@socialjusticemunchkin, I haven’t engaged with your OpenGov posts because holy hell is that a lot of text and I am a very lazy person.
but a more defensible reason is that the framing of government as software is fundamentally misguided I feel. it drags the debate in a direction that feels more comfortable to geeks (upgrade your government! open source it! hack it!) while obscuring the actual problems that need to be solved and replacing them with the vague idea that existing players are just too dumb to spot obvious wins.
like, if your proposal takes from granted axioms that aren’t even accepted by a majority of the population then it’s going to be a rocky road to acceptance, is part of what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is that the immediate actions of USG are very much defined by the people in it (Obama has been less horrible than Bush, for example), but the fundamental character of the system and the incentives shaping the big trends are influenced by the procedures and operations which in turn are an outgrowth of the constitution and history.
Thus, focusing on people can win 4-year terms of desirable policy, but focusing on systems can win decades to centuries of subtly more desirable policy by making the government be more inherently likely to output certain things over others.
And on the other hand if I try to come up with some kind of a “source code” for a government that would inherently be less harmful, focusing on specifics is like asking the drafters of the constitution about what the requirements for drivers’ licenses would be. I’m not trying to come up with specific solutions but instead with a system of delivering certain types of specific solutions. It’s not my place to describe the daycare policy of Caracas, all I’m trying to come up with is something people in Caracas could use to determine whether they want to have a daycare policy and if they do, what would it be. Traditional democracy is shitty for solving this question anywhere resembling well, and if a better solution could be implemented it would be v v good for people.
And many of the better object-level solutions could be basically described as “hands off motherfuckers”. Eg. building codes in Finland have evolved over 50 years to never actually save any energy, and just create novel problems which the next iteration will try to patch up while causing its own. The entire country would’ve been better off with a policy of “just don’t fuck with it” because at least then well-proven construction techniques that don’t end up creating health problems for people wouldn’t be outright illegal. I want government to receive legitimacy by delivering the core goods at the expense of random populist whims, not by satisfying random populist whims and sacrificing the core goods.
Existing players being too dumb to spot obvious wins is basically the entire justification for governments; if you assume they could, then I guess you might as well go full anarchist because nobody would be required to enforce the obvious wins on people. (sry for the snark; it tru tho)
And public choice theory has pretty definite explanations for certain entire classes of failures governments consistently deliver and hardening the state against them would not prevent the previous crisis as usual; instead it could render it altogether more resistant to the next crisis, and the one after that, and the one after that…
I know it’s a programmer brains thing to describe the functionings of USG as “source code” but those functionings create an incentive landscape which people will travel and the best way to push a boulder somewhere is not to exert effort on making it go uphill, it’s making that somewhere be downhill to begin with. And understanding and controlling those systems to generate less harmful outcomes is theoretically massive leverage. And what else is leverage? Software. You can campaign for a certain candidate, or you can run google or facebook and be basically in a fuck you we make the real choice position. I know which one I would work towards. So there are certain obvious analogies. And a few shock doctrine economists had a much more massive impact than millions of voters, so this isn’t without historical precedent either.
Furthermore, focusing on the meta level lets me take the focus away from my popularly objectionable object-level positions to my equally objectionable meta-level positions… okay yeah I just want to spacestead okay. Then I’ll be out of the way and not complaining when people follow democratic incentives off a cliff again and again and again.
1 week ago · tagged #we need a suckless government · 22 notes · source: argumate · .permalink
rageofthedogstar liked this
not-even-even liked this
not-a-lizard liked this
collapsedsquid liked this
socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from trashworks and added:if by “naturally empirical” you mean “finds out what works, for the meaning of ‘works’ it is operating within” then...
metagorgon liked this
trashworks reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:#we need a suckless government*heart palpitates*do you consider the market to be naturally empirical? it’s pretty clear...
blashimov liked this
argumate said: you know .sg already has a government many Silicon Valley people idolise :)
speakertoyesterday liked this
nibblrrr liked this- argumate said: AppleGov, GoogleGov, now we’re talking
- argumate liked this
anotherpersonhasclaimedthisus reblogged this from argumate and added:Oh yeah I know you geek with the best but there is a snobbery involved whenever someone does that thing with the one...
defectivealtruist liked this- argumate reblogged this from anotherpersonhasclaimedthisus and added:
Now That’s What I Call A Charitable Interpretation, Vol. 16 :)don’t get me wrong I am all about geek appeal when it...