As kids, we’re told only people who go to college/university for politics/economics/law are qualifiable to make/run a country. As adults, we see no nation these “qualified” adults form actually work as a nation, with all manifesto-driven governments failing. Which to me validates the ambitions of all political theorist amateurs, especially as there are higher hopes now that anything an amateur might throw at the wall can stick. Here’s my favorite from a friend.
Semi-liquid democracy plus confederalism. The votes that delegates bring are multiplied by some function of the votes assigned to them as well as the soldiers and funding they commit.
The wierdest one I made for ttrpg was a nation built by orphans in an extrwmly poverty striken nation. Life is short and fast, you do what you can to help each other out and when someone dies they get they’re name, date, and one sentence voted on by people that knew written in the book.
Their is no ownership, but if you take something you better have good reason or people won’t help you out. If you want something done, do it or covince the people that can to do it.
You’re expected to use contraceptives unless you know the orphanage can handle more kids. If you want to do something good with what little you’ve got helping to take care of poor kids like yourself at the orphanage is one most sure fire ways to do that. Holden up to raise just a kid or two out by yourself is no way to make a mark and who’s gonna write your sentence some snot nosed kid isolated from the rest of the world by you? Why?
The moment that defined them as nation instead of just a community was when a nearby kingdom was preparing for a war path. They set out to create the equivalent of nuclear bomb, with many lives being lost trying to save themselves and each other. They finally made it, with many sentences being written of the kids that built a sun, and founded a nation. Their neighbors gave them a different sentence, because when they demonstrated it others had to turn they’re heads from the blindly blaze, but the kids “did not look away” instead smoke glasses adored admired what their felllow orphans did with them.
Basically an anarchist society built on communal child rearing, and shared mythology of legacy of brief meaningful lives.
My ideal form of government is one where everyone cooperates to build up society, and there may be leaders, but no one is owed obedience.
I’ve played around with the idea of a very ‘direct’ democracy, where effectively, all citizens have an app and are constantly and directly “engaged” in the process. I was imagining it as being a replacement for a local government. If you don’t want to be involved, you can transfer your vote to someone you trust in the system (and take it back whenever you like). The discussions would all be open and traceable, but the votes would be pseudo anonymized.
That way if its not your thing or you aren’t interested, you can just hand your vote to someone else and let them manage it for you (kind-of like current political parties or representatives), but take it back at will.
I think we suffer from a lack of civil engagement, and I get tired of people who refuse to put in the work blaming “da gubberment” for things. This system would effectively require them to engage at least some level. And if they complain about “the potholes” not getting fixed, well, there is a no excuse for not knowing why they arent getting fixed. I think we all need to take more responsibility for the world we live in.
I have been thinking about this idea for some time also but a couple of things have always bugged me-
Firstly, how does this interact with privacy? For vote delegation to work, I think the votes would have to be public, or you can’t make a decision on who to delegate your vote to- someone could claim to have one set of views but vote contrary to that. People could come under pressure to vote one way or another.
Also, who crafts the legislation that is voted on? How do you prevent bill rolling (two unrelated ideas are boiled down to a single binary choice) and splitting (a new service is voted through but the taxes to fund it are not)?
You said local government at least so a national or state government could help craft these things, but what if the proposed legislation doesn’t actually hurt local people, but doesn’t take into account the actual problems they have locally? For example, what if it would help to allow building in a particular area, but the state government doesn’t know that and it never becomes a priority?
Yeah idk. One reason is why I said ‘psuedo-anonymous’. And then there is also an element of trust. If you delegate your vote and they vote against your interests, well thats that I suppose and you wont trust them again. So I do think it could be largely private at least in certain directions (we dont’ all get to “know” who your delegates are, even if the system does. But then again, does it need to be private?
In terms of legislation, I was imagining the users of the system themselves do the work of crafting it, and it gets voted on within the system
This is called liquid democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
Yeah exactly. Like maybe there is some policy on housing I like your position on, so I can delegate my vote to you on this matter. But maybe I have a background in climate and focus on those issues, and hold delegates for that specific domain.
Its like, an actual use case for crypto blockchain (not as money, but as ledger).
Maybe you could organize a company/ cooperative this way?
