The Online Nation

[cal]

EDIT: Here's the first draft of the Constitution

PM me your gmail account if you want to be added to the gdoc so you can edit it.

EDIT: Also, here's an outline of the economy mechanisms, sorry about the delay - Systematic Regulation I think

 

 

We are creating a system of government that is purely online!

 

There are no separated group of individuals governing the rest, the people are the system, the people sustain their government and rules, and the people control their society's actions directly, without the bullshit. So I have started writing the constitution for the new nation, as per what was started in this thread - WHOA NO WAI

 

 

The birth of an online nation, with duel-citizenship actively built-in will help lead the world incrementally through the transition to a singular world government, sustained by the entirety of its members. And why not have this global society united under one flag? I have seen into this with my own counter-arguments, most of which being that there would be strong resistance by practically anyone with political power. These people with political power will not wish to hand away their power, and that's understandable, but they will have no choice in whether or not their power is relinquished if their people just stop adhering to their rule. Bold claims, but let me explain why.

 

If an online government becomes popular and amasses a large quantity of members, as long as 51% of the citizens of a Physical Government (p.g. meaning the current governments we have now with groups of people instantiating their rules separate from the rest of the governed) are also a part of the Online Government, all they have to do to dissolve their physical government is stop adhering to their laws. "But they'll be taken to prison if they don't submit to the authority of a government they chose not to submit to!" which is probably true, but the government can't send more than half its populous to prison, which is what it would take to stop a new government that dominates half your citizens. Not to mention the prisoners (I guess they're considered to have committed treason?) will be freed as soon as new jurisdiction is put in place, assuming they are only in prison for resisting their old government.

________________________________________________________

 

What about an army? As one of my favorite hypographers quotes in his signature, "A country without an army is like a fish without a bicycle."

But what if your government is hunted down by an opposing nations army? Well I'd like to ask who exactly they'd be hunting down, considering there are no rulers, there are no designated leaders, and everyone in the system has equal power. The only way to dissolve this type of online government is to kill every single last citizen of it, which would be extremely hard to do considering it would take a global effort (anyone in the world can be a part of the online gov).

What if they spy on you and try to shut you down? What is their to spy on? The entire government system we'd be using is totally transparent. The actions of the government and it's governing society are totally available per the ideology of free information that the government pursues. There is nothing to spy on. And what if they try to DDoS or do injections to our servers? What power does that take away besides a few hours of downtime and the realization that the government is globally distributed (like wikileaks and any other site with a hundred mirrors)? Aside from bombing the physical locations of the 13-ish root servers, there would be no practical way to entirely bring down an online government, the internet is too self-healing to allow such a thing.

Then how do you spy on other governments? We don't. And why should we? Deception, backstabbing, and this whole espionage thing are ancient concepts that only achieve their goal if the competing nations are threats. No physical government can be a threat to an online one, the aggregate power of connected human consciousness is too much for a bunch of old men who don't know how the world works anymore to say that we must be brought down. On top of this I'd like to stress that this will bring incremental change to the world, not large and immediate change (well, it'd be nicer if it did, but I don't see that happening).

________________________________________________________

 

This type of society would be able to freely choose when and when not it decides to become global, if ever. That is the greatness of it, it's citizens have true freedom - freedom to even dissolve their citizenship if they truly wanted, at any given time. For more details, you can read the old thread that was throwing around the idea. I've obviously added a lot more content onto it and left you all in the dark about it, but as soon as we've crowd-sourced the constitution and fixed a lot of things, it'll be made available via this thread hopefully for your viewing pleasure.

 

I realize there are some bold statements still to be discussed, and that's what the rest of this thread will hope to smooth out, but until questions arise, I have a much more important task to ask of you the reader! WE NEED MEMBERS. Not just for the political declaration that the nation exists, we don't actually need that right away, but members to join the community and help out with instantiating the government system to begin with - programmers. So far there are four main functions of the government system that would need to be coded: registration for citizenship & citizen logging, registration for voting & law-writing, the voting & law-writing moduals themselves (which will constitute the largest amounts of code), and the crediting system the government will use for monetary interaction with its citizens and other governments (not a monetary system, there won't be any physical currency sorry, it'll be like bitcoins), more on those later.

