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Linux As a Model For a New Government?
An anonymous reader writes "The hedge fund investor who prided himself on achieving 1000% returns, Andrew Lahde, wrote a goodbye letter to mark his departure from the financial world. In it, he suggests people think about building a new government model, and his suggestion is to have someone like George Soros fund a new government that brings together the best and brightest minds in a manner where they're not tempted by bribery. In doing so, he refers to how Linux grows and competes with Microsoft. An open source government. How would such a system work, and could it succeed? How long before it became corrupt? Would it need a benevolent dictator (Linus vs. Soros)?"
How long does it take to make a phone call?
Deleted
Most of their proposals seem to be based on the idea of some sort of dictator, with everyone's best interests in mind. I'm sure like communism it might work well in theory.
Democracy is basic open source government. You get what you put in. Adding in a republic aspect allows you to have some higher level maintainers to keep things orderly and to occasionally make unpopular decisions for the good of the project. Yes, it's potentially open to corruption, but as long as the democratic process itself isn't corrupted, repairs can be made.
So long and thanks for all the money.
... there would be illicit "code" sharing with interns and staffers, killing of wives and ex-wives. And then there would be religious differences (devil worshippers and penguin followers) and we would be polarized into two parties once again: The Penguins and the Little-Red-Devils.
The more we try to change, the more we stay the same.
And ultimately, who do appoint as our "constitution-kernel" manager to approve any constitution-kernel amendment-patches?
I propose a new driver... a pro-choice driver that does not pass moral judgement over others.
Well, I think the real question here is how long till it forks?
And which one to choose, there are so many! Would it be possible to try each fork on my family first in a sort of LiveGOV program instead of committing to one particular fork of the government?
Libertarians or perhaps the Hermaphroditic party will win the desktop before Linux does.
The ability of anyone to suggest changes, managed and seconded by those who maintain the project on a day to day basis.
Man was not meant to rule himself. Some men are natural leaders, but no man is meant to rule.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
We are already about to have a government bought and paid for by Soros
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This has to be the most idiotic suggestions I've seen here for a while. There is nothing wrong with the current U.S. government - it is ignoring the constitution which is the problem. There are clear boundaries presented by the constitution to protect citizens from the abusive and corrupt politicians, but if the law is ignored, it does not matter who is in charge and whether or not the government is "open source" or not. Why not all put our pants down and bend over for the Linux boys...since they write good code, they obviously could be really good at coming up with constitutional law and governmental suggestions! Of course, they would never get corrupt at the first sight of pr0n, because they already have the hottest women on the block :)
This is a terrible idea. Any thinking person knows that we should use BSD as a model for a new government.
This guy's the limit!
We already have governments that operate that way, it's called communism.
Cool! I always wanted to fuc.. fork the government.
... but even now as we pay taxes, we should be telling the government what we want them to spend it on.
This way any election of persons "running' the government can at worse just bias such usage rather then run us into the ground with misusing your taxes and leaving us low and wet with no retirement or healthcare.
Someone said to me, when I suggested we tell the government "for the people by the people" how to spend our taxes, that the constitution of the US says we do not have the right to question how the government spends our taxes.
I agreed and said we will not question them, we will instead tell them how to use it.
The Linux ideal was applied when this country was first started, "for the people by the people" and reason, specific reasons, given is found in the "Declaration of Independence."
As an example of Government Abuse today, if you genuinely uphold the "Declaration of Independence" you WILL BE LABELED A TERRORIST and put of list of such people!
Sure that sounds great, but how are you really going to place qualified people into government positions? Open elections? We're having troubles putting competent people into the White House as is, and that's with the assistance of an 'enlightened' electoral college. The USSR tried something similar with Soviets and a Benevolent Dictator but when their economic system collapsed, their government fell too.
The best solution falls along the lines of (1) choosing a government system that is hard to corrupt and easy to flush when corruption/evil is found and (2) educating the public to understand how the system works and how to identify corruption. I guess you can say the same reasons that corruption exists in any government is the same reasons why the world still uses Windows: the end user doesn't understand the system, they believes whoever tells them what they want to hear, and doesn't really want to sweat the details.
greed@All_Evils:~#
A "benevolent dictator" is usually not benevolent, except in his own mind. Even if he is, he usually becomes less so over time as pressure builds to show results for society.
You can bet that he will act as a dictator when someone outside his circle proposes changes, though.
Good luck with your job search.
He comes with some half-baked proposal, followed by a diatribe on the legalisation of dope. Big impression that is going to make.
I do love these money-sharks turned philosophers. Yeah we took a lot of cash from those idiots, but it isn't our fault they are stupid.. What they forget is that I as a non-expert don't have a snowball chance in hell to find out if my pension is in safe hands. Fortis Bank here in Belgium was marketed as a "good housefather - sleep on it for 20 years" share and now it is poof because some fatcat financial "specialists" burned their fingers on something even they didn't understand.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
And damn, was it cheap. He didn't pay enough for Kerry in 2004, but he did well on congress in 2006.
Namely, how are people put into positions of power? Through growing reputation and ability? Meaning that the govt. would be populated (in theory) by the best politicians (and uhhh, do we really want that)? How would you get people out of power once they got there? Currently, you can just fork an open source project if you don't like the project leaders. Clearly this is not a good option for government because it usually involves bloody warfare to happen.
No, this seems like a bit of a silly, not well thought out argument. Most discussions of open source that I've been a part of trumpet it as a more "democratic" process, meaning that open source mimics the current US government more than the government should mimic open source.
Now this will likely cause a flood of comments declaring our current government as broken, and not democratic. It is fine if you think that, but if you are going to rant about a problem, you darn well better have a better solution. and if you're thinking of improving the voting process (a good place to start) you may want to check out Arrow's Impossibility Theorem which states that no voting system can possibly be fair to everyone.
About -2 days, IMHO.
sounds familiar
Benevolent dictators like Torvalds, Rossum, Moolenar etc are few. Power corrupts everyone as Stanford Prison Experiment showed. Nobody is immune to it. We are only human.
I'm all for open government, which is not to say a government based on an open source software product development group.
Any one who has taken a poli sci class or a history class that covered ancient rome, athens or the founding of the US should see that the organization of ideas and resources in order to build a good software product is a vastly different paradigm than organizing a 'good' government.
First, the argument should be about what government means. I'm less concerned with what a government provides me ( a product ) than what it denies me. The moment government thinks it's supposed to produce a product as opposed to leave me alone, I would describe that government as tyrannical.
The bad mortgage/bad credit crisis was in large part created by people who felt it was the government's job to ensure anyone could get a house, regardless of ability to afford it. This is but one example of how government by good intentions invokes the law of unintended consequences for disastrous results.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Through out history, there has on occasion actually been dictators that did good for their countries. The big problem is succession. Even the most benevolent ruler will, if given the choice put his own offspring on the throne, and said offspring invariably turns out to be either a moron or an asshole.
It almost seems like an historical law.
I've got ten bucks that says he was stoned while writing that. The letter is very scatter-brained. He sounds like he's at a frat party when he's arguing about the legality of marijuana. Not that I disagree, I'm just saying that when you write your good-bye letter resigning as the head of a hedge-fund, you're probably better off leaving the "weed talk" out.
The last time we tried to fork the US, it didn't work too well. But actually, I do think that this could be the germ of a new idea, experimental modes of government in test communities. People will argue the pro's and con's back and forth but until the theories have been put to the test, it's just speculation. The only problem I've seen is that when a bad idea is proven to be such in a proper experiment, the true believers won't say the idea was flawed, it simply was not applied with enough vigor. We're thus back where we started, only the true believers are crazier for it.
The thing I keep coming back to is that rigidly hierarchical models of direction and control were necessary in the pre-computer age. Just imagine trying to keep up with documents and records when they're all held on sheets of paper in real folders in real file drawers, just imagine trying to communicate with someone when long-distance communication is just scratchy phone lines and letters. It makes sense to concentrate all of the command and control in one place and issue orders from there, capital cities, corporate HQ's and all.
With modern telecommunications, it will be easier to push the brains of the organization out to the periphery. Just drawing from my own experience, I've worked in several different corporate environments starting with food services, then telecommunications, then a mixture of small and big shops for computers and financial services. The thing that really struck me about the chain stores is that they took away the initiative from the store manager. A place could not vary from corporate standard and while this sets a base line of acceptable quality, nobody was allowed to rise above that level, either. What also happened is that management refused to accept feedback from the stores, the front lines of the business, so when they tried to implement stupid ideas, they never got the feedback that it wasn't working; either they didn't ask for it or wouldn't listen.
Just talking about restaurants, the strength of the traditional franchise is national brand recognition, expensive marketing and research efforts to develop products for the menu, and a proven formula for success that simply needs to be adopted and adhered to. Of course, this also means that you'll often get crap. If I compare the local Denny's with the local breakfast and lunch place, there's no comparison, the local mom and pop kicks the shit out of Denny's and their "real breakfast" bullshit. Of course, Denny's gets huge advantages of scale with purchasing, etc.
What I think would be interesting is if the mom and pops could create co-ops to do the same thing nation-wide. "Look, we're all individuals but together we represent a thousand restaurants. We promise to buy in this quantity at these prices, and if anyone drops out, the rest of the members will pick up the slack." Very hard to do 30 years ago but with computers these days, should be far easier.
When I was a kid, the strength of the capitalist versus communist economies was described as demand versus command. Command economies tried to decide everything from the capital city and they really had no clue how many paperclips were needed, would set unrealistic production goals and would never have the right amount. A demand economy places the paperclip decision at the level of the people buying the paperclips and the people making the paperclips -- a better understanding of the need for paperclips helps limit the production to just as much as is necessary. This decentralizes the bureaucracy.
Can the same thing be done at the federal level? Break the monolithic agencies into smaller "franchises" with the same goal but offices spread throughout the nation, all following the same game plan but fully cognizant of what's going on at the front lines? Can we bring back a meritocracy where the successful succeed and the failures go away? That used to be the strength of the western capitalist economies but now we allow such concentration of resources in oversized companies that are "too big to fail" that we've arrived at the same inefficiencies as the communist nations.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It's called...well, you know it as communism. It's alive and...not so well, in Cuba. Vietnam. Parts of Russia (the parts no one really wants). And parts of Alaska and Arizona. As you know, in Soviet Russia, the people THINK they own everything, but in fact, they own nothing. It suxors to be a kommie !!
In the history of the world, there has never been a "good" government. When things were at their absolute best, the government was mediocre and it didn't last.
The usual quote for this situation is Thomas Paine:
Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
I am glad this hedge fund guy is moving to a purely theoretical field. If he can't learn from history, at least he can't hurt the economy with silly financial deals.
A few thoughts:
While this is an interesting idea, it seems to me like getting a majority of people (enough to redefine government) to put confidence in a governmental system such as this would be hard. Getting people to understand it, then putting confidence in an untried system, would be difficult. It's like Linux versus mainstream OSes: Linux is being adopted because it's been working in the wings for years as a reasonable alternative in some instances. It has a reputation.
Also, when the Founding Fathers came to the table they WERE the best and brightest in many ways. As I've seen so many places, would even be possible to recruit the best and brightest, gut the system, and put them in place? Could a movement like that in Amrica occur? What would be the fallout? I imagine many of our political and economic ties would be severed with other countries and it could very well crash our economy.
While a new government may sound good in principal, keep in mind that government has fostered relationships with other countries for a very long time. Can we give them up?
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It's inner workings are totally opaque to the general public (me included, for the most part). The fact that is works at all is "magical," in the Asimovian sense.
And for both, if you want answers, you have to ask "The Man!"