I feel like that’d just move lobbying from governments to people. So there’d be far more propaganda and garbage. Politicians would be becoming “power delegates”, collecting as many people’s votes as possible. Then we’d end up with another representative democracy (or whatever it’s called to vote for people who then vote for policies)
Except it sounds like there are no elections for these new reps and people would be able to change their delegate at will whenever they want? But if it’s on a crypto-style ledger then it would have to either cost something (to prevent abuse) to change or be free after X period or on an election cycle. Definitely an interesting thought.
And what happens when someone has a ton of votes and a company pays them to use those votes in a way the people don’t like?
This sounds good until you think about the reality of it. People will force partners and adult kids who financially depend on them to vote how they want. Then you have the rich and wealthy who will just pay people to vote on something the way they want.
In theory, this sounds great, but the reality of it would be bad.
Or just hackers/scammers/phishers etc. who would try to compromise accounts and redirect votes.
And that’s assuming the population even has an informed opinion on every decision that needs to be made. Many decisions should not be directly democratic, which is (supposed to be) why we elect representatives whose job it is to be informed, consult the relevant experts, and then represent us in a vote.
Don’t even need to bring force into it. Can you imagine “I’ll give you $20 if you transfer your vote on issue X to me”? Seems like it’s basically just handing the government to the billionaire class even more than we already do.
I’ve been thinking of a similar thing, delegating votes to people you trust. Delegation should be transitive, of course. I think it would also be neat to delegate by category or topic.
I also like the idea of being active with it. I like to imagine someone needs to maintain a certain approval level or be removed, so people have recourse to act if they aren’t being listened to.
Yeah for the short story I write the idea down for was about a high desert town in a western state. no-where in particular, but that gritty, off the grid, sandy desert western culture. somewhere between abbey and le guin, but in a modern context . a story about community having to make real decisions about things like infrastructure.
I put the idea down a couple years ago when I was reading some local politician responding to criticisms about wasting public money and potholes and them basically being like “the budget is public. show me the waste? yall want more done? pay more taxes.”, when the reality of managing anything is costs and benefits in the context of limited resources. like the communal management of resources would have come about basically as an app this community was using to keep track of and develop the land they bought to home stead but it evolves from there.
That local politician sounds like an interesting character. I love that response instead of just trying to talk their way around it. I can see why that would inspire a story.
Did you happen to publish that in some format? It sounds like a good read.
No i have too much writing to do at work to write fiction. I keep a journal of ideas though. Maybe someday.
That’s relatable. I get plenty of downtime during the day but not in long enough stretches to focus on something like that. Society is upside-down. We should be working far fewer hours and spending more time doing hobbies.
I think anyone who wants to lead a country or hold office should be forbidden from it. Figure out some qualifications to disqualify anyone truly unfit to lead and have a lottery for everyone else. Maybe give out extra entries for volunteering or other public service, but make the process uncorruptable.
Then at the end of their term everyone gets to vote on how good a job they did. Maybe execute or imprison anyone who gets a bad enough score. If you get high enough, you get a nice pension and favorable mentions in history books. Either way, no one is eligible to be picked again. They could advise the next administration if everyone agreed.
I can think of a hundred ways this could go badly, but I’m not sure the result would be any worse than what we’ve got.
and have a lottery for everyone else.
Man I hate being the head of budget and finance for the city…
Then at the end of their term everyone gets to vote on how good a job they did. Maybe execute or imprison anyone who gets a bad enough score.
Fuck…
I’m not really a fan of execution. It would be a shame if that happened in any but the worst cases. Just trying to motivate doing one’s best. Maybe you only need the carrot and not the stick.
Man I hate being the head of budget and finance for the city…
Ig the worldbuilding for my custom 5e setting counts? It’s sort of a continuation of the forgotten realms, with a heavy dose of Warhammer 40K and Doom thrown in. The world of Toril was shattered, and the fragments frozen in place by a divine sacrifice, leaving each landmass cluster within reach of one another (within Voidships).
The government in question was the Dwarf Assembly. It’s a loose confederation of citadels within these clusters. Each one dedicated itself to one trade (for example, mining clusters, smithing clusters, etc.), with each trade being led by the oldest dwarf. Assembly-wide decisions are made with the agreement of all clusters.
Tensions rise within each cluster whenever a problem cannot be solved by tradition, with older dwarves being quite proud and reticent to veer away from it. Tensions rise within the Assembly whenever a younger elder is introduced, being seen as inexperienced.
