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My take: 1) On web sites like this I've noticed a rule "Assume good faith". But in real life there are lots of people who say things in bad faith. In the cas

• TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Hard agree on 1. Don't have an answer other than "superhuman AI ruling humanity", but that is not fun, because at that point we stop being the protagonists of our own story. About 2: > Since this has never been tried as far as I know I don't know if my solution could even work. This was tried, during various revolutions that included the phase of killing the rich people and collectivizing their wealth. I worry your suggestion here would end up being used the same way - with prominent CEOs getting their companies auctioned from under them by angry mobs.
  • staticman2 6y ago
    I'm talking about confiscating property in a banal, rule based democracy sort of way, not by mobs. Humans seem to be wired via evolution to tolerate being controlled by higher status humans otherwise I'd expect confiscation of property to be a popular proposition in a world where high status people own the majority of property and wealth inequality keeps increasing. We'd have more discussions about where institutiins are serving us well and less about "those poor CEOs, think of their feelings" if we weren't seemingly wired to care about high status people's desires more than our own needs.
    • freeone3000 6y ago
      The Communist Party of China follows the rules of the government they controlled perfectly well -- and have no problem winning elections. If you actually want property rights to be up for popular vote, it's important to understand that removal of property is going to be backed by the threat of violence by the state (which will occasionally need to be enacted). You will have companies removed for reasons that are "against the public interest" where you disagree with the actual actions. Democratic rule is simply mob rule by proxy.
      • staticman2 6y ago
        China isn't a rights based democracy so that's neither here nor there. Sure, hypothetically if Mark Zuckerberg refuses to leave the Facebook building after being evicted of his Facebook ownership he could be physically removed by the police. Why this deserves our sympathy more than a sixteen year old physically arrested for smoking weed is not obvious- or even a tenant physically evicted for being unable to pay rent. Arresting people for drug crimes is treated as normal state violence and happily supported by Americans- but it seems people have evolved to sympathize with a high status billionaire over some kid commiting a victimless crime.
        • freeone3000 6y ago
          The thing that makes a rights-based democracy "rights-based" is the idea that there are certain lines that are so important to individual liberty that society at large has chosen to not interfere with them. Traditionally, one of these rights is the right to private capital. It's the oldest right recorded in English common law. Giving up this right, even if it's purported to be in the interests of society at large, will remove part of the "rights-based" part of the rights-based democracy above. It's not something that should be done lightly. Civil forfeiture is rife for abuse, even in its current form.
          • amanaplanacanal 6y ago
            The right to bodily autonomy feels even more important to liberty than the right to capital, at least to me.
• tempestn 6y ago
  I followed a train of thought recently that's somewhat related to this. It appears to me the one branch of government that has stood up reasonably well recently is the court system. Courts require a standard of evidence, and while it's clear that justices will try to interpret things as favorable to their partisan beliefs, for the most part they are not willing to simply accept alternate realities. Some people were worried that Trump's lawsuits would find friendly judges despite the lack of evidence, and that overwhelmingly didn't happen. So that got me wondering, ironically given your listing of lawyers as one of the named bad-faith groups, could government be made to act more like the legal system, or could the legal system be incorporated more into government. One specific idea I was considering was whether you could have the option of a defamation-style judicial review of statements of fact made by elected officials. Obviously you wouldn't litigate every statement, but what if there were some sort of challenge process - perhaps with a fee to bring a challenge, and/or consequences for spurious challenges, so they wouldn't become overwhelming - by which the opposition could challenge any public statement of fact by an elected official? Critically this challenge would be brought in a court of law, with all of the professional standards and requirements that entails. (As opposed to being litigated by politicians, like an impeachment proceeding.) It wouldn't be a criminal proceeding, and there wouldn't be criminal consequences. Probably the result would simply be made public, and maybe the losing side would need to pay the costs of the winning side. Of course they would also have had the opportunity to retract and correct the untrue statement at the outset. As things stand, the president and his supporters are able to say whatever BS they want publicly, then they go to court with these lawsuits, and they say different things, because there are actual consequences there. Perhaps if there were consequences for any knowing lie by an elected official, you'd see fewer of them? The idea wouldn't be to use this for everything, just for clear, baseless statements of fact with reprocussions. And it's not like truth is unknowable; we already have this kind of litigation around defamation, and it largely works. Anyway, not like I see anything like this happening, but if I were designing a system of government it's something I'd want to consider. (I suppose there's also the chance of it backfiring, simply politicizing the judiciary by involving it more in politics. But again, the responses to the election lawsuits give me some hope there.)
  • frabbit 6y ago