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America's Technical Debt
Funksaw writes: An article by Brian Boyko in Equal Citizens, Lawrence Lessig's blog dealing with issues of institutional corruption in democratic politics, explains why, specifically, this reform movement needs (more) people with technical minds and technical skills.
Quoting: "What we need are more people willing to look at the laws of this country based on their function. And when I use the word 'function,' I mean very specifically the same sense that a computer programmer means it. (Because lord knows, government isn't functioning by any other definition.) ... It's not just that big money politics is being injected [like a code injection] into the function of democracy. It's also that the function of democracy can be warped by an injection. Stopping the injection of money into our democratic function still leaves the function vulnerable to the same — or similar — injection attack.... We need people who can solve the problems of politics like a programmer solves problems in computer code, because a democratic system with vulnerabilities is a democratic system that can fail or be made to fail."
The author is the technical adviser to the New Hampshire Rebellion and Mayday.US, two of Lessig's major reform projects.
Quoting: "What we need are more people willing to look at the laws of this country based on their function. And when I use the word 'function,' I mean very specifically the same sense that a computer programmer means it. (Because lord knows, government isn't functioning by any other definition.) ... It's not just that big money politics is being injected [like a code injection] into the function of democracy. It's also that the function of democracy can be warped by an injection. Stopping the injection of money into our democratic function still leaves the function vulnerable to the same — or similar — injection attack.... We need people who can solve the problems of politics like a programmer solves problems in computer code, because a democratic system with vulnerabilities is a democratic system that can fail or be made to fail."
The author is the technical adviser to the New Hampshire Rebellion and Mayday.US, two of Lessig's major reform projects.
Laws are written, have the person, or their Aid be noted as their contribution to the law. The words come from someone, make public who wrote what from whom.
Leaving aside the completely ridiculous assertion that a system composed of people can be debugged in the same manner as code simply because it happens to be called a "code" of law, the author seems to be unaware that just about every problem with the democratic process has a solution which some part of history has already provided. We simply aren't using them because one of the many safeguards of the system is making the important parts (which are unfortunately the ones troubling us) difficult to change. We are in a degenerate case of democracy; the players who historically won the game have absolutely no interest in changing the rules to make them more fair. It really cannot be fixed without war.
It's not the laws per se (though some, like the ACA, are atrocious at many levels). It's the low-information voters. There are plenty of cases where motivated voters who actually pay attention will vote contrary to what the money spent on the campaign would (if Lessig were right) say that they'd vote. The problem is that most of the time, voters are two dumb to actually understand the issues at stake or the consequences of their actions. Fix the dumbness, and you fix all sorts of other cultural mal-consequences (not just clumsy politics and gimme-dat laws).
Not saying that producing informed, critical-thinking-capable young people is easy, just that the payoff for doing so is huge, and not just in the area being discussed.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Just like computer networks, economic networks need their own security detail. There are too many new scams and fraud trends to keep up with every year. Waiting for something to get public attention before having some politician do something about it is a very stupid and dangerous. There needs to be third party monitoring and securing of our economic system.
(Because lord knows, government isn't functioning by any other definition.)
he sounds like...... a Republican
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We already have technicians who work with the law, they're called lawyers and their very technical sophistication is what enables a lot of the clusterfuckery which takes place. Creating and finding loopholes, manipulation of the legal process, etc. And they also write the rules in very technical language, enabling a kind of only-we-understand-it monopoly control.
Maybe what we need is more non-technicians to eliminate the technical meddling.
The request for more STEM people in politics is analogous to asking for more "people people" (PHB) in technology. Nasty and counter-productive beyond those necessary for I/O interface.
Different people have different personalities and predilections. Tech people like manipulating technology (molecules, electrons, logic). They would be devoured by politicians who devote the same effort into manipulating people. (Often, but not always, to their detriment.)
that we can recursively send many people to learn to code, effectively, on the same funds
First of all, what he describes has nothing to do with recursion. Second, how does he think he can "send many people to learn to code" for free by somehow "passing along" the funds?
