15 replies to this topic

[Ru1138]

I've been having a discussion with someone over on Reddit about making an online egalitarian government as a first step towards post-scarcity of basic material needs. Here's what I said:

theantirobot and I have been discussing this for a bit. His idea is to create a government that listens to everybody worldwide. Naturally we'd need some way to hook all of this together, Diaspora or Appleseed might work well for this. We would need an online capitol to narrow them down to some best of breed ideas. We could get some income from hosting adverisements. With many people on the capitol we could make a good deal of money. We could also get a donation pool going if advertisement hosting isn't enough. Those are some of the ideas that we have.

If you're interested in what's been said so far, the topic is here, but discussion hasn't been very lively there. I think we could discuss it here as well.

Edit: aaaaand... I posted it to the wrong sub-forum. Could somebody move this to "off-topic" or another related sub-forum?

Edited by Ru1138, 21 November 2011 - 02:54 PM.

[Jvgora]

The problem with global government being a online entity would be the ability to fool people. Some type of definitive identification system would be needed, something akin to a SSN along with maybe a fingerprint and retina scan along with some PKI type of technology.
For me to even come close to wanting to participate in something like that, i would want everyone to be 100% identifiable online AND in reality. People have anonymity online would NOT be a good idea as people have a tendency to be overly extreme with their views. You would have to have that to keep the trolling down that we see today on some forums around the internet.
The other thing to consider is that what about the people that do not have access to the internet. As that number is getting greatly fewer with each passing day, how could we in good conscience make decisions that would effect them, without there input. Morally, that wouldn't be right. With that being said, there are simple and easy was around that. Even today.
Revenue wise, I don't think there would be a need for it. People would still pay taxes, until actually currency is phased out. Having governmental budgeting being run this way, people would actually have the ability to push there own money that they pay in taxes to specific programs. If they are legitimate in nature and for the greater good. If not, they would not get funding and subsequently shut down, but also to be able to be resurrected if the times and opinion in the program change. I think people knowing that their taxes that they pay are going to programs that they support, we probably would find that people will be happier in contributing more taxes than we do today, without being able to track our actual money. Honestly, with todays technology, how do we not have that now, is beyond me.
This is a very interesting idea. What do you think of my points? Looking forward to also continuing this discussion.

[Ru1138]

You make good points. I have been thinking about the anonyminity problem as well (imagine people creating sockpuppets for disproportionate representation). As I'm not familiar with solutions to that problem it has vexed me so far. As for getting more people online, we could start with the one laptop per child and Reddit mesh programs and work our way up from there.

[Jvgora]

Having three means of required information would reduce those puppets. A personalized number (I would prefer a 16 character ID, but that's just me), a fingerprint (which is still hard to full modern scanners with the implement of temperature and other biometrics) and PKI utilizes personalized pseudo random codes over hundreds of characters and encrypted at 256-bits)
The one laptop per child solution would work but we would have to maintain a backwards compatibility for there use. Try using a Ethernet cable in some parts of the world, and you will hear "why? We have wireless". That could have remarkable problems if you are referring to the child retaining that laptop over a ten year time period. As well as the fact that most computers under the best care will most likely last between 7 to 10 years anyway. The focus on this issue should be reliable long lasting laptops for less than two to three hrs of work (I say that due to inflationary issues and it seems like a decent number to shoot for).

[GNR Rvolution]

Anonymity is possibly worse than you might imagine, as people who feel that they can say or do what they want without any repercussion on themselves will quite happily do and say things that they wouldn't otherwise. There was recently a series of shows in the UK by Derren Brown, one of which explored this, the link to which is below:

http://www.channel4....er-the-gameshow

Apologies if you cannot view, but the page itself shows what can happen when repercussion for actions is taken away, and the same I think would be true in this case unless as mentioned people can be identified. The way the internet has evolved however does not currently allow for actual identities to be confirmed, hell I could create a new online 'personality' in a couple of hours, you would at this stage I believe need buy-in from the government to even try something like this, which is a shame

[Ru1138]

Anonymity is possibly worse than you might imagine, as people who feel that they can say or do what they want without any repercussion on themselves will quite happily do and say things that they wouldn't otherwise.

Correct. Thus the need for identification checking. Now Jvgora, what about people who can't get iris or fingerprint scanners? What about people in poorer countries who don't have social security numbers? We might have to look for a more universal means of identifying people.

