Re: A mathematical, non-corruptable, algorithmic, democratic and free system of government and society

[Erica Frank]

   On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 11:06 AM Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:

     > > The way I look at the issue, though, is that the problem is with
     Statist
     > > society in general. Hierarchical societies are not natural for
     humans,

   [citation needed]
   We have always had hierarchies. We have not always had absolute
   hierarchies, where the person/people in charge of one area are presumed
   to be in charge of all others. But human societies have never been
   "every person decides what to do for themselves, without repercussions
   if they disagree with the leaders."
   ...This is pretty much built into our genes, as three-year-olds who
   decide to do what they want without paying attention to their leaders,
   generally don't grow up to pass on those genes. Obedience to authority
   is a survival trait.
   It's one that needs temperance as people grow - teens challenge
   authority so that, as adults, they can learn to be authorities. (Even
   if only over themselves. 8-year-olds don't get to make all their own
   decisions; adults do. What age or milestone makes someone "adult"
   varies widely by culture.) But any claim that "people should be free to
   decide their own actions" needs to consider how that applies to small
   children. Do they decide? Do their parents decide? What about abusive
   or neglectful parents? (Who steps in to stop them?)

     > 1.  What if, in an anarchy, people get murdered?  Is that okay?
     It is not okay.

   How is that decision enforced in an anarchy? Who decides what behaviors
   are not okay, and who's responsible for making other people go along
   with them?
   This has always been the problem with proposed anarchies. Most
   anarchists agree that various acts of violence are wrong and not
   allowed - murder, torture, theft, and so on - but their proposed
   non-government doesn't have any method for dealing with people who do
   these things. It's like the assumption is, "if we get rid of
   governments, nobody will want to murder their neighbor for playing
   their music too late at night. Nobody will murder their ex-girlfriend
   and her new boyfriend."

     Freedom is easy, do whatever you wish but don't force other people
     to
     do it. If we all follow that simple principle, we would not have any
     troubles. Create agreements and do it with people in agreement.

   The idea of "free to act as long as others agree" handwaves past the
   existence of scam artists and charismatic predators. In an anarchist
   society, is one free to convince others to take heroin? Is there an age
   of consent? If so, who decides what it is, and who decides what happens
   to people who violate it?
   It also skips over the problem of accidents. If I light my home with
   candles and, with the wax buildup on the walls, a spark makes my house
   catch on fire, and it burns down three other houses and kills several
   people - am I a murderer?
   If I burn charcoal for heat in winter and most of my family dies from
   carbon monoxide poisoning - am I a murderer? (Will there be a public
   education system to warn people not to burn charcoal indoors? Who
   administers it? Who pays for it?)

     > 2.  Are people in the anarchy free to setup a dictatorship, with
     guns
     >     and cannons?  Is this power limited?  If it is, how is this an
     >     anarchy?
     I find anarchy represents freedom. Anarchy means that above, do what
     you wish, but don't force others.
     As soon as you start forcing others to do anything, that is
     government.
     We don't need governments, we need consciousness.

   [citation needed]
   You seem to be saying that if everyone were reasonably well-educated,
   there would be no predators, no people working in bad faith, no
   short-sighted people who insist that it's fine if they dump toxic waste
   in the river near their house because it'll just wash out to sea and
   not be a problem. Modern corporate shenanigans says this is not true.
   Education and resources do not bring empathy. I'm not sure what
   "consciousness" means here, but a few million years of human history
   show that it's never going to be a universal trait.
   I understand the appeal of "if people would just pay attention and try
   to get along, we could sort out all these problems! We have the
   resources to make the world a much better place!" Where I disagree, is
   the apparent assumption that there is some magic-button method that
   will switch the majority of people from however they are today, to
   whatever kind of people they'd need to be for this method to work.

     > not only because direct democracy doesn't scale (this could be
     > overcome with blockchains and decentralized networking), it's also

   Blockchain and decentralized networking cannot fix the problems with
   democracy, because "decentralized" anything cannot fix the problems of
   identity scams.
   We have plenty of decentralized systems right now. The entire fediverse
   is decentralized. IRC is decentralized. Anyone can host a server and
   set up a communications hub. Once that needs to tie to a legal
   identity, "decentralized" goes out the window.
   You cannot solve democracy problems with software because it's a social
   system. There is no amount of online-identity-checking that can address
   the problem of "parent threatens 18-year-old with homelessness if he
   doesn't hand over his voting access code." (There are similar exploits
   possible in the current systems, but anonymous paper voting makes them
   more difficult.)
   ...If you want to address democracy with software, start with arranging
   free internet access for everyone. After that's in place - and
   functional - we can look into "what can we do with this universal
   resource?" But until internet is actually guaranteed, not just "oh,
   everyone has that... we can ignore rural communities of a few dozen
   people who don't... and people whose electricity has been shut off...
   and  households where a teen got caught pirating movies so comcast shut
   off their internet..." there's no point in talking about coordinated
   government online, because it's not "democracy" but "control by the
   elite who have resources not available to everyone."

