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On November 29 2012 17:32 BluePanther wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I had wanted to make a new thread about this, since it relates to more than just the US and isn't actually political debate, but a moderator thinks it's a blog and moved it. Since nobody actually reads those, I'll just put it in this thread despite it being slightly off-topic. I know this post rambles a little bit, but please bear with me -- the thought is not developed enough for me to write a super-organized outline of the ideas contained.
This is a story that will start with a little of who I am, what I think about, and eventually connect it to you, what you think, and set the table for a discussion on how to truly revolutionize freedom, democracy, government, and, to an extent capitalism—essentially the whole social world order. I have wanted to discuss this with you for some time, and the motivation to write this post finally hit me tonight. I never felt it fit in with any of the other political threads, but my hand has been forced here by the mods. This post is not US-centric.
Note: These are not predictions or even personal endorsements of the ideas contained within. It's merely an exercise of the mind at this point and time. This also has not been researched fully, despite my relative expertise in the subject. Please feel free to correct such mistakes in a productive manner.
First, My Musings:
Some may know me on these forums; many do not. I have been around recently commenting on political discussions, particularly the presidential elections. I have been rather attracted to the high amount of intelligent political discussions on these forums. They are both intelligent and civil, with viewpoints from around the world on delicate and contentious issues of both morality and practicality. This is why I write this discussion to you before I write to some academic publication: I want your thoughts.
I am a Republican (albeit a rather liberal and moderate one), and spent the last year working on a political campaign. While I kept it quiet as to whom I worked for in case we won (PR reasons as I would have been a Senate staffer), there is no real point anymore since we lost: I worked for Tommy Thompson in his bid to become a Senator for the State of Wisconsin. I was one of a dozen people that helped drive one of the very few moderate primary campaigns that overcame the (impressive) Tea Party power to make it to a general election. While we didn’t win the general election, I was able to be involved in shaping political discussions throughout my state. For this reason, I do not regret what I spent my time doing. I am very proud of both what we accomplished and the candidate I worked for. I do not agree with him on everything, but he’s honest, hardworking, and (unlike most politicians) sincerely cares about solutions and not popularity.
During this foray into politics, I learned a lot; most of it was interesting, yet some was downright depressing. What stuck out most to me was the amount of influence that a few individuals can exercise over government policy and the direction of public discussions. It's far more than even educated and involved citizens believe. I found it both astounding and frustrating. Legitimate political concerns are rarely discussed, yet one-issue voters are able to drive the public debate by concentration of topic and power in numbers. Single powerful entities (whether individual media members, interest groups, or single donors) can frame the public discussion so subtly that most citizens are completely unaware of what is happening. I found this troubling for many reasons, but mostly how substance of government is developed within representative election systems.
Back to me again. Outside of my political life, I finish my JD degree later this month. In other words, I’ll be a lawyer. However, unlike most lawyers, I specialize in governments--constitutional and structural theory, to be specific. I have a background in sociology and engineering, and it has assisted me in the study and critique of constitutions that are under consideration by new governments (Somalia and Egypt) to provide commentary on the practical social EFFECTS of said documents as drafted. I am essentially the academic link between a Constitutional Scholar and a Sociologist/Economist. While I likely won’t work in this field (nobody pays anyone to have their head in the cloud and most people in power don’t give a shit what someone like me has to say), I think it’s a topic that is not talked about enough amongst smart people.
I honestly believe that there is not enough discussion around an impending revolution in this topic. The reason the experts don’t talk about it isn’t a lack of interest; I honestly think most of them are unaware of it. Why? Because the driving force behind my discussion is something they are not experts in: technology and internet productivity. It’s difficult for even smart individuals to grasp the impending change if they cannot understand the factors and nuances of the driving force. Not that they cannot, but I doubt most Ivory Tower-types with such thoughts understand things such as programming, open-source cooperation, and internet subculture. That is one advantage this forum has—it is filled with politically educated individuals from around the world with an understanding of HOW the internet culture works and how technology can be harnessed for productive uses (even if it's currenly mostly used to produce the lulz). A mass of people on the internet with an idea or a goal can often fulfill it with astounding resourcefulness (see wikipedia). Ivory tower types just don’t get it (yes, I read what they write).
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Professor, has discussed this matter to a certain degree, but I think he’s missing the true implications of his ideas. Benkler (along with other experts) focuses on the economic implications of the internet’s networking productivity; he misses the drastic political implications.
Where am I going with this you might ask? Hang in there with me for a little bit. My curiosity dives into the more interesting parts of government: the why and the how. We (and by this I mean the Western Society) have developed a system where we discount from serious discussion anything that isn’t a constitutional democracy based on capitalist-based market principles. However, I think this cementing of ideas is rather short-sighted. Five hundred years ago or so, we as humanity did not embrace any major government without a single central figure who dominated every aspect of society. Fast-forward to today and we consider such an approach to be horrendously unfair and inefficient. It may have just been practical reasons more than philosophical reasons that led to this change, but that does not mean that government cannot change drastically over time and that said change will not result in better government structures.
As the saying goes, government is “by the people, for the people.” Yet we have developed a system where the people usually only have a say in one thing and only at one time—the voting for representatives on election day. Sure, this solves the “no taxation without representation” problem, and for many it appeases their desires for freedom. It has served us well in our transition from Dictatorial style governments to a system that allows more freedoms without being unstable. What this system does not represent, however, is an ideal system where the government is truly ‘by’ the people; it’s merely ‘for’ the people. Special interests and powerful individuals are capable of defining the discussion to such a great degree that I decline to agree with the assessment that government is truly ‘by’ the people. The way it works now is that solutions are proposed by powerful individuals or organizations and public opinion is noted. A solution is then imposed in a method that the population will accept. Sure, we vote on who gauges the public opinion, but our collective mass opinion is truly as far as the average citizen will go in their participation. Over time, this system has led to increased apathy and a feeling of disconnect from one's government as other methods of networking and communication have improved while the representation system has stood pat.
What I mean by this is, have you ever attempted to petition a government official? You may have realized that it is essentially futile unless you have an absolutely rabid base of single-issue pressure backed by special interests (see SOPA). But do you have a great idea for how to save the government money? Do you have a complaint about something that needs fixing? Do you have a problem with anything that the government could remedy? The truth is that when you write your elected representative a letter, it is ignored. They have an intern read it and draft a boring, non-comittal reply. They literally hire interns to do nothing but this. Your concern is not truly noted and will have no impact in government actions. It is completely ignored. Unfortunately, I think most people acknowledge this fact. And we’ve come to live with it.
What if you could act on your political ideas and solutoins?
Now on to the exciting discussion:
Today, when discussing government theory, most people ask, “Can make government better?” I think they are missing the point. The question that drives my inquiry is different. What we should be asking is, “Can we make a better government?”
This is not new. This question has been asked in the past. Communism came about from this very same discussion! It failed, and for good reasons (it ignored some inherent human tendencies and focused on economics). However, I think there is a new development that has the potential to open up discourse on this topic once again. It is something that we didn’t have prior to this decade. It is new and provides a base structure that permits government to function in ways that simply would have been inconceivable even ten years ago. I’m not talking about difficult to implement, but new developments that would have been so foreign that it would have been impossible to even have this conversation more than ten years ago. This new “thing” is the Internet. Social Media. Not Twitter of Facebook, but a level of connectivity and networking between individuals that has revolutionized our social lives, our economy, our world outlook, but as of yet has NOT revolutionized our government.
Is it possible for us to devise a system using technology and networking to develop a more efficient, more productive, and more representative government than the style the Western World has spent the last two centuries promoting and refining?
There are some things holding the idea back. Our generation (assuming you are under 40) uses personal digital devices daily, yet the older generation has not adopted and would resist change. But eventually the old people will die off and we will have a society that could not function without their PDAs and smartphones. I believe that while we may not be able to implement any serious changes for another 30 years, this roadblock should not prevent us from laying the theoretical groundwork for this eventual r/evolution.
Think about it:
- Pure democracy and voting from your phone on mundane issues during your bus ride to work
- A binding neighborhood teleconference/forum discussion and vote on how to deal with playground grafitti.
- Being able to snap a picture of a pothole and send it to your city works department through your smartphone without thinking about it. (GPS coordinates of pictures along with a note if you want to include one)
- Transferable votes instead of elected representatives
- Federal budgets crafted in a Wikipedia environment with input from thousands of ordinary people or more
It would be possible to devise political systems that require no representatives, no presidents, no mayors, no governors, no senators, no city councils, fewer bureaucracies. And do we really need most of that stuff? The truth is that already nobody gives a damn what is said on the floor of the House in the USA. The discussion is already held in the public communications sphere (both on TV and on the internet). Our opinions aren’t developed by listening to representative debates but rather by our debates with our peers. Yet the discussion on how to create a better government with less political party tension has always revolved around the assumption that we must have representative systems. What if we didn’t?
Such a system could theoretically be Government Lite™. A massive increase in efficiency combined with a massive decrease in burden that could create a government structure that makes our current representative democracy look antiquated by every measure. For too long, the debate has been a discussion of who should hold the power to do this or that and how economics should shape government. The idea that economics should not define government at all is foreign to most people who talk about these ideas, but the internet has already shown it has the power to transcend previously uncontested economic theories. Why can’t it transcend governmental theories?
My questions to you, TL.net, are simple ones in form but complicated in substance. What do you think is the next evolution in social government? If you don’t think it will happen, why not? What do you think about what I’ve written here? Can government be made more fluid with the help of networks? What do you see as potential benefits? What do you see as drawbacks? Do not limit yourself to one specific level of government. These ideas are actually probably better discussed at a local level due to the ability to experiment and would have more practical impact, but don't hesitate to look at the big picture either.
Thoughtful responses only, please. Do not respond with one-liners, as I would like to have an actual discussion on this musing.
I see your point about ready access to information allowing for a streamlining of government, but what will it streamline into? Who will make the decisions? More importantly, regardless of the availability of information, what is to compel people to actually access and digest the information available to them?
Basically, I'm not seeing how recent developments in information technology will replace current government systems that are in place. While it may make those systems more efficient (and not even this is guaranteed), it probably isn't going to lead to the kind of "revolutionary" development that you are contemplating.
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Don't confuse the technological base with the political superstructure. It's not that IT will "replace" current government structures, because that would obviously be a category error. It's that IT will produce a new paradigm of governance that will replace the old paradigm. What this will be exactly is of course a matter still to be investigated - that's the point of doing political philosophy. Your bourgeois heroes did it in the 17th and 18th centuries, we can do it too.
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On November 30 2012 05:15 sam!zdat wrote:
Don't confuse the technological base with the political superstructure. It's not that IT will "replace" current government structures, because that would obviously be a category error. It's that IT will produce a new paradigm of governance that will replace the old paradigm. What this will be exactly is of course a matter still to be investigated - that's the point of doing political philosophy. Your bourgeois heroes did it in the 17th and 18th centuries, we can do it too.
As much as I think that the philosophical underpinnings of American-style republicanism are revolutionary, I do not think that the political institutions themselves are that revolutionary. They are all largely borrowed and adopted from previous systems ranging from the ancient Greeks to 18th century Great Britain.
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On November 30 2012 04:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 01:45 TheFrankOne wrote:On November 30 2012 00:48 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 29 2012 11:37 TheFrankOne wrote:On November 29 2012 10:18 sc2superfan101 wrote:
@kwizach
okay, but do you have the actual document? I'm looking for it right now, and I can't find it. I don't want to make a judgement about something I haven't read.
and the Republican plan is actually to cut massive amounts of entitlement programs, reform everything, simplify the tax-code and lower the rates substantially, and slash spending to a fraction of what it is.
the Democrat plan is to substantially raise taxes on the wealthy (and thus everyone else), eliminate the loopholes and deductions (further raising taxes), and increase spending substantially.
so the Republicans have come up with a plan that would cut a bit, make some reforms, reduce spending and in return we will expand the tax-base and lower rates slightly. there would still be a net increase in taxes, so this would even technically be Republicans breaking their pledge, but pretty much all Republicans are willing to accept that. so we would be giving you higher taxes, but we want cuts in spending because that is where the problem is. and no, we won't and shouldn't just vote to raise taxes ridiculously the wealthy because that hurts the economy. we're not going to hurt the economy to satisfy some weird anti-rich fetish that the Democrats have gotten on lately.
if Obama is willing to make substantial cuts, and is willing to sacrifice substantially raising taxes on the wealthy, then let him craft a bill and send it to Congress to sign. Republicans would go for it, if he actually made serious cuts.