[theantirobot]

I don't think anonymity would be a problem. The roll of the online government is just to provide services for people to use. It is not an extension of any system of government we have today. The online government provides tools for mass communication and collaboration. You can't really collaborate with people who don't exist. The whole point is to leverage capabilities of the online culture we have today to gain influence in geo-political-economic processes. If we can get a large enough body of people to consolidate this culture into one place it can grow more quickly. The online government is to watch this culture, and develop the mediums (web applications) which will enable it to thrive.

People own their culture, and if it can be made to generate revenue or profits, they should control those. Thus, one of the first necessities of an online nation is a way for businesses to run openly and transparantly online, including buying and selling of stock, and shareholder voting.

[Ru1138]

The main problem isn't that the people aren't real, it's the possibility that they might use sockpuppets to get disproportionate representation (and a person who would do that is bound to come up sooner or later). What's needed is a way to sockpuppet-proof the online government.

[Ru1138]

I've had an idea. We shouldn't go about this all at once. Start a phase one online government in countries that have social security numbers (or similar ID numbers). We could get Jvgora's biometric idea off the ground by generating money from our phase one government and put it towards creating computers that have biometric scanners built in. Once that's done, we could bring the online government to the whole world.

[truthiness]

I think are at least two problems with this idea that we haven't worked out yet...

First, there are a lot of (how to put this...) "old and backward" people out there that either don't know how to use the internet or are afraid of putting information out there, and there are those that don't know when they really should be afraid to put their information out there. Most of these are in the baby boomer generation. That generation is going to be with us and making up a large voting block for another couple of decades. I can't see this working as long as they're still powerful. When Generation X or better yet the Millennials take the reigns, then sure.

Second, if I understand what we're talking about correctly, we'll be deciding exactly what we want to fund with our tax dollars? I completely agree with this concept. I think it's great. The only thing I'm wondering is how targeted will our choices be? For instance, will we be choosing to pay for NASA or the military, or will we be choosing very specifically what projects we want to fund - specifically a replacement mirror for the new space telescope as opposed to a new probe to a comet, or a new fighter/bomber as opposed to more Kevlar armor? My inclination is to lean toward choosing between broad departments and allowing the departments themselves some autonomy to decide how to divvy out their cash, since I think they probably will know more about what they're doing than an average Joe.

[Ru1138]

For your first point Truthiness, this isn't going to be a mandate to join the government, those who don't want to join don't have to. If there are those who want to join in but have difficulty with technology then maybe we could find a way to teach them.

As for your second point, this isn't meant to replace all governments right away. In fact, it will probably keep regional governments intact and will instead act more like the United Nations and less like a traditional government. So regional governments can continue doing their jobs and this system can work solely towards post-scarcity.

Edit: Here's the idea I have for a plan. We'll start off by gaining a following by creating a website (Google Sites looks promising). After that we get a Kickstarter page to get an initial money boost. Once that's done, we try to get an advertising deal with some commercial entity to get our treasury going. After that start online debates for various issues. We need to be able to prevent sockpuppets, so first we do this in developed countries which have public ID numbers for people. When we get enough money we can create biometric peripherals for computers. This will allow people who don't have ID numbers (especially in developing countries) to take part in the government. And we work on post-scarcity from then on out.

It's rough and probably has a lot of holes, but it's the best I can do without theantirobot's input. If anyone finds any problems feel free to talk about them.

Edited by Ru1138, 23 November 2011 - 05:29 PM.

[Ru1138]

Sorry for the double post, but there's now a website for it.

[truthiness]

Ok, third question then, what would your government be doing for its people? They'd still live in the real world on real land, and they'd still eat real food and drive on real roads and will still need a real military to protect them from real foreign threats, and a real police to protect from real domestic threats... Might this new online government act more like a democratic mafia, protecting its members from online threats, and making democratic loans to members (or outsiders, for a price)? What else can you offer that a "brick and mortar" government can't or won't provide?

[Ru1138]

Ok, third question then, what would your government be doing for its people? They'd still live in the real world on real land, and they'd still eat real food and drive on real roads and will still need a real military to protect them from real foreign threats, and a real police to protect from real domestic threats... Might this new online government act more like a democratic mafia, protecting its members from online threats, and making democratic loans to members (or outsiders, for a price)? What else can you offer that a "brick and mortar" government can't or won't provide?

To be honest, I don't quite know. This wasn't my idea to begin with and the person who came up with it hasn't been talking about it much. I wish (s)he would because it sounds like it has good potential.

[Zachemc2]

Will there be a virtual currency?

[Ru1138]

Will there be a virtual currency?

Considering that it requires real money for a government to do anything, the answer is no. It's more likely that we would accept money from donors or advertisers and use it when needed.