6 ms·

Startup Country

94 points by jeff18 16y ago

joss82 16y ago
You don't really need legislative government when you can vote laws directly (through the internet). Interesting article. However, there is a risk of bugs as in any code rewrite, don't you think?
- mr_twj 16y ago
  Exactly. Honestly though, laws are the bandaids trying to patch up a poorly designed society. Nevertheless, the point was that technology can (and will) eliminate the need for bureaucracy. This kind of world is hard for most to imagine without borrowing from hollywood fantasies of either chaos or some dystopia which are more sensational and indulge in the viewer's sense of fear of the unknown (the future).
- mseebach 16y ago
  I don't think removing the last shred of accountability from lawmakers while introducing even more populism is the right way to go.
  - notahacker 16y ago
    Exactly - the great think about populism in the form of internet petitions is that the laws proposed don't actually have to work as intended and the proponents don't have the responsibility of dealing with the consequences
wdewind 16y ago
To me this illustrates one of the biggest weaknesses America has to BRIC. All of those countries have some form of an extraordinarily underregulated place within their borders as well as places with the money and efficiency of the US, and while these places allow for human rights violations, they also allow for extraordinary growth and innovation. They are able to get the best of both worlds. The prime example is Rio, with it's slums right next door to giant skyscrapers. The slums act like incubators, and when innovation happens the cities eat it up. While the vast majority of the people trying to create businesses within the slums fail, the effects of the failures are absorbed back into the slums, while the cities scale the successes. This may keep the slums poor, but this juxtaposition (among many other factors) seems to be doing wonders for Brazil's economy.
- redrobot5050 16y ago
  >The slums act like incubators Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself that. 1 in 3 people in Rio live in those slums. Even Rio's socialists want god "to step in and clean up this mess", because they view the slum inhabitants as less than human and deserving of their fate. The poverty there is so bad people break into houses of vacationing families and steal everything: copper pipe, kitchen sink, floorboard -- the freaking floorboards -- because they're useful in improving life in the slums. My friend spent 4 months there, and had to travel through the slums almost daily. He's concluded that poverty -- real poverty like what he's witnessed with his own eyes -- doesn't exist in the U.S. Here's a tip: Brazil's economy is doing well because it is not oil-dependent, it exports oil, it has no social safety net, and its doing whatever it can to attract foreign investment. The slums have nothing to do with, except as a refuge for those who are left behind by the economy.
  - forinti 16y ago
    Brazil does have a social safety net. It has a universal health care system, unemployment benefits, benefits for families with children, and a few other things. They may not be great, but they sure do exist.
    - quanticle 16y ago
      A safety net is useless if it doesn't cover those who need it the most. That's the problem with the social safety-nets in many developing countries. On paper they're great. The problem comes up if you try collecting your benefits while being a member of the underclass.
      - redrobot5050 16y ago
        This rings very, very true. In Rio, there are free schools that any child can attend so long as they show up. The thing is, they put those schools so far away from the slums as a disincentive for the barefoot underclass from showing up. Sure, a child could walk 6 miles one way uphill to get an education. And some families might support that. But in general, when a family doesn't know when or where its next meal is coming from, it has higher priorities than schooling.
pg 16y ago
Deciding everything in advance like that (e.g. banning cash, which could turn out to break everything) is actually the big co way of doing things, not the startup way. A real startup country would start out with few rules and a bunch of early adopter inhabitants, and they'd figure out what they should do incrementally in response to the inhabitants' needs. A lot like the early US in other words.
- mmelin 16y ago
  Well, they certainly achieved the "make something people want" part.
- shaddi 16y ago
  Probably a lot of these "legacy systems" are an inherent result of trying to govern a large number of people with competing interests, perhaps analogous to the cultural difference between a 10k person company and a 3 person startup. Even if you could start from a clean slate, you'd need to do that again periodically to avoid creating more "legacy systems".
- jtg 16y ago
  I agree, but unlike the early US, a startup country would stop once a while to see what has organically grown and proliferated, then unify the hodge-podge that results by refactoring. This would lay a proper foundation for further incremental growth.
  - eru 16y ago
    Sounds more like Germany or Japan. Though the stops haven't been voluntarily.
- morbidkk 16y ago
  a lot like what they did in "Atlas Shrugged"
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Unfortunately, that only worked because Galt personally selected a small and virtuous population (recall that Dagny actively tried not to become the beneficiary of govt subsidies early in the book). In the real world, I don't think it would be possible to keep rent seekers out.
martey 16y ago