it's not fair that Obama wins, declares a mandate, says that he is in the driver seat, and then blames Republicans for driving the car toward the cliff. He's the one behind the wheel, he's the driver. let him craft the bill that Republicans can sign without it being political suicide and then he can talk about obstructionism. not before. This argument of "broaden the base and cut all rates" is horrible and ignores the basic driver of our economy. The US economy is driven by consumption but you sit there and call for base broadening, wonderful code for increasing the proportion of taxes paid by lower income individuals. Increasing taxes on the rich, according to the Congressional Research service has little impact on the economy. I'm not even going to listen to any argument about "investment" because money is cheap right now but thecredit markets are still full of people deleveraging, not borrowing more. So please explain to me why gutting our automatic stabilizers that keep our economy running and following the wonderful path the UK is going down is good for us. The weird fetish is how far Republicans are willing to go to protect a few rich people from a small tax increase while clamoring about debts and calling for tax rate cuts. (Its that weird, since they need those sweet campaign dollars) "We're to far in debt! We need tax cuts!" Is ludicrous, the truth is that raising taxes on anyone is bad for the economy, but cutting them for the rich is one of the least stimulative things and raising them on the poor is one of the worst things to do for the economy but that's what you want. Look at studies on minimum wage laws based on empirical data instead of theoretical models for proof that giving low wage earners more is good for the economy. Obama should not make the serious cuts Republicans want because it's insane to cut spending right now. Our interest payments on new debt barely keep pace with inflation so there's obviously no real debt crisis. Every plan the Republicans call serious cuts revenues more than spending anyways, leaving us still with a big fat deficit but more money to the rich and less of a social safety net with an excuse to do the same in the near future: that deficit they left in place. What I really want to know is why austerity is good in the US even though it has failed badly to meet even conservative projections in the UK. economies aren't driven by consumption though, at least, not primarily. and yes, broadening the base would increase the share of taxes held by the lower income families and individuals. the top % already pays a disproportionate amount in taxes as compared to their share of the wealth, so I don't see why equalizing that would be a bad idea. ideally, we would cut taxes on everyone, but Dems want tax hikes, so we'll give them some. people aren't lending because interest rates are being kept artificially low. this is going to (and is) causing another bubble. minimum wage is an example of the failure inherent with trying to manipulate the market. minimum wage laws stagnate wages and actually push out the poor and the young from low income entry-level jobs. poverty hasn't been alleviated by the ever-increasing minimum wage, and prices haven't dropped. they've risen, along with inflation, debt, and entitlement spending. even you agree that cutting taxes on everyone will help the economy, yet you still argue for taxing the rich more. you acknowledge that it's not about helping the economy, which leads me to believe there is another reason for it. besides, our problem isn't revenue, it's spending. we can't keep spending at these ridiculous levels even if we tax the rich completely dry. something has to be cut and it's going to have to be mainly spending. increasing taxes will hurt the economy and will actually give us less revenue; lowering taxes or keeping them low will actually increase revenue when the economy gets started again, which it will if we stop trying to force a bubble. Our economy is driven by consumption: More than 70% of what the U.S. produces is for personal consumption. In 2011, $10.726 trillion of the $15.094 trillion produced went toward household purchases. The BEA sub-divides personal consumption expenditures into goods and services. (http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/f/GDP_Components.htm) It's not like the supply of consumption goods is why they are purchased, if consumer purchases make up 70% of the economy, I think its fair to say that consumer demand drives the economy. Removing the progressiveness of the income tax system is a terrible idea, for ethical reasons, for practical reasons (MPC, marginal utility of income), and because the poor already face benefits losses which are an effective marginal tax, Mankiw (top Romney economic advisor) said the US practically has a flat tax. People aren't lending because rates are low? Do you believe in Say's Law? People aren't borrowing because of widespread deleveraging and because of more stringent credit markets. When you actually control for other variables, entitlement spending isn't up much from the mid 60s, inflation has been on target for decades and the minimum wage has not caused a drop in employment when done well. http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP217.pdfIn the US, this is not the case because we do those stupid lump sum increases when we feel like it which is the best way to negatively impact employment. Britain has a board that raises it a few cents every year, much better system. Also, don't put words in my mouth, I never called for taxes on the rich, I said taxing the rich has less of a drag on the economy than gutting our automatic stabilizers and increasing the tax burden of the poor. What I said was that the kind of austerity program you are calling for has been done in Britain and it has failed miserably so we shouldn't be doing one here. They point to their bond yields and say "Look what we did! It's working!" but they are back in a recession and the US has bond yields at about the same rates. Please don't try to push your horrible tax revenue argument on me. Tax cuts do not pay for themselves, not now, not ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgpOmkHZxQU (Check out Greenspan's opinion on the matter) http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2276/no-gov-pawlenty-tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves(Breaks down the Regan and Bush tax cuts, there is offsetting but they don't increase revenue, that's just wrong.) You still have't done anything to discount my analogy with Britain. Why I think your argument is crazy in one chart: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-us-vs-uk-growth-2012-4@DeepElemBlues: I would more go for the whole marginal utility of income thing to justify it on ethical grounds, plus that whole transfer payments report that lays out the effective marginal tax rates of low income people. They "pay" by getting less from the government as they earn more. I have to disagree with a few points you made. First, entitlement spending is WAY up, both in inflation adjusted per capita terms and percent of GDP terms and will continue to rise under current law due to baby boomers retiring. Second, counting a benefit reduction as a tax (as the transfer payment report did) has no merit beyond the scope of the paper. Third, while low interest rates are certainly warranted there's still room for criticism here. Low rates aren't a free lunch - those who rely on rates for income (retirees, pension funds, insurance companies, etc.) have all seen their income fall because of low rates ( link). Also the low rates are making it harder for lenders to earn a decent spread on their loans. I have no idea if its had much of an impact yet but its something to worry about going forward.
Well I can't find the articles I was reading on the welfare state so this lacks a source  , and it has grown but as you can see from the chart, a significant portion of the growth is healthcare costs which have been up across the industry well above inflation and there is a spike during this recession which is to be expected. The moral of the story is I have no sources and I do agree it has grown.
On your second point: Counting a benefit reduction as an effective tax is proper accounting.
From Mankiw's Blog: "The bottom line is that the average household now faces an effective marginal tax rate of 30 percent. In 2014, after various temporary tax provisions have expired and the newly passed health insurance subsidies go into effect, the average effective marginal tax rate will rise to 35 percent."
From Cochrane's blog: "if you receive a benefit from the government that phases out with income, so every dollar of income above (say) $30,000 reduces your benefit by 50 cents, then you face a 50 percent marginal tax rate even if you pay no "taxes" at all. Taxes and benefits -- both in level and on the margin -- need to be considered together."
It really is the effective marginal tax rate that they face according to those guys. There is a lot of merit to that approach when looking at tradeoffs faced in the labor market.
If you increase taxes but don't want people to lose their standard of living, you have to make up the difference with more transfer payments, which are inefficient. If you say "fuck their standard of living" the difference no longer matters, but I'm not sure what Blues was really arguing there, just wanted to say it makes no sense to tax the poor and then give them more benefits to make up the difference. Which is why I am against "base broadening" because I think our safety net is not that extravagant but overall at an okay place.
Third: Yes, those people are hurt by low rates, no argument here, but banks seem to be doing okay, their net interest income actually increased from 07-10 because they paid less and charged more, their spreads are protected by the decreases in their funding costs. Their could, theoretically be an impact as this trend continues since their money is so cheap right now it can't get much cheaper, but so far, so good for them. It turns out, their lowest spreads in 20 yeears were in 2006. I'm not shedding any tears for the banks, they seem okay. Besides, this deleveraging by households should (i hope) stop soon which should pick up loan volume and make up for the difference as funds stay on the lower bound.
http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/DBR_INTERNET_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000288493/Low interest rates pressuring US bank margins.pdf
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On November 30 2012 05:49 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 05:15 sam!zdat wrote:
Don't confuse the technological base with the political superstructure. It's not that IT will "replace" current government structures, because that would obviously be a category error. It's that IT will produce a new paradigm of governance that will replace the old paradigm. What this will be exactly is of course a matter still to be investigated - that's the point of doing political philosophy. Your bourgeois heroes did it in the 17th and 18th centuries, we can do it too. As much as I think that the philosophical underpinnings of American-style republicanism are revolutionary, I do not think that the political institutions themselves are that revolutionary. They are all largely borrowed and adopted from previous systems ranging from the ancient Greeks to 18th century Great Britain.
The greeks have nothing to do with it, and it's part of the same revolution as 18th century britain...
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On November 30 2012 03:44 TheFrankOne wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 02:46 sc2superfan101 wrote:
consumer spending has nothing to do with whether the economy is demand driven or supply driven. the truth is that there is no such thing as a demand-driven, consumer based economy. supply is always the primary determining factor in prices. production is where wealth is created, demand is just a singular guiding factor of what to produce and when. where demand can be manufactured (advertising, tax-cuts, entitlement spending), supply cannot be manufactured or manipulated. the cost of production will remain the cost of production, despite any change in demand. and people do buy based on supply, as it is supply which most determines prices.
I don't know if Say's Law is perfectly accurate but I certainly don't agree with the Keynesian criticism of it. increasing demand artificially won't help the economy when the increase comes in the form of subsidies from the supplier to the demand-er. this holds true across all sectors of the economy, including borrowing and lending.
as for the austerity of the UK, the problem is that it's a pretty weak form of austerity, and further it's not being coupled with deregulation and tax-cuts. and yes, this would cause some temporary setbacks while the market corrects itself. and even further, the fact was, whatever austerity is doing to the UK or isn't doing, they can't keep spending at the levels they were spending at. you could drain the rich of every cent the rich have and you still won't pay for all the spending in the US, so I don't see how it would work in the UK.
simple logic applies to tax-cuts and raising revenues. Simple logic, much like "common sense" just doesn't apply to reality on tax cuts. Arguments can valid but wrong. So your argument in the UK boils down to: "What I'm saying isn't working but that's only because they haven't gone far enough!"? That's insane, all the estimates of austerity impact by conservatives were way off, if it had come close to their estimates, I might be willing to try it here but it hasn't and so more of the same seems dumb. I think I'm done with this discussion.
except there is mountains of evidence to show that lower tax rates often do lead to higher revenues.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/08/the-historical-lessons-of-lower-tax-rates
(edit: there is an argument about it, but that doesn't mean that the simple logic doesn't actually apply)
I didn't say, and never said, that just cutting some spending would suddenly make the economy better, so your criticism of that is way off base. pointing at a situation that has nothing to do with what I'm suggesting and then saying: "See, it doesn't work" is..... like a strawman or something.
cool stuff.
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On November 30 2012 05:10 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2012 17:32 BluePanther wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I had wanted to make a new thread about this, since it relates to more than just the US and isn't actually political debate, but a moderator thinks it's a blog and moved it. Since nobody actually reads those, I'll just put it in this thread despite it being slightly off-topic. I know this post rambles a little bit, but please bear with me -- the thought is not developed enough for me to write a super-organized outline of the ideas contained.
This is a story that will start with a little of who I am, what I think about, and eventually connect it to you, what you think, and set the table for a discussion on how to truly revolutionize freedom, democracy, government, and, to an extent capitalism—essentially the whole social world order. I have wanted to discuss this with you for some time, and the motivation to write this post finally hit me tonight. I never felt it fit in with any of the other political threads, but my hand has been forced here by the mods. This post is not US-centric.
Note: These are not predictions or even personal endorsements of the ideas contained within. It's merely an exercise of the mind at this point and time. This also has not been researched fully, despite my relative expertise in the subject. Please feel free to correct such mistakes in a productive manner.
First, My Musings:
Some may know me on these forums; many do not. I have been around recently commenting on political discussions, particularly the presidential elections. I have been rather attracted to the high amount of intelligent political discussions on these forums. They are both intelligent and civil, with viewpoints from around the world on delicate and contentious issues of both morality and practicality. This is why I write this discussion to you before I write to some academic publication: I want your thoughts.
I am a Republican (albeit a rather liberal and moderate one), and spent the last year working on a political campaign. While I kept it quiet as to whom I worked for in case we won (PR reasons as I would have been a Senate staffer), there is no real point anymore since we lost: I worked for Tommy Thompson in his bid to become a Senator for the State of Wisconsin. I was one of a dozen people that helped drive one of the very few moderate primary campaigns that overcame the (impressive) Tea Party power to make it to a general election. While we didn’t win the general election, I was able to be involved in shaping political discussions throughout my state. For this reason, I do not regret what I spent my time doing. I am very proud of both what we accomplished and the candidate I worked for. I do not agree with him on everything, but he’s honest, hardworking, and (unlike most politicians) sincerely cares about solutions and not popularity.
During this foray into politics, I learned a lot; most of it was interesting, yet some was downright depressing. What stuck out most to me was the amount of influence that a few individuals can exercise over government policy and the direction of public discussions. It's far more than even educated and involved citizens believe. I found it both astounding and frustrating. Legitimate political concerns are rarely discussed, yet one-issue voters are able to drive the public debate by concentration of topic and power in numbers. Single powerful entities (whether individual media members, interest groups, or single donors) can frame the public discussion so subtly that most citizens are completely unaware of what is happening. I found this troubling for many reasons, but mostly how substance of government is developed within representative election systems.
Back to me again. Outside of my political life, I finish my JD degree later this month. In other words, I’ll be a lawyer. However, unlike most lawyers, I specialize in governments--constitutional and structural theory, to be specific. I have a background in sociology and engineering, and it has assisted me in the study and critique of constitutions that are under consideration by new governments (Somalia and Egypt) to provide commentary on the practical social EFFECTS of said documents as drafted. I am essentially the academic link between a Constitutional Scholar and a Sociologist/Economist. While I likely won’t work in this field (nobody pays anyone to have their head in the cloud and most people in power don’t give a shit what someone like me has to say), I think it’s a topic that is not talked about enough amongst smart people.
I honestly believe that there is not enough discussion around an impending revolution in this topic. The reason the experts don’t talk about it isn’t a lack of interest; I honestly think most of them are unaware of it. Why? Because the driving force behind my discussion is something they are not experts in: technology and internet productivity. It’s difficult for even smart individuals to grasp the impending change if they cannot understand the factors and nuances of the driving force. Not that they cannot, but I doubt most Ivory Tower-types with such thoughts understand things such as programming, open-source cooperation, and internet subculture. That is one advantage this forum has—it is filled with politically educated individuals from around the world with an understanding of HOW the internet culture works and how technology can be harnessed for productive uses (even if it's currenly mostly used to produce the lulz). A mass of people on the internet with an idea or a goal can often fulfill it with astounding resourcefulness (see wikipedia). Ivory tower types just don’t get it (yes, I read what they write).
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Professor, has discussed this matter to a certain degree, but I think he’s missing the true implications of his ideas. Benkler (along with other experts) focuses on the economic implications of the internet’s networking productivity; he misses the drastic political implications.
Where am I going with this you might ask? Hang in there with me for a little bit. My curiosity dives into the more interesting parts of government: the why and the how. We (and by this I mean the Western Society) have developed a system where we discount from serious discussion anything that isn’t a constitutional democracy based on capitalist-based market principles. However, I think this cementing of ideas is rather short-sighted. Five hundred years ago or so, we as humanity did not embrace any major government without a single central figure who dominated every aspect of society. Fast-forward to today and we consider such an approach to be horrendously unfair and inefficient. It may have just been practical reasons more than philosophical reasons that led to this change, but that does not mean that government cannot change drastically over time and that said change will not result in better government structures.
As the saying goes, government is “by the people, for the people.” Yet we have developed a system where the people usually only have a say in one thing and only at one time—the voting for representatives on election day. Sure, this solves the “no taxation without representation” problem, and for many it appeases their desires for freedom. It has served us well in our transition from Dictatorial style governments to a system that allows more freedoms without being unstable. What this system does not represent, however, is an ideal system where the government is truly ‘by’ the people; it’s merely ‘for’ the people. Special interests and powerful individuals are capable of defining the discussion to such a great degree that I decline to agree with the assessment that government is truly ‘by’ the people. The way it works now is that solutions are proposed by powerful individuals or organizations and public opinion is noted. A solution is then imposed in a method that the population will accept. Sure, we vote on who gauges the public opinion, but our collective mass opinion is truly as far as the average citizen will go in their participation. Over time, this system has led to increased apathy and a feeling of disconnect from one's government as other methods of networking and communication have improved while the representation system has stood pat.
