that once socialism had been established in conditions of affluence, coercion would no longer be necessary and everyone could share in the administration of common affairs. Exactly how this would be done was never specified, however, and the history of the Soviet Union after the Communist Party took power certainly provided ammunition for the argument that a revolution which intended to abolish elites would simply replace one elite with another.

crab.rutgers.edu...


Anyway, sounds more like BIg Brother's wet dream to me.

originally posted by: TheBlackTiger
Government of the Future?

Everybody knows the government of the future will be the Federation.

TOTALITARIANISM - The political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority.


Unless you do something about it. It will get progressively worse until you'll wake up to someone telling you when to wake up.

Here is what is really in store for us. Brought to us by the elites in the Club of Rome and the UN.

www.freedomadvocates.org...

a reply to: TheBlackTiger

Welcome to the future:

www.bitcongress.org... (article)