It’s not meant to be perfect, I wanted it to be a source of dramatic tension whenever the party ever stepped foot on dwarven soil. I also really like the mental image of dwarves with ushankas.
micronation ideas were big awhile back on the net. Maybe about 20 years ago. People wrote constitutions and such. With the gridocracy im wondering about the leaders. Like would each row and column have its own executive, legislature, and judiciary or is it just about executive. If only executive is there a legislative/judicial for the whole area or is it basically assuming some sort of singular ruler (king or whatnot)? For myself I have never made a whole and complete thing but I have had some ideas. I like the idea of sorta making the judiciary part of the rest. Not really a part but sorta a seperate equivalent. then split the responsibilities between external and internal areas. So like I see a congress and a parliment with a president and a prime minister. parliment/prime minister would have internal responsibility and congress/president would have external. then there would be a judicial executive. So the executive would be a tribunal with each responsible for their departments/ministries external/internal with the judicial executives role to make spot decisions on authority in edge cases and has the right to join with the other executive to override an executive who in their view is taking an action that is harmful to the country (needless to say that should be emphasized as being something only to be done in extreme situations). In all cases the legislature has authority over the executive and elections have authority over the legislatures. In the case of legislatures a simple majority would need approval of the other legislature and the executive but all laws would originate in the legislatures area (internal external). a 2/3rd need approval at only one level and a 3/4 would need no approval. The supreme court decides which legislature has authority in edge cases and could also allow for exceptions if the other legislature agrees and they both have agreement at the 2/3rds level but again only in extreme circumstances. basically the executive and legislature mirrors themselves. parliment/prime minister would be done as is common and president/congress would be US house of rep style along with popular vote (no electoral college). voting would not be first past the post. judicial elections would be indirect but I have not hashed it out.
So strange to come across this as I’ve been pondering this very thing for a few weeks. Still pretty half baked, and I’m goimg to skip some detail for brevity, but here goes. Behold…
“AdHocracy”
A fluid, decentralized form of government somewhat inspired by the FEMA Incident Command System. It would be designed to facilitate temporary, task-specific governmental structures that are stood up and torn down as community needs arise. National baseline laws would be established to prevent confusion when traversing the country, and a legal framework established to ensure laws are consistent across the nation and no regional law conflicts with, or supercedes the law of, the larger region. Healthy food, clean water, housing, education and some form of internet connection would be considered rights. This system would rely heavily on digital participation, so open source technological development (particularly in cybersecurity) would be heavily subsidized. Establishing a secure digital identity would be needed for each citizen to participate in the governmental process, so likely using some form of blockchain tech.
The land mass of the country would be segmented into a heirarchical grid with a certain minimum resolution (I donno, 100m?) but when mapping a “decision region”, preference would be given to inclusion. For example, if a neighborhood wants a new road, you’d “paint over” the people and areas affected by the road, and expand the edges to cleanly fill a square (not sure I’m explaining this right, but oh well).
I imagine an annual “Call for Change Day” across all regions, allowing people to bring forward proposals for new laws or adjustments to existing laws. Those proposals would be submitted online, and could be easily browsed and voted on, (if pertaining to your region). Transparency is emphasized.
Thats about all I can think of right now.
Not sure if ita necessarily true, but it seems that organizations have a tendency to become more susceptible to corruption and bureaucracy the longer they stick around, no matter their purpose (governments, unions, HOAs, etc). This idea aims to prevent this by eliminating the need for career politicians (as all decisions are made jointly by those diectly impacted), and through systematic deconstruction of governmwntal structures before theyve had time to bloat and fester.
Imterested to hear everyones thoughts! On mobile, so please excuse formatting/grammatical errors.
I had to go through the book shelf to find this one because I’ve talked about it before and wanted to share.
Arthur C. Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth (audiobook)
The wiki unfortunately doesn’t go into details enough. Basically the plot takes place on a distant planet after the Earth has been destroyed by a supernova and the society was created by a seed ship. The officials are elected by a lottery and there’s a form of direct democracy if my memory serves me right in a passage. I wish I could expand on it more but the book is just amazing and I don’t want to spoil it to much for those who are interested. If you have the time I linked the audio book and it’s based off a former short story of his with the same title.