Is there a way to debug voters who keep re-electing the same politician over and over? (And in the case of term limits, they keep electing relatives of the previous politician).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
As a Nation, we are corrupt, greedy, adulterous, full of lies and cursing and hatred, ignorant of the woes around us (or at least more concerned about inconveniences at home), and always ready to break covenants, yet we expect our democratically elected & representative politicians to have the exact opposite character.
It's a nice sentiment, but absurdly naive, if you think that politics can be solved by applying programming-type *logic*. Hell, we can't even get rid of *office politics*, and you think you're going to take on the real thing? Some of the smartest programmers I know would likely get chewed up and spat out by actual politicians and media.
So, here's the problem with such straightforward thinking:
What if we could, for example, write a program which will show you at a glance, which politicians have the highest or lowest correlation of campaign contributions to supported policy?
And? I'm not sure what that tells you. A campaign contribution does not indicate corruption. Let's say I'm a big believer in the same sorts of principles as the NRA, and the NRA donates $1000 to get me elected. Have I been bribed or bought by the NRA? Your answer might depend on whether or not you personally *agree with* what the NRA stands for. Let's change it to the EFF. I've been given $1000 by the EFF. In these cases, have the politicians been bought, or are they being supported because the organizations believe them to hold views which they agree with?
There are all sorts of gray areas in politics as well. If you never compromise on your beliefs, but your principled stand either ends up blocking or stalling otherwise useful legislation, or gets you entirely excluded from the decision-making process, did you do the right thing? If you've got what you believe to be a bad bill in front of you, and your choices are to: a) oppose it, and have it pass as it, or b) engage and make it slightly less bad, then which is the better option?
I'm not sure I have a real answer for what *should* be done, but I don't think it's helpful to pretend that technology can solve what are ultimately very *human* problems. Can an algorithm fix your personal relationships as well? Same principle, I think. I'm all for getting more technically-minded people in office simply because they'll have a better understanding of technology-related issues, but I'm not going to hold my breath that a more analytical sort of mind will make a better politician.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Just from the federalist papers #51
" If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
Going to need omniscience to figure out what the functionality will be of changed laws, and a whole lot of arrogance to think the "Selfless" people doing this for the greater good won't be bought off faster and cheaper than any congress critter ever could
The U.S. form of representative democracy was set up by the "founders" to be what it is, and it is no mistake that the upper class fights tooth and nail to keep it that way. The main problem with representative democracy goes beyond the founders though (which may explain why it was chosen in the first place) and is very similar to the main problem with the economic system called communism: Both require that humans act outside their behavior patterns to reach some ideal abstraction.
Where communism insists that humans must act according to the best interests of the whole before acting in one's own best interests, representative democracy insists that a specific human act according to the best interests of the whole before acting in their own interest. The problem is that humans act according to a hierarchy that is different: They will first act in their own interest, then in the interest of their immediate group, then -- lastly -- they will act for the benefit of the larger whole. This behavior pattern is documented and proven true over time and _no_ ideal abstraction will long get in the way.
If Mr. Lessig et al. are really interested in having functional government, then we need to discuss the dumping of representative democracy for something more "functional," such as direct democracy.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Programmers are taught to code for a specific, well-defined objective, whereas untrained ordinary folk think more along the lines of "do what I mean". Recently, however, through the ACA state funding case, decided that what is *said* is immaterial, and that the law should reflect what Congress obviously *meant*. In other words, "do what I mean". Given this, language is no longer important, and it is up to the high priests of the US Supreme Court to view the auguries to determine true meaning. In other words, thanks to the Supreme Court it is not programmers that are needed, but magicians.
But we have to recognize that our government is not working.
Our government is working. We've gone over 200 years without a coup de'etat.
We've been successful in maintaining a strong army that doesn't threaten the state.
We keep a lot of fundamental rights.
To a large degree we manage to help poor people, and take care of old people.
Crime is low enough that I can walk out on the street at night without a defensive weapon.