 

Let me know if any of you are interested, you can post it here, or pm me on hypography, or even email me for content and creation stuffs at- [email protected]

 

This is the birth of a nation, let it be a good one!

Edited April 19, 2013 by Snax

[Eclogite]

Well, it's original and daring.

 

 

Now, what is the function of this proposed government?

[Moontanman]

We are creating a system of government that is purely online!

 

How many citizens are in this "we" so far?

[Boerseun]

I can understand where you're coming from, and I like the idea an' all, but I would rather campaign for a world with NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL.

 

Call me an idealist.

 

The guy who said "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely" did have a point, after all. Forming one world government will merely funnel all the channels of corruption to a singular, higher plane.

 

Want happiness? Get rid of government.

[cal]

Now, what is the function of this proposed government?

It's essentially carrying out the same function as what every other government is supposed to carry out- to govern a populous and levy the ideology of the populous into the laws that effect them. If you're talking about the function as in what I'm hoping it achieves when implemented, then I'd say the function is to absolve a lot of the current problems that our American government has (in relation to efficiency and corruption), and then to absolve the American government from power entirely. And then I guess the rest of the world, but I am but one voice within the system, I only have equal say as the rest of the citizens would, so If they don't want that, then the government doesn't pursue that function. I hope that answered it. =P

 

 

How many citizens are in this "we" so far?

I suppose I was using the royal "we", since the government doesn't technically exist yet, but if you want to get technical, it's me and two friends. As soon as we can get a registration system up, or as soon as anyone else says they want in, I'll add them to the list. Would you be interested in participating lol? Four is better than three, you know.

 

 

I can understand where you're coming from, and I like the idea an' all, but I would rather campaign for a world with NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL.

 

Call me an idealist.

 

The guy who said "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely" did have a point, after all. Forming one world government will merely funnel all the channels of corruption to a singular, higher plane.

 

Want happiness? Get rid of government.

I think it's safe for me to assume that you've never seen the anarchy bit from Spongebob. But even if that assumption is incorrect, you seem to have some misconceptions about this kind of government. There is no "absolute power" in this system, and there's no room for the system to be "corrupted absolutely" unless you meant physically, like if the data on the servers got corrupted somehow lol. What I mean by that is that there's no rulers, there's no politicians (technically, I guess you could say anyone who votes is a politician in this system?), to put it in quotes, "We are the music makers."

 

I'm going to attach a lil' sompthin-sompthin to this reply to show some refutation that has already been countered from the previous thread. That should help clear up any more misconceptions anyone has about this government system.

Gov Refutation.pdf

Edited February 10, 2013 by Matthew Garon

[Deepwater6]

A good place for a model of goverment like this might be on a man made off-shore nation. Starting a goverment off this way would be a whole lot easier than transforming an existing one.

 

Either way I think its a great model, and if it ever got up and running perhaps other countries would pursue it in something similar to the arab spring.

[phillip1882]

i would very much love to participate. I'm a coder too so i can throw my weight in there.

my email is [email protected]. send me what you need.

[cal]

In case people don't see my edit in the OP, here's THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE CONSTITUTION WHOOOO!!!

 

If you want to edit or add to it, pm me your gmail account name so I can add you to the gdoc as an editor.

 

 

A good place for a model of goverment like this might be on a man made off-shore nation. Starting a goverment off this way would be a whole lot easier than transforming an existing one.

 

Either way I think its a great model, and if it ever got up and running perhaps other countries would pursue it in something similar to the arab spring.

We don't have to off-shore it or transform an existing one. That's a false dichotomy, those aren't the only two options and I should make clear that neither are the options I've suggested lol.

 

It's simple, we kill the batman, I meant, we start it by hosting it on some server and allow digital citizenship until there is a full country that utilizes it. Once a full country uses the Online Nation's system of government, and no longer uses their old government, we have our first "province" by which to base our nation. Everything is bacon from there on out.

Edited February 10, 2013 by Matthew Garon

[Eclogite]

I am clearly missing something. Imagine the following scenario.

 

85% of the citizens of an existing country have signed up to become citizens of WHOO. How do they take over road construction? Who plans it? Who investigates its impact? How does it get approved? How is it paid for? The mechanics of the process seem fraught with complexity.