We would all be ruled by a penguin, but not just any old penguin:
An emperor penguin :)
Summation 2
And then US is microsoft using its evil proprietary wares to crush any form of communism (even non-evil variants, like the smurfs!!!) . But where does the fascist part of all attempts at communism fit in? I mean linus is a bit of a control freak when it comes to what gets into the kernel, but he is unlikely to shoot you if you fork the kernel (try and break away).
In summary this analogy really sucks!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
all the current places already have governments. they need a new country for their new government.
I vote they build a city under the sea - somewhere all the existing governments can't get their hands on.
They'll need to bring in all the best scientists, artists, doctors and engineers in as well - I think it'd be important for them to bring in geneticists to help develop new DNA sciences in this new place so that they can build a better, newer world, no?
The wealthy bankers already buy and sell our elected representatives; why would they want to make it official?
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Shouldn't that be "Linux As a Model For a GNU Government"?
This guy's the limit!
You can't compare government with software development. Contrary to government, Linux is needed. ;)
Do not trust this signature.
Our current government is broken and not democratic!
My solution involves free bacon for everyone. If you love bacon, vote for me in the upcoming election.
See isn't that the way the democratic process is supposed to work?
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The more I read about history and politics, the more I'm impressed by the US Constitution and by the people who wrote it.
870% return - NOT returns.
He's just a self-aggrandizing self-promoting - Harvard MBA full of shit hedge fund manager. What I'm saying is he got real lucky once and was smart enough to cash out while he was ahead. And, he will never be able to do it again.
As a social studies teacher I am happy to see people discussing the idea. Maybe the open source government has no chance of succeeding, but to hear talk of different governing styles is a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I love the promise and potential our U.S. Constitution offers (note the PATRIOT ACT is NOT part of the Constitution tyvm) but am also aware of some shortcomings. Society, like the animal kingdom, evolves. Therefore to say we are stuck with the late 1700s as the best we can do for a backbone is selling ourselves short. Though it can be said that Japan's postwar constitution was something of an update of that system. If the open source idea sounds terrible, then perhaps throw out some alternatives. Why not kick around ideas? With elections hinged on money and elected officials seemingly tied to a cycle of the constant reelection game, discussions on alternatives can't make things any worse.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
Find a corrupt/broken/inefficient part of government.
Learn about the source of the problem.
Then do what you can to rid it of corruption, fix it, and make it more efficient.
Does such a thing exist?
The houses could be Earthsips, the food could be farmed through aquaponics and rotating gardens(see omega garden).
Practically everything could be automated with enough smart people.
I would love a place where I would be free to live as a renaissance man, working on whatever projects I liked.
I remember reading about "hacker spaces" a few years ago which are a similar idea.
Heavens Gate also tried something similar but that didn't end very well :-o
I believe what's called Direct Democracy is like Open Source, citizens can pretty much vote on every issue.
In this day and age it should be easy, if not cheap, to allow every citizen to vote on everything. I know electronic voting has a bad reputation but if the bugs could be worked out (quantum cryptography) this could allow countries with large populations the ability to hear from all citizens.
On the dark side though a true Democracy is probably not a good idea since the majority rules unlike current Western style governments where the majority doesn't, large populations in rich sections of a country could have all the power.
There was a significant event, the new site with absolutely free
video adult avi format www.respect-mastrubatsiya.org
Metagovernment.
"best and brightest" != correct
There's a reason why we have incredibly smart people holding differing opinions on nearly every single issue. Joe six pack who has never even read a book might have the "best" idea to solve a problem, even with no idea when the War of 1812 went down. This concept of being right just because you've thought it through is just arrogance. Yes, it probably helps to have an education, but ultimately a lot of decision making is guesswork and judgment calls.
Latewire
I haven't posted in a looooong time! Here goes: This is a good idea, in that we need better government. The thing is, it doesn't need Soros or anyone else to invest. There is an existing, excellent example governmental system already at work in the world. Six million people are organizing themselves around the world using a system originally designed in the late 1800's. The Baha'i World Community has three levels of government, it is completely free of corruption, it is non-partisan, it is based on individual capabilities rather than party platforms, it is free from electioneering/campaigning, and it has been functioning effectively for over 40 years at a global scale (prior to that it was functioning for many more decades at a national scale in various countries around the world).
:-D
There is an excellent wikipedia article about the Baha'i system.
As a member of the Baha'i community myself, I have first-hand experience with the functioning of this system. It is amazing how incredibly different it is from the existing governmental systems you see running in nations.
There are other people who have commented here about how this system or the other system is excellent, it's just that (some excuse for why it's not working)... The Baha'i system _is_ working. There is no excuse to offer about how it's great in theory, because it's also great in practice.
The only challenge is that you have to actually buy into it... Oh, wait, that's a challenge for every other system too. Oh well.
Actually, the real challenge is that it is not just a mechanical system. It uses spiritual principles in its operation. This is difficult for many people, but still, I encourage you to investigate it and the Baha'i community itself. Mishkin.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Stop thinking about changing systems, start thinking about changing people. Any system can serve everyone well if it is operated by capable and good people. So, instead of trying to change a system, let's focus on education and developing people's skills and sense of duty and ethics. What we lack and what we need is people who are capable and willing to do what is right. We have lots of systems and every system is guaranteed to fail if no capable and good people can operate it, so focus on what we need most first: people.
for a single lifetime. Then they die, and they never really get the hand off they should have to the next person, who will most likely be a dictator, sans benevolence. That's why Plato called the Republic practically unattainable - there aren't enough Philosopher Kings to handle the mess in the most expedient and trustworthy manner.
Also, certain governments, like Singapore, have tried paying their government officials salaries that are so high that they become less bribable. This works, since Singapore is seen as less corrupt than many countries in similar levels of development, but modern society in America might have a problem paying government officials after several hundred years of distrusting politicians.
The source code is here.
[Insert pithy quote here]
This is an established idea and has been gaining momentum over the years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance
Well, this will be adopted about as fast as Linux on the Desktop.
Why the FUCK does everyone in geek circles compare EVERYTHING to linux?
I mean, it's an operating system. Once you allow it to envelop your life or help you make decisions, your an idiot that can't think for yourself.
Seriously, how the FUCK did this become news for nerds, as if it even matters.
More blogging constituted as journalism.
--Toll_Free
Fixed that for you. ;)
After for once reading the article (very interesting let me tell you) it'd seem that the summary is a bit off course.
Adrew Lahde talks about the need for George Soros (or alike) to fund or start a forum that'd discuss a new form of Goverment/economics, that could grow in the sense of Linux (one guy starts it up, other start contributing).
He does not want Linus or Soros to run a country. He wants people like Soros (anyone with loads of money) to help wise people (not necessarily oil owners) to think about a new world order past capitalism.
He also talks about number of different good ideas which should be put in play.
This idea annoys me. First we have OSS governments and then we'll see physical, deadly, flaming wars between the vi and emacs parties. Finally we end up with a world ruled by several Beowulf clusters of robotic overlords.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Andrew Lahde obviously hasn't a clue about OSS. First, Linus isn't a "benevolent dictator" of OSS; at most, he's the ruler-via-merit of Linux, specifically, not OSS in general. OSS doesn't have a ruler of any sort these days, but until probably a couple years or so ago that would have been RMS - not Linus. "Linux" can be replaced by any number of things (FreeBSD, OS/X, Solaris, HP-UX, Windows, etc etc) and still use the majority of the rest of the OSS's community's flagship products. And are we really, after what the last few weeks have shown us, calling any damn financial elite "benevolent" at this point? Soros in particular has been on a mad power trip for a few years now, doing what I can only hope he thinks is the "right thing," but... Had Linus gone on the power trip Soros has been on, we would have replaced him by now. See, that's the difference between a OSS project that can be easily forked, and a "benevolent dictator" - we can't fork a government. I have to say though that given Soros' misguided attempts to "promote democracy" I find it fittingly ironic that someone would suggest him as a dictator. I personally use the OSS community as an example of why, in the future, when we are much more evolved socially than we are now, true communism would not only work but prosper. That being the case, communism (the only sort of example OSS can provide) isn't a method of rulership, it's a financial system. Governments protect financial systems, that doesn't mean they are the financial system (though they are always deeply entwined). One could have a democratic state with a traditional, market, command, or mixed economic system. But since, as I mentioned, one can't fork a government...the strength of OSS doesn't remotely apply (any such easily replaceable government would be easily removed by external forces too, and wouldn't have lasted long enough to piss off their constituents enough for them to have "forked" it).
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddmhxhmm_0fn4jjmfc Are you tired of it yet? Are you tired of it yet, yes that is the question. But are you really... No, I am not tired enough of it yet. I am not ready to do what it takes to take control of my life. The things that are most important to me. Such as my family, my friends, my pets, my life. I am simply doing what I hope is the best that I can to get by. That is an excellent example of exactly how many people feel right now. Or you might of answered, I am a true patriot. The definition of a patriot being (lets consult [Princeton] S: (n) patriot, nationalist (one who loves and defends his or her country). The thing in my mind, would all but have to be about the most important thing for me. Because let's face it, the most important thing to me is me. Without me there is nothing.. at least to me. I am my most valuable possession. Because if I have any possessions whatsoever, you want to protect them. The only way to be sure in anyone's mind is if they are there to protect the objects they "possess." I either do or do not possess a family (one at least I can be taxed on) or have to many other items, but one thing is for sure as long as I own and on a mission to possess a selfless desire but to acquire what I only need and required think of how I could really, truly impact my world. I am but a man in my country. We love, represent, and back football teams, families and organizations on close to a daily basis. The one thing that most represents me, in the world is my country. I must take it seriously. Not doing so does unequivocally include guaranteed annihilation. End of story. This is not meant to be propaganda, although admittedly falls under such definitions. The fact of the matter is my fellow Americans that if enough of us do not immediately decide to make some different correct decisions it appears soon we will not be in possession of our country, if we call it that now. Without my country, I am a changed man. Borders move all time, but never with any consistent peace. The ultimate preservation is therefore my country. Without which I am changed forever. I would be willing to take a bullet, if it meant that 9-11 woulnd't have happend. I may not be politician, or have any answers, but there are those that do. I am likely not of quite enough peace of mind and ineptitude to find the best choice, but I recognize that and to continue the logic, willing to seek the answers from those that do. I may happen to know a few people that are smart enough to recognize their preservation priority, and I am going to nominate them to themselves. In order to perform a more perfect union. Who is responsible for this country if not but us, we the people. You, me and everybody. You may have to make some tough decisions, whether it be lifestyle changes, or getting up off our pity stones we have strapped to our feet. I am a prime example, one with his first heart surgery at two, his second at 7 and his spinal fusion surgery at 11. I have seen some "negative circles" of people and I have seen and been lucky to be the beneficiary of some of the countries best and hardest working. If you consider yourself close to a hard worker, you owe it to yourself to standout and decide today right here and right now that you want to see and participate in some serious discussions.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
I think our checks and balances in the Constitution, and the Bill or Rights are pretty good too. I just think they aren't followed like they should be.
The politicians treat the Constitution and it's Amendments as if they have to follow a little bit less every year.
I think fundamentally we have an open source government, but it's too heavy at the top. There are too few people with too much power.
This was mentioned as good idea and i have to say I kind of like it myself.
Money is the root of all evil?
# fsck.democratism /dev/world /dev/world
fsck.democratism: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open
Could this be a zero-length partition?
#
All "modern" government systems (democracy, communism, you name it), or in fact, all government systems until now, had one giant elephant of a problem sitting right there in the middle of the room:
There are humans governing others.
Now continue to read before you judge.
