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> And we believe it’s up to tech Founders, VC’s and employees to do something about it. It’s up to us. Governments and other traditional forms of hierarchical p

> And we believe it’s up to tech Founders, VC’s and employees to do something about it. It’s up to us. Governments and other traditional forms of hierarchical power are ill-equipped to understand the network economy and evolve the new social contract. Hard pass, I'll take a social contract defined through democracy every time. Founders and investors, in particular, are uniquely unqualified to evolve the social contract because they have overwhelming financial interests.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
Founders, investors, successful business owners and CEOs are more likely to show sociopathic behaviour than the average person next door. They are the least competent group to be given power to shape any societal rules and contracts or to define how the humanity should look like.
- namlem 5y ago
  Exactly. If anything, we need to transition to a democratic model based at least in part on sortition. Randomly selected citizens assemblies have already shown promise in Ireland, France, and elsewhere.
  - Grim-444 5y ago
    How do you ensure the people that are selected have any significant level of intelligence, or desire to better their country rather than just themselves, or have any applicable life experience or knowledge that would lead them to make good, wise, decisions? How can you ensure that if it's a random selection?
    - furgooswft13 5y ago
      We don't ensure any of that currently for any of our politicians. In fact the system we have in place now has perverse incentives to ensure exactly the opposite, both on intelligence and self-interest. So a purely random selection would seem like an improvement at this point.
    - dgb23 5y ago
      You don't ensure any of that anyways.
    - kahmeal 5y ago
      It's the same as voting. You give everyone a vote because that is the least exploitable, fairest approach given the situation. You don't try to determine who is "most qualified to vote" because you end up with what the republicans are doing now. The likelihood that you accidentally recruit a power hungry dictator by virtue of his random selection to some position of power is much less than that individual maliciously seeking it of his/her own volition.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      If sortition is used to select the members of a second legislative chamber, then we would expect the randomly chosen set of people to have the same average intelligence as the general population. This chamber would have the right to veto and suggest changes to legislation, but not initiate it or unilaterally change any laws. Just as politicians may not be experts in the specific areas that they legislate on, the members of this second chamber would have the right to ask for input from specialists. This could be seen as an extension of the right that juries have in some states to ask questions of expert witnesses. Even if, in practice, the second chamber end up mostly listening to advisers (or lobbyists) provided by the existing political parties, they would at least have to hear a variety of opinions, let's say in proportion to the partisan leanings of that chamber. This would eliminate gerrymandering and other problems like campaign financing.
    - namlem 5y ago
      It doesn't matter if they have a significant level of intelligence or desire to better their country. That's the beauty of the system. If you have a large enough sample and a well-designed deliberative structure, even a group of average, self-interested individuals will be able to perform well. The deliberative structure used is based on research into group decision-making, and is usually some form of system where people split into small discussion groups that engage in structured discussion, then present something to the broader group, then discuss again, then shuffle into different groups and repeat the process. The fact that people are self-interested also doesn't pose a problem, so long as the sample is large enough. You probably want at least 100 for good measure, depending on the population being represented. Because it's a representative random sample (ideally it's not fully random, but weighted to represent population demographics), you get a broad slice of the population and therefore many competing interests. An individual may wish to further their own interests, but this would conflict with the interests of everyone else. Overall, the group's incentive is to do a good job, because they live in society and their decisions will affect them.