What I mean by this is, have you ever attempted to petition a government official? You may have realized that it is essentially futile unless you have an absolutely rabid base of single-issue pressure backed by special interests (see SOPA). But do you have a great idea for how to save the government money? Do you have a complaint about something that needs fixing? Do you have a problem with anything that the government could remedy? The truth is that when you write your elected representative a letter, it is ignored. They have an intern read it and draft a boring, non-comittal reply. They literally hire interns to do nothing but this. Your concern is not truly noted and will have no impact in government actions. It is completely ignored. Unfortunately, I think most people acknowledge this fact. And we’ve come to live with it.
What if you could act on your political ideas and solutoins?
Now on to the exciting discussion:
Today, when discussing government theory, most people ask, “Can make government better?” I think they are missing the point. The question that drives my inquiry is different. What we should be asking is, “Can we make a better government?”
This is not new. This question has been asked in the past. Communism came about from this very same discussion! It failed, and for good reasons (it ignored some inherent human tendencies and focused on economics). However, I think there is a new development that has the potential to open up discourse on this topic once again. It is something that we didn’t have prior to this decade. It is new and provides a base structure that permits government to function in ways that simply would have been inconceivable even ten years ago. I’m not talking about difficult to implement, but new developments that would have been so foreign that it would have been impossible to even have this conversation more than ten years ago. This new “thing” is the Internet. Social Media. Not Twitter of Facebook, but a level of connectivity and networking between individuals that has revolutionized our social lives, our economy, our world outlook, but as of yet has NOT revolutionized our government.
Is it possible for us to devise a system using technology and networking to develop a more efficient, more productive, and more representative government than the style the Western World has spent the last two centuries promoting and refining?
There are some things holding the idea back. Our generation (assuming you are under 40) uses personal digital devices daily, yet the older generation has not adopted and would resist change. But eventually the old people will die off and we will have a society that could not function without their PDAs and smartphones. I believe that while we may not be able to implement any serious changes for another 30 years, this roadblock should not prevent us from laying the theoretical groundwork for this eventual r/evolution.
Think about it:
- Pure democracy and voting from your phone on mundane issues during your bus ride to work
- A binding neighborhood teleconference/forum discussion and vote on how to deal with playground grafitti.
- Being able to snap a picture of a pothole and send it to your city works department through your smartphone without thinking about it. (GPS coordinates of pictures along with a note if you want to include one)
- Transferable votes instead of elected representatives
- Federal budgets crafted in a Wikipedia environment with input from thousands of ordinary people or more
It would be possible to devise political systems that require no representatives, no presidents, no mayors, no governors, no senators, no city councils, fewer bureaucracies. And do we really need most of that stuff? The truth is that already nobody gives a damn what is said on the floor of the House in the USA. The discussion is already held in the public communications sphere (both on TV and on the internet). Our opinions aren’t developed by listening to representative debates but rather by our debates with our peers. Yet the discussion on how to create a better government with less political party tension has always revolved around the assumption that we must have representative systems. What if we didn’t?
Such a system could theoretically be Government Lite™. A massive increase in efficiency combined with a massive decrease in burden that could create a government structure that makes our current representative democracy look antiquated by every measure. For too long, the debate has been a discussion of who should hold the power to do this or that and how economics should shape government. The idea that economics should not define government at all is foreign to most people who talk about these ideas, but the internet has already shown it has the power to transcend previously uncontested economic theories. Why can’t it transcend governmental theories?
My questions to you, TL.net, are simple ones in form but complicated in substance. What do you think is the next evolution in social government? If you don’t think it will happen, why not? What do you think about what I’ve written here? Can government be made more fluid with the help of networks? What do you see as potential benefits? What do you see as drawbacks? Do not limit yourself to one specific level of government. These ideas are actually probably better discussed at a local level due to the ability to experiment and would have more practical impact, but don't hesitate to look at the big picture either.
Thoughtful responses only, please. Do not respond with one-liners, as I would like to have an actual discussion on this musing. I see your point about ready access to information allowing for a streamlining of government, but what will it streamline into? Who will make the decisions? More importantly, regardless of the availability of information, what is to compel people to actually access and digest the information available to them? Basically, I'm not seeing how recent developments in information technology will replace current government systems that are in place. While it may make those systems more efficient (and not even this is guaranteed), it probably isn't going to lead to the kind of "revolutionary" development that you are contemplating.
What compels people to edit Wikipedia?
What compels someone to donate time to Mozilla or Linux?
How are volunteers and activists able to create a system that rivals industry behemoths such as Microsoft with a fraction of the production costs?
The answer is simple. Economics (as you learn it in 101) is not the only factor. While it is somewhat of a new observation within the academic world, there is proof that economics (basic supply/demand) alone cannot define the decisions of humans in all aspects. Now, I am a firm believer that the individual is still getting something out of their effort, but that there is something more at play than pure supply/demand. If you doubt me, read Yochai Benkler, “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm,” Yale Law Journal 112 (2002): 369-446. If you accept this premise, I do not understand how you can dismiss such a possibility of a government operating in a similar manner.
Now granted, I do no think you can or must devolve government completely. In fact, I think our current system can function within an interconnected society for a long while to come. I don't mean to give the impression that I'm a revolutionary or anything. I'm not. But as everyone can see, government satisfaction is dropping and I don't think it's necessarily because of mere economic issues. I think there is a growing lack of communication between the government/representatives and its constituents that lends to a level of dissatisfaction ("they aren't listening to me"). So the question I ask myself is this: can you remedy this within the current system. Based on my experience, I do not believe so.
This inevitably leads to my exercise of the mind in "how can we make people feel as if they have a stake in this?"
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On November 30 2012 06:01 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 05:49 xDaunt wrote:On November 30 2012 05:15 sam!zdat wrote:
Don't confuse the technological base with the political superstructure. It's not that IT will "replace" current government structures, because that would obviously be a category error. It's that IT will produce a new paradigm of governance that will replace the old paradigm. What this will be exactly is of course a matter still to be investigated - that's the point of doing political philosophy. Your bourgeois heroes did it in the 17th and 18th centuries, we can do it too. As much as I think that the philosophical underpinnings of American-style republicanism are revolutionary, I do not think that the political institutions themselves are that revolutionary. They are all largely borrowed and adopted from previous systems ranging from the ancient Greeks to 18th century Great Britain. The greeks have nothing to do with it, and it's part of the same revolution as 18th century britain...
In terms of institution borrowing, the classical government forms play a role to one degree or another in pretty much every Western government today. It is just a matter of how far up the family tree you want to go.
As for the philosophy, I wasn't strictly referring to American enlightenment thinkers. Obviously the British ones laid the foundation.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
base broadening doesn't have to broaden downward. broaden it into glorious mother cayman islands for all i care.
btw, the problem of government v private sector should be understood along lines of how that conflict has been defined in economics, that of centralized planning vs diffused information and resources. it's actually not that political per se, but an argument about efficient and effective organizational structure.
let's look at this bulletin of the mount pelerin society,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Pelerin_Society#Aims
1. "The analysis and exploration of the nature of the present crisis so as to bring home to others its essential moral and economic origins.
2. The redefinition of the functions of the state so as to distinguish more clearly between the totalitarian and the liberal order.
3. Methods of re-establishing the rule of law and of assuring its development in such manner that individuals and groups are not in a position to encroach upon the freedom of others and private rights are not allowed to become a basis of predatory power.
4. The possibility of establishing minimum standards by means not inimical to initiative and functioning of the market.
5. Methods of combating the misuse of history for the furtherance of creeds hostile to liberty.
6. The problem of the creation of an international order conducive to the safeguarding of peace and liberty and permitting the establishment of harmonious international economic relations."[2]
what's the problem with it? well, it sometimes ignored its own advice and thought guys like pinochet were alright because they supported private property. private property in the anglo world of liberal civil society stands for a different political value than what it stands for in traditional societies where it stands for entrenched interests and rent seeking. ignoring the prior distribution, a constant fault line mind you, is just a sign of ignorance. these things have to be empirically assessed and not assumed from first principles.
the "market" for its supporters is mainly about its diffusion of initiatives through private ownership of the moving parts, such that each part is able to move on its own. this observation is the key contribution from market thinkers. but, private property is also a rather primitive notion that operates at the level of dominion. it does not account for the exclusionary impact. (as a short example, animals peeing on a tree, or people putting a flag on a land, imagine themselves to be asserting control over the object. they don't think about "oh if i take this what will other people have left", it is a pretty short wired heuristic)
anyway the point is that private properties is more heavy handed than merely a mechanism of linking individual effort with individual rewards. on that narrow ground, there isn't much to object. but, it just incompletely describes itself. the effect it has on the level of private power, i.e. the power property itself exerts, is rather alien.
to raise the spectre of the gravity analogy. the most perfect world to a market purist is one with massless particles that interact solely governed by their internal laws. (perfect competition of guys with 0 market share) add in mass (various advantages, entrenched interests, market power) and things become totally different.
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On November 30 2012 05:49 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 05:15 sam!zdat wrote:
Don't confuse the technological base with the political superstructure. It's not that IT will "replace" current government structures, because that would obviously be a category error. It's that IT will produce a new paradigm of governance that will replace the old paradigm. What this will be exactly is of course a matter still to be investigated - that's the point of doing political philosophy. Your bourgeois heroes did it in the 17th and 18th centuries, we can do it too. As much as I think that the philosophical underpinnings of American-style republicanism are revolutionary, I do not think that the political institutions themselves are that revolutionary. They are all largely borrowed and adopted from previous systems ranging from the ancient Greeks to 18th century Great Britain.
I want to stress that this is a philosophical underpinning (network connectivity and open collaboration), not a simple change to the political institutions. While technology lets us fiddle with institutions in ways we could never have done before, there are some things that won't change, such as individuals who hold some level of power. This isn't a "mob rule" suggestion as much as it is a suggestion to let people get involved in productive ways.
I want to stress that I fully consider myself a fan of Capitalism. While most of this prior work is done by Progressives and Marxists (they focus on economy) and I believe many parts of their theories are correct, I disagree with their conclusions that it would be a more efficient economy. What I DO think though, is that it MAY provide a foundation for a more effective government.
I want to stress, that at the current time I do not think this could work in American federal government. However, I think on the municipal level in America, this would be an extremely effective and efficient method of governance.
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On November 30 2012 05:03 TeCh)PsylO wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 29 2012 17:32 BluePanther wrote:
I had wanted to make a new thread about this, since it relates to more than just the US and isn't actually political debate, but a moderator thinks it's a blog and moved it. Since nobody actually reads those, I'll just put it in this thread despite it being slightly off-topic. I know this post rambles a little bit, but please bear with me -- the thought is not developed enough for me to write a super-organized outline of the ideas contained.
This is a story that will start with a little of who I am, what I think about, and eventually connect it to you, what you think, and set the table for a discussion on how to truly revolutionize freedom, democracy, government, and, to an extent capitalism—essentially the whole social world order. I have wanted to discuss this with you for some time, and the motivation to write this post finally hit me tonight. I never felt it fit in with any of the other political threads, but my hand has been forced here by the mods. This post is not US-centric.
Note: These are not predictions or even personal endorsements of the ideas contained within. It's merely an exercise of the mind at this point and time. This also has not been researched fully, despite my relative expertise in the subject. Please feel free to correct such mistakes in a productive manner.
First, My Musings:
Some may know me on these forums; many do not. I have been around recently commenting on political discussions, particularly the presidential elections. I have been rather attracted to the high amount of intelligent political discussions on these forums. They are both intelligent and civil, with viewpoints from around the world on delicate and contentious issues of both morality and practicality. This is why I write this discussion to you before I write to some academic publication: I want your thoughts.
I am a Republican (albeit a rather liberal and moderate one), and spent the last year working on a political campaign. While I kept it quiet as to whom I worked for in case we won (PR reasons as I would have been a Senate staffer), there is no real point anymore since we lost: I worked for Tommy Thompson in his bid to become a Senator for the State of Wisconsin. I was one of a dozen people that helped drive one of the very few moderate primary campaigns that overcame the (impressive) Tea Party power to make it to a general election. While we didn’t win the general election, I was able to be involved in shaping political discussions throughout my state. For this reason, I do not regret what I spent my time doing. I am very proud of both what we accomplished and the candidate I worked for. I do not agree with him on everything, but he’s honest, hardworking, and (unlike most politicians) sincerely cares about solutions and not popularity.
During this foray into politics, I learned a lot; most of it was interesting, yet some was downright depressing. What stuck out most to me was the amount of influence that a few individuals can exercise over government policy and the direction of public discussions. It's far more than even educated and involved citizens believe. I found it both astounding and frustrating. Legitimate political concerns are rarely discussed, yet one-issue voters are able to drive the public debate by concentration of topic and power in numbers. Single powerful entities (whether individual media members, interest groups, or single donors) can frame the public discussion so subtly that most citizens are completely unaware of what is happening. I found this troubling for many reasons, but mostly how substance of government is developed within representative election systems.
Back to me again. Outside of my political life, I finish my JD degree later this month. In other words, I’ll be a lawyer. However, unlike most lawyers, I specialize in governments--constitutional and structural theory, to be specific. I have a background in sociology and engineering, and it has assisted me in the study and critique of constitutions that are under consideration by new governments (Somalia and Egypt) to provide commentary on the practical social EFFECTS of said documents as drafted. I am essentially the academic link between a Constitutional Scholar and a Sociologist/Economist. While I likely won’t work in this field (nobody pays anyone to have their head in the cloud and most people in power don’t give a shit what someone like me has to say), I think it’s a topic that is not talked about enough amongst smart people.
I honestly believe that there is not enough discussion around an impending revolution in this topic. The reason the experts don’t talk about it isn’t a lack of interest; I honestly think most of them are unaware of it. Why? Because the driving force behind my discussion is something they are not experts in: technology and internet productivity. It’s difficult for even smart individuals to grasp the impending change if they cannot understand the factors and nuances of the driving force. Not that they cannot, but I doubt most Ivory Tower-types with such thoughts understand things such as programming, open-source cooperation, and internet subculture. That is one advantage this forum has—it is filled with politically educated individuals from around the world with an understanding of HOW the internet culture works and how technology can be harnessed for productive uses (even if it's currenly mostly used to produce the lulz). A mass of people on the internet with an idea or a goal can often fulfill it with astounding resourcefulness (see wikipedia). Ivory tower types just don’t get it (yes, I read what they write).
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Professor, has discussed this matter to a certain degree, but I think he’s missing the true implications of his ideas. Benkler (along with other experts) focuses on the economic implications of the internet’s networking productivity; he misses the drastic political implications.
