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'Technology Will Replace the Need For Big Government' (vice.com)
New submitter axlash writes: There's a lot of dissatisfaction with governments today, as can be seen by the rise of left-wing parties in Europe, to the rise of non-mainstream political candidates in America. Well, here's a thought -- with all the talk of technology replacing jobs, why not have it replace governments, too? The speculates about how "in the near future, the government might dramatically shrink -- not because of demands by fiscally astute Americans, but because of radical technology." It goes on: "Even the US President could one day be replaced, which -- strangely enough -- might bring sanity to our election process." The main thrust of the article is essentially about how government jobs will be replaced with technology, although it doesn't say much about whether there'll be technology administering this technology.
Big government spends so much time fighting with itself that not much gets done. A smaller more efficient government will screw the people a lot faster.
Show of hands: Anyone want to actually live in the worlds depicted in those two books? I sure don't.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
This implies, there ever was a real need for Big Government in the first place...
There sure were problems, which the government solved, however, (quite) arguably, these solutions introduced worse problems of their own...
Libertarians continue to argue — with show of reason — that government's role ought to be confined to keeping the enemies away without and crime at bay within the borders...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It is my belief that technology improves the capability to centralize government operations. That's one reason you have states tending towards top down centralization today. It is now possible to run more things from the national capital than ever before.
Centralization has benefits that are quite considerable... if they are used for good. The problem with big government is that the characteristics of a large bureaucracy make the government itself into its own constituency. Look at US legislators. They're completely out of step with a lot of their voters, on both sides. How could that happen? It's way too easy to manage things from the capital.
Will direct democracy and other things become more prevalent with more technology? Quite possibly. However, while I've always stated that democracy is a very good method of generating legitimacy for a particular government, it's really shitty at determining the truth for questions that have anything but the simplest answers.
A lot of progressive types today take great comfort in the belief that they have the majority opinion on their side. However, would they still consider themselves correct if they were a minority? They certainly would. Therefore, having everyone on your side is convenient, but doesn't necessarily improve the value of your proposition. A direct democracy without experts mediating the effects could generate some very popular, and very disastrous policies.
As for technology in general managing things. Garbage in, garbage out. If you start with a flawed premise, your technology will find the best possible means of achieving your flawed goals and screwing you over. I am interested in how technology can help us in the future, but in the end, I think the real determination of whether a future is utopia or dystopia will be determined by the moral and ethical decisions that we generate the starting goals and premises from which the technology will implement a solution.
Government is not mainly technology and will not be replaced by technology.
There's never been a need for "Big Government",
and we all know that technology has outpaced our obese overlords.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Forget about the software. The backdoor will be in the hardware, which is even less comprehensible and verifiable than software is.
replacing government with technology will eventually lead to replacing the government with the owner of said technology.
translation: Our new feudalism corporate overlords would like us to dismantle what's left of our governments, the only thing left that could reign in their power. What is this pro corporate propaganda waffle doing on a tech site?
Actually, its the internet.
I had this realization a while back from mention of a very old economic theory, one truely beyond its time since it comes from before the real advent of general purpose computing. Its a very simple concept.... decentralization is more efficient as information flows.
You need big central orgs when information is bottlenecked and can't move to where it needs fast enough. The Internet turns this concept on its ear. We need the government we have because it used to be reasonable that it takes 6 weeks for someone to get to Washington in an "emergency".
Its time to break this shit up, its too big and centralizes way too much power into way too few hands.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"