     It could scale. I don't vouch for democracy. But it is easy to
     scale. Give me example of decision to be made and I will let you
     know
     how. If you wish to make a road in specific village, so ask
     villagers.

   At this point, I wish to bring up the Simpson's Monorail episode.
   "Ask the villagers" implies that the person asking is (1) not lying and
   (2) actually has the village's well-being as a goal.

     > For reasons not to be discussed in this brief email, humans
     > communicate with each other much less efficiently than when we are
     > thinking by ourselves, assuming the combined set of knowledge is
     the
     > same.  Rethinking collaboration is needed.
     That is right, with more communication we would be such better
     greater
     civilization.

   We currently have instant, near-global communication, and we have had
   it for decades. Short of mass telepathy, we're not getting better
   communication options.

     > However, as a result of elections in representative democracy,
     > politicians' goal in mind is to win the next election to get sweet
     > money.  Elected?  Sure, just do everything promised, then sit in
     wage
     > and bribes and relax doing nothing at all for the people.  Just
     make
     > sure the people who elected you are pleased and get reelected and
     get
     > money.  This must be overcome.
     Yes, by raising awareness.

   Any solution predicated on the raised consciousness of the masses is
   doomed.
   This is not because the masses are stupid, but because they are busy.
   Most people are focused on survival, with their "extra" time mostly set
   aside for leisure. Assigning them the task of "figure out how your
   survival method impacts strangers a thousand miles away, and use your
   limited leisure time to research and understand this" is going to be
   soundly rejected. Most people are willing to make adjustments that
   improve everyone's lives in the future, but figuring out what those are
   is never going to be everyone's job.

     > Before we get rid of money entirely, the easiest way to do that
     > would be to pay politicians by their performance (which would be
     > hard to measure), not to give them a fixed/slightly-variable wage.
     Money is not bad. But you have to get rid of banks, not money. Banks
     which create money out of thing air are controlling the planet. But
     money as such, like gold or silver, platinum, use it, it is not
     bad.

   Money based on scarce resources has its own set of problems, which is
   why basically everyone switched to fiat money. I've considered an
   economic system based on labor-hours instead of a physical resource,
   but I don't understand enough economic theory to sort out how it would
   function. (It's hard to research. A lot of the texts about "economic
   theory" are more focused on "how people get rich" than "how money
   actually works.")

     > Maybe a system where everybody voices their opinion would work.
     That is always good idea.
     But as of 2021 we live in system where we can voice our opinion so
     much less than in 2020, and so much less than in 2019. So I don't
     know
     where this leads.

   I don't have any less freedom to voice my opinions now than I did 3
   years ago, or 10 years ago. In fact, I have access to several
   communication platforms now that didn't exist in the past.
   Whole lot of people think "freedom to voice an opinion" means "freedom
   from social consequences of voicing that opinion." Or that "freedom to
   voice an opinion" should include "ability to make people pay attention
   to & respect my opinion." Those, we may have less of. But there's no
   shortage of places and ways to voice an opinion these days.

     > We create a distributed network (e.g. a blockchain) (assuming
     people
     > have computers, and that RSA hasn't been cracked yet or there's an
     > alternative algorithm) that stores the reputation of each person's
     > thoughts in a specific field, and their voices are taken more with
     a
     > higher reputation, kind of like how Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow
     > works, but distributed (avoiding a central authority which may
     > become corrupt).
     It will never work.

   That, I fully agree with. Starting with the problem of "assuming people
   have computers..."
   Fix that first. Then see where the rest of the equation stands. Don't
   even look past that point until that part is solved, because I don't
   think that's a trivial issue.
   "Get everyone a computer" is pretty damn close to "end poverty." Have
   fun.
   (Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom goes into some of
   the problems with reputation-based systems.) (Stack Exchange/Overflow
   is one of the most hostile tech resources online. It's better now.
   "Better" is nowhere near "actually welcoming of new and inexperienced
   people." The problem with rep-based systems starts with "what community
   is assigning reputation bonuses?" because that's self-selecting for
   more of the same.)

     Jean
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