Overall, corruption has gone down since the days of boss Tweed, Pendergast, Daley, Huey Long, and Soapy Smith.
Is our government perfect? No, but it's surely a reasonable solution for the difficult problem of living with other people.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
First of all, humans aren't computers that obey logical laws. they also have emotions such as greed and fear.
Second, democracy is a failed system and will always fail. The original framers of the constitution setup a representative republic and not a direct democracy. Democracy is nothing more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
The entire public school system is built around the concept that democracy is the best form of government. This is by design to keep the people deluded by the falsehood that democracy will succeed if only the people had the right information or that if the right honest politicians were elected that all would be well. See my first statement above.
The only possible way to improve the system of government is to improve the people who support it. This is only possible with proper education. A proper education isn't possible with a public school system and a proper government isn't possible with democracy. Therefore we're fucked. A collapse of the entire system is coming. Probably wars, probably nuclear wars which possibly will destroy most if not all life on earth. I do not state this with any hint of humor or sarcasm, it's just the way things are.
W2843 - Warning: extended metaphor on line 1. Did you forget to terminate the metaphor?
If you are going to have democracy then you need to push things to the lowest level possible. Instead of 50% + 1 winning it needs to be more like 2 sigma or 95%. If you want to delegate a function to the national government then 95%+ of the people should agree. Same for the state, county, town, neighborhood, family, or individual. The system we have now insures conflict because you can force a slight majority to your will.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I've, at times, written to folks (including the Mayday folks) about the apportionment problem in the US House. That is, briefly, the fact that the number of seats has remained fixed for over 100 years while the population has tripled. Your voice to your representative is a third of what your grandparents' voices were (assuming they could even vote at the time; when you account for disenfranchisement, the voting populace then was even smaller).
Few care. It's not a sexy issue. But it is one way to attack some of the problems from a programming standpoint. If you have too little throughput in a system, you have this bottleneck where the political bandwidth is chewed up by the wealthy, one fix is to increase bandwidth. It would reduce the effectiveness of gerrymandering, it would increase your voice to your congresscritter. The people in the habit of buying power would have to spend more time and money to buy more seats. It would open the chances for third party candidates to compete.
It has issues, like small states objecting because their representation in the House would be a smaller proportion than now. People say that a thousand-seat congress, or even larger, couldn't do anything. It's not a simple-to-explain issue that can be easily rallied for. But I do believe it is one step in the right direction, however hard a step it might be.
This is the metrication issue of our generation (err, wait, the last generation never did get metrication to happen...).
... just don't assume the people already trying are stupid. This is a legitimately difficult issue.
A big thing that this coding concept doesn't quite grasp is that the "hackers" are sitting there f'ing with your code AS you write it.
And you can't just fork the code if you have a disagreement with them.
The trick is to think ahead 10 moves and put something in the system that will seem meaningless initially but which at a later juncture will trigger and deal a savage blow to hackers.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Good luck fixing anything with the number of entrenched interests within and without the government invested in the status quo.
The fatal flaw is when people don't pay attention. If the public doesn't pay attention, than the ones who do will get into power.
No constitution you can conceive will save ignoramuses from themselves.
What about one that said "people who do not vote will be taken out into the street and hung by the neck until dead; one in ten people who voted for the losing side in any election will be taken out into the street, placed up against the wall, and then shot"?
In other words, forced participation, with forced collaboration on outcome.
Yes, that's a reductio ad absurdum of your argument.
Yes, the original article is (yet another) example of this current avant garde trend of characterizing everything as "code," but for once the underlying point has some merit: the entire institution of civil law is a structure, a system, designed to produce a desired result.
Many of my Poli-Sci classes in college were taught by erudite gentlemen who helped us ponder the beautiful and challenging intricacies of political theory. The best professor I ever had was not one of those men. He was a self-described "crazy bearded anarchist" who's class on "government budgeting" focused mainly on pragmatic advice for city managers (how to catch people embezzling, how to navigate city council politics and how to cover your ass from witch-hunts) He understood democracies and the laws that shape them from the bottom-up; the end result. The end result a political system needs are viable candidates - which they must produce from a pool of mere flawed humans, with all their foibles.