The problem behind this is, that those people have a conflict of interest, between the needs of the governed and their own interests. So the ideal leader would be someone, where those two match perfectly.... which is of course impossible. But you can approximate it.
The problem with this is, that we have no reliable way of selecting such a person. Mostly because normal people can be tricked pretty easily.
But there is one new solution, that just came up when computers and the Internet got available everywhere:
Do not use an humans, but a very simple mathematical model (one that is so simple that every educated human can check it for himself), that calculates descisions out of the votes of a model of cascading trust relationships. This sounds complicated but it's very simple. (If you know how CSS decides, what rules apply to a HTML element, you already know it.)
In reality, it would work like this:
There is a set of things, where a decision has to be taken. That set is defined by people having differences in these points. Now someone - the typical role, that a politician would fill today - can create decisions for that set. Then another one can say "I want what he wants.... but, i want this specific thing to be different". Of course someone can use the results of that as his base too. And you can combine partial sets too, as you like. For example, you could say "I'm a liberal, but I agree with person X on family matters and person Y on science matters. oh, and I want social skills to be taught in school."
That way you could form a nice set of your own views without voting for every shit out there. (Because, it should make your life better, not worse :)
Now of course, this does not mean that you can get everything you want... because you live in a community.
So you assign yourself to a community/communities (country, state, town) (those are cascading too, and you can define which one has priority over which), and your views will merge with those of the community, to create the rules for that group of people.
So a conflict of interest would not be possible, because you could change your set of rules at any time.
Now there would of course be one simple limitation: You have to be in the same group with people that you share resources (land, water, jobs) with, when it comes to that matter (land, water, jobs). This could be automatically solved via a GPS input (or something similar).
I think that would work great. You could even extensively test it in parallel to the current system, round out all problems, and if it works, you can simply let all people join that system by themselves, until the old government does not matter anymore and goes away. So there is also no need for a "transient" government, like in communism, which for some reason never seems to end its job of transition (again a conflict of interest).
This idea of mine is open and I do not care who implements it, as long as you do not create a slightly modified system that becomes evil, and still associate it with me!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
What do you think of when you hear the word "corruption" as it pertains to government? Typically two things:
#1 is capable of some self-regulation in non-dictatorships, especially with our system based on checks and balances, but #2 is the modus operandi in the USA for no good reason. Lobbying is bribery, and should be punished as such, both for those offering the bribes and those taking them. To up the ante, since bribery of government officials is inciting governmental corruption, it could be construed as treasonous.
There will always be some measure of judgment involved for determining what counts as bribery and what doesn't, but as we are now, our levels of corruption via bribery make are enough to turn banana republics green with envy.
Especially true if you put some investor guy like George Soros at the helm.
Look, let's be clear about these kind of men (Warren Buffett, George Soros, etc). They are very good at making money. I applaud them for that, and say good for them, in general.
But to say they are some kind of wise, beneficial, impartial observers is ridiculous. They'll use the government to make a buck in a heartbeat. Look at Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is practically getting sweatheart deals from the Democrats even now. He constantly endorses democrats and gives them huge scads of money to get elected. They, in return, fight to keep things like the estate tax alive, and estate tax insurance and planning is a huge part of Warren Buffett's company business.
And perhaps even worse is this example. A few weeks ago 90% of the American people cried out to their representatives to not vote in a massive 700 billion dollar debt/bailout package. Buffett, however, endorsed it and pushed democrats and other government leaders very hard the opposite way (against the American people), and then right before it went through bought up billions of dollars in Goldman Sachs, an investmant bank that, if the bailout passed, would then get billions of dollars from the government through the bailout package. And now the Democrats have suggested more bailouts, more stimulus packages and wealth redistributions, and Buffet is pouring even more money into their coffers. And who will be well positioned to benefit from these redistributions and other policies? That's right, Warren Buffett and the other liberal billionaire investors.
Of course, I can hear some of you saying, "Well, it's at best just a wash for him, because his taxes will go up under the Obama plan to tax the rich." Actually, they probably won't, and I doubt he's worried about it. Guess who really gets hurt by these "tax increases for the rich?" It actually isn't Buffett. Buffett's wealth is tied up in stock, which grows without being taxed (it only gets taxed if he cashes out, in which case he pays capital gains tax). His actual income, especially given his thriftiness (which is a commendable trait), isn't all that massive, believe it or not. And this isn't a tax on wealth, so his stocks are safe. No, this is a tax on income, and the people who get whacked the most with that are small businesses and entreprenuers who are just getting started, because they don't tend to have massive stock holdings that appreciate over time like Buffett or Berkshire. Instead, they are growing year to year based on the profits they make on what they produce, which come in as, you guessed it, income. And income, not wealth and assets, are what the democrats are pushing to tax.
So yeah, I'm exceedingly opposed to letting anyone like Buffett or Soros run anything in the government. They already manipulate it now to their benefit and get rich off tax and bailout bills, so the last thing they need is to be made a "benevolent dictator".
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
I only have a problem with you if your plan is to steal the bacon from the pig farmers.
Money is the root of all evil?
We need a government that will work on any level. So we can have any improvement made to the system immediately work at the federal, state, county, township, city, family, and toaster level.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I dare this guy to read just one day of LKML traffic, and slog through the Mad Max-style landscape, where open warfare and mass hysteria are always simmering just beneath the surface of Bartertown, suppressed only by Linus and his lieutenants.
In this analogy Linus Torvalds is either the Tina Turner character or Master/Blaster. Take your pick.
Personally, I believe that this would work, for it seems to me that disengineering is exactly the same as unethicalness. Once you base governance on open social engineering, you eliminate the very enviroment necessary for the disengineering of government. Just as when one takes any unethical action, it only works when one hides the action in order to evade the consequencial reaction. The light of citizen review would eliminate the shawdows where evil hides.
Isn't he the guy that "broke" the bank of england (essentially stealing about $1B some of his wealth from the uk using currency speculation)? Didn't he also use his wealth to punish countries that he didn't like their taxation policies on investment using currency speculation?
Yeah he should be an ideal benevolent dictator, a guy with the same morals of a domain squatter and the RIAA... he's be a dictator alright...
the process of breaking up a large country into many smaller ones is often known as "balkanisation". When you do this, you always raise the possibility of trade barriers, and protectionism. these are the single quickest ways to screw up an economy (and to bring down a government). What we need are larger trading areas - with common interests, standards and regulations, not smaller ones.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Everybody talks about some kind of political change... but nobody seems to get that political institutions are the way they are for a reason. You cannot change them at will. They evolve together with (or slightly after) the structure of economy. Political problems can be fixed only by changing today's economic system AKA capitalism.
Check out my cross-platform apps
I can appreciate certain periods , even recent, of US government.
Talking about the USofA, the majority of it's people will probably support the idea of a Capitalist economy thriving under a Democratically elected government.
The problems of recent are in my view caused by Capitalism ruling the government instead of the other way around.
Democracy will get damaged when special interests are able to significantly buy votes.
I've said it before, here in and in other places, the US needs to ban any financial contributions to political parties in the widest sense by non voters.
And voters should be limited to say a US$ 20.- contribution per year on a party.
Even the poorest voters could afford such a payment and thus the one-man one-vote democracy would be restored.
If a majority of voters decided the parties need more money to operate successful they could allow tax money to be used, many countries have come up with reasonable systems to fund the running of party bureaucracies without distorting the democratic balances.
Until then (especially in the US) the Democratic process is being diverted by funny money instead of votes.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Let me guess, since all land is already occupied by existing governments it would make sense to build a city underwater, somewhere in international waters, how does the mid-Atlantic seabed sound?
Linux was successful in its adoption and deployment. But it really is a dictatorship. To get something into Linux required the approval of Linus and team. In the open source world I always had the ability to fork and go off in my own direction. This kept the executives in check. If they became corrupt they would lose their power very quickly and possibly another fork would dominate with a different set of executives. What is the analog to "forking" in the physical world? Other than when there was a frontier, this has not been possible. So what should be measured in the real world? Levels of freedom? Wealth? Fairness? Being adopted (or coerced) everywhere?
Can we write laws in such a way that they aren't subject to wildly varying differences in interpretation? Codify law in a strongly typed, object-oriented language that can be compiled and run and tested with varying inputs to see the result.
In theory it should be a matter of having enough variables modeled to give desirable outputs (ie. calculate guilt, jail time, ...). Where not enough variables are modeled, they could be added (with appropriate controls) so that future cases take into consideration those new things (like case law). Law would evolve in a measurable way, subject to scrutiny of whoever wants to go through the revision control system and see when things changed, by who, for what reason, etc.
The inputs into the system would still be subject to interpretation but that's no worse than things are today. I see that as the easier part to get agreement on.
It's the political power in the first place. Why expect to put power over other people life and property in the hand of someone and assume he will not profit from it. It's not about putting "the right people" in place, or about the right government, it's about the incentives.
\u262D = \u5350
Linux is successful as open source because so many people want a hand in overcoming a separate power's hold on the computer world. Open Source Government would be corrupt because so many want a hand in power over the world.
The USSR tried something similar with Soviets and a Benevolent Dictator but when their economic system collapsed, their government fell too.
Except that it didn't. "USSR economy collapsed" is US propaganda formula, invented to justify supposed effectiveness of Reagan-style economy and foreign policy US practiced at the time.
USSR "collapse" was a political act originated and performed by heads of three largest USSR members -- Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, who decided that the only way to get rid of incompetent people in central government (that included, among others, oh-so-loved-in-US Gorbachev) is to dissolve the whole union and pass the power to already existing structures of former 15 USSR members, three of whom they represented.
There was neither an economic cause or reason for this, nor USSR dissolution was accompanied with any changes in economic policy. Structure and condition of the economy, and economic policy pre-dissolution and post-dissolution were exactly the same, so dissolution merely erected more trade barriers between now-independent states, creating greater opportunities for corruption.
If anything, all attempts of economic reforms greatly weakened USSR and ex-USSR economies that were in accelerating decline since late-80's Gorbachev's reforms until 1998 when after a massive crisis many of "free market" policies were reversed. Compared to this, mild recession of 80's (one that spooked Gorbachev in the first place) is something that should've been better simply waited out.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Civilization in general reacts better towards that then any other for of government.
The problem is that absolute power guarantees they wont be benevolent for long.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It is eventually going to happen. If you look at our 5000 year old history, you will see that our social activity goes increasingly participative at every aspect, including government.
now we have the internet and are in the digital age, one of the biggest obstacles to a direct democracy with open source government has been overcome - distance and interaction. ah, these also clears some remaining issues with education level of the public.
trend does not change. its a part of social evolution. there can be only delays due to adverse periods, but it can only continue this way. its a matter of time, not a matter of if.
Read radical news here
Why the fuck is this taken seriously? Talk about an entirely new government?
How about we look at the real problem... The Constitution, with all of its flaws, sets up a beautiful system of government where states and localities create the laws they want. And, we've blatantly ignored that Constitution for the past three generations.
How do we fix the current US government? Eliminate everything that is UnConstitutional!
A new government? Fuck that. We need to just start removing corruption from our current goverment.
A benevolent dictator... is what every dictator claims to be.
It works for linux because it is software, but you can't decide to fork your own country.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Interesting, I have not hear of this view before. I've only heard of the propaganda versions of Regan out spending the Russians with the military arms race and the decline of the price of oil.
See, and this is why I sited the need for more education of the masses. Without educating the plebes, we are reduced to a mob who is steered by feelings and the loudest voices we can hear. I think the founding fathers did a good job establishing a sound government, but there was one caveat: the voter had to be educated (think Jefferson's enlightened farmer).
greed@All_Evils:~#
forking the government model will probably not help what model the government adopts.