This seems to be similar to the article from last month's Atlantic Monthly about Paul Romer's plan to have developed countries run microstates similar to Hong Kong or Singapore in developing nations. It was discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429
- ivankirigin 16y ago
  Here is an article about it: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politi...
- michael_scheibe 16y ago
  Also see http://www.chartercities.org/ http://www.chartercities.org/ and http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html
rfreytag 16y ago
Might as well designate existing metropolitan areas as Startup Countries - less dislocation. There also would be a ready supply of lawyers eager to startup a new legal system as well. Or perhaps do this around Western Nebraska where are some of the poorest counties in the USA.
quanticle 16y ago
>The entire banking system would be automated. There would be no cash in the start-up country. You wouldn't need to "apply" for a loan because the virtual bank would always have a current notion of your credit-worthiness. Am I the only one who is even slightly troubled by the fact that individuals could essentially be tracked in real time as a result of this technology? I mean the Stasi would have loved to have this level of information about their citizens' activities.
- lincolnq 16y ago
  I know very little about cryptography, but it seems like it would be possible to construct a system where you authorize the bank to learn only those details of your credit history which are relevant to its decision.
randombit 16y ago
One difficulty here, if the idea is to identify policies that should be adopted country-wide, is confounding factors. Say you ban cash, and also introduce a 1984-style police state, and lastly pay for education and health care for all citizens. Crime drops versus the rest of the country. Is it because you're living in a police state, or is it because people are well educated and healthy? This difficulty seems especially problematic when some top level entity is a priori choosing what the new policies will be, versus choosing them as reality indicates. A better system might be to have a number of startup countries, let the people in them choose what laws they will or will not have, and also allow people to move easily between countries, so if the policies enacted in one turn out to suck, people can vote with their feet. And with a large number of countries to choose from, the ones with the best policies will tend to win out over the long term. Say to start, let's have fifty of them.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  I see what you did there.
- abstractbill 16y ago
  And with a large number of countries to choose from, the ones with the best policies will tend to win out over the long term. Say to start, let's have fifty of them. I don't get the feeling people really move from state to state for the politics though. I would guess things like natural resources, weather, and historical accident play a bigger role. I'm in California, apparently because Fredrick Terman encouraged a couple of his students to start a company here [1], and because the place has nice weather. [1]: http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/computer-history-museum-112008-presentation http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/computer-history-museum-112...
  - rdl 16y ago
    People absolutely do move between states for politics. People who move directly for political reasons (taxes, regulations, etc.) are relatively small, but for instance I left California due to California firearms laws and taxes. A lot of people move for second-order effects of politics -- there is more new business activity in Texas than in Louisiana, New Hampshire vs. Vermont, and in South Dakota than Minnesota, etc. due to government actions, and people move for those jobs.
Tawheed 16y ago
Want to know the only difference between complicated and simple? Between a startup and Big Co? EDGE CASES -- Your startup (country) will be fine and perfect as long as you support the basic cases. It's when you start addressing the nuances, you'll get right back on the path of the parent country.
justinph 16y ago
This sounds like a place that would not be fun to live or work in. Part of the vibrancy of cities and countries is that there is history and, yes, inefficiency.
jacoblyles 16y ago
Similar in spirit to http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html
smithbits 16y ago
Ah yes, the second system syndrome. This time we'll get it right.
- arethuza 16y ago
  Going by history the third version doesn't work out too well either.
dstorrs 16y ago
Personally, I think this is the most horrific idea Scott has proposed in a long time. Police-state surveillance in my bedroom and bathroom?[1] No cash, meaning no possibility of discreet purchases? Only one option for banking? This world of his would be lovely right up until humans started occupying it. But even the slightest bit of corruption would render it a nightmare. [1] Actually, full surveillance everywhere EXCEPT in the home would be fine with me...as long as the data feeds are completely public.
gdee 16y ago
Here's a nice book about, among other things, a similar country: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
jeremyw 16y ago
See Patri Friedman's seasteading concept: a multitude of startup countries where political systems compete and innovate. http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro
leif 16y ago
