You "hackers" are looking and competing in every direction to disrupt, to change the world, to make an impact. Yet no-one is talking about disruption in the lower levels of the system: the state itself.
The problem is that the status-quo benefits those that are in control. There's no incentive for them to change it - quite the contrary.
Getting into politics itself is based on who you know as opposed to actual skill or knowledge (unlike in tech, where skill alone will usually get you in a decent position).
Once you're inside, your tenure depends on keeping everyone satisfied, and "everyone" includes people with vested interests as well as simple idiots (who can be exploited by other people with an agenda), both within the government and the general population.
Any attempt at disruption is unlikely to pass and will often just signify the end of your political career. Finally, if you've actually made it thus far, you might very well get complacent and happy with the benefits of the job (including "donations") and decide to keep quiet and not make too much noise.
I’ve been downvoted for making this comment before, but I really don’t care. Sure the details are fuzzy and I’m sure it has its problems, but here goes: legislation outside that of basic human rights things (like murder, theft, rape, etc)
should have an expiration date. It would force legislators to revisit some of the more asinine laws that no longer have a place in society. Drug legalization comes to mind here. Maybe that’s a bit simplistic and I acknowledge that but there’s something in expiring unnecessary and unneeded legislation that’s so appealing.
I think that would add a huge amount of instability. Crafting legislation to work with the existing laws to account for n order impacts is already complicated. But under this blanket proposal you would have to understand the current state system plus all the iterations over its lifetime due to the existing laws phasing out and whether or not they will be extended, replaced, or expired. Not to mention, that would likely invalidate a lot of case law if not a straight extension.
I feel like that might end up with some circular fights.
The judiciary is probably the closest thing to removing laws by invalidating ones that violate rights or other rules. Although it seems they are more inclined to legislate from the bench than actually uphold rule of law.
The system does everything it can to preserve itself and its power.
I've tried looking into technology that could make a difference, but I didn't get much input from HN. I think the big thing is education. Educating people about their rights, about how the system is supposed to work, about how it actually works (or doesn't), and what resources are available would be a huge step in the right direction. Most of the issues in the system remain unaddressed because people are ignorant. The laws in my state allow for a person to be thrown in jail for up to 90 days and fined $100-500 for their dog escaping their yard. Do you really think the public agrees that throwing someone in jail for a loose dog is just? This law exists because the people don't know about it. There are many activist organizations working on reform, but most people don't know about them (many are state specific).
One attempt to hack representative democracy is a party controlled by an app. It works like this:
An app is created which lets citizens vote on every issue in the legislature. A party is formed whose elected members vote according to the app results. Citizens elect members from this party. Once the party achieves an elected majority, the legislature becomes controlled by the app, and transformed into a digital direct democracy.
Loads of people are doing this, all over the world, at every level of state/politics.
What would you call Cambridge Analytica if not disrupting politics?
(On a less salubrious level there are loads of polling and canvassing companies trying to do the whole "getting elected" and "staying popular" thing a bit cleverer, without being totally amoral, using more sophisticated statistical modelling and database setups on the public electoral register.)
Emmanuel Macron's campaign apparently fairly successfully fought off a state-sponsored attack on their systems when he ran for president in 2017.
Estonia has held parliamentary elections using internet voting.
Tax/Revenue bodies all over the world use cloud computing and machine learning methods to detect money laundering, among other things. It's not ledgers and adding machines in there.
Health authorities in several countries analyse de-identifed location data from Apple and Google as part of Covid-tracking efforts.
Ireland is (somewhat controversially) rolling out a single sign on for all online interactions with the state - tax, social welfare, renewing a passport etc.
Those examples are all off the top of my head. The suggestion that there's no "disruption" in politics or the public service is incorrect.
Bad idea. You want the system to be viscous, to respond slowly to pressure put on it. Too fluid, and it turns into populist-driven mob rule.
If you want to argue that the system currently is too viscous and needs to move somewhat toward liquid, I might agree. But it is dangerous and destructive to go all the way to liquid.
This system exists all around the world - Brazil, Switzerland, Finland and other parts of europe, Japan... it doesn’t make a huge difference when the government itself defines which five issues will be voted on, and I don’t think it could be any different.
Personally, I think the focus should be on education. How can you have vast masses of the world in 2021 electing dumb, retrograde populist leaders? learning history for real, stimulating independent though and intelectual freedom - but that’s way “too leftist” for anyone to take on right now.