Yep save da Republic. We need a Gub'mnt stiffly organized by-and-with algorithm hungry howling-dawg weenie-dudes. Mebby half-dozen slack_jaws from SLACK and fifty DEBIOLIAN long haired pointers. Finish with two-POODLES from IBM and a MANDRIVA *itch. Can those boyz hunt or what ...?
Uhm... so if there is a feature in anything you just fork it every time?
Just because you "can" doesn't mean it's feasible. My solution is to stay clear of Wikipedia...
Very well. I suppose it's down to me. ...Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Life would be easier if I had the source code.
Government follows money.
What allows government to be large, centralised and corrupted?
"It's The Money Stupid".
Deleted
I personally look forward to years of...
The formerly United States becoming a mass of vaguely related governments, new ones sprining up every few weeks as people keep deciding they could do better.
A lot of people wandering around, lost, joining and leaving dozens of these different micro governments while they try and find the right one for them.
A registration process for becoming a citizen, each time you wish to join a different one, that 99% of citizens go back feudalism, a system they know is totally broken and screws them horribly, simply because it's less hassle.
The remaining 1% sneering at the fools who stayed with feudalism, completely unable to understand why no one else is joining their new, amazing form of government.
While most citizens don't sign up, after a few years of major distrust, most companies register with these new governments because they realize it avoids letting them pay a lot of their taxes. Much like Delaware does at the moment.
ENDLESS wrangling over trying to form a common bill of rights. Eventually 30 different bills of rights pop up, with even the feudal nations claiming they have one too. Everyone argues over what "free" really means.
Only being able to buy cars from two manufacturers while every other car maker just can't be bothered dealing with the requirements of this new, weird, tiny little governments.
Every time the mail comes late, the roads aren't iced, there's a power cut, telephones don't work properly, or any other inconvenience, your mother, sister, brother in law, grandmother and two guys from down the street come to you and demand you fix it because you talked them in to this amazing system of government. You rapidly discover you're spending most of your life providing basic services to the people, like an idiot, you converted - rather than living in this new utopia.
BestBuy sets up the SocialServicesSquad. Any time a lightbulb blows out, a street needs repairing, they'll send out a "qualified" technician who'll manage to fix it, most of the time, for a huge fee. However, they only go to feudal areas because your hydrogen powered monorails are way too confusing compared to the dirt tracks they're used to working on.
Seeing as you're stuck making every little repair, you quickly ask around for pointers. Everyone laughs at you and calls you a n00b if you can't figure out how to build your own exchange rate mechanism, detached from the gold standard, capable of resisting speculators. I mean, that's just the basic stuff, loser. Everyone else tweaks their own daily.
The only games you can play for years are really obscure, really boring, math based ones that don't require anything more complex than a sheet of paper and a pencil. Eventually someone figures out how to make a clone of soccer. But they made the ball out of a rock because they didn't really understand what makes balls fun. Many of your neighbors keep kicking the rock anyway, declaring there's no fun those feudal types can have that we can't have in our enlightened system of government.
And... other than your mom who you brought along... no women. Sure, there are rumors of this really hot red headed one who wears chunky black glasses, a few villages over... but you've never actually seen her, have you.
Sounds, uh, Utopian.
"So yeah, I'm exceedingly opposed to letting anyone like Buffett or Soros run anything in the government. They already manipulate it now to their benefit and get rich off tax and bailout bills, so the last thing they need is to be made a "benevolent dictator"."
Soros and buffet are nowhere near in the same league, I've met Mr Soros personally and I can tell you he is not in the same league as your typical billionaire in the slightest. He set up conferences in how the political process of america is manipulated, see here: http://www.linktv.org/programs/orwell_deceiving
He publishes books constantly criticizing the the deficiencies of the capitalist system. (Just google or search on amazon for his name) and he also funds the soros foundation that has done a hell of a lot of good for people in the world and in america - http://www.soros.org/
Just because a person is rich doesn't mean that they are all about money, nor does it mean they are perfect. If you've actually watched interviews of Mr Soros or read any of his books and researched into the man, you'd get a much better picture then the superficial version and vague notions that he is just "some greedy rich dude". People should read some of his books and actually research before they smear a man you know nothing about. He is not perfect, but no one is, and since america is all about hyper belief in capitalism. Americans deserve to get the real world capitalism good and hard - they deserve to get the ideals they worship - greed, status, beauty, hyper individualism and being rich, and therefore deserve a bunch of rich people who believe greed is good ruling them.
If the american people want change they should be ignoring the law, outright revolting and going after these people with mob justice. It is astounding how ignorant most people are of history. Oswald spenglers decline of the west should be required reading for every student before they enter the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West
Oswald knew the only thing that can counter greed and oppression of the corruption of the rich is bloodshed and lawless disobedience, like the destruction of property, the intimidation of the corrupt men in the law profession and the corrupt judges, people did this during the depression, but most people today are too comfortable, selfish and individualistic to set aside their differences and fearful for their lives to oust these people. The rich live in a world radically different and sheltered from the real world of the masses and the more distant from this world they become the more myopic and distorted their thinking and vision becomes.
take power away from government. Let the free market find the answers. Because it's not open source if there is one entity telling everyone what to do.
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters. ~Alan Simpson
This is the same Soros that is funding Moveon.org, hates Bush and his allies with a passion and has funded the democrats before this election to the tune of at least $20-30 million dollars?
We're supposed to trust Mr Liberal, there? No thanks.
Joe? ..is that you??
maybe because it's stale? came we please move on now?
but he's a political/sociological idiot.
He fails immediately with "have someone like George Soros fund a new government...". Once you start throwing money at it, corruption starts almost immediately.
The pig farmers ARE the problem! They impead our progress as a nation by limiting the supply of bacon! Deregulate the bacon market, allow bacon to flow freely through our economy. It will be a Free Bacon Economy, and Milton Fried-Bacon-man will be our [puppet] leader! Vote for me and this bright future of change and hopeful bacon can be ours!
Yous in Pork-ituity,
The Man in the Bacon Mask
-
Linux works because of freedom. You can choose to use it or you can choose to use something else. You can choose to use it AND something else. Government's do not afford their subjects that kind of freedom. Governments exist to enforce rules, as it stands you only have to enforce rules on people who don't want to abide by them in the first place.
Most of us have no desire to murder anyone, as such it's no great imposition for it to be illegal. Many of us wish to criticize the leaders of our governments, an "open source" government wouldn't be able to allow people to flout its rules or else it would be powerless.
He should stick to investing money because he really just stepped out of his element with this stupid-ass suggestion.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Capitalism worked for two hundred years, but times change, and systems become corrupt.
This is why we moved to a mixed economy in the 39's. Unfortunately, we have yet to find a method to prevent regulatory capture..
while at the same time creating rewards great enough to attract the best and brightest minds to serve in government roles without having to rely on corruption to further their interests or lifestyles.
Being "bright" does not necessarily mean a morality which serves the common man.
Part of the common man's distrust intellectuals stems from the abuse suffered at the hands of those who are exceedingly intelligent, and have concluded the narcissistic teachings of machiavelli were the most correct.
This forum could be similar to the one used to create the operating system, Linux, which competes with Microsoftâ(TM)s near monopoly
I disagree on this regard.
Linux is a meritocracy because those who participate in it agree on most issues.
This would not fly in government.
The questions are:
Who decides what constitutes "merit" in this meritocracy?
If this is to be decided by popular vote, what is to prevent mob rule?
I propose something different.
We did pretty well nurturing a prosperous middle class when we had a proper mixed economy, why not have a mixed government too?
Representative democracy for social issues.
Direct democracy for the formation of regulation (with laws to prevent corporate power from engaging in massively asymmetric media blitzes)
I'll continue mulling over this. Who knows, it may be enough material for a book.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
With revision tracking of congress documents (like on wikipedia), it would be impossible slip in blatantly corrupt legislation in totally unrelated bills as they do today. Every law should be written from start to finish on wiki.congress.gov so that anyone could see exactly what changes each representative commit to the document.
The transparent revision history is a FLOSS-principle that could easily be ported to government.
While I agree that the idea of enthroning Buffett, Soros, or anyone else for that matter is an insane proposition at best, I think that either you do not understand or are misrepresenting how the proposed tax increase would work. It increases the taxes on income over $250,000, yes, but income is calculated by subtracting your expenses from your revenue. I do not mean bogus expenses, I mean very real ones. If I sell a product for $800, I do not get taxed on $800 income. I get taxed on the profit margin, which is much smaller. I know of very few small businesses or entrepreneurs that are looking at over $250,000 profit at or near startup; most of their revenue is tied up in either expansion (hiring new staff, new facilities, etc.) or paying existing expenses (payroll is a massive expense for a small business). This is something many misunderstand, and politicians are abusing this misunderstanding intentionally.
a new government that brings together the best and brightest minds
Sounds like someone has been watching reruns of The Simpsons.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
The same Soros who destroyed the Thai bhat? Actions speak louder than conferences, citizen.
The equivalent of open source government, would be no (centralized) government at all, that is anarchy. This is hardly a new idea, it's been going for some centuries now, and has been implemented, with some sucess, in several situations such as the Ucranian revolution (1918) of the anarchist group identified with Nestor Makno, or the the spanish revolution and the CNT (1936). Off course, true anarchy in the sense of no opression over others, or minimized opression, is incompatible with capitalism, since capitalism denies economic democracy, and therefore would do away with it.
Although not the same, it's easy to see similarities in the modes of operation of anarchist organizations and open source communities.
Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffet's company. Berkshire Hathaway does not specialize in "estate tax insurance and planning" which is not a "huge part" of their business. Berkshire Hathaway sells all sorts of things including electricity, candy, and insurance. But nobody sells "estate tax insurance" since people can only insure themselves against risks not known liabilities.
Before anybody listens to the parent's allegations of conflict of interest (which he curiously portrays as a phenomenon unique to the Democratic Party) I think it's fair to demand the following evidence:
BTW, I'm really excited to hear that url for estate tax insurance. Gosh, maybe he even sells other tax insurance, like income tax insurance! That would be awesome. Geeze, it seems like I have to pay that one every year.
Wait-a-minute! That's why buffet is supporting Obama's tax hike for the rich: He's going to make a mint selling the income tax insurance! Oh Buffet, you are a wiley one!
A constant stream of referendums. "The government is attempting to undermine your civil rights. Cancel or allow?"
Different governments create different products:
Linus is called the "benevolent dictator" because he's making a product.
Our Constitution guarantees a republic. We've "overridden the base class" (in OOP-speak) to produce an arguably functioning democracy. But the bigger the democracy gets, the more problems we have. We want what the majority wants (by definition) - however right now, what we want does not exist. We're chasing entitlements right into bankruptcy. This isn't a problem with democracy as a form of government per se, it is a problem with the people in it, and what they feel they should be able to get. We elect those who promise the most, but without the ability to pay for it we end up "borrowing" really stealing our entitlements from our kids.
The intended product of the Constitution was one where the federal government was of limited authority. It had control over interstate commerce, international operations, and ability to make laws and fund itself and to those ends only. States were supposed to be our real governments, where as small groups of people, we can affect our immediate environment to a much higher degree. Unfortunately the Uniform Commercial Clause and taxation have eaten away at the limits of the federal government.