"Campaign contributions would be eliminated because all campaigns would happen on the Internet so that running for office would cost next to nothing." I doubt it. Competition between better and worse campaigns would ensure that everyone running for office would still want the best campaign managers, and they would still pay through the nose for that. Just because media purchasing is thrown out the window doesn't mean there isn't room left for further (expensive) optimization. In fact, any system with rules is going to have inefficiencies to be exploited. In this case, it seems like the biggest one is privacy. The most well off startup citizens are going to realize they want some privacy back, and will pay dearly for it (just as the wealthiest currently value their privacy so highly). This will create a market for elite "privacy engineers" (think ghost in the shell style), who will be the citizens most in demand.
- byrneseyeview 16y ago
  Heh, that line stood out. Imagine: "Venture capital will be eliminated because more companies will be started on the Internet, where costs are next to nothing."
mkramlich 16y ago
i figured out a while back that the 2 main enablers of political corruption are (1) the allowing of privacy for politicians, and (2) allowing untracked economic transactions (cash handed over, etc.). If you could eliminate those two things it would be much harder for politicians to be corrupt. But it's easier contemplated than implemented, in part because we have inertia and power in the hands of people who would not allow it. Also, there is effectively no "unclaimed" land/sea in the world anymore upon which to start a new country. And in the US, at least, it is considered a high crime for anyone to band together and split off forming a new country (consider Lincoln and the US Civil War). You could still try to start a new country somewhere, but you'd probably need a lot of military power to defend it from existing countries, their puppet forces, and pirates. To this day I still think it's amusing that we supposedly live in The Land of the Free (TM) but we can't "fork" a piece of the US off, even a tiny piece of it that we personally inhabit, and make a new country.
- narrator 16y ago
  I think the main enabler of political corruption is politicians aren't paid enough. In the U.S, they oversee trillion dollar budgets yet are paid less than $100,000. It's a recipe for corruption. Politicians in Singapore pay themselves a few million dollars annually and Transparency international rates Singapore as the 3rd least corrupt country in the world.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    While the U.S. salaries aren't millions of dollars, they're definitely over $100,000 these days, at least for federal office. Senators and Congressmen get $174,000/yr, Supreme Court Justices get $200,000, the Vice President gets $227,000, and the President gets $400,000. They all get very generous benefits, pension packages, and expense reimbursements as well.
- mseebach 16y ago
  Corruption can take many, many other forms than the handing over of cash. Politician A fixes something for company X in legislation, company X opens a new plant in A's constituency just in time for re-election. A runs on excellent job-creation credentials, and regular meetings with X aren't controversial, after all X is the biggest employer in the district. Also, Politician B fixes something for labour union Y. When it's time to announce his bid for re-election, 400 exited Y-workers show up yielding "Re-elect B" rally signs. Excellent photos for the front page of the paper, and man-of-the-people B-roll for the TV-news for the entire campaign. Are these even corruption, by the way? Or are A and B genuinely looking out for the best interests of their constituents?
mustpax 16y ago
An article in the Atlantic that was posted here "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty" actually talks about this idea from the lens of international development. It dwells on the analogy with Hong Kong, and some city states in Mediaval Europe quite extensively. It's a thought provoking read, you should check it out here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politi... HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429
stretchwithme 16y ago
Startup countries are a great idea. Old governments are patched and repatched to meet each new wave of lobbyists. Th key is not starting over but establishing mechanisms that require governments to compete and that enable customers to walk away if they aren't happy. The US started out with 50 competitive states whose overall security was protected by a tiny federal government that did little more than manage the border and the currency. The states did everything else. If you dislike your state, you just move to another one. WE need MORE of that. We need SMALLER states with more intense competition. The naysayers will tell you its a crazy patchwork quilt. They want one set of rules, presumably for all human beings ultimately with no innovation or competition. The dream of all statists. They trumpet diversity in biology, but scorn it in human life.
- ido 16y ago
  Actually, didn't it start with 13 states?
  - ovi256 16y ago
    Don't break his rosy dreams.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    yes, it was 13.
mseebach 16y ago
The "perfect and flawless"-model for running states has been widely discredited. These models invariably makes sweeping assumptions about peoples priorities, which is very hard to do, given how surprisingly different people are. The resulting flood of compromises either leads to inefficient systems like the ones we have today, or totalitarian regimes (force people to share the assumed priorities). The model of deciding on a few general core values and defending them rigourously (free speech, equality to the law, right of self determination etc.) leads to inefficient, yet stable and reasonably prosperous societies.