- sremani 5y ago
  >> Founders, investors, successful business owners and CEOs are more likely to show sociopathic behaviour than the average person next door. This argument is being taken as a Gospel. Seems to be a work of people who gave us the Stanford Torture Experiment. Given 50% of the so called psych studies are not reproducible. Basing foundational changes on this kind, fast-food pop psy is not a great idea. We have wisdom of thousands of years in the classics and religious texts, I would rely on them.
  - babyblueblanket 5y ago
    Thousands of years in the classics and religious texts also point to "the rich fuck over everyone else; eat them".
    - ericd 5y ago
      And then there will be a new set of rich and powerful, cloaked in the robes of the new ideology, and wielding its power to destroy their enemies and solidify their hold on power. Including many of the people who led the last revolution. We see it pretty much every single time.
  - wyre 5y ago
    Give animals more food than they need and they will share it with their friends. This IS reproducible and points to sociopathic behavior in the wealthy.
  - atty 5y ago
    Classics and Religious texts suggest that stoning is an appropriate punishment for premarital sex, that bloodletting is a good cure for just about anything, that the earth is the center of the universe… I will take my chances with imperfect science.
    - sremani 5y ago
      Scientism is a religion, a modern one at it.
- mrRandomGuy 5y ago
  Don't forget the most out of touch to the struggles of the majority of people. Makes me think of Gwyneth Paltrow doing the food stamp challenge but ending up buying shit no person on food stamps would purchase.
4r4r4r 5y ago
> Hard pass, I'll take a social contract defined through democracy every time. You can't have a functioning democracy when you have militant organizations suppressing candidates who dare challenge the status quo.
- pope_meat 5y ago
  You're referring to the armies of lobbyists and SUPER PACs owned by the wealthy, those militant organizations suppressing candidates who dare to challenge the status quo?
  - 4r4r4r 5y ago
    The technology of killing someone and making it look like an accident or a suicide reached a state of high art at least 42 years ago. Here is one illustration. http://drnissani.net/mnissani/revolutionarystoolkit/DartGun1975.jpg http://drnissani.net/mnissani/revolutionarystoolkit/DartGun1... The nearby photograph shows the late US Senator Frank Church displaying a Central Institute of Assassinations’ (CIA) dart gun that, depending on the poison used, either causes an immediate heart attack or a belated cancer. According to Congressional 1975 testimony, the gun fires a frozen poison-tipped dart. The tiny dart can penetrate clothing and leaves a barely-visible pin-sized red mark where it enters the victim’s body. In the heart attack version, once in the body, the poison melts, gets absorbed into the bloodstream, and causes cardiac arrest. The poison then denatures quickly, so that a routine autopsy is likely to ascribe the heart attack to natural causes. In passing: Church probably paid for his courage–and for his progressive record–with his life. By 1984, at the early age of 59, he died of . . . cancer. Bob Marley was also likely murdered by oncogenic viruses placed on a nail in his shoe which led to his brain cancer and ultimate collapse a few years later. He was not intimidated when his house was shot up and didn't back down. He too paid the price with his life.
    - Natfan 5y ago
      How exactly would a dart cause cancer? I'm curious.
dgb23 5y ago
It's interesting that economic power is not perceived as hierarchical by the author. Or rather it seems like an ideological view. Also: > The rich get really rich, and the poor get poorer by comparison. Unfortunately, this has always been true. It is not an artifact of modern economics. This is not true as far as I know. There have been times in recent history between the early ~1900 and ~1970 where the income gap decreased and worker protection increased. It was a time of stronger worker movements, unions, emancipation and policy aimed at the larger demographics of the public. The 70's mark a shift towards neo-liberal ideology in the western world. The article is riddled with dystopian suggestions. There are some things I can agree with. For example I very much agree with the importance of workplace transparency. And there is also an underlying tone of empathy with the unfortunate, but it comes off as patronizing. I think the biggest fallacy is to think that our societies are becoming more meritocratic almost by default (as assessed in the article). Ignoring whether that is a good thing or not, I doubt this is true at all or if it even can be measured objectively.