People are people - we lie and cheat all the time. The professor illustrated the point by asking us students if we ever lied - say, when we were talking to an attractive member of the opposite sex at the bar. Such things are endemic to human existence, so any system of people-selection hoping to produce a desired result must be made with the expectation that people will lie, cheat and game the system to the best of their ability. Such a system will ideally make the skills required to game it successfully synonymous with the skills to lead governments in an effective manner.
This pragmatist approach flies in the face of the nigh-holy ethical apparatus people envision when they think of what government should be; thus our perpetual disgust with politicians that will always fall short of Plato's gilded City On The Hill. The constant and ever-wearisome lamentations about The State Of Politics Today misses that the system works. To use the United States as an example: Senators and Representatives spend a great deal of their time "pork-barreling," doing their best to get federal spending directed to their state (or passing laws that benefit private industries in their states.) To quote Hall's third law of politics: "Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend military spending, and conservatives social spending in their own districts)." Politicians do this because they need votes to win elections, and hauling goodies to their home districts is a surefire way to win loyalty. The bitching about this awful low-minded thieving of Federal tax dollars continues nonstop, but nobody considers that the system is working as intended: those politicians are indeed representing their constituents interests.
America is a unique example of a democratic republic created by people who had an opportunity to build a proper "system" from the ground-up, without having to accommodate any pre-existing legal structures. It's interesting then to note that Americans are a particularly litigious people; we don't detest a politician who lies so much as we detest one who breaks the rules. A system where people can flagrantly ignore the rules is as useless as a screen door on a submarine, for the same reasons. People will game and cheat the system as much as possible, sure - but their very existence guarantees that everyone has to cheat equally, starting from the same baseline. If nobody cared about the laws backlash against those who break them would render the system ineffectual. The strongly litigious nature of American culture is a massive reinforcement against that. The law is the system, and the system is not designed to enforce morality or ethics, but equality. The system is effectively synonymous with equality, and equality is the core concept enshrined by democracy. Americans tend to respect a politicians office inherently; it's been found many times that "President " consistently polls a few points higher than "" alone. This is also why people reacted so badly w
The author is naive.
"Money" is an abstract representation of how much influence one has over others (many people don't think of it this way...if you are in that group, consider the means by which you influence others to grow food and make clothing for you.....you pay them....).
"Politics" is the enterprise of exercising one's influence over others (this should be outright obvious).
When reflected upon objectively, it becomes clear that one can no more take the money out of politics than take medicine out of health care. The two are mutually interdependent.
People who don't have very much money naturally feel powerless (because, well, they are) and so want to find some other means of influencing others (in particular, influencing governors, who by proxy allows one to influence most of the country). So, such people convince themselves that their own political agenda should have equal weight with that of people who have tremendous influence over others (either by means of being rich or holding office...though the distinction between the two becomes very blurry over time). They want to believe that their votes dictate every outcome, and are weighed equally with everyone else's votes, and they insist that such an arrangement would be fair, and that by allowing wealth to skew the situation, one is making things unfair.
Get real. The penniless are also generally clueless when it comes to even the most basic beginnings of setting policies that will regulate commerce between billions of people. They don't have the facts that are necessary to select (let alone engineer) good policies, they don't have the education necessary to have the slightest glimmer of a clue what the impact of their decisions will be, they don't have minds that can store the raw number of variables one must coordinate when making policies, and so on. They have never been in a position to acquire this knowledge nor to exercise the necessary mental skills. They can't make good policies.
They know what they want. They can happily vote for whoever promises them more of what they want and less of what they don't want (even when this is a direct contradiction). That is generally all they can do.
While it is true that the wealthy are corrupt and make evil decisions....an evil but competent body of leaders is preferable to a noble but incompetent body any day of the week.
(And don't even start with the popular "politicians are incompetent" sentiment....they only seem incompetent to people stupid enough to believe their lies).