94 points by jeff18 16y ago

You don't really need legislative government when you can vote laws directly (through the internet). Interesting article. However, there is a risk of bugs as in any code rewrite, don't you think?

mr_twj 16y ago
Exactly. Honestly though, laws are the bandaids trying to patch up a poorly designed society. Nevertheless, the point was that technology can (and will) eliminate the need for bureaucracy. This kind of world is hard for most to imagine without borrowing from hollywood fantasies of either chaos or some dystopia which are more sensational and indulge in the viewer's sense of fear of the unknown (the future).
mseebach 16y ago
I don't think removing the last shred of accountability from lawmakers while introducing even more populism is the right way to go.
- notahacker 16y ago
  Exactly - the great think about populism in the form of internet petitions is that the laws proposed don't actually have to work as intended and the proponents don't have the responsibility of dealing with the consequences

wdewind 16y ago

To me this illustrates one of the biggest weaknesses America has to BRIC. All of those countries have some form of an extraordinarily underregulated place within their borders as well as places with the money and efficiency of the US, and while these places allow for human rights violations, they also allow for extraordinary growth and innovation. They are able to get the best of both worlds. The prime example is Rio, with it's slums right next door to giant skyscrapers. The slums act like incubators, and when innovation happens the cities eat it up. While the vast majority of the people trying to create businesses within the slums fail, the effects of the failures are absorbed back into the slums, while the cities scale the successes. This may keep the slums poor, but this juxtaposition (among many other factors) seems to be doing wonders for Brazil's economy.

redrobot5050 16y ago
>The slums act like incubators Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself that. 1 in 3 people in Rio live in those slums. Even Rio's socialists want god "to step in and clean up this mess", because they view the slum inhabitants as less than human and deserving of their fate. The poverty there is so bad people break into houses of vacationing families and steal everything: copper pipe, kitchen sink, floorboard -- the freaking floorboards -- because they're useful in improving life in the slums. My friend spent 4 months there, and had to travel through the slums almost daily. He's concluded that poverty -- real poverty like what he's witnessed with his own eyes -- doesn't exist in the U.S. Here's a tip: Brazil's economy is doing well because it is not oil-dependent, it exports oil, it has no social safety net, and its doing whatever it can to attract foreign investment. The slums have nothing to do with, except as a refuge for those who are left behind by the economy.
- forinti 16y ago
  Brazil does have a social safety net. It has a universal health care system, unemployment benefits, benefits for families with children, and a few other things. They may not be great, but they sure do exist.
  - quanticle 16y ago
    A safety net is useless if it doesn't cover those who need it the most. That's the problem with the social safety-nets in many developing countries. On paper they're great. The problem comes up if you try collecting your benefits while being a member of the underclass.
    - redrobot5050 16y ago
      This rings very, very true. In Rio, there are free schools that any child can attend so long as they show up. The thing is, they put those schools so far away from the slums as a disincentive for the barefoot underclass from showing up. Sure, a child could walk 6 miles one way uphill to get an education. And some families might support that. But in general, when a family doesn't know when or where its next meal is coming from, it has higher priorities than schooling.

pg 16y ago

Deciding everything in advance like that (e.g. banning cash, which could turn out to break everything) is actually the big co way of doing things, not the startup way. A real startup country would start out with few rules and a bunch of early adopter inhabitants, and they'd figure out what they should do incrementally in response to the inhabitants' needs. A lot like the early US in other words.

mmelin 16y ago
Well, they certainly achieved the "make something people want" part.
shaddi 16y ago
Probably a lot of these "legacy systems" are an inherent result of trying to govern a large number of people with competing interests, perhaps analogous to the cultural difference between a 10k person company and a 3 person startup. Even if you could start from a clean slate, you'd need to do that again periodically to avoid creating more "legacy systems".
jtg 16y ago
I agree, but unlike the early US, a startup country would stop once a while to see what has organically grown and proliferated, then unify the hodge-podge that results by refactoring. This would lay a proper foundation for further incremental growth.
- eru 16y ago
  Sounds more like Germany or Japan. Though the stops haven't been voluntarily.
morbidkk 16y ago
a lot like what they did in "Atlas Shrugged"
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Unfortunately, that only worked because Galt personally selected a small and virtuous population (recall that Dagny actively tried not to become the beneficiary of govt subsidies early in the book). In the real world, I don't think it would be possible to keep rent seekers out.