I think it is better to focus on the features of government than the government itself. Any government this far has had a treasury. This is an accumulation of wealth. It can be raided (and is routinely) with acts of congress. I'd like to see a government without a treasury. The bills are instead direct billed to the people. The people then can pay based on itemization of the costs. Anything not endorsed by the people won't be funded. And there is no treasury to be raided. There can never be costs past on to the next generation... While congress can still have lobbyists, their effectiveness is limited. Congress can pass any law they want, but without funding the effect of corruption is limited by the people.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Warren Buffett gave $28,500 in 2008 to democrats this year according to this site. Is that "huge scads of money"? He is "pouring even more money into their coffers"? Where do you get this stuff?
You are arguing that he is for the estate tax because he makes money on estate tax insurance. Sure. I'm sure it is has nothing to do with values about where the tax burden is least harmful. Taxes have to come from somewhere unless you want to just print money or borrow another $trillion from China.
I think the consensus on the bailout bill was that there would be catastrophic consequences for the US economy if the situation was not resolved. Do you have money in the bank (more than the then 100000 FDIC limit - btw the FDIC would go bankrupt pretty quick)? Do companies have money in banks? There was consensus among people who understood the situation that something needed to be done (except maybe Jim Rogers). The representatives risked their own re-election for the good of the public. Maybe it is a conspiracy that both candidates supported the bill and other countries are doing the same thing. Or maybe the average person does not understand our economic system. You decide. BTW I think they are getting ownership of the banks directly instead of buying debt instruments.
Buffett has been for raising the capital gains tax and I think Obama also. That is where he makes most of his money. The other way to get money out of stocks is dividends which is taxed as income. Of course you are not taxed until you sell a stock, but if you don't sell it you never get any money do you?
Business can deduct their expenses. So money used for growth is not included in "income" and is not taxed as your post would imply.
Smart people will profit from whatever the government does. I can understand disagreeing with their ideology, but suggesting that liberal multi-billionaires support raising taxes for their own FINANCIAL benefit seems a little far fetched.
Historically speaking, the process of trying out a new form of government -- be it based on intelligentsia, divine right, populist appeal, military might, or financial might -- is usually a pretty messy thing.
There's all that marching and yelling, sometimes blood and death too.
Things have to be pretty bad to make that worth it. I'm not sure things are bad enough right now for it to be worth it.
I mean, I'm all for a good thought experiment now and again, but tossing out a system of government that's been working reasonably well seems like a bad idea.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Quite right.
Government, logically, is force. The government is that entity in a society which has a practical monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Insomuch as there are others able to ignore the dictates of the government or to use force to their own ends (think corruption/organized crime), the government is not sovereign.
In this sense the Open Source approach is not suited to government. The actions of government apply to everyone and are supported by the application of force (i.e if you disobey you will be arrested, if you resist arrest you will be shot) while an Open Source project is defined by voluntary action and a pluralistic, meritocratic, approach to system design. The two are inherently contradictory.
I think that to apply Open Source principles to government would require a Minimalist, Libertarian, style government. The Government Proper, the entity with the monopoly on force, would be restricted to ensuring that the various open development units don't attempt to use force against each other. Other than that policy would be left up to non-government units.
For instance, rather than having a monolithic federal welfare system, we could have a plurality of nonprofit organizations for the reduction and alleviation of poverty. If you have resources or skills and are concerned about poverty, you could join one of the existing organizations (the one which takes the approach that you find most appropriate) and contribute your time or money to helping them. Or, if you don't really identify with the approach of any of the existing organizations, you could get together with a group of like minded people and start an organization of your own.
Rather than taking a single ad hoc approach to solving civic problems we could have a diversity of parallel approaches being undertaken. Those that prove most effective will draw more and more contributors and donors, and, if they become too big and crufty, concerned members can fork off, or fledgling organizations can step in to break new paths and undercut the giants.
Under such a system, enlightened people would ask each other what organizations they work with, rather than what party they support. Instead of flaming each other in bars about which set of leaders should rule us, we could argue about which social projects take the best approach. Instead of sitting around reading the news and getting pissed, we could be designing new tactics and strategies for our favorite organizations. In other words, we could have real participatory "government" (as opposed to submitting a laughable, 0 = Democrat, 1 = Republican, every two years).
I think that this has been the major failing of the Libertarian movement. They've failed to paint a picture of a compassionate Libertarian world. Eliminating federal programs to assist the needy (poor, unhealthy, undereducated) does not mean that we'd all selfishly go around ignoring impoverished people begging on our doorsteps any more than legalizing drugs would mean that we'd all be out shooting heroin the next day. It just means that, instead of passing off our problems as a people to some faceless bureaucracy, we'd take responsibility for them ourselves.
Individualism isn't about greed. It's about standing on your own two feet and taking care of the world yourself, like an adult, rather than handing all of your problems over to our paternalistic government and then wallowing in childish self-pity when the world goes to shit.
Benevolent dictatorships (which Plato already considered a few thousand years ago) fail as soon as they encounter a genuine disagreement. Any system of government needs be able to cope with conflicting ideas, whether it's a conflict of interest (benevolent dictator wants a raise?), the needs of the few vs needs of the many, a choice of equally good but mutually incompatible paths (socialism vs libertarianism) or being forced to make a decision when the consequences of the choice are not universally agreed upon (most environmental issues).
Dictatorships are benevolent as long as no major disagreements occur. Once a disagreement occurs, things go downhill very quickly - the population has to either be pacified or repressed.
Democracy as we practice it in the west is really a system of temporary dictatorship, punctuated by ritualized revolutions. We simulate a civil war to see which leader would manage to gather the largest group of followers ... then accept that whoever has the most bodies would most likely win, skipping all the death and destruction of a real civil war. So long as people genuinely feel the result reflect what would be the real outcome of a conflict, there's no rational reason for actual violence - being part of the system is more productive than trying to oppose it.
Linux has not yet had to face a succession - and it's the successions more than the leadership of the moment that are the test of a system of government. Also, linux can fork if any schism grows too large - forking geography is a lot more messy: you can't take a copy to each side and you have to assume that people are willing to abandon their roots and communities to decide which fork to move to.
So in short ... come back in a hundred years and let's take a look at the state of linux then before we decide if has lessons to offer for a system of government.
One system of party democracy gets suborned, and people want to go back to dictatorship...
Talk about misunderstood.
Instead of admitting the faults might lie more in the area of the small number of parties, the mechanism in which that democracy can be subverted, etc...
People just to accusing democracy of having failed.
I blame the voters. Just because you think you can have a government that represents you doesn't make it so.
I'd also state that democracy hasn't failed till the armed rebellion has...
I don't see any plans in that direction, so the 700 million plan can't be that bad...
Buffet bought Goldman Sachs because it was the one investment bank that didn't need the bailout, not because the bailout was going to pass.
O rlly?
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWM0MjZmZTQzMmM5ODFhNTY5MjQxOTQxMzNlOWQ3MzQ=
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/04/11/gore-admits-financial-reasons-advancing-global-warming-hysteria
K, so Gore isn't a billionaire, but the fact that proponents of Leviathan are quick to use government to pad their own wallets should surprise no one who has studied the true robber barons of the 19th century, the political entrepreneurs, or has been paying attention for the duration of their life-span from the 20th to 21st centuries.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
A lot more transparency would be a fine thing, but the problem is that most people don't care, not that blatantly corrupt legislation is being added to unrelated bills.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Emails show journalist rigged Wikipedia's naked shorts
Overstock's Byrne vindicated amidst economic meltdown
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_shorting/
Pertinent Quote:
----
"Two and a half years ago, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne penned an editorial for The Wall Street Journal, warning that widespread stock manipulation schemes - including abusive naked short selling - were threatening the health of America's financial markets. But it wasn't published.
"An editor at The Journal asked me to write it, and I told him he wouldn't be allowed to publish it," Byrne says. "He insisted that only he controlled what was printed on the editorial page, so I wrote it. Then, after a few days, he got back to me and said 'It appears I can't run this or anything else you write.'"
The Journal never changed its stance. But last week, the editorial finally saw the light of day at Forbes - after Byrne added a few paragraphs explaining that naked shorting had hastened what could turn out to be the biggest financial crisis since The Great Depression.
With a traditional short sale, traders borrow shares and sell them in the hope that prices will drop. A naked short works much the same way - except the shares aren't actually borrowed. They're sold but not delivered.
By the middle of the summer, these unresolved "stock IOUs" - as Byrne calls them - were pilling up in four Wall Street giants already struggling to stay afloat: investment banks Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On July 12, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an emergency order banning naked shorts in a host of major stocks, and all four of those names were on the list.
Patrick Byrne
The order expired in mid-August, and in the weeks since, Lehman Brothers has filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch vanished into Bank of America, and Fannie and Freddie were seized by the US government.
Then, on September 17, the SEC issued a new order meant to curb naked shorting of all stocks. "These several actions today make it crystal clear that the SEC has zero tolerance for abusive naked short selling," read a statement from SEC chairman Christopher Cox. "The Enforcement Division, the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, and the Division of Trading and Markets will now have these weapons in their arsenal in their continuing battle to stop unlawful manipulation."
In the wake of the SEC's crackdown, the mainstream financial press has acknowledged that widespread and deliberate naked shorting can artificially deflate stock prices, flooding the market with what amounts to counterfeit shares. But for years, The Journal and so many other news outlets ignored Byrne's warnings, with some journalists - most notably a Forbes.com columnist and former BusinessWeek reporter named Gary Weiss - painting the Overstock CEO as a raving madman.
Byrne has long argued that the press dismissed his views at least in part because Weiss - hiding behind various anonymous accounts - spent years controlling the relevant articles on Wikipedia, the "free online encyclopedia anyone can edit."
"At some level, you can control the public discourse from Wikipedia," Byrne says. "No matter what journalists say about the reliability of Wikipedia, they still use it as a resource. I have no doubt that journalists who I discussed [naked shorting] with decided not to do stories after reading Wikipedia - whose treatment [of naked short selling] was completely divorced from reality."
As recently as last week, Weiss told us he's never even edited Wikipedia. But emails shared with Byrne and The Register show that Weiss has in fact edited the encyclopedia's article on naked shorting. And they indicate he's behind an infamous Wikipedia account known as "Mantanmoreland," an account that - with the backing o
...clickety click went the bureaucrat's fingers as the dissident citizens of Linuxia dropped like flies.
Opposing Bush is good, isn't it?
Not if one supports the equally corrupt Democrats.
2% market share is about right for government.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Great resignation. Read the whole thing. The Open Source thing is just one line, and I'd be surprised if the guy would be serious about when he has time (and he does have time) to give it more thought.
No, forget about the Open Source one-liner. It's not a big take-away here. This is a classic "I made my pile, so fuck you" resignation. They come along once in a while in various places. The guy is plainly on a high. Or a low. Or something. Unequivocably, he's feeling a lot of intense emotions; built up over long years of stress and then released in one shining moment of "I don't have to please anybody or anything anymore, here is what I really think" brilliance.
People who read it may tend to have the reaction of "finally, he's saying what I think". They might also think "he's got his stash, now he's nuts". The true corporate drones will be like, "Why is he being that way?" and then they will procede to hunch back over their keyboards and waste their lives.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Soros is a left-winger who funds MoveOn.org, funds gun control groups, and believes capitalism is flawed because there's no powerful, centralized government. He's part of what makes the Democratic Party a party of elites--it's a party funded by Hollywood celebrities and liberal worldly millionaires like Soros.
Marxism is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ideal governmental model. It is human nature to want to work for your reward, and to appreciate only things that you've worked for.
Marxism takes this and turns it on it's head. It claims that you should hate work, but that you should do it for the "common good" and that people should have their needs met by society even if they are unable to work.
The only thing I can think of that's more degrading than working for nothing is being paid for nothing. In Marxism, you can only get something by needing it, and no matter how hard you work you can never earn anything. The whole thing is disgusting and degrading on a fundamental level.