Where am I going with this you might ask? Hang in there with me for a little bit. My curiosity dives into the more interesting parts of government: the why and the how. We (and by this I mean the Western Society) have developed a system where we discount from serious discussion anything that isn’t a constitutional democracy based on capitalist-based market principles. However, I think this cementing of ideas is rather short-sighted. Five hundred years ago or so, we as humanity did not embrace any major government without a single central figure who dominated every aspect of society. Fast-forward to today and we consider such an approach to be horrendously unfair and inefficient. It may have just been practical reasons more than philosophical reasons that led to this change, but that does not mean that government cannot change drastically over time and that said change will not result in better government structures.
As the saying goes, government is “by the people, for the people.” Yet we have developed a system where the people usually only have a say in one thing and only at one time—the voting for representatives on election day. Sure, this solves the “no taxation without representation” problem, and for many it appeases their desires for freedom. It has served us well in our transition from Dictatorial style governments to a system that allows more freedoms without being unstable. What this system does not represent, however, is an ideal system where the government is truly ‘by’ the people; it’s merely ‘for’ the people. Special interests and powerful individuals are capable of defining the discussion to such a great degree that I decline to agree with the assessment that government is truly ‘by’ the people. The way it works now is that solutions are proposed by powerful individuals or organizations and public opinion is noted. A solution is then imposed in a method that the population will accept. Sure, we vote on who gauges the public opinion, but our collective mass opinion is truly as far as the average citizen will go in their participation. Over time, this system has led to increased apathy and a feeling of disconnect from one's government as other methods of networking and communication have improved while the representation system has stood pat.
What I mean by this is, have you ever attempted to petition a government official? You may have realized that it is essentially futile unless you have an absolutely rabid base of single-issue pressure backed by special interests (see SOPA). But do you have a great idea for how to save the government money? Do you have a complaint about something that needs fixing? Do you have a problem with anything that the government could remedy? The truth is that when you write your elected representative a letter, it is ignored. They have an intern read it and draft a boring, non-comittal reply. They literally hire interns to do nothing but this. Your concern is not truly noted and will have no impact in government actions. It is completely ignored. Unfortunately, I think most people acknowledge this fact. And we’ve come to live with it.
What if you could act on your political ideas and solutoins?
Now on to the exciting discussion:
Today, when discussing government theory, most people ask, “Can make government better?” I think they are missing the point. The question that drives my inquiry is different. What we should be asking is, “Can we make a better government?”
This is not new. This question has been asked in the past. Communism came about from this very same discussion! It failed, and for good reasons (it ignored some inherent human tendencies and focused on economics). However, I think there is a new development that has the potential to open up discourse on this topic once again. It is something that we didn’t have prior to this decade. It is new and provides a base structure that permits government to function in ways that simply would have been inconceivable even ten years ago. I’m not talking about difficult to implement, but new developments that would have been so foreign that it would have been impossible to even have this conversation more than ten years ago. This new “thing” is the Internet. Social Media. Not Twitter of Facebook, but a level of connectivity and networking between individuals that has revolutionized our social lives, our economy, our world outlook, but as of yet has NOT revolutionized our government.
Is it possible for us to devise a system using technology and networking to develop a more efficient, more productive, and more representative government than the style the Western World has spent the last two centuries promoting and refining?
There are some things holding the idea back. Our generation (assuming you are under 40) uses personal digital devices daily, yet the older generation has not adopted and would resist change. But eventually the old people will die off and we will have a society that could not function without their PDAs and smartphones. I believe that while we may not be able to implement any serious changes for another 30 years, this roadblock should not prevent us from laying the theoretical groundwork for this eventual r/evolution.
Think about it:
- Pure democracy and voting from your phone on mundane issues during your bus ride to work
- A binding neighborhood teleconference/forum discussion and vote on how to deal with playground grafitti.
- Being able to snap a picture of a pothole and send it to your city works department through your smartphone without thinking about it. (GPS coordinates of pictures along with a note if you want to include one)
- Transferable votes instead of elected representatives
- Federal budgets crafted in a Wikipedia environment with input from thousands of ordinary people or more
It would be possible to devise political systems that require no representatives, no presidents, no mayors, no governors, no senators, no city councils, fewer bureaucracies. And do we really need most of that stuff? The truth is that already nobody gives a damn what is said on the floor of the House in the USA. The discussion is already held in the public communications sphere (both on TV and on the internet). Our opinions aren’t developed by listening to representative debates but rather by our debates with our peers. Yet the discussion on how to create a better government with less political party tension has always revolved around the assumption that we must have representative systems. What if we didn’t?
Such a system could theoretically be Government Lite™. A massive increase in efficiency combined with a massive decrease in burden that could create a government structure that makes our current representative democracy look antiquated by every measure. For too long, the debate has been a discussion of who should hold the power to do this or that and how economics should shape government. The idea that economics should not define government at all is foreign to most people who talk about these ideas, but the internet has already shown it has the power to transcend previously uncontested economic theories. Why can’t it transcend governmental theories?
My questions to you, TL.net, are simple ones in form but complicated in substance. What do you think is the next evolution in social government? If you don’t think it will happen, why not? What do you think about what I’ve written here? Can government be made more fluid with the help of networks? What do you see as potential benefits? What do you see as drawbacks? Do not limit yourself to one specific level of government. These ideas are actually probably better discussed at a local level due to the ability to experiment and would have more practical impact, but don't hesitate to look at the big picture either.
Thoughtful responses only, please. Do not respond with one-liners, as I would like to have an actual discussion on this musing. As a musing, I appreciate your post and thoughtfulness, but my immediate reaction calls some key points into question. I question the power of social media, the impact you describe it would have in transforming a better government, and your discounting the importance of economics. As you mention, a lot of issues (such as pot holes) are a matter for the local government, and structurally these issues need to be discussed separately. There has been a lot of discussion, especially since the revolutions taking place in the Middle East, about the importance of social media. It is of my opinion that this importance has been grossly overstated. The process of organization and communication as a necessary component of revolution, or any change, has always happened without the internet. The internet brings efficiency, inclusion, and greater scale, but it does not change the root causes/need for change, the objectives of change, or help with the actual outcome (ie: at the end of the day, someone needs to fund, fight, or protest, all of which are not virtual realities). Syria, for example, just blacked out the internet. As noted in a recent Bloomberg cover story, the Syrian government was already monitoring political activists computers, and using it against them. The net effect of that we can't determine, but I can assure everyone that the revolution will continue. Maybe less efficiently, but maybe more efficiently as the government can not infiltrate communications as easily. Either way, a strong argument can be made that the impact of social media on change is overstated. In the same line of thinking, the examples that you gave about the internet changing the way we do government, are more examples of efficiency. Voting in an election on our phones is certainly more efficient that going to the local school gym or church and standing in line, but does that change the actual structure of government? The implication that the people would simply vote on every issues has 2 main drawbacks. One, people are not educated, informed, or prepared on every issue, and would still be as vulnerable to misinformation as they are now. Two, there are limited funds and resources to govern with, and the people as a whole all can't be managing the resources. For example, we can take a picture of a pot hole and send it to our city hall. What if there were many pot holes, and we could only fix 80% of them? How would we make that decision? People would simply vote for the pot holes that directly effect them, unless there was some campaign to educate people on the reasons why other pot holes would be more beneficial to fix. Then you would have agency problems, where local business (as an example), would try to inform people that the pot holes closest to them would be the most important. Essentially, we would end up with the same system we have now, just with more efficient (and possibly less secure) voting. This scenario leads to issues that you probably know more about than I (with a law background), about the right to free speech through campaign donations, political advocacy, etc... This is a law issue, but also an issue that refers to another point, about economics (which is my background, B.S. in economics). Economics isn't just about the expansion of GDP, inflation rates, etc... Economics is about choosing one option over another to achieve maximum utility, individually and collectively. The role that free markets play in the collective vs individual good is at the heart of debate about the role of government. The governments role, at its most basic level, is to provide what the free market can't, or to drive for a market equilibrium that the free market won't due to externalities. Even if the government was stripped down to simply national security and advancing interstate infrastructure such as highway systems, etc... economic decisions are still at the basis of the governments role. Generally speaking, people are simply uneducated about the political process. For example, here in Michigan there was a proposal on the ballot that would require any international bridge (ie: one about to be built into Windsor), would have to get a popular vote. The only reason this was on the ballot was because the owner of the current bridge paid millions of dollars to get it on the ballot and advocate for it, to protect his prophets. Surprisingly, not many people knew this, despite the fact that it was talked about in the news and the information was available on any website providing election based information such as fact check websites. The ignorance revolved around the issue was entirely the fault of the people that were ignorant, and they are the reason that the political system is so easy to manipulate. "People" want the government to fix a lot of problems, but don't want to pay for it, or be involved in it. The current political system, in my view, is corrupt, but the solution isn't to change the system, but for the people to actually engage in the system. The mechanisms to root out corruption are already in place, people just need to use them. On a positive note, the recent presidential election demonstrated that people are not entirely susceptible to manipulation. The republican party spent an astronomical amount of money to take down Obama, and Romney was still left, ironically, with only 47% of the vote. + Show Spoiler +
I think you bring up some good points, but you are slightly off target with what I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting a path that diverges from capitalism or free markets. Here is a post I wrote to someone else:
I wasn't only suggesting pure democracy. That is only just one possible form of government which could be greatly enhanced by such a system. Rather, think of it as an open-source project. Government done wiki-pedia style. Or a government done in the manner of Linux or Mozilla. A group of interested parties who want to build a better solution to a particular problem --- say immigration or something far more specific such as government policies on energy with regards to reducing excess energy production and the resulting waste. Government itself doesn't need to be done away with, but the functions of providing solutions could be crowd-sourced, in essence. This would remove a lot of bloat yet provide citizens with more hands-on government interaction.
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As an exercise of the mind, what if a town of 100 people decided to develop a governmental system that was contained entirely online yet had the force of law in fact? You could pay citizens per diem to log in and perform certain functions of government, should they be entirely necessary. You could forego costs such as a city hall meeting location, yet provide a far more effective local forum for discussion of issues that should be addressed.
Say someone wants a dog park. It has support of 45% of the population, 35% like the idea but want to hear more about the finances, and 20% oppose it. Right now, they would have to convince an alderman to propose it at a meeting and the only individuals with a direct say in the matter are 3 elected officials. If the 2 of the 3 alderman in the town of 100 people disagree, it doesn't happen, despite a 80% approval rating from the town as a whole. In this situation, a virtual government would facilitate the wishes of the people in a more direct and efficient manner than having to wait for a new and costly election. The initial votes on opinion, substance, the ensuing discussion of finances and observations of the population could all happen much quicker and much more efficiently. Those with more stake in the matter could be more involved in finding a solution and those not interested could let the other debate over the finer points.
Another example would be open-source alcohol permit renewals. The renewals requests are automatically processed, posted online, and given a window for comment. Without objection from X number of people, it is renewed automatically. If a certain threshold is reached, an online hearing is held on it and it can be pushed to further considerations of more formal government. Today much of this is done in the physical world, but costs, speed, and efficiency could all be improved by digitizing these interactions.
The idea isn't necessarily to replace government completely, but to create a more efficient way for government and people to interact. It increases participation if individuals believe they have a stake in it, and increased participation results in more satisfaction with government fairness. This may or may not involve a complete revamp of the political structure--I honestly don't know at this point.
I will say that it would be more practical at municipal levels than, say, the US federal government. At this point and time.
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On November 30 2012 06:34 BluePanther wrote:
I want to stress, that at the current time I do not think this could work in American federal government. However, I think on the municipal level in America, this would be an extremely effective and efficient method of governance.
Yes, and that's where you should start. I think you might be able to grow the new governance from the bottom up, although like you say not in the sort of naive mob rule advocated by fashion statement anarchists and the like
edit: @above bluepanther you are my new favorite
edit: lol there is a specter haunting the politics thread... the specter of the gravity analogy
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
umm, what do you think the various democratic activist movements are trying to accomplish? they are the practical manifestations of ground-up governance.
the moment that you realize your enemies are actually a long lost brother. cue drama music
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On November 30 2012 06:53 oneofthem wrote:
umm, what do you think the various democratic activist movements are trying to accomplish? they are the practical manifestations of ground-up governance.
the moment that you realize your enemies are actually a long lost brother. cue drama music
Pretty much all democratic, progressive, communist/marxist movements focus on economics in one way or another. My focus is on participation and collaboration. I don't think this idea I'm putting forth is necessarily a promotion of a particlar form of government; i think it could be effectively implemented as pure democracy just as easily as a transferable representative form of government or even within a dictatorship.
In other words, my discussion is about the means of effective government in today's society, not the end result of what said government would look like. I think this is enough to distinguish much of what I'm thinking from your suggested movements.
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On November 30 2012 06:42 BluePanther wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 05:03 TeCh)PsylO wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 29 2012 17:32 BluePanther wrote:
I had wanted to make a new thread about this, since it relates to more than just the US and isn't actually political debate, but a moderator thinks it's a blog and moved it. Since nobody actually reads those, I'll just put it in this thread despite it being slightly off-topic. I know this post rambles a little bit, but please bear with me -- the thought is not developed enough for me to write a super-organized outline of the ideas contained.
This is a story that will start with a little of who I am, what I think about, and eventually connect it to you, what you think, and set the table for a discussion on how to truly revolutionize freedom, democracy, government, and, to an extent capitalism—essentially the whole social world order. I have wanted to discuss this with you for some time, and the motivation to write this post finally hit me tonight. I never felt it fit in with any of the other political threads, but my hand has been forced here by the mods. This post is not US-centric.
Note: These are not predictions or even personal endorsements of the ideas contained within. It's merely an exercise of the mind at this point and time. This also has not been researched fully, despite my relative expertise in the subject. Please feel free to correct such mistakes in a productive manner.
First, My Musings:
Some may know me on these forums; many do not. I have been around recently commenting on political discussions, particularly the presidential elections. I have been rather attracted to the high amount of intelligent political discussions on these forums. They are both intelligent and civil, with viewpoints from around the world on delicate and contentious issues of both morality and practicality. This is why I write this discussion to you before I write to some academic publication: I want your thoughts.
I am a Republican (albeit a rather liberal and moderate one), and spent the last year working on a political campaign. While I kept it quiet as to whom I worked for in case we won (PR reasons as I would have been a Senate staffer), there is no real point anymore since we lost: I worked for Tommy Thompson in his bid to become a Senator for the State of Wisconsin. I was one of a dozen people that helped drive one of the very few moderate primary campaigns that overcame the (impressive) Tea Party power to make it to a general election. While we didn’t win the general election, I was able to be involved in shaping political discussions throughout my state. For this reason, I do not regret what I spent my time doing. I am very proud of both what we accomplished and the candidate I worked for. I do not agree with him on everything, but he’s honest, hardworking, and (unlike most politicians) sincerely cares about solutions and not popularity.
