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So never change any laws and or invent new things? I can't imagine many people really think that's the answer. I'd also point out that arguments like this, wh

So never change any laws and or invent new things? I can't imagine many people really think that's the answer. I'd also point out that arguments like this, while often well-intentioned, can also be abused, by people who don't like a particular new idea but can't articulate a defensible reason. It's easiest then to just fall back on conservatism. The real answer is to invent new stuff and try not to be idiots about it. Use good design principles, don't cut corners, do the testing, roll out gradually when that's feasible, etc. For the Torvalds principle you mentioned "untested" new code, and Boeing definitely cut corners.

marcosdumay 6y ago
The first step of not cutting corners is not ignoring obvious flaws. If you are adding complexity into a very complex system, in order to govern it, it is very likely that the change will make the system harder to control. So you must have a pretty good certainty that this will give you governance and not destroy it.
- DennisP 6y ago
  Shareholder voting is not that complicated, it's just a simple majority vote weighted by number of shares held. My suggestion is a modest extension of that, to address a specific problem. Can you come up with specific ways it might fail? I can definitely think of issues that would have to be addressed, but so far all the critical comments in this subthread could apply, unmodified, to thousands of unrelated ideas, rather than just this one.
  - Haga 6y ago
    Shareholders do not know the specifics. Usually it's good old cattle consensus if value goes up and down. That one is dependent on some pack leading animals.. Who know better or we're just more lucky in the past. So it all boils down to a few bigger players trust in politics beeing able to protect the company from market forces. The day that trust evaporates the shares get worthless.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    If corporation governance were simple, we wouldn't see that kind of failure. > Can you come up with specific ways it might fail? It's trivially exploitable by the executive team by just behaving in a sustainable way for a while, and then changing it suddenly when every other shareholder is locked-in. The reason the comments apply to thousands of possible suggestions is that the problems appear on thousands of possible suggestions, and nobody wants to keep writing thousands of comments debunking each bad idea.
    - DennisP 6y ago
      Finally, a criticism that is not completely generic conservatism. It's a good point that this would work better for shareholder votes on policy decisions rather than board elections.
      - marcosdumay 6y ago
        Then you immobilize some long term holders with many proposals for them to vote, and after they can't do anything anymore, bribe the employees directly into doing the shortsighted action. Again, it's an extra bonus to the unethical ones, because they are the only ones that can sell, and will take all the profits from the short lived stock pump. Do you also have a home-made encryption algorithm you'd like to push?
        DennisP 6y ago
        Cryptography is a well-developed professional field with rigorous peer review. Their products do what they're supposed to almost perfectly, and many people use them. Perhaps you could point me to an equivalent field for making society better, with a well-developed utopia that lots of people live in today.

marcosdumay 6y ago

The first step of not cutting corners is not ignoring obvious flaws. If you are adding complexity into a very complex system, in order to govern it, it is very likely that the change will make the system harder to control. So you must have a pretty good certainty that this will give you governance and not destroy it.

DennisP 6y ago
Shareholder voting is not that complicated, it's just a simple majority vote weighted by number of shares held. My suggestion is a modest extension of that, to address a specific problem. Can you come up with specific ways it might fail? I can definitely think of issues that would have to be addressed, but so far all the critical comments in this subthread could apply, unmodified, to thousands of unrelated ideas, rather than just this one.
- Haga 6y ago
  Shareholders do not know the specifics. Usually it's good old cattle consensus if value goes up and down. That one is dependent on some pack leading animals.. Who know better or we're just more lucky in the past. So it all boils down to a few bigger players trust in politics beeing able to protect the company from market forces. The day that trust evaporates the shares get worthless.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  If corporation governance were simple, we wouldn't see that kind of failure. > Can you come up with specific ways it might fail? It's trivially exploitable by the executive team by just behaving in a sustainable way for a while, and then changing it suddenly when every other shareholder is locked-in. The reason the comments apply to thousands of possible suggestions is that the problems appear on thousands of possible suggestions, and nobody wants to keep writing thousands of comments debunking each bad idea.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    Finally, a criticism that is not completely generic conservatism. It's a good point that this would work better for shareholder votes on policy decisions rather than board elections.
    - marcosdumay 6y ago
      Then you immobilize some long term holders with many proposals for them to vote, and after they can't do anything anymore, bribe the employees directly into doing the shortsighted action. Again, it's an extra bonus to the unethical ones, because they are the only ones that can sell, and will take all the profits from the short lived stock pump. Do you also have a home-made encryption algorithm you'd like to push?
      - DennisP 6y ago
        Cryptography is a well-developed professional field with rigorous peer review. Their products do what they're supposed to almost perfectly, and many people use them. Perhaps you could point me to an equivalent field for making society better, with a well-developed utopia that lots of people live in today.