 

 

Complete side issue: I do recall that we did have an exchange about word usage. You argued that it was preferable to use 'big words' and if someone was too uneducated to be familiar with those words that was their problem. (I paraphrase your argument.)

 

On that basis you might want to look at your use of absolve in the sentence: then I'd say the function is to absolve a lot of the current problems that our American government has (in relation to efficiency and corruption), and then to absolve the American government from power entirely.

 

You use the word correctly in the second instance, though you are using a less common meaning of the word, but the first instance is nonsensical. You cannot absolve a current problem. Current problems have no responsibility.

 

Ignore this off topic point if you wish. I won't be offended.

[cal]

I am clearly missing something. Imagine the following scenario.

 

85% of the citizens of an existing country have signed up to become citizens of WHOO. How do they take over road construction? Who plans it? Who investigates its impact? How does it get approved? How is it paid for? The mechanics of the process seem fraught with complexity.

Ask those questions about our current system. The way things like that are carried out would stay the same unless some industry-specific law (which I need to add a sector for in the const.) is passed that says otherwise.

 

The transition of these offices would be as easy as registering them into the system as a government ran thing, otherwise they stay private. You can only register a service thing if the place you're in is already registered as a province. So until 100% of the citizens of a country are using this new system, they can just keep using the old services provided by their old gov.

It's unfair to the old systems, but I guess we're sorta beating the love out of them lol.

 

 

Complete side issue: I do recall that we did have an exchange about word usage. You argued that it was preferable to use 'big words' and if someone was too uneducated to be familiar with those words that was their problem. (I paraphrase your argument.)

No, you argued it was preferable to use smaller words, and less of them to describe what I was trying to describe, and I said the way I described it was adequate and better for the read since there was a lot to read. I never said it was always better to use bigger words, or that they should always be used in place of smaller ones, I merely said that if a bigger word is used and someone does not know what it means, it is not the writer's fault for the reader's ignorance. That was all. (I'm paraphrasing my argument.)

 

 

On that basis you might want to look at your use of absolve in the sentence: then I'd say the function is to absolve a lot of the current problems that our American government has (in relation to efficiency and corruption), and then to absolve the American government from power entirely.

 

You use the word correctly in the second instance, though you are using a less common meaning of the word, but the first instance is nonsensical. You cannot absolve a current problem. Current problems have no responsibility.

Yea I use the wrong word for things all the time cause of the dyslexia, and the later I stay up, the more mistakes I miss and don't fix. I'm kinda surprised that this is the first time on this forum that anyone has brought up my misuse of a word. I mixed up "absolve" with "resolve" and "dissolve" sorry lol. A lot of times when I use two similar words in a sentence, I accidentally use a third different word altogether, which is what happened here. =P

Edited February 10, 2013 by Matthew Garon

[Rade]

How will the laws of the constitution be enforced ? How will taxes be collected so that laws can be enforced ? Sorry if questions already asked and answered.

Edited February 10, 2013 by Rade

[Rade]

Many groups seek to get folks to take pledges to do or not do things, this seems like a workable model for an Online Nation. So, suppose a constitution where each human pledges not to initiate use of force against another person, with a tracking mechanism of such actions, with name and address of actors involved for each reported violation. Over time a database would be created that could be sorted many ways..type of force used, geographic location, result of force (death, cut, broken nose, etc)...of course only for those registered to belong to the Online Nation. Makes one wonder, if everyone took such a pledge, would there be any violations of the law within the Online Nation ? That is, do we violate laws mostly because we never sign a pledge not to do so ? Very interesting thread topic, best of luck.

[cal]

How will the laws of the constitution be enforced ? How will taxes be collected so that laws can be enforced ? Sorry if questions already asked and answered.

They were asked, but not here, so it's good you brought them up. The quotes are from friends.

 

"The main problem we'll run into is not being taken seriously by other governments." > When their populous stops listening to them, thereby taking their power, they will take us seriously. And to what consequence is it to a digital government if a physical one doesn't interact with it? NOT A NEGATIVE ONE, THAT'S FOR SURE. It's much, MUCH better if physical governments don't take us seriously at first, it gives us a huge advantage and leap on the market for citizens. Really I can only see this as empowering for the Online Nation.