And on top of that, accountability for politicians. It should not be a life career, and gross mistakes should mean stepping out so new heads can come in.
"learning history for real, stimulating independent though and intelectual freedom - but that’s way “too leftist” for anyone to take on right now."
I don't think it's "too leftist". I think it's that both sides want their own views "taught" in school. The way some issues are taught or graded border on indoctrination. I would love to see independent/critical thinking taught in schools. This next part might be controversial, I also think that every citizen should have to pass the citizenship test (provisional citizenship as a child of a citizen up until 18, or if disabled, etc). How can we have a effective government if the people don't understand tha basics of it or how to hold it accountable when it fails?
You did not discuss money in politics, which present significant challenges.
The US sees many struggles, and does so in a way that impacts most of the population. These things go unaddressed despite majority support for solutions.
Populist ideas need not be dumb, and the term itself has roots in politics that would be valued and beneficial, in terms of reducing unnecessary struggle.
"Populist ideas need not be dumb, and the term itself has roots in politics that would be valued and beneficial, in terms of reducing unnecessary struggle."
What unnecessary struggle?
I can see how popular ideas are good from the standpoint of the majority of the population liking them. Some of that is being eroded now. For example, wanting to eliminate the 60 votes in the senate related to the filibuster as they already did with some conformation hearings (how can they use a 51 vote to abolish a 60 vote rule anyways, that seems to undermine the point). So now, we are reducing the amount of people necessary to like the law and reducing the likelihood of compromises to make laws less partisan and more acceptable to all. The downside to populist laws is that the people may not be educated in even the basics of how the system works (or is supposed to). Maybe it was a populist idea that things should be segregated by race. That doesn't make it right, and it infringes on the minority faction.
Can you effectively participate in a game if you don't understand the rules and objective? I don't think so. You wouldn't drop someone into a car, a job, or really anything important without some knowledge or training. If we did, we would expect poor outcomes. I think we are seeing that now. For example, people don't know the basic differences of statute, code, and case law, or how they work. They can't define or explain basic legal principles. I'm many cases, they don't even know what rights they have. How can you demand your rights and proper treatment if you don't know them, nor how to effectively communicate about the law?
I'm also saying that populism has some issues with what percentage does it take to pass something, thus alienating a very large minority (like 51/49). That populist policies can trample the rights of others.
I had no input on the economic struggle as that was not even defined, so I find it odd that you would try to link my statement to that. I had asked what kind of "unnecessary struggle" the parent meant. I guess here you are saying it is economic. Can you elaborate on what is unnecessary? If it is unnecessary then there must be some obvious solution - can you define that too?
You are saying exactly that, and frankly I reject it across the board.
I would continue with your other very debatable observations, but we have no real basis to do that in a way that makes sense, and I am not inclined to attempt to improve it at this time.
Should we somehow discuss struggle, necessary can enter again in that context.
I said what I said, not what you are saying. There is a lot of context and nuance that you simply want to misrepresent my statements and label people as stupid.
You still didnt define what you mean by struggle. How can we communicate, if you're not communicating? You have to at least define the problem and explain what you are talking about rather than assuming I'm a mind reader. Nothing personal, but I'm starting to think you are a troll.
Your arguments boil down to people being either uninformed, or of insufficient capacity, to participate in "the game"
We could simplify that to: they don't know how it works.
If you want to take a minute and get better clarity on our lack of a basis for the other discussion, I'm good with that.
There is what you said, in the literal sense, and there's what it means. All I can communicate to you is how I take that meaning.
As for troll, and any other personal judgments, I tend to avoid those.
Finally, the way I see it is simple: people can participate, and should have a voice in the democracy. There should be few limits on that, in fact the minimum possible, none ideally.
They would also benefit significantly, in light of the very strong influence of money on policy and politics right now, with improved ability to work together, understand one another better, find solidarity, and make that participation more than symbolic.
They are more than capable of sharing their life stories, policy preferences, needs, and other things same as anyone else.
"...in light of the very strong influence of money on policy and politics right now..."
This is an example of what I'm talking about. The reason the money is influential is because some people are naive and listen to the advertising/campaigning, which often misrepresents facts or only tells one side.
"There should be few limits on that..."
I'm not discussing limits, other than a basic citizenship test which all non-birthright citizens already take. The majority of this should be handled in schools. There's really no reason not to have the test.
"They are more than capable of sharing their life stories, policy preferences, needs, and other things same as anyone else."
Not if they are being manipulated because they don't understand the system or investigate claims. Then you end up with policies built off of lies and misrepresentation.
