Slashdot Mirror
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)?"
'...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.'
This is an old idea, of course, most recently known as 'meritocracy', a term that many people are unaware was originally intended to be pejorative. Here's what Michael Young (who coined the term in the 50s) had to say about this type of system in business and politics back in 2001, well before the current economic mess:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
'The business meritocracy is in vogue. If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get. They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side. So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves. The old restraints of the business world have been lifted and, as the book also predicted, all manner of new ways for people to feather their own nests have been invented and exploited.'