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Even this is outdated and backwards. By the time it would ever become a reality the "Government" portion of this system will have already been replaced with "Te

Even this is outdated and backwards. By the time it would ever become a reality the "Government" portion of this system will have already been replaced with "Tech". We are already at a place where software could successfully manage many of the functions of government. We simply haven't found a nation to prototype it, yet. But I think the test case would be less the UK and more Venezuela

kbenson 10y ago
In what way is tech supposed to replace the legislative duties of government? Whatever you say about lawmakers, I think they have a higher than average understanding of the laws and how they interact, and the consequences of certain actions (even if "higher than average" isn't that high). I don't believe a true democracy where everyone votes yields a better system, just a more democratic one. For example, brexit. It was truly democratic, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea, or that if everyone was presented with an impartial, truthful display of the facts the same people would have voted the same way. There are some negative aspects of our psychology that we haven't found a good way to curb yet.
- 7952 10y ago
  I don't think it is tech exactly that is the great hope, but the culture that it can engender. We all hate laws and regulation but constantly depend on strict standards to make things work. Just rendering a web page requires an insane amount of agreement and cooperation, all goverened by mutual interest rather than compulsion. The hope is to align buisness in such a way that comapanies work together to promote quality and interoperability. Needing government to set standards and regulation is just too slow.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Regulations are just sets of rules agencies adopt to enforce the law. This is needed because people are not like computers, and do't just blindly follow a standard or best practice. If there's a way to gain more at the expense of others, some people will attempt to do so without some negative consequence (and some will still attempt to do so). Laws are to clearly define what is not allowed. Regulations just make it clear how to operate in a way compliant with the law. > The hope is to align buisness in such a way that comapanies work together to promote quality and interoperability. Needing government to set standards and regulation is just too slow. The only way people and companies are able to interact with other people and companies on any basis that requires future action is because the laws regulate exactly what is expected under certain circumstances. Two parties can agree on whatever they want, but without an impartial third party to review violations in their agreement, enforce penalties, and rule on new situations, this breaks down. I don't think we've seen the last of the cases regarding commerce that requires high level legal review, so I don't think we're done with lawmakers.
- rwhitman 10y ago
  Most of the management of government services could be automated, direct democracy is possible with software. There's certainly a lot of potential for AI augmentation in day-to-day governance. It certainly wouldn't be perfect at first. I'm sure some people would suffer from the mistakes made in the prototyping phase. But this isn't about Brexit. The question I believe will be answered is would someone living in an already failed state suffer worse with an augmented or fully automated administrator, or under current horror of war, starvation, fear? Civil wars start over ideological differences, political failures are the result of corruptions of government officials, power plays of individuals, mistakes of management. Nations split and crumble against the best interest of the people because leaders have human agendas. The cold impartiality of software takes the politics out of governance, it favors sustainability over the long term. We in the tech world see things from a position of privilege, protected by relative wealth, a large seemingly stable system of governance, but in many places in the world a new system of administration would be a gift to cherish.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    The problem with immediate and direct democratic representation is that humans have many mental foibles due to our evolution which can combine into feedback loops which have disastrous consequences (lynch mobs are inherently democratic in nature). Non-representation or representation that is delayed too long is problematic because it disenfranchises people and they eventually resort to violence to reassert their representation. These are the extremes we need to walk between, Democracy and the Dictator. If you think just allowing people to vote directly will somehow circumvent the natural tendency of people for herd mentality, confirmation bias, and valuing anecdotes and personal experience over statistics, then I think you're vastly underestimating those problems. The role of technology is to help is increase the positive aspects of whatever point along that spectrum we've settled, and decrease the negative aspects. For example, making it very easy for representatives to quickly and accurately poll their constituents (and making these polls and their results public) rather than relying on lobbying and the varying abilities of special interest groups to activate advocates would probably yield much better representation for the average person. A very vocal 2% should not drown out the other 98%, but they should not necessarily be ingored either. Good polls would likely have a question and a scale of how much you strongly agree, somewhat agree, abstain, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree, and have the question asked at least 2-3 different ways, from different perspectives.