 

"an online government would have no trace of power" > Just like the American government has no trace of power, right? I really have zero understanding of why someone would say something like this. A government (even if it is physically instantiated) only ever has conceptual power. The power of a government is derived from whether or not it's populous chooses to enforce its rules, and as far as I can tell, people like having rules, they like having a police force, meaning they like enforcing the rules, and therefore, if they admit themselves to be citizens of this government, they will follow the rules or suffer their prescribed consequences.

 

I see more power from a world collective than from a remote group of dudes saying they have power because they hold some unrespected office.

 

My other friend said that physical force is the root of power, to which I say- I don't think you understand what this government is... like you seem to think that it's not even a government. Just because it's hosted on the internet does not mean that the internet is its extent... And again, that physical force is derived from the concept of authority. As long as people think America's government has authority, they will enforce its laws. As long as people think any government has authority, they will enforce its laws. As long as people understand that the Online Nation is a government system, and thus has authority in relation to law, they will enforce said laws. I honestly don't get what about that axiom people don't understand.

 

Maybe people are confused by the dispersion that the citizens will initially take. How do you enforce laws amongst people that reside in multiple countries? Initially, the only laws we could enforce are intellectual laws (like intellectual property and interaction with the online system), so its true that the only real rules are the ones that can be enforced, however, once we get our first province, we will have land to which we say the Online Nation physically owns, and from there we will have human police and court system able to enforce every other law. Like I said and must stress more because of failure to comprehend by my friends, THIS IS INCREMENTAL, NOT AN IMMEDIATE CHANGE. Stop assuming ****, Nelson.

 

Also, taxes lol? People need to realize the potential of an online government, why would the government need to tax anything if it controls its own credit? Remember, we aren't using a monetary system, we're using a system of crediting, which is ran automatically, and kept in check like bitcoins' hash checks. You might then ask, well then how does it afford things to get done? Here's where I need to release all the pages on this that I haven't copied over, cause in this system you can buy and sell credit, which is confusing to most who haven't gone over all the **** written up on this, and I apologize for that, so I'll try to give you the basic points. You become a citizen and are granted 100 credits to your account (same account as your log-in for your registered person in the system, the same account log-in that lets you vote) by default, and you use these credit points to buy food etc. You start to run low so you get a job which pays you in credit. This is basically capitalism, the medium its occurring in is just different (meaning what's being traded). The government needs to pay road workers to repave a highway so people don't **** each other and die on the highway, the government pays the road-workers in credit, but where is the government getting this credit? Any exchange with other nations will bring about a currency exchange, in which hard currency is converted into credit that the ON government can use to interact with its citizens. But that won't be enough, obviously, so the beauty of this system of crediting is that credit can also be created and destroyed at any time by the government (only the credit that the government owns, not the credit of citizens). The government creates credit algorithmically in proportion to the costs and labor it takes to repave the highway and pay the workers. But what about inflation you ask? Just as it algorithmically creates credit, it algorithmically destroys credit to help balance out the value of a credit point. I realize more question probably arise from that explanation than are answered, but give me time I'm busy with work and school and can't find enough time to collaborate with the other people on this and get it all in writing and distributed for everyone to see, I guess I'm failing as a coordinator, but meh.

 

You might be saying these credit points sound awfully like a hard currency system. I guess you're right, but we're aiming to synthesize the two systems into one. Credit is still credit, it doesn't have to be directly transferred right away, it can be used in allowance and the time it is exchanged can be delayed, just like the credit we're used to from banks. A lot more on this is being written and reviewed, I'll be adding it with other content into the linked constitution as we go along, I apologize for delay in information this is creating haha.

[Buffy]

It's essentially carrying out the same function as what every other government is supposed to carry out- to govern a populous and levy the ideology of the populous into the laws that effect them. If you're talking about the function as in what I'm hoping it achieves when implemented, then I'd say the function is to absolve a lot of the current problems that our American government has (in relation to efficiency and corruption), and then to absolve the American government from power entirely. And then I guess the rest of the world, but I am but one voice within the system, I only have equal say as the rest of the citizens would, so If they don't want that, then the government doesn't pursue that function. I hope that answered it. =P

 

Yah, I'm with Eclogite: I have no idea what you're trying to accomplish here. A "government" is an organization that adopts laws, collects taxes, and performs functions that implement those laws and protects "the people"--the members of a group that support that government--from internal and external threats.

