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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.
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.
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.
Oh man - the "blame" tool just took on a whole new meaning!
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
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.
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.
Public education is fucked. Case in point, recently a student was suspended for nibbling a toaster pastry into the shape of a gun. This is an example of the demagoguery of which you speak. There ARE good teachers however they cannot educate in an environment where such stupidity prevails.
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 people that can actually change the laws, namely, the people we have already elected, have a vested interest in making sure that the changes that would be necessary, will never get enacted.
The ONLY possible 'reset' to the current system will involve a large number of guns.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!