martey 16y ago

This seems to be similar to the article from last month's Atlantic Monthly about Paul Romer's plan to have developed countries run microstates similar to Hong Kong or Singapore in developing nations. It was discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429

ivankirigin 16y ago
Here is an article about it: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politi...
michael_scheibe 16y ago
Also see http://www.chartercities.org/ http://www.chartercities.org/ and http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html

rfreytag 16y ago

Might as well designate existing metropolitan areas as Startup Countries - less dislocation. There also would be a ready supply of lawyers eager to startup a new legal system as well. Or perhaps do this around Western Nebraska where are some of the poorest counties in the USA.

quanticle 16y ago

>The entire banking system would be automated. There would be no cash in the start-up country. You wouldn't need to "apply" for a loan because the virtual bank would always have a current notion of your credit-worthiness. Am I the only one who is even slightly troubled by the fact that individuals could essentially be tracked in real time as a result of this technology? I mean the Stasi would have loved to have this level of information about their citizens' activities.

lincolnq 16y ago
I know very little about cryptography, but it seems like it would be possible to construct a system where you authorize the bank to learn only those details of your credit history which are relevant to its decision.

randombit 16y ago

One difficulty here, if the idea is to identify policies that should be adopted country-wide, is confounding factors. Say you ban cash, and also introduce a 1984-style police state, and lastly pay for education and health care for all citizens. Crime drops versus the rest of the country. Is it because you're living in a police state, or is it because people are well educated and healthy? This difficulty seems especially problematic when some top level entity is a priori choosing what the new policies will be, versus choosing them as reality indicates. A better system might be to have a number of startup countries, let the people in them choose what laws they will or will not have, and also allow people to move easily between countries, so if the policies enacted in one turn out to suck, people can vote with their feet. And with a large number of countries to choose from, the ones with the best policies will tend to win out over the long term. Say to start, let's have fifty of them.

Vivtek 16y ago
I see what you did there.
abstractbill 16y ago
And with a large number of countries to choose from, the ones with the best policies will tend to win out over the long term. Say to start, let's have fifty of them. I don't get the feeling people really move from state to state for the politics though. I would guess things like natural resources, weather, and historical accident play a bigger role. I'm in California, apparently because Fredrick Terman encouraged a couple of his students to start a company here [1], and because the place has nice weather. [1]: http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/computer-history-museum-112008-presentation http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/computer-history-museum-112...
- rdl 16y ago
  People absolutely do move between states for politics. People who move directly for political reasons (taxes, regulations, etc.) are relatively small, but for instance I left California due to California firearms laws and taxes. A lot of people move for second-order effects of politics -- there is more new business activity in Texas than in Louisiana, New Hampshire vs. Vermont, and in South Dakota than Minnesota, etc. due to government actions, and people move for those jobs.

Tawheed 16y ago

Want to know the only difference between complicated and simple? Between a startup and Big Co? EDGE CASES -- Your startup (country) will be fine and perfect as long as you support the basic cases. It's when you start addressing the nuances, you'll get right back on the path of the parent country.

justinph 16y ago

This sounds like a place that would not be fun to live or work in. Part of the vibrancy of cities and countries is that there is history and, yes, inefficiency.

jacoblyles 16y ago

Similar in spirit to http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html

smithbits 16y ago

Ah yes, the second system syndrome. This time we'll get it right.

arethuza 16y ago
Going by history the third version doesn't work out too well either.

dstorrs 16y ago

Personally, I think this is the most horrific idea Scott has proposed in a long time. Police-state surveillance in my bedroom and bathroom?[1] No cash, meaning no possibility of discreet purchases? Only one option for banking? This world of his would be lovely right up until humans started occupying it. But even the slightest bit of corruption would render it a nightmare. [1] Actually, full surveillance everywhere EXCEPT in the home would be fine with me...as long as the data feeds are completely public.