During this foray into politics, I learned a lot; most of it was interesting, yet some was downright depressing. What stuck out most to me was the amount of influence that a few individuals can exercise over government policy and the direction of public discussions. It's far more than even educated and involved citizens believe. I found it both astounding and frustrating. Legitimate political concerns are rarely discussed, yet one-issue voters are able to drive the public debate by concentration of topic and power in numbers. Single powerful entities (whether individual media members, interest groups, or single donors) can frame the public discussion so subtly that most citizens are completely unaware of what is happening. I found this troubling for many reasons, but mostly how substance of government is developed within representative election systems.
Back to me again. Outside of my political life, I finish my JD degree later this month. In other words, I’ll be a lawyer. However, unlike most lawyers, I specialize in governments--constitutional and structural theory, to be specific. I have a background in sociology and engineering, and it has assisted me in the study and critique of constitutions that are under consideration by new governments (Somalia and Egypt) to provide commentary on the practical social EFFECTS of said documents as drafted. I am essentially the academic link between a Constitutional Scholar and a Sociologist/Economist. While I likely won’t work in this field (nobody pays anyone to have their head in the cloud and most people in power don’t give a shit what someone like me has to say), I think it’s a topic that is not talked about enough amongst smart people.
I honestly believe that there is not enough discussion around an impending revolution in this topic. The reason the experts don’t talk about it isn’t a lack of interest; I honestly think most of them are unaware of it. Why? Because the driving force behind my discussion is something they are not experts in: technology and internet productivity. It’s difficult for even smart individuals to grasp the impending change if they cannot understand the factors and nuances of the driving force. Not that they cannot, but I doubt most Ivory Tower-types with such thoughts understand things such as programming, open-source cooperation, and internet subculture. That is one advantage this forum has—it is filled with politically educated individuals from around the world with an understanding of HOW the internet culture works and how technology can be harnessed for productive uses (even if it's currenly mostly used to produce the lulz). A mass of people on the internet with an idea or a goal can often fulfill it with astounding resourcefulness (see wikipedia). Ivory tower types just don’t get it (yes, I read what they write).
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Professor, has discussed this matter to a certain degree, but I think he’s missing the true implications of his ideas. Benkler (along with other experts) focuses on the economic implications of the internet’s networking productivity; he misses the drastic political implications.
Where am I going with this you might ask? Hang in there with me for a little bit. My curiosity dives into the more interesting parts of government: the why and the how. We (and by this I mean the Western Society) have developed a system where we discount from serious discussion anything that isn’t a constitutional democracy based on capitalist-based market principles. However, I think this cementing of ideas is rather short-sighted. Five hundred years ago or so, we as humanity did not embrace any major government without a single central figure who dominated every aspect of society. Fast-forward to today and we consider such an approach to be horrendously unfair and inefficient. It may have just been practical reasons more than philosophical reasons that led to this change, but that does not mean that government cannot change drastically over time and that said change will not result in better government structures.
As the saying goes, government is “by the people, for the people.” Yet we have developed a system where the people usually only have a say in one thing and only at one time—the voting for representatives on election day. Sure, this solves the “no taxation without representation” problem, and for many it appeases their desires for freedom. It has served us well in our transition from Dictatorial style governments to a system that allows more freedoms without being unstable. What this system does not represent, however, is an ideal system where the government is truly ‘by’ the people; it’s merely ‘for’ the people. Special interests and powerful individuals are capable of defining the discussion to such a great degree that I decline to agree with the assessment that government is truly ‘by’ the people. The way it works now is that solutions are proposed by powerful individuals or organizations and public opinion is noted. A solution is then imposed in a method that the population will accept. Sure, we vote on who gauges the public opinion, but our collective mass opinion is truly as far as the average citizen will go in their participation. Over time, this system has led to increased apathy and a feeling of disconnect from one's government as other methods of networking and communication have improved while the representation system has stood pat.
What I mean by this is, have you ever attempted to petition a government official? You may have realized that it is essentially futile unless you have an absolutely rabid base of single-issue pressure backed by special interests (see SOPA). But do you have a great idea for how to save the government money? Do you have a complaint about something that needs fixing? Do you have a problem with anything that the government could remedy? The truth is that when you write your elected representative a letter, it is ignored. They have an intern read it and draft a boring, non-comittal reply. They literally hire interns to do nothing but this. Your concern is not truly noted and will have no impact in government actions. It is completely ignored. Unfortunately, I think most people acknowledge this fact. And we’ve come to live with it.
What if you could act on your political ideas and solutoins?
Now on to the exciting discussion:
Today, when discussing government theory, most people ask, “Can make government better?” I think they are missing the point. The question that drives my inquiry is different. What we should be asking is, “Can we make a better government?”
This is not new. This question has been asked in the past. Communism came about from this very same discussion! It failed, and for good reasons (it ignored some inherent human tendencies and focused on economics). However, I think there is a new development that has the potential to open up discourse on this topic once again. It is something that we didn’t have prior to this decade. It is new and provides a base structure that permits government to function in ways that simply would have been inconceivable even ten years ago. I’m not talking about difficult to implement, but new developments that would have been so foreign that it would have been impossible to even have this conversation more than ten years ago. This new “thing” is the Internet. Social Media. Not Twitter of Facebook, but a level of connectivity and networking between individuals that has revolutionized our social lives, our economy, our world outlook, but as of yet has NOT revolutionized our government.
Is it possible for us to devise a system using technology and networking to develop a more efficient, more productive, and more representative government than the style the Western World has spent the last two centuries promoting and refining?
There are some things holding the idea back. Our generation (assuming you are under 40) uses personal digital devices daily, yet the older generation has not adopted and would resist change. But eventually the old people will die off and we will have a society that could not function without their PDAs and smartphones. I believe that while we may not be able to implement any serious changes for another 30 years, this roadblock should not prevent us from laying the theoretical groundwork for this eventual r/evolution.
Think about it:
- Pure democracy and voting from your phone on mundane issues during your bus ride to work
- A binding neighborhood teleconference/forum discussion and vote on how to deal with playground grafitti.
- Being able to snap a picture of a pothole and send it to your city works department through your smartphone without thinking about it. (GPS coordinates of pictures along with a note if you want to include one)
- Transferable votes instead of elected representatives
- Federal budgets crafted in a Wikipedia environment with input from thousands of ordinary people or more
It would be possible to devise political systems that require no representatives, no presidents, no mayors, no governors, no senators, no city councils, fewer bureaucracies. And do we really need most of that stuff? The truth is that already nobody gives a damn what is said on the floor of the House in the USA. The discussion is already held in the public communications sphere (both on TV and on the internet). Our opinions aren’t developed by listening to representative debates but rather by our debates with our peers. Yet the discussion on how to create a better government with less political party tension has always revolved around the assumption that we must have representative systems. What if we didn’t?
Such a system could theoretically be Government Lite™. A massive increase in efficiency combined with a massive decrease in burden that could create a government structure that makes our current representative democracy look antiquated by every measure. For too long, the debate has been a discussion of who should hold the power to do this or that and how economics should shape government. The idea that economics should not define government at all is foreign to most people who talk about these ideas, but the internet has already shown it has the power to transcend previously uncontested economic theories. Why can’t it transcend governmental theories?
My questions to you, TL.net, are simple ones in form but complicated in substance. What do you think is the next evolution in social government? If you don’t think it will happen, why not? What do you think about what I’ve written here? Can government be made more fluid with the help of networks? What do you see as potential benefits? What do you see as drawbacks? Do not limit yourself to one specific level of government. These ideas are actually probably better discussed at a local level due to the ability to experiment and would have more practical impact, but don't hesitate to look at the big picture either.
Thoughtful responses only, please. Do not respond with one-liners, as I would like to have an actual discussion on this musing. As a musing, I appreciate your post and thoughtfulness, but my immediate reaction calls some key points into question. I question the power of social media, the impact you describe it would have in transforming a better government, and your discounting the importance of economics. As you mention, a lot of issues (such as pot holes) are a matter for the local government, and structurally these issues need to be discussed separately. There has been a lot of discussion, especially since the revolutions taking place in the Middle East, about the importance of social media. It is of my opinion that this importance has been grossly overstated. The process of organization and communication as a necessary component of revolution, or any change, has always happened without the internet. The internet brings efficiency, inclusion, and greater scale, but it does not change the root causes/need for change, the objectives of change, or help with the actual outcome (ie: at the end of the day, someone needs to fund, fight, or protest, all of which are not virtual realities). Syria, for example, just blacked out the internet. As noted in a recent Bloomberg cover story, the Syrian government was already monitoring political activists computers, and using it against them. The net effect of that we can't determine, but I can assure everyone that the revolution will continue. Maybe less efficiently, but maybe more efficiently as the government can not infiltrate communications as easily. Either way, a strong argument can be made that the impact of social media on change is overstated. In the same line of thinking, the examples that you gave about the internet changing the way we do government, are more examples of efficiency. Voting in an election on our phones is certainly more efficient that going to the local school gym or church and standing in line, but does that change the actual structure of government? The implication that the people would simply vote on every issues has 2 main drawbacks. One, people are not educated, informed, or prepared on every issue, and would still be as vulnerable to misinformation as they are now. Two, there are limited funds and resources to govern with, and the people as a whole all can't be managing the resources. For example, we can take a picture of a pot hole and send it to our city hall. What if there were many pot holes, and we could only fix 80% of them? How would we make that decision? People would simply vote for the pot holes that directly effect them, unless there was some campaign to educate people on the reasons why other pot holes would be more beneficial to fix. Then you would have agency problems, where local business (as an example), would try to inform people that the pot holes closest to them would be the most important. Essentially, we would end up with the same system we have now, just with more efficient (and possibly less secure) voting. This scenario leads to issues that you probably know more about than I (with a law background), about the right to free speech through campaign donations, political advocacy, etc... This is a law issue, but also an issue that refers to another point, about economics (which is my background, B.S. in economics). Economics isn't just about the expansion of GDP, inflation rates, etc... Economics is about choosing one option over another to achieve maximum utility, individually and collectively. The role that free markets play in the collective vs individual good is at the heart of debate about the role of government. The governments role, at its most basic level, is to provide what the free market can't, or to drive for a market equilibrium that the free market won't due to externalities. Even if the government was stripped down to simply national security and advancing interstate infrastructure such as highway systems, etc... economic decisions are still at the basis of the governments role. Generally speaking, people are simply uneducated about the political process. For example, here in Michigan there was a proposal on the ballot that would require any international bridge (ie: one about to be built into Windsor), would have to get a popular vote. The only reason this was on the ballot was because the owner of the current bridge paid millions of dollars to get it on the ballot and advocate for it, to protect his prophets. Surprisingly, not many people knew this, despite the fact that it was talked about in the news and the information was available on any website providing election based information such as fact check websites. The ignorance revolved around the issue was entirely the fault of the people that were ignorant, and they are the reason that the political system is so easy to manipulate. "People" want the government to fix a lot of problems, but don't want to pay for it, or be involved in it. The current political system, in my view, is corrupt, but the solution isn't to change the system, but for the people to actually engage in the system. The mechanisms to root out corruption are already in place, people just need to use them. On a positive note, the recent presidential election demonstrated that people are not entirely susceptible to manipulation. The republican party spent an astronomical amount of money to take down Obama, and Romney was still left, ironically, with only 47% of the vote. + Show Spoiler + I think you bring up some good points, but you are slightly off target with what I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting a path that diverges from capitalism or free markets. Here is a post I wrote to someone else: I wasn't only suggesting pure democracy. That is only just one possible form of government which could be greatly enhanced by such a system. Rather, think of it as an open-source project. Government done wiki-pedia style. Or a government done in the manner of Linux or Mozilla. A group of interested parties who want to build a better solution to a particular problem --- say immigration or something far more specific such as government policies on energy with regards to reducing excess energy production and the resulting waste. Government itself doesn't need to be done away with, but the functions of providing solutions could be crowd-sourced, in essence. This would remove a lot of bloat yet provide citizens with more hands-on government interaction. ------------ As an exercise of the mind, what if a town of 100 people decided to develop a governmental system that was contained entirely online yet had the force of law in fact? You could pay citizens per diem to log in and perform certain functions of government, should they be entirely necessary. You could forego costs such as a city hall meeting location, yet provide a far more effective local forum for discussion of issues that should be addressed. Say someone wants a dog park. It has support of 45% of the population, 35% like the idea but want to hear more about the finances, and 20% oppose it. Right now, they would have to convince an alderman to propose it at a meeting and the only individuals with a direct say in the matter are 3 elected officials. If the 2 of the 3 alderman in the town of 100 people disagree, it doesn't happen, despite a 80% approval rating from the town as a whole. In this situation, a virtual government would facilitate the wishes of the people in a more direct and efficient manner than having to wait for a new and costly election. The initial votes on opinion, substance, the ensuing discussion of finances and observations of the population could all happen much quicker and much more efficiently. Those with more stake in the matter could be more involved in finding a solution and those not interested could let the other debate over the finer points. Another example would be open-source alcohol permit renewals. The renewals requests are automatically processed, posted online, and given a window for comment. Without objection from X number of people, it is renewed automatically. If a certain threshold is reached, an online hearing is held on it and it can be pushed to further considerations of more formal government. Today much of this is done in the physical world, but costs, speed, and efficiency could all be improved by digitizing these interactions. The idea isn't necessarily to replace government completely, but to create a more efficient way for government and people to interact. It increases participation if individuals believe they have a stake in it, and increased participation results in more satisfaction with government fairness. This may or may not involve a complete revamp of the political structure--I honestly don't know at this point. I will say that it would be more practical at municipal levels than, say, the US federal government. At this point and time.
Similar things are happening online, such as motions and the like. People can nowadays propose topics to be discussed and then receive secretary notes/reports from the (also open) municipal meetings. It's called e-government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government
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On November 30 2012 07:00 TS-Rupbar wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 06:42 BluePanther wrote:On November 30 2012 05:03 TeCh)PsylO wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 29 2012 17:32 BluePanther wrote:
I had wanted to make a new thread about this, since it relates to more than just the US and isn't actually political debate, but a moderator thinks it's a blog and moved it. Since nobody actually reads those, I'll just put it in this thread despite it being slightly off-topic. I know this post rambles a little bit, but please bear with me -- the thought is not developed enough for me to write a super-organized outline of the ideas contained.