- csa 5y ago
  > It was a time of stronger worker movements, unions, emancipation and policy aimed at the larger demographics of the public. A lot of the things you mentioned only developed during the time when there was (or seemed to be) a compelling competing ideology. Communism/socialism was seen as a potential alternative to capitalism during that time, and I think that the competition of ideas during that time led to more benefits for the lower end of the economic ladder.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Just ideas? Not massive union participation and protests across the Western world, revolutions and wars to force it?
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      That's how competition of ideas looks like - with people being in conflict over these ideas, and those ideas (or ideologies as "idea packages") having to change and compromise to win over more people or be outcompeted as their supporters get outnumbered, defeated or even eliminated.
mistermann 5y ago
> Hard pass, I'll take a social contract defined through democracy every time. When you say democracy, are you referring to democracy the abstract philosophy, or the specific concrete implementation of "democracy" that we currently operate under? Would you be open to considering a third option: a complete re-implementation of democracy from the ground up? > Founders and investors, in particular, are uniquely unqualified to evolve the social contract because they have overwhelming financial interests. Similarly, are are you referring to founders and investors in the abstract sense (a general methodology for organizing and funding the implementing ideas), or the specific types of founders and investors that have risen to the top, under our current implementations of democracy, economics, etc? Would you be open to considering an alternative approach: a new kind of founding and funding of the implementation of an idea, one that is deliberately designed from day one to avoid the shortcomings we see today, as well as be ever watchful for the emergence of novel new shortcomings that may emerge?
- helen___keller 5y ago
  > When you say democracy, are you referring to democracy the abstract philosophy, or the specific concrete implementation of "democracy" that we currently operate under? Both. At a philosophical level, democracy is a just (while imperfect) method for long-term decision making of a large system of humans. Nothing else comes close. Concretely, our democracy has a lot of flaws but hasn't been awful enough to degrade into totalitarianism in many many years, so I'd say it's doing its job. It's even amenable to upgrades, if with difficulty from the enormous consensus required. > Would you be open to considering a third option: a complete re-implementation of democracy from the ground up? In the abstract, yes, poking at our poorly-architected democratic machine is one of my favorite hobbies. In reality, there's significant risk of destabilization that comes with re-architecting a political system, so it's hard to say. > Similarly, are are you referring to founders and investors in the abstract sense (a general methodology for organizing and funding the implementing ideas), or the specific types of founders and investors that have risen to the top, under our current implementations of democracy, economics, etc? Specifically founders and funders as they exist in our economy under our current sociopolitical system (hence: they have competing interests in making society better vs owning a company that isn't bankrupt and returns value to shareholders) > Would you be open to considering an alternative approach: a new kind of founding and funding of the implementation of an idea, one that is deliberately designed from day one to avoid the shortcomings we see today, as well as be ever watchful for the emergence of novel new shortcomings that may emerge? I'm not sure what that means. Governments have a monopoly on force, so you must have system A or B but not both. Funding/founding is decentralized, so you may have both systems A and B, and the dominant system over time tends to be the one that makes the most money. So am I open to an alternative founding/funding approach? Sure. Do I think it's going to improve the social contract in a world of ruthless capitalism? No.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago

Founders, investors, successful business owners and CEOs are more likely to show sociopathic behaviour than the average person next door. They are the least competent group to be given power to shape any societal rules and contracts or to define how the humanity should look like.

namlem 5y ago
Exactly. If anything, we need to transition to a democratic model based at least in part on sortition. Randomly selected citizens assemblies have already shown promise in Ireland, France, and elsewhere.
- Grim-444 5y ago
  How do you ensure the people that are selected have any significant level of intelligence, or desire to better their country rather than just themselves, or have any applicable life experience or knowledge that would lead them to make good, wise, decisions? How can you ensure that if it's a random selection?
  - furgooswft13 5y ago
    We don't ensure any of that currently for any of our politicians. In fact the system we have in place now has perverse incentives to ensure exactly the opposite, both on intelligence and self-interest. So a purely random selection would seem like an improvement at this point.
  - dgb23 5y ago
    You don't ensure any of that anyways.
  - kahmeal 5y ago
    It's the same as voting. You give everyone a vote because that is the least exploitable, fairest approach given the situation. You don't try to determine who is "most qualified to vote" because you end up with what the republicans are doing now. The likelihood that you accidentally recruit a power hungry dictator by virtue of his random selection to some position of power is much less than that individual maliciously seeking it of his/her own volition.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    If sortition is used to select the members of a second legislative chamber, then we would expect the randomly chosen set of people to have the same average intelligence as the general population. This chamber would have the right to veto and suggest changes to legislation, but not initiate it or unilaterally change any laws. Just as politicians may not be experts in the specific areas that they legislate on, the members of this second chamber would have the right to ask for input from specialists. This could be seen as an extension of the right that juries have in some states to ask questions of expert witnesses. Even if, in practice, the second chamber end up mostly listening to advisers (or lobbyists) provided by the existing political parties, they would at least have to hear a variety of opinions, let's say in proportion to the partisan leanings of that chamber. This would eliminate gerrymandering and other problems like campaign financing.
  - namlem 5y ago
    It doesn't matter if they have a significant level of intelligence or desire to better their country. That's the beauty of the system. If you have a large enough sample and a well-designed deliberative structure, even a group of average, self-interested individuals will be able to perform well. The deliberative structure used is based on research into group decision-making, and is usually some form of system where people split into small discussion groups that engage in structured discussion, then present something to the broader group, then discuss again, then shuffle into different groups and repeat the process. The fact that people are self-interested also doesn't pose a problem, so long as the sample is large enough. You probably want at least 100 for good measure, depending on the population being represented. Because it's a representative random sample (ideally it's not fully random, but weighted to represent population demographics), you get a broad slice of the population and therefore many competing interests. An individual may wish to further their own interests, but this would conflict with the interests of everyone else. Overall, the group's incentive is to do a good job, because they live in society and their decisions will affect them.
sremani 5y ago
>> Founders, investors, successful business owners and CEOs are more likely to show sociopathic behaviour than the average person next door. This argument is being taken as a Gospel. Seems to be a work of people who gave us the Stanford Torture Experiment. Given 50% of the so called psych studies are not reproducible. Basing foundational changes on this kind, fast-food pop psy is not a great idea. We have wisdom of thousands of years in the classics and religious texts, I would rely on them.
- babyblueblanket 5y ago
  Thousands of years in the classics and religious texts also point to "the rich fuck over everyone else; eat them".
  - ericd 5y ago
    And then there will be a new set of rich and powerful, cloaked in the robes of the new ideology, and wielding its power to destroy their enemies and solidify their hold on power. Including many of the people who led the last revolution. We see it pretty much every single time.
- wyre 5y ago
  Give animals more food than they need and they will share it with their friends. This IS reproducible and points to sociopathic behavior in the wealthy.
- atty 5y ago
  Classics and Religious texts suggest that stoning is an appropriate punishment for premarital sex, that bloodletting is a good cure for just about anything, that the earth is the center of the universe… I will take my chances with imperfect science.
  - sremani 5y ago
    Scientism is a religion, a modern one at it.
mrRandomGuy 5y ago
Don't forget the most out of touch to the struggles of the majority of people. Makes me think of Gwyneth Paltrow doing the food stamp challenge but ending up buying shit no person on food stamps would purchase.

4r4r4r 5y ago

> Hard pass, I'll take a social contract defined through democracy every time. You can't have a functioning democracy when you have militant organizations suppressing candidates who dare challenge the status quo.

pope_meat 5y ago
You're referring to the armies of lobbyists and SUPER PACs owned by the wealthy, those militant organizations suppressing candidates who dare to challenge the status quo?
- 4r4r4r 5y ago
  The technology of killing someone and making it look like an accident or a suicide reached a state of high art at least 42 years ago. Here is one illustration. http://drnissani.net/mnissani/revolutionarystoolkit/DartGun1975.jpg http://drnissani.net/mnissani/revolutionarystoolkit/DartGun1... The nearby photograph shows the late US Senator Frank Church displaying a Central Institute of Assassinations’ (CIA) dart gun that, depending on the poison used, either causes an immediate heart attack or a belated cancer. According to Congressional 1975 testimony, the gun fires a frozen poison-tipped dart. The tiny dart can penetrate clothing and leaves a barely-visible pin-sized red mark where it enters the victim’s body. In the heart attack version, once in the body, the poison melts, gets absorbed into the bloodstream, and causes cardiac arrest. The poison then denatures quickly, so that a routine autopsy is likely to ascribe the heart attack to natural causes. In passing: Church probably paid for his courage–and for his progressive record–with his life. By 1984, at the early age of 59, he died of . . . cancer. Bob Marley was also likely murdered by oncogenic viruses placed on a nail in his shoe which led to his brain cancer and ultimate collapse a few years later. He was not intimidated when his house was shot up and didn't back down. He too paid the price with his life.
  - Natfan 5y ago
    How exactly would a dart cause cancer? I'm curious.