If you want an example, look at the PA ballot question from a few years ago about retirement age for judges. They manipulated people by rewording the question. The integrity of the system and the strength of the country is dependent upon knowledge citizens in a democracy. To make this clearer to you, here's another example. Why is consensual sex with a minor a crime? It's because the minor is consider to be incapable of comprehending the totality of the situation and giving informed consent. The same can be true of electing people. How can you give your informed consent for a person to represent you on issues if you don't even understand the basics of it? This undermines the general public's right to be governed by a fair and effective system.
"Attorneys do that all the time; namely, represent people who lack understanding."
For large sums of money. They are also held to higher professional conduct standards than politicians. They also only need to represent the best interests of the client. This also involves detailed explanations of the issue at hand (hey look, the education I was talking about) so that the client can make an informed decision.
So now the elected representatives cannot represent, because they are not expected to? Does this not make it very unlikely for any person to actually make an informed decision?
Next move is money in politics, who do the politicians actually work for and why do they work that way?
You wrote it above, large sums of money.
What's an ordinary person to do but conclude they are not getting good, or even reasonable representation? (And they aren't overall)
What do they do to combat that?
I can assure you taking some test is not the answer here. At. All.
"So now the elected representatives cannot represent, because they are not expected to? Does this not make it very unlikely for any person to actually make an informed decision?"
You really have a habit of going off on some random tangent and misrepresentating what was said. The dynamic is different. You have a 1 to 1 vs a 1 to n (thousands to millions). This allows lawyers, the example you brought up, to interact in a meaningful and even educational way. The rules of professional conduct are also different, allowing politicians to do things lawyers cannot. If the people are educated, then they can recognize when they are being misrepresented and the steps to take to correct it. This might involve adding better candidates to the ballot or looking outside of the traditional 2 parties.
It's not the test, it's the education of the people. Passing some rule, as you suggest, isn't going to fix anything. It's not likely that the representatives will legislate away that source of funding without adding loopholes that benefit the party in power. Your plan depends on the same corrupt power hungry people to somehow oversee themselves and remove a source of their own power. So how do you see that actually working? Spoiler - it doesn't.
For starters The State isn't just one thing. Additionally there's so much money involved. The United States M1 money supply is about 4 trillion dollars. Finally, I'm not sure this is the right word, but
"unit transaction inertia." (UTI)
The higher some system's UTI the less likely it is to fundamental change.
So, ordering food at a restaurant or getting a taxi is mostly a one-off. It's UTI is near 0 and rarely moves. Paying rent's UTI is a bit bigger. The renter is staying there for a while, the rent is a significant amount of money, the land lord has invested a lot in the property. Also a marriage is going to have a large UTI, just not in terms of money. Ostensibly each party is in it for life and they interact many times every day.
Now, on to the state. Any State's UTI is going to be huge. Lots of specialized workers have invested a lot of time and The State interacts with a lot of people and for usually all their lives.
Certainly you could use fleas to change the course of a train. But it'll take a lot.
There are electorates that are not as enlightened basically. Trump got the second largest vote total of any American president (aside from Biden). That’s the reality of who is actually out there in the country.
Contrary to popular belief, our representative democracy actually works. The representatives suck because look at who they represent. Mitch McConnell actually gets voted in every year.
Many electorates are not evolving or are evolving at a generational pace. Most of our common sense reforms like marijuana legalization or gay marriage are happening due to a generational shift where the new electorate votes differently than the last one. It will seem like disruption, but what will happen is we will stagnate again as this generation never changes their views again until they are dead.
This is very hard to disrupt unless we make most electorates across the nation open minded, willing to try different things, nimble (not necessarily fickle), and willing to vote differently throughout their lifetime.
You can take a look at how many times gay marriage legalization actually failed as a California ballot referendum, and that’s in the most liberal democratic state in the country. We consider that state to be a decade or two ahead of others in terms of ideas, and even they are slow.
Getting into politics itself is based on who you know as opposed to actual skill or knowledge (unlike in tech, where skill alone will usually get you in a decent position).
Once you're inside, your tenure depends on keeping everyone satisfied, and "everyone" includes people with vested interests as well as simple idiots (who can be exploited by other people with an agenda), both within the government and the general population.
Any attempt at disruption is unlikely to pass and will often just signify the end of your political career. Finally, if you've actually made it thus far, you might very well get complacent and happy with the benefits of the job (including "donations") and decide to keep quiet and not make too much noise.