This is a story that will start with a little of who I am, what I think about, and eventually connect it to you, what you think, and set the table for a discussion on how to truly revolutionize freedom, democracy, government, and, to an extent capitalism—essentially the whole social world order. I have wanted to discuss this with you for some time, and the motivation to write this post finally hit me tonight. I never felt it fit in with any of the other political threads, but my hand has been forced here by the mods. This post is not US-centric.
Note: These are not predictions or even personal endorsements of the ideas contained within. It's merely an exercise of the mind at this point and time. This also has not been researched fully, despite my relative expertise in the subject. Please feel free to correct such mistakes in a productive manner.
First, My Musings:
Some may know me on these forums; many do not. I have been around recently commenting on political discussions, particularly the presidential elections. I have been rather attracted to the high amount of intelligent political discussions on these forums. They are both intelligent and civil, with viewpoints from around the world on delicate and contentious issues of both morality and practicality. This is why I write this discussion to you before I write to some academic publication: I want your thoughts.
I am a Republican (albeit a rather liberal and moderate one), and spent the last year working on a political campaign. While I kept it quiet as to whom I worked for in case we won (PR reasons as I would have been a Senate staffer), there is no real point anymore since we lost: I worked for Tommy Thompson in his bid to become a Senator for the State of Wisconsin. I was one of a dozen people that helped drive one of the very few moderate primary campaigns that overcame the (impressive) Tea Party power to make it to a general election. While we didn’t win the general election, I was able to be involved in shaping political discussions throughout my state. For this reason, I do not regret what I spent my time doing. I am very proud of both what we accomplished and the candidate I worked for. I do not agree with him on everything, but he’s honest, hardworking, and (unlike most politicians) sincerely cares about solutions and not popularity.
During this foray into politics, I learned a lot; most of it was interesting, yet some was downright depressing. What stuck out most to me was the amount of influence that a few individuals can exercise over government policy and the direction of public discussions. It's far more than even educated and involved citizens believe. I found it both astounding and frustrating. Legitimate political concerns are rarely discussed, yet one-issue voters are able to drive the public debate by concentration of topic and power in numbers. Single powerful entities (whether individual media members, interest groups, or single donors) can frame the public discussion so subtly that most citizens are completely unaware of what is happening. I found this troubling for many reasons, but mostly how substance of government is developed within representative election systems.
Back to me again. Outside of my political life, I finish my JD degree later this month. In other words, I’ll be a lawyer. However, unlike most lawyers, I specialize in governments--constitutional and structural theory, to be specific. I have a background in sociology and engineering, and it has assisted me in the study and critique of constitutions that are under consideration by new governments (Somalia and Egypt) to provide commentary on the practical social EFFECTS of said documents as drafted. I am essentially the academic link between a Constitutional Scholar and a Sociologist/Economist. While I likely won’t work in this field (nobody pays anyone to have their head in the cloud and most people in power don’t give a shit what someone like me has to say), I think it’s a topic that is not talked about enough amongst smart people.
I honestly believe that there is not enough discussion around an impending revolution in this topic. The reason the experts don’t talk about it isn’t a lack of interest; I honestly think most of them are unaware of it. Why? Because the driving force behind my discussion is something they are not experts in: technology and internet productivity. It’s difficult for even smart individuals to grasp the impending change if they cannot understand the factors and nuances of the driving force. Not that they cannot, but I doubt most Ivory Tower-types with such thoughts understand things such as programming, open-source cooperation, and internet subculture. That is one advantage this forum has—it is filled with politically educated individuals from around the world with an understanding of HOW the internet culture works and how technology can be harnessed for productive uses (even if it's currenly mostly used to produce the lulz). A mass of people on the internet with an idea or a goal can often fulfill it with astounding resourcefulness (see wikipedia). Ivory tower types just don’t get it (yes, I read what they write).
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Professor, has discussed this matter to a certain degree, but I think he’s missing the true implications of his ideas. Benkler (along with other experts) focuses on the economic implications of the internet’s networking productivity; he misses the drastic political implications.
Where am I going with this you might ask? Hang in there with me for a little bit. My curiosity dives into the more interesting parts of government: the why and the how. We (and by this I mean the Western Society) have developed a system where we discount from serious discussion anything that isn’t a constitutional democracy based on capitalist-based market principles. However, I think this cementing of ideas is rather short-sighted. Five hundred years ago or so, we as humanity did not embrace any major government without a single central figure who dominated every aspect of society. Fast-forward to today and we consider such an approach to be horrendously unfair and inefficient. It may have just been practical reasons more than philosophical reasons that led to this change, but that does not mean that government cannot change drastically over time and that said change will not result in better government structures.
As the saying goes, government is “by the people, for the people.” Yet we have developed a system where the people usually only have a say in one thing and only at one time—the voting for representatives on election day. Sure, this solves the “no taxation without representation” problem, and for many it appeases their desires for freedom. It has served us well in our transition from Dictatorial style governments to a system that allows more freedoms without being unstable. What this system does not represent, however, is an ideal system where the government is truly ‘by’ the people; it’s merely ‘for’ the people. Special interests and powerful individuals are capable of defining the discussion to such a great degree that I decline to agree with the assessment that government is truly ‘by’ the people. The way it works now is that solutions are proposed by powerful individuals or organizations and public opinion is noted. A solution is then imposed in a method that the population will accept. Sure, we vote on who gauges the public opinion, but our collective mass opinion is truly as far as the average citizen will go in their participation. Over time, this system has led to increased apathy and a feeling of disconnect from one's government as other methods of networking and communication have improved while the representation system has stood pat.
What I mean by this is, have you ever attempted to petition a government official? You may have realized that it is essentially futile unless you have an absolutely rabid base of single-issue pressure backed by special interests (see SOPA). But do you have a great idea for how to save the government money? Do you have a complaint about something that needs fixing? Do you have a problem with anything that the government could remedy? The truth is that when you write your elected representative a letter, it is ignored. They have an intern read it and draft a boring, non-comittal reply. They literally hire interns to do nothing but this. Your concern is not truly noted and will have no impact in government actions. It is completely ignored. Unfortunately, I think most people acknowledge this fact. And we’ve come to live with it.
What if you could act on your political ideas and solutoins?
Now on to the exciting discussion:
Today, when discussing government theory, most people ask, “Can make government better?” I think they are missing the point. The question that drives my inquiry is different. What we should be asking is, “Can we make a better government?”
This is not new. This question has been asked in the past. Communism came about from this very same discussion! It failed, and for good reasons (it ignored some inherent human tendencies and focused on economics). However, I think there is a new development that has the potential to open up discourse on this topic once again. It is something that we didn’t have prior to this decade. It is new and provides a base structure that permits government to function in ways that simply would have been inconceivable even ten years ago. I’m not talking about difficult to implement, but new developments that would have been so foreign that it would have been impossible to even have this conversation more than ten years ago. This new “thing” is the Internet. Social Media. Not Twitter of Facebook, but a level of connectivity and networking between individuals that has revolutionized our social lives, our economy, our world outlook, but as of yet has NOT revolutionized our government.
Is it possible for us to devise a system using technology and networking to develop a more efficient, more productive, and more representative government than the style the Western World has spent the last two centuries promoting and refining?
There are some things holding the idea back. Our generation (assuming you are under 40) uses personal digital devices daily, yet the older generation has not adopted and would resist change. But eventually the old people will die off and we will have a society that could not function without their PDAs and smartphones. I believe that while we may not be able to implement any serious changes for another 30 years, this roadblock should not prevent us from laying the theoretical groundwork for this eventual r/evolution.
Think about it:
- Pure democracy and voting from your phone on mundane issues during your bus ride to work
- A binding neighborhood teleconference/forum discussion and vote on how to deal with playground grafitti.
- Being able to snap a picture of a pothole and send it to your city works department through your smartphone without thinking about it. (GPS coordinates of pictures along with a note if you want to include one)
- Transferable votes instead of elected representatives
- Federal budgets crafted in a Wikipedia environment with input from thousands of ordinary people or more
It would be possible to devise political systems that require no representatives, no presidents, no mayors, no governors, no senators, no city councils, fewer bureaucracies. And do we really need most of that stuff? The truth is that already nobody gives a damn what is said on the floor of the House in the USA. The discussion is already held in the public communications sphere (both on TV and on the internet). Our opinions aren’t developed by listening to representative debates but rather by our debates with our peers. Yet the discussion on how to create a better government with less political party tension has always revolved around the assumption that we must have representative systems. What if we didn’t?
Such a system could theoretically be Government Lite™. A massive increase in efficiency combined with a massive decrease in burden that could create a government structure that makes our current representative democracy look antiquated by every measure. For too long, the debate has been a discussion of who should hold the power to do this or that and how economics should shape government. The idea that economics should not define government at all is foreign to most people who talk about these ideas, but the internet has already shown it has the power to transcend previously uncontested economic theories. Why can’t it transcend governmental theories?
My questions to you, TL.net, are simple ones in form but complicated in substance. What do you think is the next evolution in social government? If you don’t think it will happen, why not? What do you think about what I’ve written here? Can government be made more fluid with the help of networks? What do you see as potential benefits? What do you see as drawbacks? Do not limit yourself to one specific level of government. These ideas are actually probably better discussed at a local level due to the ability to experiment and would have more practical impact, but don't hesitate to look at the big picture either.
Thoughtful responses only, please. Do not respond with one-liners, as I would like to have an actual discussion on this musing. As a musing, I appreciate your post and thoughtfulness, but my immediate reaction calls some key points into question. I question the power of social media, the impact you describe it would have in transforming a better government, and your discounting the importance of economics. As you mention, a lot of issues (such as pot holes) are a matter for the local government, and structurally these issues need to be discussed separately. There has been a lot of discussion, especially since the revolutions taking place in the Middle East, about the importance of social media. It is of my opinion that this importance has been grossly overstated. The process of organization and communication as a necessary component of revolution, or any change, has always happened without the internet. The internet brings efficiency, inclusion, and greater scale, but it does not change the root causes/need for change, the objectives of change, or help with the actual outcome (ie: at the end of the day, someone needs to fund, fight, or protest, all of which are not virtual realities). Syria, for example, just blacked out the internet. As noted in a recent Bloomberg cover story, the Syrian government was already monitoring political activists computers, and using it against them. The net effect of that we can't determine, but I can assure everyone that the revolution will continue. Maybe less efficiently, but maybe more efficiently as the government can not infiltrate communications as easily. Either way, a strong argument can be made that the impact of social media on change is overstated. In the same line of thinking, the examples that you gave about the internet changing the way we do government, are more examples of efficiency. Voting in an election on our phones is certainly more efficient that going to the local school gym or church and standing in line, but does that change the actual structure of government? The implication that the people would simply vote on every issues has 2 main drawbacks. One, people are not educated, informed, or prepared on every issue, and would still be as vulnerable to misinformation as they are now. Two, there are limited funds and resources to govern with, and the people as a whole all can't be managing the resources. For example, we can take a picture of a pot hole and send it to our city hall. What if there were many pot holes, and we could only fix 80% of them? How would we make that decision? People would simply vote for the pot holes that directly effect them, unless there was some campaign to educate people on the reasons why other pot holes would be more beneficial to fix. Then you would have agency problems, where local business (as an example), would try to inform people that the pot holes closest to them would be the most important. Essentially, we would end up with the same system we have now, just with more efficient (and possibly less secure) voting. This scenario leads to issues that you probably know more about than I (with a law background), about the right to free speech through campaign donations, political advocacy, etc... This is a law issue, but also an issue that refers to another point, about economics (which is my background, B.S. in economics). Economics isn't just about the expansion of GDP, inflation rates, etc... Economics is about choosing one option over another to achieve maximum utility, individually and collectively. The role that free markets play in the collective vs individual good is at the heart of debate about the role of government. The governments role, at its most basic level, is to provide what the free market can't, or to drive for a market equilibrium that the free market won't due to externalities. Even if the government was stripped down to simply national security and advancing interstate infrastructure such as highway systems, etc... economic decisions are still at the basis of the governments role. Generally speaking, people are simply uneducated about the political process. For example, here in Michigan there was a proposal on the ballot that would require any international bridge (ie: one about to be built into Windsor), would have to get a popular vote. The only reason this was on the ballot was because the owner of the current bridge paid millions of dollars to get it on the ballot and advocate for it, to protect his prophets. Surprisingly, not many people knew this, despite the fact that it was talked about in the news and the information was available on any website providing election based information such as fact check websites. The ignorance revolved around the issue was entirely the fault of the people that were ignorant, and they are the reason that the political system is so easy to manipulate. "People" want the government to fix a lot of problems, but don't want to pay for it, or be involved in it. The current political system, in my view, is corrupt, but the solution isn't to change the system, but for the people to actually engage in the system. The mechanisms to root out corruption are already in place, people just need to use them. On a positive note, the recent presidential election demonstrated that people are not entirely susceptible to manipulation. The republican party spent an astronomical amount of money to take down Obama, and Romney was still left, ironically, with only 47% of the vote. + Show Spoiler + I think you bring up some good points, but you are slightly off target with what I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting a path that diverges from capitalism or free markets. Here is a post I wrote to someone else: I wasn't only suggesting pure democracy. That is only just one possible form of government which could be greatly enhanced by such a system. Rather, think of it as an open-source project. Government done wiki-pedia style. Or a government done in the manner of Linux or Mozilla. A group of interested parties who want to build a better solution to a particular problem --- say immigration or something far more specific such as government policies on energy with regards to reducing excess energy production and the resulting waste. Government itself doesn't need to be done away with, but the functions of providing solutions could be crowd-sourced, in essence. This would remove a lot of bloat yet provide citizens with more hands-on government interaction. ------------ As an exercise of the mind, what if a town of 100 people decided to develop a governmental system that was contained entirely online yet had the force of law in fact? You could pay citizens per diem to log in and perform certain functions of government, should they be entirely necessary. You could forego costs such as a city hall meeting location, yet provide a far more effective local forum for discussion of issues that should be addressed. Say someone wants a dog park. It has support of 45% of the population, 35% like the idea but want to hear more about the finances, and 20% oppose it. Right now, they would have to convince an alderman to propose it at a meeting and the only individuals with a direct say in the matter are 3 elected officials. If the 2 of the 3 alderman in the town of 100 people disagree, it doesn't happen, despite a 80% approval rating from the town as a whole. In this situation, a virtual government would facilitate the wishes of the people in a more direct and efficient manner than having to wait for a new and costly election. The initial votes on opinion, substance, the ensuing discussion of finances and observations of the population could all happen much quicker and much more efficiently. Those with more stake in the matter could be more involved in finding a solution and those not interested could let the other debate over the finer points. Another example would be open-source alcohol permit renewals. The renewals requests are automatically processed, posted online, and given a window for comment. Without objection from X number of people, it is renewed automatically. If a certain threshold is reached, an online hearing is held on it and it can be pushed to further considerations of more formal government. Today much of this is done in the physical world, but costs, speed, and efficiency could all be improved by digitizing these interactions. The idea isn't necessarily to replace government completely, but to create a more efficient way for government and people to interact. It increases participation if individuals believe they have a stake in it, and increased participation results in more satisfaction with government fairness. This may or may not involve a complete revamp of the political structure--I honestly don't know at this point. I will say that it would be more practical at municipal levels than, say, the US federal government. At this point and time. Similar things are happening online, such as motions and the like. People can nowadays propose topics to be discussed and then receive secretary notes/reports from the (also open) municipal meetings. It's called e-government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government
If you were to build a fully functioning "e-government" what would it look like?