dgb23 5y ago

It's interesting that economic power is not perceived as hierarchical by the author. Or rather it seems like an ideological view. Also: > The rich get really rich, and the poor get poorer by comparison. Unfortunately, this has always been true. It is not an artifact of modern economics. This is not true as far as I know. There have been times in recent history between the early ~1900 and ~1970 where the income gap decreased and worker protection increased. It was a time of stronger worker movements, unions, emancipation and policy aimed at the larger demographics of the public. The 70's mark a shift towards neo-liberal ideology in the western world. The article is riddled with dystopian suggestions. There are some things I can agree with. For example I very much agree with the importance of workplace transparency. And there is also an underlying tone of empathy with the unfortunate, but it comes off as patronizing. I think the biggest fallacy is to think that our societies are becoming more meritocratic almost by default (as assessed in the article). Ignoring whether that is a good thing or not, I doubt this is true at all or if it even can be measured objectively.

csa 5y ago
> It was a time of stronger worker movements, unions, emancipation and policy aimed at the larger demographics of the public. A lot of the things you mentioned only developed during the time when there was (or seemed to be) a compelling competing ideology. Communism/socialism was seen as a potential alternative to capitalism during that time, and I think that the competition of ideas during that time led to more benefits for the lower end of the economic ladder.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Just ideas? Not massive union participation and protests across the Western world, revolutions and wars to force it?
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    That's how competition of ideas looks like - with people being in conflict over these ideas, and those ideas (or ideologies as "idea packages") having to change and compromise to win over more people or be outcompeted as their supporters get outnumbered, defeated or even eliminated.

mistermann 5y ago

> Hard pass, I'll take a social contract defined through democracy every time. When you say democracy, are you referring to democracy the abstract philosophy, or the specific concrete implementation of "democracy" that we currently operate under? Would you be open to considering a third option: a complete re-implementation of democracy from the ground up? > Founders and investors, in particular, are uniquely unqualified to evolve the social contract because they have overwhelming financial interests. Similarly, are are you referring to founders and investors in the abstract sense (a general methodology for organizing and funding the implementing ideas), or the specific types of founders and investors that have risen to the top, under our current implementations of democracy, economics, etc? Would you be open to considering an alternative approach: a new kind of founding and funding of the implementation of an idea, one that is deliberately designed from day one to avoid the shortcomings we see today, as well as be ever watchful for the emergence of novel new shortcomings that may emerge?

helen___keller 5y ago
> When you say democracy, are you referring to democracy the abstract philosophy, or the specific concrete implementation of "democracy" that we currently operate under? Both. At a philosophical level, democracy is a just (while imperfect) method for long-term decision making of a large system of humans. Nothing else comes close. Concretely, our democracy has a lot of flaws but hasn't been awful enough to degrade into totalitarianism in many many years, so I'd say it's doing its job. It's even amenable to upgrades, if with difficulty from the enormous consensus required. > Would you be open to considering a third option: a complete re-implementation of democracy from the ground up? In the abstract, yes, poking at our poorly-architected democratic machine is one of my favorite hobbies. In reality, there's significant risk of destabilization that comes with re-architecting a political system, so it's hard to say. > Similarly, are are you referring to founders and investors in the abstract sense (a general methodology for organizing and funding the implementing ideas), or the specific types of founders and investors that have risen to the top, under our current implementations of democracy, economics, etc? Specifically founders and funders as they exist in our economy under our current sociopolitical system (hence: they have competing interests in making society better vs owning a company that isn't bankrupt and returns value to shareholders) > Would you be open to considering an alternative approach: a new kind of founding and funding of the implementation of an idea, one that is deliberately designed from day one to avoid the shortcomings we see today, as well as be ever watchful for the emergence of novel new shortcomings that may emerge? I'm not sure what that means. Governments have a monopoly on force, so you must have system A or B but not both. Funding/founding is decentralized, so you may have both systems A and B, and the dominant system over time tends to be the one that makes the most money. So am I open to an alternative founding/funding approach? Sure. Do I think it's going to improve the social contract in a world of ruthless capitalism? No.