gdee 16y ago

Here's a nice book about, among other things, a similar country: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

jeremyw 16y ago

See Patri Friedman's seasteading concept: a multitude of startup countries where political systems compete and innovate. http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro http://seasteading.org/learn-more/intro

leif 16y ago

"Campaign contributions would be eliminated because all campaigns would happen on the Internet so that running for office would cost next to nothing." I doubt it. Competition between better and worse campaigns would ensure that everyone running for office would still want the best campaign managers, and they would still pay through the nose for that. Just because media purchasing is thrown out the window doesn't mean there isn't room left for further (expensive) optimization. In fact, any system with rules is going to have inefficiencies to be exploited. In this case, it seems like the biggest one is privacy. The most well off startup citizens are going to realize they want some privacy back, and will pay dearly for it (just as the wealthiest currently value their privacy so highly). This will create a market for elite "privacy engineers" (think ghost in the shell style), who will be the citizens most in demand.

byrneseyeview 16y ago
Heh, that line stood out. Imagine: "Venture capital will be eliminated because more companies will be started on the Internet, where costs are next to nothing."

mkramlich 16y ago

i figured out a while back that the 2 main enablers of political corruption are (1) the allowing of privacy for politicians, and (2) allowing untracked economic transactions (cash handed over, etc.). If you could eliminate those two things it would be much harder for politicians to be corrupt. But it's easier contemplated than implemented, in part because we have inertia and power in the hands of people who would not allow it. Also, there is effectively no "unclaimed" land/sea in the world anymore upon which to start a new country. And in the US, at least, it is considered a high crime for anyone to band together and split off forming a new country (consider Lincoln and the US Civil War). You could still try to start a new country somewhere, but you'd probably need a lot of military power to defend it from existing countries, their puppet forces, and pirates. To this day I still think it's amusing that we supposedly live in The Land of the Free (TM) but we can't "fork" a piece of the US off, even a tiny piece of it that we personally inhabit, and make a new country.

narrator 16y ago
I think the main enabler of political corruption is politicians aren't paid enough. In the U.S, they oversee trillion dollar budgets yet are paid less than $100,000. It's a recipe for corruption. Politicians in Singapore pay themselves a few million dollars annually and Transparency international rates Singapore as the 3rd least corrupt country in the world.
- _delirium 16y ago
  While the U.S. salaries aren't millions of dollars, they're definitely over $100,000 these days, at least for federal office. Senators and Congressmen get $174,000/yr, Supreme Court Justices get $200,000, the Vice President gets $227,000, and the President gets $400,000. They all get very generous benefits, pension packages, and expense reimbursements as well.
mseebach 16y ago
Corruption can take many, many other forms than the handing over of cash. Politician A fixes something for company X in legislation, company X opens a new plant in A's constituency just in time for re-election. A runs on excellent job-creation credentials, and regular meetings with X aren't controversial, after all X is the biggest employer in the district. Also, Politician B fixes something for labour union Y. When it's time to announce his bid for re-election, 400 exited Y-workers show up yielding "Re-elect B" rally signs. Excellent photos for the front page of the paper, and man-of-the-people B-roll for the TV-news for the entire campaign. Are these even corruption, by the way? Or are A and B genuinely looking out for the best interests of their constituents?

mustpax 16y ago

An article in the Atlantic that was posted here "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty" actually talks about this idea from the lens of international development. It dwells on the analogy with Hong Kong, and some city states in Mediaval Europe quite extensively. It's a thought provoking read, you should check it out here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politically-incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/07/the-politi... HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426429

stretchwithme 16y ago

Startup countries are a great idea. Old governments are patched and repatched to meet each new wave of lobbyists. Th key is not starting over but establishing mechanisms that require governments to compete and that enable customers to walk away if they aren't happy. The US started out with 50 competitive states whose overall security was protected by a tiny federal government that did little more than manage the border and the currency. The states did everything else. If you dislike your state, you just move to another one. WE need MORE of that. We need SMALLER states with more intense competition. The naysayers will tell you its a crazy patchwork quilt. They want one set of rules, presumably for all human beings ultimately with no innovation or competition. The dream of all statists. They trumpet diversity in biology, but scorn it in human life.

ido 16y ago
Actually, didn't it start with 13 states?
- ovi256 16y ago
  Don't break his rosy dreams.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  yes, it was 13.

mseebach 16y ago

The "perfect and flawless"-model for running states has been widely discredited. These models invariably makes sweeping assumptions about peoples priorities, which is very hard to do, given how surprisingly different people are. The resulting flood of compromises either leads to inefficient systems like the ones we have today, or totalitarian regimes (force people to share the assumed priorities). The model of deciding on a few general core values and defending them rigourously (free speech, equality to the law, right of self determination etc.) leads to inefficient, yet stable and reasonably prosperous societies.