I'm not talking the simple adoption of technology into governance, but building up governance with these technologies as a base.
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On November 30 2012 05:56 TheFrankOne wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 04:43 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 30 2012 01:45 TheFrankOne wrote:On November 30 2012 00:48 sc2superfan101 wrote:On November 29 2012 11:37 TheFrankOne wrote:On November 29 2012 10:18 sc2superfan101 wrote:
@kwizach
okay, but do you have the actual document? I'm looking for it right now, and I can't find it. I don't want to make a judgement about something I haven't read.
and the Republican plan is actually to cut massive amounts of entitlement programs, reform everything, simplify the tax-code and lower the rates substantially, and slash spending to a fraction of what it is.
the Democrat plan is to substantially raise taxes on the wealthy (and thus everyone else), eliminate the loopholes and deductions (further raising taxes), and increase spending substantially.
so the Republicans have come up with a plan that would cut a bit, make some reforms, reduce spending and in return we will expand the tax-base and lower rates slightly. there would still be a net increase in taxes, so this would even technically be Republicans breaking their pledge, but pretty much all Republicans are willing to accept that. so we would be giving you higher taxes, but we want cuts in spending because that is where the problem is. and no, we won't and shouldn't just vote to raise taxes ridiculously the wealthy because that hurts the economy. we're not going to hurt the economy to satisfy some weird anti-rich fetish that the Democrats have gotten on lately.
if Obama is willing to make substantial cuts, and is willing to sacrifice substantially raising taxes on the wealthy, then let him craft a bill and send it to Congress to sign. Republicans would go for it, if he actually made serious cuts.
it's not fair that Obama wins, declares a mandate, says that he is in the driver seat, and then blames Republicans for driving the car toward the cliff. He's the one behind the wheel, he's the driver. let him craft the bill that Republicans can sign without it being political suicide and then he can talk about obstructionism. not before. This argument of "broaden the base and cut all rates" is horrible and ignores the basic driver of our economy. The US economy is driven by consumption but you sit there and call for base broadening, wonderful code for increasing the proportion of taxes paid by lower income individuals. Increasing taxes on the rich, according to the Congressional Research service has little impact on the economy. I'm not even going to listen to any argument about "investment" because money is cheap right now but thecredit markets are still full of people deleveraging, not borrowing more. So please explain to me why gutting our automatic stabilizers that keep our economy running and following the wonderful path the UK is going down is good for us. The weird fetish is how far Republicans are willing to go to protect a few rich people from a small tax increase while clamoring about debts and calling for tax rate cuts. (Its that weird, since they need those sweet campaign dollars) "We're to far in debt! We need tax cuts!" Is ludicrous, the truth is that raising taxes on anyone is bad for the economy, but cutting them for the rich is one of the least stimulative things and raising them on the poor is one of the worst things to do for the economy but that's what you want. Look at studies on minimum wage laws based on empirical data instead of theoretical models for proof that giving low wage earners more is good for the economy. Obama should not make the serious cuts Republicans want because it's insane to cut spending right now. Our interest payments on new debt barely keep pace with inflation so there's obviously no real debt crisis. Every plan the Republicans call serious cuts revenues more than spending anyways, leaving us still with a big fat deficit but more money to the rich and less of a social safety net with an excuse to do the same in the near future: that deficit they left in place. What I really want to know is why austerity is good in the US even though it has failed badly to meet even conservative projections in the UK. economies aren't driven by consumption though, at least, not primarily. and yes, broadening the base would increase the share of taxes held by the lower income families and individuals. the top % already pays a disproportionate amount in taxes as compared to their share of the wealth, so I don't see why equalizing that would be a bad idea. ideally, we would cut taxes on everyone, but Dems want tax hikes, so we'll give them some. people aren't lending because interest rates are being kept artificially low. this is going to (and is) causing another bubble. minimum wage is an example of the failure inherent with trying to manipulate the market. minimum wage laws stagnate wages and actually push out the poor and the young from low income entry-level jobs. poverty hasn't been alleviated by the ever-increasing minimum wage, and prices haven't dropped. they've risen, along with inflation, debt, and entitlement spending. even you agree that cutting taxes on everyone will help the economy, yet you still argue for taxing the rich more. you acknowledge that it's not about helping the economy, which leads me to believe there is another reason for it. besides, our problem isn't revenue, it's spending. we can't keep spending at these ridiculous levels even if we tax the rich completely dry. something has to be cut and it's going to have to be mainly spending. increasing taxes will hurt the economy and will actually give us less revenue; lowering taxes or keeping them low will actually increase revenue when the economy gets started again, which it will if we stop trying to force a bubble. Our economy is driven by consumption: More than 70% of what the U.S. produces is for personal consumption. In 2011, $10.726 trillion of the $15.094 trillion produced went toward household purchases. The BEA sub-divides personal consumption expenditures into goods and services. (http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/f/GDP_Components.htm) It's not like the supply of consumption goods is why they are purchased, if consumer purchases make up 70% of the economy, I think its fair to say that consumer demand drives the economy. Removing the progressiveness of the income tax system is a terrible idea, for ethical reasons, for practical reasons (MPC, marginal utility of income), and because the poor already face benefits losses which are an effective marginal tax, Mankiw (top Romney economic advisor) said the US practically has a flat tax. People aren't lending because rates are low? Do you believe in Say's Law? People aren't borrowing because of widespread deleveraging and because of more stringent credit markets. When you actually control for other variables, entitlement spending isn't up much from the mid 60s, inflation has been on target for decades and the minimum wage has not caused a drop in employment when done well. http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP217.pdfIn the US, this is not the case because we do those stupid lump sum increases when we feel like it which is the best way to negatively impact employment. Britain has a board that raises it a few cents every year, much better system. Also, don't put words in my mouth, I never called for taxes on the rich, I said taxing the rich has less of a drag on the economy than gutting our automatic stabilizers and increasing the tax burden of the poor. What I said was that the kind of austerity program you are calling for has been done in Britain and it has failed miserably so we shouldn't be doing one here. They point to their bond yields and say "Look what we did! It's working!" but they are back in a recession and the US has bond yields at about the same rates. Please don't try to push your horrible tax revenue argument on me. Tax cuts do not pay for themselves, not now, not ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgpOmkHZxQU (Check out Greenspan's opinion on the matter) http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/2276/no-gov-pawlenty-tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves(Breaks down the Regan and Bush tax cuts, there is offsetting but they don't increase revenue, that's just wrong.) You still have't done anything to discount my analogy with Britain. Why I think your argument is crazy in one chart: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-us-vs-uk-growth-2012-4@DeepElemBlues: I would more go for the whole marginal utility of income thing to justify it on ethical grounds, plus that whole transfer payments report that lays out the effective marginal tax rates of low income people. They "pay" by getting less from the government as they earn more. I have to disagree with a few points you made. First, entitlement spending is WAY up, both in inflation adjusted per capita terms and percent of GDP terms and will continue to rise under current law due to baby boomers retiring. Second, counting a benefit reduction as a tax (as the transfer payment report did) has no merit beyond the scope of the paper. Third, while low interest rates are certainly warranted there's still room for criticism here. Low rates aren't a free lunch - those who rely on rates for income (retirees, pension funds, insurance companies, etc.) have all seen their income fall because of low rates ( link). Also the low rates are making it harder for lenders to earn a decent spread on their loans. I have no idea if its had much of an impact yet but its something to worry about going forward. Well I can't find the articles I was reading on the welfare state so this lacks a source , and it has grown but as you can see from the chart, a significant portion of the growth is healthcare costs which have been up across the industry well above inflation and there is a spike during this recession which is to be expected. The moral of the story is I have no sources and I do agree it has grown. On your second point: Counting a benefit reduction as an effective tax is proper accounting. From Mankiw's Blog: "The bottom line is that the average household now faces an effective marginal tax rate of 30 percent. In 2014, after various temporary tax provisions have expired and the newly passed health insurance subsidies go into effect, the average effective marginal tax rate will rise to 35 percent." From Cochrane's blog: "if you receive a benefit from the government that phases out with income, so every dollar of income above (say) $30,000 reduces your benefit by 50 cents, then you face a 50 percent marginal tax rate even if you pay no "taxes" at all. Taxes and benefits -- both in level and on the margin -- need to be considered together." It really is the effective marginal tax rate that they face according to those guys. There is a lot of merit to that approach when looking at tradeoffs faced in the labor market. If you increase taxes but don't want people to lose their standard of living, you have to make up the difference with more transfer payments, which are inefficient. If you say "fuck their standard of living" the difference no longer matters, but I'm not sure what Blues was really arguing there, just wanted to say it makes no sense to tax the poor and then give them more benefits to make up the difference. Which is why I am against "base broadening" because I think our safety net is not that extravagant but overall at an okay place. Third: Yes, those people are hurt by low rates, no argument here, but banks seem to be doing okay, their net interest income actually increased from 07-10 because they paid less and charged more, their spreads are protected by the decreases in their funding costs. Their could, theoretically be an impact as this trend continues since their money is so cheap right now it can't get much cheaper, but so far, so good for them. It turns out, their lowest spreads in 20 yeears were in 2006. I'm not shedding any tears for the banks, they seem okay. Besides, this deleveraging by households should (i hope) stop soon which should pick up loan volume and make up for the difference as funds stay on the lower bound. http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/DBR_INTERNET_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000288493/Low interest rates pressuring US bank margins.pdf
As far as considering a loss of a benefit as part of the effective tax rate goes - it really depends on the context. If we're talking about incentives to work then treating a loss of a benefit as a tax makes perfect intuitive sense. Its also a great way to put conservatives on the same page as liberals "you understand the negative impact of taxes, right? well, take a look at this..." and then a light bulb goes off.
As far as the progressiveness of the tax goes though, I don't think it makes as much sense. Obviously someone paying negative taxes and receiving benefits, even after some benefits are lost, is not on the bad end of the progressive taxation stick. That said, its still useful in a tax and spend redistribution context since the benefits a poor person receives can vary wildly due to small changes in gross income.
I won't argue with you about banks - they're a-holes 
Edit: you also made a comment before about minimum wages - you might like this article: Moderate Minimum Wages can do More Good than Harm
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On November 30 2012 07:14 BluePanther wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2012 07:00 TS-Rupbar wrote:On November 30 2012 06:42 BluePanther wrote:On November 30 2012 05:03 TeCh)PsylO wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 29 2012 17:32 BluePanther wrote:
I had wanted to make a new thread about this, since it relates to more than just the US and isn't actually political debate, but a moderator thinks it's a blog and moved it. Since nobody actually reads those, I'll just put it in this thread despite it being slightly off-topic. I know this post rambles a little bit, but please bear with me -- the thought is not developed enough for me to write a super-organized outline of the ideas contained.
This is a story that will start with a little of who I am, what I think about, and eventually connect it to you, what you think, and set the table for a discussion on how to truly revolutionize freedom, democracy, government, and, to an extent capitalism—essentially the whole social world order. I have wanted to discuss this with you for some time, and the motivation to write this post finally hit me tonight. I never felt it fit in with any of the other political threads, but my hand has been forced here by the mods. This post is not US-centric.
Note: These are not predictions or even personal endorsements of the ideas contained within. It's merely an exercise of the mind at this point and time. This also has not been researched fully, despite my relative expertise in the subject. Please feel free to correct such mistakes in a productive manner.
First, My Musings:
Some may know me on these forums; many do not. I have been around recently commenting on political discussions, particularly the presidential elections. I have been rather attracted to the high amount of intelligent political discussions on these forums. They are both intelligent and civil, with viewpoints from around the world on delicate and contentious issues of both morality and practicality. This is why I write this discussion to you before I write to some academic publication: I want your thoughts.
I am a Republican (albeit a rather liberal and moderate one), and spent the last year working on a political campaign. While I kept it quiet as to whom I worked for in case we won (PR reasons as I would have been a Senate staffer), there is no real point anymore since we lost: I worked for Tommy Thompson in his bid to become a Senator for the State of Wisconsin. I was one of a dozen people that helped drive one of the very few moderate primary campaigns that overcame the (impressive) Tea Party power to make it to a general election. While we didn’t win the general election, I was able to be involved in shaping political discussions throughout my state. For this reason, I do not regret what I spent my time doing. I am very proud of both what we accomplished and the candidate I worked for. I do not agree with him on everything, but he’s honest, hardworking, and (unlike most politicians) sincerely cares about solutions and not popularity.
During this foray into politics, I learned a lot; most of it was interesting, yet some was downright depressing. What stuck out most to me was the amount of influence that a few individuals can exercise over government policy and the direction of public discussions. It's far more than even educated and involved citizens believe. I found it both astounding and frustrating. Legitimate political concerns are rarely discussed, yet one-issue voters are able to drive the public debate by concentration of topic and power in numbers. Single powerful entities (whether individual media members, interest groups, or single donors) can frame the public discussion so subtly that most citizens are completely unaware of what is happening. I found this troubling for many reasons, but mostly how substance of government is developed within representative election systems.
Back to me again. Outside of my political life, I finish my JD degree later this month. In other words, I’ll be a lawyer. However, unlike most lawyers, I specialize in governments--constitutional and structural theory, to be specific. I have a background in sociology and engineering, and it has assisted me in the study and critique of constitutions that are under consideration by new governments (Somalia and Egypt) to provide commentary on the practical social EFFECTS of said documents as drafted. I am essentially the academic link between a Constitutional Scholar and a Sociologist/Economist. While I likely won’t work in this field (nobody pays anyone to have their head in the cloud and most people in power don’t give a shit what someone like me has to say), I think it’s a topic that is not talked about enough amongst smart people.