Linus describing himself as a benevolent dictator, we could say that is as already been done before : it was in France and Europe, and was called "Despotisme éclairé"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_absolutism but the French version is more complete.
The most powerful corruption in any nation comes from a central bank that is privately owned. Since the time of Benjamin Franklin, it's been said that whoever has the power over a nation's money supply has ultimate power over that nation's economy, its politics, and the destiny of its people. The problem in the USA is the money supply is not run by any of our elected representatives; instead it is in the hands of private bankers and we know whose interests they have at heart.
There has been much speculation about who owns the Federal Reserve Corporation. It has been one of the best kept secrets of the century, because the Federal Reserve Act Act of 1913 provided that the names of the owner banks be kept secret. However, R. E. McMaster publisher of the newsletter The Reaper, asked his Swiss banking contacts which banks hold the controlling stock in the Federal Reserve Corporation. The answer:
In his book The Secrets Of The Federal Reserve, Eustace Mullins (protégé of Ezra Pound) indicates that, because the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sets interest rates and controls the daily supply and price of currency throughout the U.S., the owners of that bank are the real directors of the entire central banking system in the U.S. Mullins states:
"The shareholders of these banks which own the stock of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are the people who have controlled our political and economic destinies since 1914. They are the Rothschilds, Lazard Freres (Eugene Mayer), Israel Sieff, Kuhn Loeb Company, Warburg Company, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller family, and the J.P. Morgan interests."
I can't wait to see the Linux Haters blog mocking this story. Linux as a model for new government? Ever visited the flamefests of the LKML? Hell, ever tried to program sound on Linux? There are so many broken APIs, you can barely get anything done.
Not if one supports the equally corrupt Democrats.
Something like that. Democrats *and* Republicans (with an exception here and there like Dr. Ron Paul) are the problem with government.
The two party system that has evolved in the US is a sham in the sense that it is really just one party with two different names and they both do the same kinds of things when they are granted power.
I know of very few small businesses or entrepreneurs that are looking at over $250,000 profit at or near startup; most of their revenue is tied up in either expansion (hiring new staff, new facilities, etc.) or paying existing expenses (payroll is a massive expense for a small business).
Oh. Maybe you should check SBA regulations for what is considered a small business (in most cases, it's a lot more than $250,000 in net revenue).
Maybe you should also ask the Messiah to clarify just how he is going to apply his US$250k rule. Maybe it's gross revenues, maybe it's something else. No one knows.
George Soros and a failed hedge fund investor. With those guys backing Linux, it's bound to succeed, right?
Here is a somewhat sarcastic essay on the Ivy League which relates indirectly to Andrew Lahde's comments:
"Post-Scarcity Princeton"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
It talks about moving beyond conventional economics altogether to a Linux-like post-scarcity paradigm, and what it would mean to re-envision an elite institution along those lines.
From the introduction: "Wikipedia. GNU/Linux. WordNet. Google. These things were not on the visible horizon to most of us even as little as twenty years ago. Now they have remade huge aspects of how we live. Are these free-to-the-user informational products and services all there is to be on the internet or are they the tip of a metaphorical iceberg of free stuff and free services that is heading our way? Or even, via projects like the RepRap 3D printer under development, are free physical objects someday heading into our homes? If a "post-scarcity" iceberg is coming, are our older scarcity-oriented social institutions prepared to survive it? Or like the Titanic, will these social institutions sink once the full force of the iceberg contacts them? And will they start taking on water even if just dinged by little chunks of sea ice like the cheap $100 laptops that are ahead of the main iceberg? "
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Due to the fact that there are federal limits on how much an individual can donate to named political candidates (this is called "hard money"), I'm sure Buffet would have given more if he legally could. Note that Soros doesn't bother with hard money, his $30 Million went to Moveon.org which gets around traditional campaign finance limits by being an "issue advocacy" organization (both liberal & conservative organizations do the same thing).
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
... would have to start with electoral lotteries and a flattening of the hierarchy. Keeping the current electoral system(s) and government structure would just preserve the corrupting hierarchical element. It's that hierarchical element that leads to all the trouble, and the current electoral system is actually tailored to benefit those who are excessively ambitious and ethically dubious. The current system is a lose-lose for We The People.
That sounds like an Ayn Rand quote to me (I'm pretty sure I read it in Atlas Shrugged), though I'm sure she wasn't the first to say it.
That's a good practical argument, but it's not an idealist's argument. The problem with Marxism is more fundamental than that. It demands that people be something they are not.
I like to work, because I get what I want from it. But a Marxist says that I should work even though I will get nothing. That's a self-loathing, life hating approach to life. It claims that my desire for material things is bad, and I should pretend not to want them. But I want what I want and there's not anything wrong with that. Even if it was bad, I'd rather be the bad person I am than pretend to be a good person I am not.
Linux 0 to 2.0 was great, because you know where it was coming from and where it was to be headed.
Since then - 2.2 onward - you have to resign yourself to playing catch up with whatever they might feel like doing next, with Redhat being the nearest equivalent of the GOP in this context.
Your average American hasn't a fucking CLUE about how economics of any sort work, how wall street works, what a derivative security is, or what a mortgage-backed security is. Of course they were crying when they saw the $700B price tag on the government bailout. They're ignorant and only looked at the price tag. Few people have any idea how urgently needed the bailout actually is, and the few that do were in favor of it. If we were a direct democracy the bailout would have failed, and America would be facing a serious depression. Fortunately the bailout passed and we're only looking at a recession.
Politics, sadly, is the process of balancing logic with emotion, in order to achieve workable consensus. This is something computer programmers have historically been very bad at.
If there was a "news for nerds, stuff that matters" yearly award I'd nominate this story!
About Open Source Government: IIRC, Douglas Hofstadter wrote in one of his books, years ago, about a game where the purpose of the game was to each turn, change the rules. I don't remember the name, lexus or something. If anyone remembers please reply.
Maybe having laws with version control and unit testing would be a good idea :-)
I interpreted the bit he said about the U.S.A government as follows:
Did I kind of get the gist? IANAL, IANAPolitician, IANASociologist, etc. etc.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Wow... I'm not which side of the argument you are trolling for. Bravo. Honestly, with all due respect, that's one of the most masterful trolls I've ever seen.
Money is the root of all evil?
"This is the same Soros that is funding Moveon.org, hates Bush and his allies with a passion and has funded the democrats before this election to the tune of at least $20-30 million dollars?"
And what was the context of his support? Did you ask or even read about why he did such things? Just saying "he gave money to so and so" without any kind of context on why he did what he did is meaningless ideological smear tactics.
"We're supposed to trust Mr Liberal, there? No thanks."
Again, this betrays any insight or intelligence into the matters at hand. My post didn't say he was a perfect man, but it is obvious you know very little about George soros besides what you want to see in the man. Try meeting him and going through interviews to find out why he did what he did instead of just mindlessly saying "so and so did this", anyone can point fingers and frame facts in such a way to make someone look bad. The real world is more complicated then the black and white fantasy land most conservative and other ideologues live in.
Marxist Communism has been the one of the most influential ideological developments of the past 200 years, yet very few Americans actually know anything about Communist ideology. Americans do have many misconceptions about Communism however, which have been intentionally promoted by American leadership. I say influential for a reason, because the 20th century was largely defined by the struggle between capitalism and communism. Communism is so influential because even capitalist countries like America were defined in the 20th century by their anti-Communist policies, and because communism was a critical factor in the development of the climate that led to World War II, as fascism itself developed in opposition to communism. There are three basic major socialist ideologies: Socialism, Anarchism, and Communism. These are all regarded as forms of socialism. Interestingly, socialism emerged as feudalism began to breakdown. Communist movements originally developed among the conservative feudal peasants and craftsmen. Many of the guilds from feudal times were workers' organizations that lived communal lifestyles. As the industrial revolutions began these communal lifestyles became jeopardized. Anarchist and Communist ideology were very similar at this point. In the 1700s, both of these movements were dominated by peasant farmers and guilds. More about the roots of Anarchism and Communism: http://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/index.htm Socialist ideology was a little more elitist and was more dominated by middle-class intellectuals and even some aristocrats. The early Communists and Anarchists sought to preserve the communal lands and communal lifestyle, but also sought to overthrow the feudal aristocracy to establish democracy, this made them both progressive and conservative. The early Socialists were a little more progressive and more into technological advance. The early communists were like the Amish in many ways. The Amish are an enduring holdover from the early communist movements. For more on the Amish see: http://people.howstuffworks.com/amish.htm Many of these groups opposed progress, and some participated in riots, the destruction of industrial machines, and the sabotage of factories. This was done because the new industrial forms of production were undermining rural life and were putting millions of craftsmen out of work by making their skills no longer valuable. Then Karl Marx came along in the mid 1800s and Marx denounced the "utopian socialism" and anti-progress communism of his day. Marx pointed out that capitalism was progressive because it represented an improvement in production. Marx hailed capitalism's triumph as a victory over feudalism. Marx said that industrialization was a good thing and that it should be embraced, that instead of opposing the progress of industrialization the goal should be to end wage-labor, and that the new industrial systems should be converted to communal property, much like the lands had been communal property just some 50 or 100 years prior. This changed the communist movement from being anti-technology to pro-technology, and led to the development of what most people recognize today as "Communist ideology". The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, and can be found here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm It is important to distinguish the difference between Communism and Marxism. Marxism is basically a system of analysis, and a way to view the world. Communism, on the other hand, is basically a political movement, a form of government, a condition of society. It is also important to understand the difference between "communism" and the Communist Party. No country has ever had a communist system of government. The countries that we call "Communist" are countries
"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."-- Fred Hampton
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, is that you?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Vote for me and Ill give you a check for 10000$ !!!
95% of the people will get the money as I only take the money from people who made WAAAY too much and those smelly companies! They deserve it!
(There's your problem with democracy. Once people realize that they can maximize their gain in voting, they will always do so, regardless of ramifications even 1 day ahead.)
Hello! Why reinvent a wheel that is already being built?
http://metagovernment.org/
Plato promoted a society run by philosopher-thinkers. Those would be the equivalent of technocrats today.
What would go along with that worldview is the fact that when the USSR was dissolved, Russia took its place on the UN Security Council, along with the other 4 permanents.
Don't you think more transparency would lead to more people actually caring? If you want people to devote time and energy on "caring" about corruption in government, you need to provide information that is clear and accessible.
What if the linux kernel developers would all hide the details about who did what and just every once in a while release thousands of new lines of code which they would share all responsibility for? Would that spark interest for someone curious about kernel development?
If every change to a congress document could be linked to the representative that committed the change, it would provide you with a clear view on relevant information.
Today the level of detail we know about a legislation stops at who worked on it and who voted for it. That means: every bill has a majority of the congress behind it, and everybody (read: nobody) takes the blame for the corrupted details.
forking the government model will probably not help what model the government adopts.
In soviet russia, they government forks you!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
"The "state of communism" is described by Marx and Engels as the condition in which "the State" no longer exists and people live and work together in harmony in a society based on equality where the fruits of labor are shared with all members of society and no one is exploited."
That's exactly what I have a problem with. Why should I share the fruits of my labor if I do not wish to do so? And how am I exploiting people by refusing to share with them? This is wrong. I want to live by the fruits of my labor, not by the charity of others.
undo mod
I am a software developer in Hilo, Hawaii. For the past year I have been developing an online implementation of Interactive Democracy.
The system in its current stage enables anyone to vote directly on any of the House Bills in a virtual copy of Congress. Legislators can then use this collected consensus when opining on our behalf.