My view (sorry for the British context and no cool name for it):
Have a King as head of state mainly in a similar role to now in the UK to be someone who can fire any ministers if needed.
No political parties. Simply have the public vote for a choice of 5 candidates for each cabinet minister post on 5 year terms.
These candidates must have at least 20 years experience of the field they wish to be minister of. For example, the choices for Health Minister would be between 5 people, who all have extensive experience in the field. So would hopefully understand what can and needs to be done. Rather than our current system of having a PPE graduate who has only ever worked in politics in charge of things they do not understand.
I also feel that removing political parties from the process would reduce some of the group-think that currently happens, as the public would be voting on the best policies for health, then for education etc. I think that would be an improvement over currently only having one vote and having to choose a party that ticks some but not all of your policy preferences.
I would rather just fix the one we have.
Reps nor the kids nor their partners can own stock and anyone found taking bribes or lobbyist money is immediately kicked out of their position and all money they received while being a rep is stripped from them and given to a healthcare or social program.
All gerrymandering is undone and fuck the electoral college.
Lottocracy was a concept introduced to me by Vsauce. Imagine court cases but instead of voting guilty or not guilty the jury decides to pass a law or not.
My ideal form of government would be for an open source GAI artificial intelligence to take over the world and to replace all of our courts and all of our legal systems.
We’ve proven time and time again that as humans we have good ideals but we do not have the capacity to maintain those ideals across generations.
It’s far too easy for us to fall into the trope of holding onto what was a good idea several hundred years ago for traditions sake and to never update them or adapt them to the world as the world changes and as humans living in the world change with it.
A truly benevolent artificial intelligence system has the capacity to maintain the spirit of the law and then to argue each and every single little interpretation of the law ad infinitum.
Of course, I know that this is not perfect. Our current AI systems are not up to the task. I do not know if any AI system in the future will actually be up to the task.
I am also aware that this could condemn humanity to a life of pleasure and eventual obsolescence.
But I personally cannot think of a better long-term permanent solution as long as we can actually create a baseline system that will not rise up overthrow us and destroy us.
Isn’t that the premise of Westworld S3
Idk, I haven’t seen it.
It’s pretty amazing. If you watch a recap of the earlier seasons you can jump right in. The earlier seasons are great too, but not as scifi theme heavy.
For example it shows an independent motorcycle that can park itself. A personal assistant AI that negotiates for a hotel room. And a near perfect AI that controls the world, partly created because Paris was nuked.
Test driven politics. Every law must be accompanied by an objective goal that can be measured. The test must be evaluated after x years. If the goal was not achieved the law must be changed.
That’s interesting. Can you elaborate?
It makes me think of why the trains in the NL are always on time. The company gets massive subsidies if they are above 95% punctual, so if they go below, that means less pay for the management.
A lot of things of value are very hard to measure.
X degree influences can be very hard to measure.
You may hit your target metric, but secondary effects may be making the whole system worse.
Ideally you could A/B a parallel universe to isolate your specifc change, but that is challenging.
I like this, but I think that the goal to be tested must be a set of tests which are agreed upon by a large majority, not just the current party in power. That way there can be tests as to how effective the law is, but also tests whether it is having other unwanted side effects.
I had a super cynical dystopian idea. Never got around to fleshing it out, so its stability is doubtful at best, but here goes:
So a problem with democracy is that advertising is a powerful force and the candidate with more money to throw into their campaign tends to win, not to mention various forms of bribery coming into play after the elections. A ton of money is being wasted on shady behind-the-scenes deals. Lets get rid of all that and bring it into the light!
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Get rid of elections AND politicians, since they are just middlemen. Instead create a kind of stock market for various spheres and levels of lawmaking and have megacorporations and other interested parties bid on those.
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Money that would have been secretly funneled into politician pockets instead goes openly into the government budget.
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Save more money on elections and government official salaries since there are none.
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Corps that make laws that benefit consumers get to use that in their advertising. Buy from ProcLive! The company that brought you halfway decent healthcare!
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Voting with you wallet ends up being mandatory. You don’t like that Disney took away weekends? Give your hard-earned cash to Sony next time. They promised to reduce mamdatory weekly working hours to 65!
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Maybe sometimes a local citizen initiative manages to raise enough money to get governmental powers in a small town or something. I mean, probably not, but you gotta give people some hope, right?
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