kbenson 10y ago

In what way is tech supposed to replace the legislative duties of government? Whatever you say about lawmakers, I think they have a higher than average understanding of the laws and how they interact, and the consequences of certain actions (even if "higher than average" isn't that high). I don't believe a true democracy where everyone votes yields a better system, just a more democratic one. For example, brexit. It was truly democratic, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea, or that if everyone was presented with an impartial, truthful display of the facts the same people would have voted the same way. There are some negative aspects of our psychology that we haven't found a good way to curb yet.

7952 10y ago
I don't think it is tech exactly that is the great hope, but the culture that it can engender. We all hate laws and regulation but constantly depend on strict standards to make things work. Just rendering a web page requires an insane amount of agreement and cooperation, all goverened by mutual interest rather than compulsion. The hope is to align buisness in such a way that comapanies work together to promote quality and interoperability. Needing government to set standards and regulation is just too slow.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Regulations are just sets of rules agencies adopt to enforce the law. This is needed because people are not like computers, and do't just blindly follow a standard or best practice. If there's a way to gain more at the expense of others, some people will attempt to do so without some negative consequence (and some will still attempt to do so). Laws are to clearly define what is not allowed. Regulations just make it clear how to operate in a way compliant with the law. > The hope is to align buisness in such a way that comapanies work together to promote quality and interoperability. Needing government to set standards and regulation is just too slow. The only way people and companies are able to interact with other people and companies on any basis that requires future action is because the laws regulate exactly what is expected under certain circumstances. Two parties can agree on whatever they want, but without an impartial third party to review violations in their agreement, enforce penalties, and rule on new situations, this breaks down. I don't think we've seen the last of the cases regarding commerce that requires high level legal review, so I don't think we're done with lawmakers.
rwhitman 10y ago
Most of the management of government services could be automated, direct democracy is possible with software. There's certainly a lot of potential for AI augmentation in day-to-day governance. It certainly wouldn't be perfect at first. I'm sure some people would suffer from the mistakes made in the prototyping phase. But this isn't about Brexit. The question I believe will be answered is would someone living in an already failed state suffer worse with an augmented or fully automated administrator, or under current horror of war, starvation, fear? Civil wars start over ideological differences, political failures are the result of corruptions of government officials, power plays of individuals, mistakes of management. Nations split and crumble against the best interest of the people because leaders have human agendas. The cold impartiality of software takes the politics out of governance, it favors sustainability over the long term. We in the tech world see things from a position of privilege, protected by relative wealth, a large seemingly stable system of governance, but in many places in the world a new system of administration would be a gift to cherish.
- kbenson 10y ago
  The problem with immediate and direct democratic representation is that humans have many mental foibles due to our evolution which can combine into feedback loops which have disastrous consequences (lynch mobs are inherently democratic in nature). Non-representation or representation that is delayed too long is problematic because it disenfranchises people and they eventually resort to violence to reassert their representation. These are the extremes we need to walk between, Democracy and the Dictator. If you think just allowing people to vote directly will somehow circumvent the natural tendency of people for herd mentality, confirmation bias, and valuing anecdotes and personal experience over statistics, then I think you're vastly underestimating those problems. The role of technology is to help is increase the positive aspects of whatever point along that spectrum we've settled, and decrease the negative aspects. For example, making it very easy for representatives to quickly and accurately poll their constituents (and making these polls and their results public) rather than relying on lobbying and the varying abilities of special interest groups to activate advocates would probably yield much better representation for the average person. A very vocal 2% should not drown out the other 98%, but they should not necessarily be ingored either. Good polls would likely have a question and a scale of how much you strongly agree, somewhat agree, abstain, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree, and have the question asked at least 2-3 different ways, from different perspectives.