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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.
... 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?
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 :)
We already have governments that operate that way, it's called communism.
... 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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at the
University of Edinburgh) had this to say about 'the fall of
the Athenian Republic' some 2,000 years prior.
'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply
cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy
will continue to exist up until the time that voters
discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from
the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates who promise the most
benefits from the public treasury, with the result that
every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal
policy, [which is] always followed by a dictatorship.
'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations
from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, these nations always progressed
through the following sequence:
'From bondage to spiritual faith;
'From spiritual faith to great courage;
'From courage to liberty;
'From liberty to abundance;
'From abundance to complacency;
'From complacency to apathy;
'From apathy to dependence;
'From dependence back into bondage.
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.
That's just one funny example to enforce my belief in Representative Democracy as we know it, even in places like Switzerland.
It takes some above average people to take risks in The Peoples name because they can see light where the average man just sees the horizon.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
forking the government model will probably not help what model the government adopts.
Bullshit.
Maybe not
Government follows money.
What allows government to be large, centralised and corrupted?
"It's The Money Stupid".
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"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.
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.
What big trade needs are larger trading areas with common interests, standards and regulations. What citizens need is smaller trading areas and smaller organizations with less effective power.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
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.
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.
In the demarchist system proposed by Alastair Reynolds, the voting system tracked everyone's votes and the long-term effects of the decisions arising from them. Those people who made decisions who had their votes multiplied by a small factor (under five). This would allow forward thinking people to make this kind of decision, but only as long as they kept making good decisions. It is my understanding that Google uses something similar internally for corporate decisions.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"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.
It's interesting that we've finally come to a time where people are actually vocally discussing a change of the whole system. That really says something about the magnitude of the changes that are happening.
That said I think you got it quite right about the problem being that humans govern other humans and thus face a conflict of interest.
However I dare to claim that the program you are proposing already exists and is in place and has been for practically ever since humans existed on this planet. That program is indeed open source to the core and completely free for everyone to participate in. It is called THE FREE MARKET.
If the problem is humans governing other humans how about letting human individuals governing ONLY themselves. I govern me and you govern yourself. If you want somebody else to do something for you or believe as you do, do not apply force to make them comply (like the current governments do), but instead use persuasion and other PEACEFUL non-violent means. And if it doesn't work then simply give up. Using violence against another (which current governments unfortunately legitimize, even while forbidding everyone else from doing it, thus taking a monopoly on violence) only results in more violence - violence breeds more violence.
This is not anarchy in the sense most people have been taught to look at anarchy. It is not lawlessness in the same sense either. It is simply a lack of a coercive ruler in place of self-rulers trading both value and ideas between each other on a purely voluntary basis. And it is law that is private where the only universal, and natural, principle to be followed by everyone and at the same time enforced by everyone (right to bear arms for defense) is the principle of non-initiation of force or fraud.
This philosophy is called by varying names: anarcho-capitalism, market anarchy, voluntaryism (because the CORE idea is that all human action should be voluntary, not coerced) etc. It is arguably also the original libertarian idea, although nowadays libertarianism is seen as compromising with coercion and government a bit too much so with respect to that we can call it a subset of libertarianism, or libertarian purism.
Lastly I want to refer anyone who didn't before think this idea through to check out these sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntaryism
http://www.mises.org/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/
http://freedomainradio.com/ (a fairly popular podcast by a genious market anarchist philosopher Stefan Molyneux which can with great proficiency answer every question you might have about market anarchy).
If you're curious enough that you'd give a book a chance, there's a free one with an audio book available here called "The Market for Liberty": http://freekeene.com/free-audiobook/
It changed my life.
And if you are convinced already or become sufficiently convinced after exploring this, there is good news: a place where free market and liberty stand most chance in the world: New Hampshire, because of a project of moving thousands of liberty minded people to it: http://www.freestateproject.com/
Thanks for your consideration (and sorry for such a long post, I'm just too passionate about this). I truly hope that instead of worsening conditions for our freedoms, this shift we are seeing happening in the world opens the eyes of people towards the true nature of coercive governance and what freedom truly is).
Float your boat so long as it doesn't sink mine.
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?