I honestly believe that there is not enough discussion around an impending revolution in this topic. The reason the experts don’t talk about it isn’t a lack of interest; I honestly think most of them are unaware of it. Why? Because the driving force behind my discussion is something they are not experts in: technology and internet productivity. It’s difficult for even smart individuals to grasp the impending change if they cannot understand the factors and nuances of the driving force. Not that they cannot, but I doubt most Ivory Tower-types with such thoughts understand things such as programming, open-source cooperation, and internet subculture. That is one advantage this forum has—it is filled with politically educated individuals from around the world with an understanding of HOW the internet culture works and how technology can be harnessed for productive uses (even if it's currenly mostly used to produce the lulz). A mass of people on the internet with an idea or a goal can often fulfill it with astounding resourcefulness (see wikipedia). Ivory tower types just don’t get it (yes, I read what they write).
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Professor, has discussed this matter to a certain degree, but I think he’s missing the true implications of his ideas. Benkler (along with other experts) focuses on the economic implications of the internet’s networking productivity; he misses the drastic political implications.
Where am I going with this you might ask? Hang in there with me for a little bit. My curiosity dives into the more interesting parts of government: the why and the how. We (and by this I mean the Western Society) have developed a system where we discount from serious discussion anything that isn’t a constitutional democracy based on capitalist-based market principles. However, I think this cementing of ideas is rather short-sighted. Five hundred years ago or so, we as humanity did not embrace any major government without a single central figure who dominated every aspect of society. Fast-forward to today and we consider such an approach to be horrendously unfair and inefficient. It may have just been practical reasons more than philosophical reasons that led to this change, but that does not mean that government cannot change drastically over time and that said change will not result in better government structures.
As the saying goes, government is “by the people, for the people.” Yet we have developed a system where the people usually only have a say in one thing and only at one time—the voting for representatives on election day. Sure, this solves the “no taxation without representation” problem, and for many it appeases their desires for freedom. It has served us well in our transition from Dictatorial style governments to a system that allows more freedoms without being unstable. What this system does not represent, however, is an ideal system where the government is truly ‘by’ the people; it’s merely ‘for’ the people. Special interests and powerful individuals are capable of defining the discussion to such a great degree that I decline to agree with the assessment that government is truly ‘by’ the people. The way it works now is that solutions are proposed by powerful individuals or organizations and public opinion is noted. A solution is then imposed in a method that the population will accept. Sure, we vote on who gauges the public opinion, but our collective mass opinion is truly as far as the average citizen will go in their participation. Over time, this system has led to increased apathy and a feeling of disconnect from one's government as other methods of networking and communication have improved while the representation system has stood pat.
What I mean by this is, have you ever attempted to petition a government official? You may have realized that it is essentially futile unless you have an absolutely rabid base of single-issue pressure backed by special interests (see SOPA). But do you have a great idea for how to save the government money? Do you have a complaint about something that needs fixing? Do you have a problem with anything that the government could remedy? The truth is that when you write your elected representative a letter, it is ignored. They have an intern read it and draft a boring, non-comittal reply. They literally hire interns to do nothing but this. Your concern is not truly noted and will have no impact in government actions. It is completely ignored. Unfortunately, I think most people acknowledge this fact. And we’ve come to live with it.
What if you could act on your political ideas and solutoins?
Now on to the exciting discussion:
Today, when discussing government theory, most people ask, “Can make government better?” I think they are missing the point. The question that drives my inquiry is different. What we should be asking is, “Can we make a better government?”
This is not new. This question has been asked in the past. Communism came about from this very same discussion! It failed, and for good reasons (it ignored some inherent human tendencies and focused on economics). However, I think there is a new development that has the potential to open up discourse on this topic once again. It is something that we didn’t have prior to this decade. It is new and provides a base structure that permits government to function in ways that simply would have been inconceivable even ten years ago. I’m not talking about difficult to implement, but new developments that would have been so foreign that it would have been impossible to even have this conversation more than ten years ago. This new “thing” is the Internet. Social Media. Not Twitter of Facebook, but a level of connectivity and networking between individuals that has revolutionized our social lives, our economy, our world outlook, but as of yet has NOT revolutionized our government.
Is it possible for us to devise a system using technology and networking to develop a more efficient, more productive, and more representative government than the style the Western World has spent the last two centuries promoting and refining?
There are some things holding the idea back. Our generation (assuming you are under 40) uses personal digital devices daily, yet the older generation has not adopted and would resist change. But eventually the old people will die off and we will have a society that could not function without their PDAs and smartphones. I believe that while we may not be able to implement any serious changes for another 30 years, this roadblock should not prevent us from laying the theoretical groundwork for this eventual r/evolution.
Think about it:
- Pure democracy and voting from your phone on mundane issues during your bus ride to work
- A binding neighborhood teleconference/forum discussion and vote on how to deal with playground grafitti.
- Being able to snap a picture of a pothole and send it to your city works department through your smartphone without thinking about it. (GPS coordinates of pictures along with a note if you want to include one)
- Transferable votes instead of elected representatives
- Federal budgets crafted in a Wikipedia environment with input from thousands of ordinary people or more
It would be possible to devise political systems that require no representatives, no presidents, no mayors, no governors, no senators, no city councils, fewer bureaucracies. And do we really need most of that stuff? The truth is that already nobody gives a damn what is said on the floor of the House in the USA. The discussion is already held in the public communications sphere (both on TV and on the internet). Our opinions aren’t developed by listening to representative debates but rather by our debates with our peers. Yet the discussion on how to create a better government with less political party tension has always revolved around the assumption that we must have representative systems. What if we didn’t?
Such a system could theoretically be Government Lite™. A massive increase in efficiency combined with a massive decrease in burden that could create a government structure that makes our current representative democracy look antiquated by every measure. For too long, the debate has been a discussion of who should hold the power to do this or that and how economics should shape government. The idea that economics should not define government at all is foreign to most people who talk about these ideas, but the internet has already shown it has the power to transcend previously uncontested economic theories. Why can’t it transcend governmental theories?
My questions to you, TL.net, are simple ones in form but complicated in substance. What do you think is the next evolution in social government? If you don’t think it will happen, why not? What do you think about what I’ve written here? Can government be made more fluid with the help of networks? What do you see as potential benefits? What do you see as drawbacks? Do not limit yourself to one specific level of government. These ideas are actually probably better discussed at a local level due to the ability to experiment and would have more practical impact, but don't hesitate to look at the big picture either.
Thoughtful responses only, please. Do not respond with one-liners, as I would like to have an actual discussion on this musing. As a musing, I appreciate your post and thoughtfulness, but my immediate reaction calls some key points into question. I question the power of social media, the impact you describe it would have in transforming a better government, and your discounting the importance of economics. As you mention, a lot of issues (such as pot holes) are a matter for the local government, and structurally these issues need to be discussed separately. There has been a lot of discussion, especially since the revolutions taking place in the Middle East, about the importance of social media. It is of my opinion that this importance has been grossly overstated. The process of organization and communication as a necessary component of revolution, or any change, has always happened without the internet. The internet brings efficiency, inclusion, and greater scale, but it does not change the root causes/need for change, the objectives of change, or help with the actual outcome (ie: at the end of the day, someone needs to fund, fight, or protest, all of which are not virtual realities). Syria, for example, just blacked out the internet. As noted in a recent Bloomberg cover story, the Syrian government was already monitoring political activists computers, and using it against them. The net effect of that we can't determine, but I can assure everyone that the revolution will continue. Maybe less efficiently, but maybe more efficiently as the government can not infiltrate communications as easily. Either way, a strong argument can be made that the impact of social media on change is overstated. In the same line of thinking, the examples that you gave about the internet changing the way we do government, are more examples of efficiency. Voting in an election on our phones is certainly more efficient that going to the local school gym or church and standing in line, but does that change the actual structure of government? The implication that the people would simply vote on every issues has 2 main drawbacks. One, people are not educated, informed, or prepared on every issue, and would still be as vulnerable to misinformation as they are now. Two, there are limited funds and resources to govern with, and the people as a whole all can't be managing the resources. For example, we can take a picture of a pot hole and send it to our city hall. What if there were many pot holes, and we could only fix 80% of them? How would we make that decision? People would simply vote for the pot holes that directly effect them, unless there was some campaign to educate people on the reasons why other pot holes would be more beneficial to fix. Then you would have agency problems, where local business (as an example), would try to inform people that the pot holes closest to them would be the most important. Essentially, we would end up with the same system we have now, just with more efficient (and possibly less secure) voting. This scenario leads to issues that you probably know more about than I (with a law background), about the right to free speech through campaign donations, political advocacy, etc... This is a law issue, but also an issue that refers to another point, about economics (which is my background, B.S. in economics). Economics isn't just about the expansion of GDP, inflation rates, etc... Economics is about choosing one option over another to achieve maximum utility, individually and collectively. The role that free markets play in the collective vs individual good is at the heart of debate about the role of government. The governments role, at its most basic level, is to provide what the free market can't, or to drive for a market equilibrium that the free market won't due to externalities. Even if the government was stripped down to simply national security and advancing interstate infrastructure such as highway systems, etc... economic decisions are still at the basis of the governments role. Generally speaking, people are simply uneducated about the political process. For example, here in Michigan there was a proposal on the ballot that would require any international bridge (ie: one about to be built into Windsor), would have to get a popular vote. The only reason this was on the ballot was because the owner of the current bridge paid millions of dollars to get it on the ballot and advocate for it, to protect his prophets. Surprisingly, not many people knew this, despite the fact that it was talked about in the news and the information was available on any website providing election based information such as fact check websites. The ignorance revolved around the issue was entirely the fault of the people that were ignorant, and they are the reason that the political system is so easy to manipulate. "People" want the government to fix a lot of problems, but don't want to pay for it, or be involved in it. The current political system, in my view, is corrupt, but the solution isn't to change the system, but for the people to actually engage in the system. The mechanisms to root out corruption are already in place, people just need to use them. On a positive note, the recent presidential election demonstrated that people are not entirely susceptible to manipulation. The republican party spent an astronomical amount of money to take down Obama, and Romney was still left, ironically, with only 47% of the vote. + Show Spoiler + I think you bring up some good points, but you are slightly off target with what I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting a path that diverges from capitalism or free markets. Here is a post I wrote to someone else: I wasn't only suggesting pure democracy. That is only just one possible form of government which could be greatly enhanced by such a system. Rather, think of it as an open-source project. Government done wiki-pedia style. Or a government done in the manner of Linux or Mozilla. A group of interested parties who want to build a better solution to a particular problem --- say immigration or something far more specific such as government policies on energy with regards to reducing excess energy production and the resulting waste. Government itself doesn't need to be done away with, but the functions of providing solutions could be crowd-sourced, in essence. This would remove a lot of bloat yet provide citizens with more hands-on government interaction. ------------ As an exercise of the mind, what if a town of 100 people decided to develop a governmental system that was contained entirely online yet had the force of law in fact? You could pay citizens per diem to log in and perform certain functions of government, should they be entirely necessary. You could forego costs such as a city hall meeting location, yet provide a far more effective local forum for discussion of issues that should be addressed. Say someone wants a dog park. It has support of 45% of the population, 35% like the idea but want to hear more about the finances, and 20% oppose it. Right now, they would have to convince an alderman to propose it at a meeting and the only individuals with a direct say in the matter are 3 elected officials. If the 2 of the 3 alderman in the town of 100 people disagree, it doesn't happen, despite a 80% approval rating from the town as a whole. In this situation, a virtual government would facilitate the wishes of the people in a more direct and efficient manner than having to wait for a new and costly election. The initial votes on opinion, substance, the ensuing discussion of finances and observations of the population could all happen much quicker and much more efficiently. Those with more stake in the matter could be more involved in finding a solution and those not interested could let the other debate over the finer points. Another example would be open-source alcohol permit renewals. The renewals requests are automatically processed, posted online, and given a window for comment. Without objection from X number of people, it is renewed automatically. If a certain threshold is reached, an online hearing is held on it and it can be pushed to further considerations of more formal government. Today much of this is done in the physical world, but costs, speed, and efficiency could all be improved by digitizing these interactions. The idea isn't necessarily to replace government completely, but to create a more efficient way for government and people to interact. It increases participation if individuals believe they have a stake in it, and increased participation results in more satisfaction with government fairness. This may or may not involve a complete revamp of the political structure--I honestly don't know at this point. I will say that it would be more practical at municipal levels than, say, the US federal government. At this point and time. Similar things are happening online, such as motions and the like. People can nowadays propose topics to be discussed and then receive secretary notes/reports from the (also open) municipal meetings. It's called e-government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government If you were to build a fully functioning "e-government" what would it look like? I'm not talking the simple adoption of technology into governance, but building up governance with these technologies as a base.
I think the short answer is probably that I wouldn't. I actually don't think it's a good idea. It's only a good idea as a supplement, not as a base.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the 'make government more of a service with market mechanisms' thing really is fact dependent. it's certainly a good idea for starters. bureaucrats are just terrible at doing anything outside of their 3x3 box. not gonna say much more because i dont know the facts lol. you do have to realize though that when you service-ize the government, individuals have to inform themselves about these things in order to properly take advantage. some segments of the population may not be well positioned to do this.
anyway on the topic of treating benefits as a tax, it's helpful to look at it from a job search/matching perpsective. the key difference between a benefit and a tax is that tax is accrued after you get the job, while benefits are given before you do so.
what this means is that the benefit taker can both be disincentivized to even have a job, and also be incentivized to lengthen her job search because she is looking for a better paying one, a more risk taking strategy enabled by less horrific of an outcome when any particular search fails (i.e. starvation)
given that a lot of jobs require a lot of training, which is a front loaded cost, benefits do get people to take more risks than they would if they are penniless. (though obviously family resources play a large part in that whole dynamic)
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BluePanther, there are two things that I think are relevant, and a question I can pose to you. 1) People are not educated enough to make rational decisions about many government related issues. Something like ObamaCare for example will impact the markets in a way that virtually every voter isn't qualified to answer. 2) The sheer scale of the issues in itself requires a level of organization beyond something suitable for direct democracy. Examples such as Firefox and Wikipedia are not so open source that there is no central organization and people in charge. As for my question to you, how would you feel about our current government structure if you stripped away the corruption? The issues you note in your introduction are primarily issues of corruption and influence, not government structure. Your ideas are highly applicable to a local government, but at the state and federal level things get much more complicated.
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EPT