We have the technology to do this now. We need to start moving away from the electoral process and the republic and trade it in for something more democratic now that technology and information could support it. Let the people decide instead of delegates and representatives. Only then will we see the posibility of breaking away from the corrupt false dichotomy known as R and D.
We already solve it like programmers--we do it according to what the suits say, regardless of how stupid it is because... money.
The good programmers (would-be leaders) get disgusted and quit.
What we need is disruptive technology, from a different bunch of suits. This has nothing to do with how good the programmers are, except that if it's a good bunch of suits they'll attract a good bunch of programmers.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Wonks have not fared well in the profession. A Los Angeles paper once had a long interview with Obama, and he spelled out fairly detailed plans and the careful reasoning behind them. But it's not the same kind of presentation he uses in front of crowds or at press conferences. He knows better.
Spock is more logical, but Kirk makes a better ambassador and negotiator because he thinks more like those he's working with.
Table-ized A.I.
Lawrence Lessig is a HUGE left-wing flake, who for some reason gets lots of attention on Slashdot. Seriously, is there ANY space between Lessig and Karl Marx on substance? Whenever something even mildly positive from the political right gets onto Slashdot, there are lots of posts along the theme "Why is this on Slashdot?" and complaints that it's not related to solder, coding, etc.
I'm actually OK with the Lessig-related stuff showing up here as long as we can have SOME balance. If there are going to be posts that are designed to keep Lessig in the minds of Slashdotters (and in a positive light), then let's have some on Rand Paul (who has plenty of tech-friendly Libertarian positions) or Ted Cruz (currently overseeing NASA in the Senate and trying to get them back to a space exploration focus) or similar on the right. Otherwise, Lessing should be relegated to Kos and HuffPo where he more properly fits.
Slashdot is not made political by hosting articles that concern political people - Slashdot is made political when it leans heavily to one political side.
As one who has spent decades in The Valley I do understand one thing - the blame game can only go so far
And as one who has spent as much time on technology I realize that when a project has become so klunky, so unusable, and so evil, it is best to scrap that thing and start anew
Politics works very similar to programming - what you put into it is what you will get out from - and politics in places such as The United States of America has become so toxic that no amount of 'tweaking' or 'debugging' gonna make any difference
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The ONLY possible 'reset' to the current system will involve a large number of guns
The large number of guns is just a beginning
An even larger number of people being killed (or simply gone missing, forever ) will happen
Even that does not come with any guarantee either ...
... and no, the Americans are not prepared for this type of sacrify
I agree their view is simplistic, but two ideas do come to mind. An above post mentioned tracking where the code/text came from. I like that! if a Lobbying group is going to write a law we should at least know that the politician is just a mouthpiece.
Ok, what would unit testing look like in this scenario? Or at least some form of testing. Integration, functional. Possibly, require a few interpretations of the law (and its consequences) that would serve as documentation.
THe H1B visa program is a result of our government caring only about their cronies instead of the people
There, now if the law doesn't work a bit better, at least it will be easier to read and you can look at it in two terminals side by side!
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
I have worked in state government for over ten years. The problem is that laws are written by people that have no knowledge of the field they regulate. If a scientific study is requested,completed, but then rejected because it conflicts with your parties view why request the report. Both parties do this ignoring common sense. This goes from simple highway conformity to climate change. No one whats to take a middle of the road stand any more; the next moron might run you down.
Voters, not money, are the problem with democracy. Voters are empowered only to select whether their existing representatives ought to continue, or be replaced. Government exists to provide security, order, justice, protection of rights and property, essential legal physical and social infrastructure that benefits the entire community, and a safety net for social peace and individual dignity. When voters add other things, that's whemn the whole society starts sliding towards collapse.
Law as program? And in this model, who is the processor? Who is the data? Also, whenever do people VOTE on the writing of a program?
Want laws that BSOD every few days?
1) Mandatory voting, enforced by financial penalties. (Works for Australia)
2) All laws have an expiration date. (Rotate old laws in to make the transition smooth)