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Recrafting Government As an Open Platform
itjoblog writes "How effective are the world's governments at using technology to become more responsive? Technology has revolutionised the way that we do business, but the public sector has traditionally moved more cautiously than the private one. Now, a report from the Centre for Technology Policy Research in the UK has made some recommendations for the use of technology as an enabling mechanism for government."
I have one simple requirement: all laws must be written in a wiki with full history.
But you can't play in the mudpit without getting dirty, and that's one reason why no matter how they start out, by the time they have progressed far enough in party politics to be on a ballot, pretty much everyone has become either a corrupted dipshit or a disillusioned cynic.
But why is that? It's because voters are easily led sheep, who vote for shiny trinkets. It's never going to change unless people get interested in their government, instead of what they're told by Faux News &c.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
USPS is also cheaper. As long as people keep using them, their issues don't need to be resolved, because they're clearly meeting the demand. Advertisers, for example, don't want to pay for 100% package delivery quality, and UPS & FEDEX don't offer a "less than perfect" option. USPS also delivers everywhere (in some form or other) -- UPS & FEDEX are free to refuse to deliver to places that aren't economically justifiable to them. The government has a basic need to communicate with people -- mail is the chosen medium. It therefore needs a method of delivery that isn't dependent on the marketplace, which may or may not provide the needed service, may go out of business at just the wrong time, and may charge and arm and a leg for it when it feels it can (right around tax time, census time, etc.) An in-house system takes care of that. I'm not saying USPS is perfect, mind you. But it doesn't exist without reason.
Governments may suck, but how many anarchies do we have on this planet? Somalia? They don't just happen by themselves. People create governments because they see good reasons to. People can be wrong. But the root of the problem is always people, not governments.
By your standard, corporations create nothing. For everything they provide to one group, it must be taken or borrowed from another. (Often the same group, but not always.) It's just a basic rule, government or not. No free lunch.
The microbes in your gut are parasites too -- but mostly helpful ones. Government's more of a symbiosis. When it gets out of balance, that's a problem. But it's not a size thing. There are more foreign cells in your body than your own, yet you're (probably) in balance.
I don't get the states' rights thing. I don't understand why small-government types usually believe:
a) the state is "good enough" (not county, town, or neighborhood -- even though these would seem likelier candidates for local control)
b) the constitution was originally perfect (what?!?! the founders actually fully expected later revolutions! some wanted laws to auto-expire, because they mistrusted the legislative process so much! why would they have thought their own works perfect, and why should you?)