This project is open source and available today at trustfreedemocracy.com
You have a very scary position. Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West argued that the only thing that can counter the power of money in "parliamentarism" was "blood and soil." Within the context of Hitler's subsequent rise, emphasizing the German race and its mystical connection with the land, Spengler's words become a very stark warning, not a model to follow.
Soros's criticisms of capitalism are particularly rich, insofar as he goes out of his way to cause turmoil. Soros's manipulation of the Thai Bhat set off the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 that spread around the world, ultimately resulting in the hyperinflation of the Russian Ruble in 1998 and their default on IMF loans. He engaged in a political attack on the British Pound in the 1980s with the object of driving Britain out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. It's hard to see his criticisms of the system as particularly constructive given his otherwise politically destructive behavior.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
president@open-source-gov:~$ sudo rm -r /constitution/rights
....so how would this be a departure from current circumstances?
Increased transparency would make it easier, but I'm not sure it would make it easy enough. There are people who chew through a lot of the crap that Congress spews forth and try to turn it into the clear information that you are talking about, and they don't seem to get all that much attention.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
"You have a very scary position. Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West argued that the only thing that can counter the power of money in "parliamentarism" was "blood and soil." Within the context of Hitler's subsequent rise, emphasizing the German race and its mystical connection with the land, Spengler's words become a very stark warning, not a model to follow."
You obviously don't understand spengler, or you wouldn't have passed off such trite nonsense, his point was the only real counter to corruption and rule by the rich historically speaking, is blood.
"Soros's criticisms of capitalism are particularly rich, insofar as he goes out of his way to cause turmoil."
Look soros admits the british pound and he said if it wasn't him it would have been someone else, it's not like he's hiding from these facts. Don't act like you have the moral highground here, what soros knows about markets runs rings around most economists in having produced evidence that he knows.
"Soros's manipulation of the Thai Bhat set off the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 that spread around the world, ultimately resulting in the hyperinflation of the Russian Ruble in 1998 and their default on IMF loans."
Which is the biggest load of bullshit ever. Look George soros is on record for the british pound, because if it wasn't him it would have been someone else. Let's face that fact please, George soros is not the only currency speculator in the world. His influence is rather minmal compared to millions of speculators. It's absolute nonsense that he caused the asian crisis. It's bullshit plain and simple.
Note: This is what really happened with the baht
Soros was also making contacts for a ceasefire deal through JP Morgan.
He was losing money on his short-term positions, which were not covered, but subsequently would make money on his medium-term positions. In general he was not in big trouble, unlike other speculators who had attacked the baht in the spot market and were trapped in the guillotine of the two-tier currency system. (The two-tier system made it impossible for speculators to attack the baht from offshore.)
Soros' position was largely medium-term, which would be matured in six months. That was the big chunk of the attack. Rerngchai realised that come August, the Bank of Thailand would not have the dollars on hand to deliver to the speculators, as obligated by the currency swaps.
But Soros also realised that the carry-over, or interest, cost of his baht positions would not be worthwhile due to the abnormally high interest rates on the baht.
Rerngchai reached a broad agreement with his aides that the Bank of Thailand would settle only half of its US$14.8 billion in offshore swap positions, which confronted the speculators face to face.
Paiboon Kittisrikangwarn, then the central bank's chief trader, received several phone calls from speculators through local banks asking for a truce. But his reaction was stern. He would not meet the speculators, but he agreed to cut a deal at an exchange rate of Bt23 to the dollar or the forward rate of 9 per cent.
"Take it or leave it," he said.
The speculators wanted Bt26, meaning that the deal would have left them with a loss of Bt3 for every dollar. The speculators were fuming with rage.
It was evident that strong political backup was necessary if this mission was to be successful. When Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, then prime minister, was informed about this plan to talk it out with Soros, Chavalit agreed.
His tone was conciliatory. "It's alright. Let's do it. I am ready to help," he said.
But the political situation at that time was highly precarious. Engaging in this kind of clandestine operation required a stable administration; otherwise, the slightest jab by the opposition could bring down the government. In the meantime, rumours of ceasefire negotiations with Soros quickly became widespread.
Euromoney wrote in its September 1997 issue: "Undeterred by the freeze, those who needed baht offshore to cover short positions became more inventive. One particular exposed speculator - local gossip-mongers reckon it was George Soros - went cap in hand to the central bank to ask for baht and offered to play the bank's game in return by easing off hammering the currency. The Bank of Thailand declined the offer."
In the end, negotiations with Soros would never take place because the finance minister lacked the political back up. Amnuay was about to fall victim to coalition politics, engineered by the Chat Pattana, which wanted to take over economic management from the New Aspiration Party.
In early June Arminio Fraga, a former deputy governor of the central bank of Brazil, who worked for Soros, contacted the Bank of Thailand to cut a deal. Fraga, who would be appointed his country's central bank governor a year later to save the Brazilian real, was then the managing director of Soros Fund Management.
Fraga, who frequently visited Bangkok to investigate the business climate, came over to talk about the possibility of ending the baht war.
But after Amnuay's resignation in late June, he sensed victory. When one of the central bank officials tried to call him to reach a settlement, he said: "I think we can wait a little bit more".
With that sentence ringing in his ear, Rerngchai realised that the Bank of Thailand was about to lose the currency war.
There's any proof that Linux is not corrupted too? By the way, that's called meritocracy and it's not democrat so it's rejected by most of the population and I highly doubt that a bunch of nerds will came to a solution to imposs something to anyone. :)
ghostbar page.
You mistakenly believe that the fruits of your labour are going to the poor. But by and large, they're not. The poor in North America are getting poorer all the time. For the most part, the fruits of your labour that are taken from you are going to the super-rich, and their share gets bigger every day. Why should the value of your labour go into Warren Buffet's pocket? or Soros'? or any other multi-billionaire?
The fact is, we could probably bring all the poor up to a middle-class standard with very little expenditure on our part. But there will never be enough money (=value=labour) to satisfy people who are literally addicted to making money. If you work in a big company, how much more would you make if everyone in that company made the same wage? I would wager that the only people to suffer a wage decrease would be the directors and/or the board. That's it.
The problem with the laissez-faire capitalist system is that it's just as fictitious as a pure communist system. The system we have now is rigged in favour of the richest few people on the planet, and most of us don't even see it. They've conned us into thinking we all can be as successful as they are, if we just work hard enough. But it's bullshit. The game is rigged.
In a world with men who are so rich they can't possibly spend all their money, there should be nobody starving.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
1) The freedom to run the government, for any purpose
2) The freedom to study how the government works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the government and its laws is a precondition for this.
3) The freedom to redistribute government, so you can help your neighboring countrymen
4) The freedom to improve the government, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
----
Seriously though, I think that we can make the government more like Linux by allowing average citizens more input into our government. There should be venues where there can be quick changes and innovations in the law and in society, to see how they work out. There should be free and quick access to our societies laws. And laws should be simple enough for ordinary people to understand. You shouldn't have to be a political scientist or a lawyer to figure out how to vote or how to sell a house, for example.
In Soviet Amerika, your government forks YOU!
I don't give a damn who the fruits of my labor is going to if it's not going to me. I work for me, not for anyone else.
"The fact is, we could probably bring all the poor up to a middle-class standard with very little expenditure on our part."
How? You need to understand that value!=money!=resources these things merely approximate each other. If we took money from rich people and gave it to poor people it would do little to improve their situation because the resources and the value aren't really there. All you'd do is increase the price of housing and basic services. In the end, any benefit to the poor would come at the expense of the middle class (by raising their costs). In the long term, it would hurt everybody, because some of the money you took from the rich was going to be used for new capital investment (to increase available resources in the future and thereby further enrich the wealthy) and now it won't be.
But that's only one part of the practical problem, the other side is that you can't make a poor person wealthy simply by giving them money. It is really easy to spend money, and if you didn't earn it yourself you will have no appreciation of what it's worth. So if you give a beggar a dollar, they will probably waste it. However, if you earn a dollar, you are likely to spend it as efficiently as possible.
"They've conned us into thinking we all can be as successful as they are, if we just work hard enough."
That's stupid, a human is only capable of so much work. Why would you think you could get rich just by working hard? It takes more than that.
"The game is rigged."
Yes, but it's rigged primarily by government intervention.
"In a world with men who are so rich they can't possibly spend all their money, there should be nobody starving."
Why should someone who contributes nothing to society expect to be fed? And if they are fed, will they really appreciate the hard work that others had to do to feed them?
Unless you want "government" (or anything else) to be:
- Always in last place.
- Have a questionable commitment to who it's serving versus the workers.
- Low in overall quality.
- Vague and often difficult to understand.
- Controlled by a small cabal paid by corporations (yep, I said it... here's looking at you, kernel dev team!).
(Oh I could come up with more... but I'm sure the "true believers" of Slashdot will mod me "Flamebait" anyway.)
You don't want to be modeling it after "Linux".
+++OK ATH
I don't give a damn who the fruits of my labor is going to if it's not going to me. I work for me, not for anyone else.
Then why do you let the rich underpay you?
How? You need to understand that value!=money!=resources these things merely approximate each other. If we took money from rich people and gave it to poor people it would do little to improve their situation because the resources and the value aren't really there.
Actually, money doesn't get devalued by being taken from the rich and given to the poor, it gets devalued when more of it is created without also increasing the value it represents. You don't even need to give the money to the poor, just take it from the rich and destroy it. That alone will increase the value of the money remaining in the system. If the money is an (approximate) representation of the value of a nation's labour and capital, then moving that money from one place to another doesn't devalue it. Any discrepancy between money/value/labour is due to the monetary system that allows money to be created based on money itself, and not based on the value of capital/labour.
Also, don't forget, I'm not necessarily talking about giving money to the poor, I'm talking about raising the poor's wages, and giving them jobs where they don't already have them. If the money that's currently being hoarded was brought back into the economy (through purchasing, investing in infrastructure, whatever) then there would be more demand for goods and more supply of those goods, for better wages. Whenever something bad happens, what do the leaders say? Spend more money. Why? Because it gives the economy a boost. The problem with the rich is that they don't spend enough on real stuff, they hoard value. (Whether or not it's a good idea to base the economy on consumption is an argument for another day.)
In the end, any benefit to the poor would come at the expense of the middle class (by raising their costs).
Except that if the middle class were getting paid what their labour was worth, they'd have more money to compensate for the rising costs.
In the long term, it would hurt everybody, because some of the money you took from the rich was going to be used for new capital investment (to increase available resources in the future and thereby further enrich the wealthy) and now it won't be.
Shenanigans. You're making my arguments for me. The problem is that they hoard their wealth now. Rich people don't invest in new capital unless they are sure they'll get more money to hoard out of that investment. There's nothing wrong with taking profits as a return on your investment, but the game is rigged so that they take more profits than they could ever need. They do this at YOUR expense.
You may be able to balance the equation merely by making money not inheritable. Want to pass on your millions to your kids? Buy them houses, jets and jewelry and pass that along, not your money. This would have the advantage of at least turning all that money back into capital. (Don't attack me on this one please, as I'm not sure at all it would work, I'm still only toying with the idea)
you can't make a poor person wealthy simply by giving them money.
I'm not talking about making a poor person wealthy, I'm talking about making a poor person not starving or malnourished. Making sure poor people are reasonably healthy and have a roof over their heads. Making sure poor people have an education. It doesn't take all that much to make sure everyone has a minimum standard of living. I'm not saying everyone should make the same wage, just that there be a minimum (that supports a decent life) and a maximum (I'm thinking a few hundreds of thousands a year, just not in the millions/year range), and between those two points you're free to compete with your peers. Currently, this isn't possible. Or rather, for the middle class it i
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
There is nothing wrong with the current U.S. constitution- it is the government ignoring the constitution which is the problem.
"How about because it's morally repugnant to ignore the suffering of another person?"
How about it doesn't matter. Here's how it is. If you were stranded on a desert island, and it was just you and another person, would you expect that other person to feed you while you sat on your ass? Would you have any right to complain if they chose not to?
Maybe if you could gather enough food for both of you, you would share it with the other person, but what if you couldn't? Would you split what you have with them and wait while you both slowly starve to death? Then you'd both die. That doesn't make any sense.
This is the situation you set up for your self when you adopt the philosophy that everyone should be fed regardless of their merit. It's true that some people are disabled, but unless everyone contributes everything they can, you won't be able to provide for everyone.
You don't have a right (or a particularly good reason) to expect people to give you something for nothing.
"Rich people don't invest in new capital unless they are sure they'll get more money to hoard out of that investment."
Yeah, that's why they're rich. Why should they do otherwise? After all, they still invest.
Singapore does this, and it actually works pretty well: the city-state regularly scores near the top as one of the least corrupt countries in the world.
What if the mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, and the more opaque and exotic instruments had been open source? Would we still have gotten fucked this badly?
I have mod points but I'll answer instead of modding you.
Unless you want "government" (or anything else) to be:
- Always in last place.
- Have a questionable commitment to who it's serving versus the workers.
- Low in overall quality.
- Vague and often difficult to understand.
- Controlled by a small cabal paid by corporations (yep, I said it... here's looking at you, kernel dev team!).
You could well say that the points you made are valid for Windows too. And for the latter, you could add the following point:
- Impossible to correct any fault which might arise
:(){
As I read through comment didn't see anyone mentioning this site
The problem isn't the government; it's the public.
The public sucks.
How's that for a campaign slogan?
If you think millions of pages of documents would be unlikely, remember the IBM, AT&T, and Microsoft anti-trust cases.
If Source and Destination is recorded corruption will be prevented.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
You have to be elected to be on the dev team. But you *have* to publish your source code. Take away secrecy and watch corruption take a few very large steps back.
It'll never be totally gone but hopefully it won't be as rampant as it is now.
Heck JFK might have been right.
Mind the frickin' laser...
This quote from one very disgruntled Jamie Ziewinski comes to mind:
My biggest fear, and part of the reason I stuck it out as long as I have, is that people will look at the failures of mozilla.org as emblematic of open source in general. Let me assure you that whatever problems the Mozilla project is having are not because open source doesn't work. Open source does work, but it is most definitely not a panacea. If there's a cautionary tale here, it is that you can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of ``open source,'' and have everything magically work out. Software is hard. The issues aren't that simple.
It's a good article anyway and a fun read. Catch the rest at: http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html/.
Point is, open source is no solution, and while some of the mechanisms open source developers use to promote transparency and equity are enviable and perhaps even applicable to government processes, it's the equity and transparency that are the key, not the open source-osity.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
erm, no: [http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp]
You don't have a right (or a particularly good reason) to expect people to give you something for nothing.
And that's the problem with free market ideologues. Neither do people born with a silver spoon in their mouth, a random lucky break, a good mentor or with good genes have a "right" to "something for nothing". It's a lot more complex than that and your automatic assumption that it is so simple is simply wrong.
In addition it's amazing how often the [expectant/self-perceived] rich think capitalism (keeping) is a good idea and how often the [expectant/self-perceived] poor think socialism (sharing) is a good idea. Not surprising that richer countries tend to foster capitalist ideologues and poorer countries tend to foster ideologues.
Even this is a stupid idea in the long run, and shows a decided lack of understanding of what wealth, money, and capital really are. Things like airplanes, jewelry, and houses are just as much capital as a pile of money sitting in a bank. Inheritance taxes only skewer the system even more in terms of forcing those who have wealth to be more "creative" on how they pass that inheritance on to the next generation, and it doesn't really do the job for stopping the uber-rich from passing their wealth onto the next generation. At best, it only screws over ordinary working people who don't have the financial resources to hire accountants or set up dummy corporations to pass that wealth to their kids.
Besides trying to work hard so you kids can have every advantage possible in the future is a basic goal for any parent.
This whole class thing is something that has been mostly manufactured out of whole cloth and is imaginary rather than something real. While I'll admit that in Europe there is this crazy thing of noble birth and rights to the throne that has existed for centuries, that has little to nothing to do with wealth or the ability to meet basic survival needs.
I have been with and lived among people in abject poverty of the 3rd world variety... where basic food and clothing requirements are hard to acquire and where raw sewage is running in the street (a hard smell to ignore). My experience is that you can't just give somebody in this condition a pile of money or goods in order to get them out of that condition, but rather you have to change who they are and what they think of themselves.
Throwing money at "the poor" only makes them more poor and dependent politically and emotionally on those who are giving the "charity". That is awesome if you are trying to get a huge slave army to do your bidding, but be honest at what you are trying to do and don't try to wrap it up in any nice little catch phrases that disguise this sort of behavior from the despotic regimes of ancient history. All told, I see little between the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt that built the Pyramid in Giza or the Chinese emperors who built the Great Wall and some of the more modern "Marxist" leaders like Castro, Mao, and Stalin. Heck, Saddam Hussein openly bragged that he thought that Stalin was the best political leader that ever existed, and had a picture of Stalin in his bedroom until he had to hide from the Americans in the 21st Century Iraq war.
If you want to make a poor person to avoid malnutrition and have them acquire some clothing, shelter, and other basic minimum requirements to survival, you need to give them the tools to rise above their current condition... and that the
Direct democracy would prevent the legislature bring into law, legislation which the majority of people disagreed with. They would have the veto on it. Needs strong control of the media though. Have to be well informed to make the right choices.
It won't happen though.
"Representative" democracy is a misnomer. It is there to give you the feeling that there is something democratic about the system, but as we all know, the people which our representatives represent, are their own, rather than ours.
As for "democratic capitalism"... don't get me started on that downright contradictory abuse of the language.
That's exactly what Marx has envision the world should be run and it is a wonderful model. UNFORTUNATELY, the *only* problem is that outside of a few niche works like arts, software development, crafting, you can't find sufficient people really enjoy the works.
How many people *enjoy* serving burgers to you at the fast food restaurant w/o any compensation? How many people *enjoy* sweeping streets w/o any compensation? How many people *enjoy* take your trash to the landfill every week w/o ever asking for any compensation?
Sure, you may find one or two people actually enjoy doing that. But you can't possibly fill the demands for most tasks out there by just psychological reward alone.
Marx seemed to have said communism would be possible only if the economy is *highly* developed. Maybe he meant it is only possible when AI is intelligent enough that robots can do all these dirty jobs and yet not smart enough to ask for any compensation.
You are splitting hairs now. The Wild West might have been "anarcho-capitalist", whatever you mean by that, but it had most of the important characteristics of libertarianism: very few laws and lots of guns everywhere. And that society lasted only 50 years or so, which by historical standards means it disappeared almost instantly.
Whether it imploded on its own or was warped by external force is irrelevant: if you want to claim that libertarianism is a stable condition, then it must work under a wide range of circumstances. A robust and durable society must be able to cope with a great deal of change, because there is never an end to history. If you have to split hairs to make your society seem a better survivor than anarcho-capitalism, then you are saying that libertarianism will work only under rare circumstances. And that is the same as saying that libertarianism is fragile and unstable. Which is what I'm saying.
I'm sorry for not addressing the rest of your post, but the above is the key point. Until you deal with it convincingly, whatever else you say is of secondary importance.
The problem is that if you just take money from all rich people, you will end up taking it from those who did earn it, as well as those who did not. That's really bad. And you are giving it to people who didn't earn it, which is also really bad, for reasons I've explained above.
Though some people who didn't earn their wealth got it dishonestly, most got it through inheritance or luck, which is a voluntary process. On the other hand, socialists take money by force. I would never endorse that.
I don't know how you can honestly claim to be a more moral person than me. I have been told I am not a particularly moral person, and to the standards I am judged by I am not. However, you advocate taking money you didn't earn through force. Even I think that's immoral.
Even this is a stupid idea in the long run, and shows a decided lack of understanding of what wealth, money, and capital really are.
Bravo. The very first thing you attack out of what I said was a throwaway comment that I explicitly said I haven't thought through at all. I'm going to return the favour and assume that the rest of your post is full of shit too.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
The hedge fund investor who prided himself on achieving 1000% returns
Hedge fund investor? In other words someone who makes money without actually producing anything, to put it bluntly? And this guy has suddenly seen the light and knows how to solve all the problems in the world? He's right about one thing, though - the current form of government in the US is not working optimally.
The idea he is proposing is far from new - it seems to be the standard "solution" whenever it gets a bit tough, and it always ends with a bunch of idiots in an ivory tower - IOW, aristocrats. Nope, democracy is still the way forward, despite all its inefficiency and shortcomings. Government in general shouldn't be efficient - it should be accountable and it should plan far ahead. The inefficiency is part of the "checks and stops", it forces those in government to think before they act. If the goverment was efficient, we would soon have a wild-eyed George Bush, foaming around the mouth, hurling the country into stupid wars. Haven't we had enough of kings and aristocrats?
What we really need is to make a few, clever adjustments to things. More accountability, more openness, for starters, as well as a considerable tightening of the rules for how much private money and religion may influence politics. One of the biggest problems for American democracy is that the country is in effect being ruled by a very small minority of either the hyper rich or fringe groups that have influence because they are loud. I don't know - make it illegal (ie, a crime) to receive more than the typical membership fee from any private entity, make it illegal for companies, churches and the like to pay for political adverts of any sort during an election campaign. Give each candidate the same amount of airtime, make it a capital offence to be a professional lobbyist; whatever it takes to keep out undue influence on the processes of democracy.
A democracy worth its name should represent the will of the people, and I think it is worth protecting. Even if it means limiting the general laissez-faire version of "freedom of speech" on certain occasions.
is that it assumes the majority are correct.
...
I hope you realize, of course, that the authors of the articles you are linking to are blinded by their ideologies. The Soros life insurance issue seems pretty far fetched, and given that they don't bother to quantify exactly how much Soros makes, it's little more than a transparent (but apparent effective on you) ad Hominem attack.
The second article is even more ridiculous. Gore doesn't really believe in climate change? He's creating the climate change controversy solely for the benefit of investments he made in green companies? Do you understand how blindly stupid that charge is? If he didn't believe in climate change there'd be no reason for him to invest in those companies in the first place. It should be no surprise that he's investing in companies that are offering a solution to a something he believes is going to be a giant problem in the future. Giving that situation you'd have to be a giant mysanthrope to not invest in green companies. Honestly, are you brainwashed or just stupid?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Maybe. Who said Windows is all there is? Not me certainly.
+++OK ATH
i think an open source government would be great - if you don't agree, you can go fork yourself.
Also, the 'good' dictator Linus keeps aside bad programmers.
How could you keep aside bad governors, on such subjective topics as politics?
I iz are conservatuv. Er-got, I is r stoopid &an brainwooshed.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
There's conservative and then there's stupid. A good conservative uses his brain, you make other conservatives look bad.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Thanks for that. Intolerant illiberal liberals always help out with our nefarious, right-wing PR conspiracy.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Dumbass. I'm not even a liberal, just someone who dislikes half-assed lies and moronic conspiracy theories.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You're also a whiner, or else you'd have done some research and come up with rebuttals, instead of flaming and showing everyone how mature you are by adding to Nixonian enemies list. And if you're not a liberal, you're possibly confused on what liberalism is.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
There is also the problem of hosting. I'm sure the space wouldn't come cheap.