 

I'm not going to even try to argue about whether starting such a thing from scratch as an "online government" is possible or not, I'll start by assuming it is: it's obvious that most of the back and forth you've had to deal with has to do with nuts and bolts of why or why not you'd be able to get the thing off the ground.

 

The question I really have is why the heck would anyone care?

 

I get the feeling that the main answer to that is something along the lines of "the current government isn't responsive to the people/controlled by the rich/etc. and because the internet is so cool, we can now do it ourselves!"

 

But to me, you could replace "the internet" with "the printing press" and it seems this whole thing is going off into the weeds of thinking that the latest transformative technology is the POINT, and therefore "everything is different" without realizing that it's really simply the grease on wheels that were invented back in time immemorial.

 

Thus we end up with a vacuous framework that does not recognize that political systems ARE indeed all about specific policies, power-centers, log rolling, shifting mores, cultural divides, tribalism, etc. etc. etc.

 

So what if Karl Rove or the Koch brothers pick up your idea and fund the hell out of it as a crazy Tea Party advocacy platform? Are you going to support it whole-heartedly? Or for those of you tea partier's if it were funded by George Soros, fronted by Rachel Maddow, with military backup from the Black Helicopters of the Bilderburgs?

 

The question here is not so much that folks with money could hijack this, but that the *ideas* that get pushed to the front will not find "natural majorities" no matter *what* those ideas are. To a great extent, I think the fact that you've so far seemed to punt on this point is avoiding the most fundamental issue around forming a government: it's not so much how it's implemented, but what you're going to propose to get people to *want* to be "citizens" of it.

 

The new comedy 1600 Penn on NBC here in the US had an interesting commentary on this this week, with a bunch of people protesting the White House advocating for Mass Transit: they eventually get invited in to meet with the president and it deteriorates from there:

President: So, what can I do for you?

Spokesman: Mr. President, we need more investment in mass transportation. Specifically, high-speed rail which is our top priority.

Woman protester: That's our top priority? What about light rail?

Protester in crowd: Trolleys, man!

Spokesman: Oh god, enough with the trolleys Carol.

Protester in cap: We should be talking about clean energy! Solar, wind...

Spokesman: *I'm* the spokesman!

Crowd: [breaks into crosstalk/arguments]

 

Governing is really about the participants building *coalitions* of interest which advocate highly disparate opinions, and certainly these groups are all getting very sophisticated with using the internet as a mechanism for publicizing their viewpoints and in that we see a very democratizing effect from this new technology, but it's not the point, it's the means. And as far as I can see so far, there's not really any argument here that's a convincing reason to come up with an entirely new constitution/government: what you're really going to end up with is a web site that ends up advocating something specific, and if its just "we support doing a new constitution on the internet!" I think most people will have the same response that I have: "okay, so what?"

 

So what are you *really* trying to accomplish here?

 

The government is unresponsive to the needs of the little man. Under 5'7", it is impossible to get your congressman on the phone, :phones:

Buffy

[Eclogite]

Matthew, based on your response (thank you for the detail) and the reality check from Buffy, I am forced to ask - "Have you actually ever managed anything? A small group of a dozen, or maybe fifty people? Do you understand the complexities involved in building an administrative machine from scratch? The devil is in the detail and you seem unaware of that.

[cal]

A "government" is an organization that adopts laws, collects taxes, and performs functions that implement those laws and protects "the people"--the members of a group that support that government--from internal and external threats.

You're assuming a lot aren't you? Just because governments should do those things doesn't mean they have to.

That being said, again, no taxes, credit can't be taxed (well, at least not without making some funny rules up). I can't think of an internal threat aside from someone unplugging a server, but one server of many is not a big deal, and there would be security posted like there already is for server rooms. I can see an external threat being an issue, like if some country bombed all the server buildings, but how would they get that info? I mean they still haven't found pirate bay's servers, and as far as anyone can tell, all of TPB's servers are in one building, they have all their eggs in one basket, but it's the internet so it's like this steal-alloy basket that shoots back when fired upon. Again, this is more or less of an experiment testing to see whether or not it works, like previously stated, and if it does work, then we have a viable platform for which to host a world government, the kinks of which would be worked out during this suedo-expirement, making it a super stable system to handle the world over. Let me quell your other qualms.

 

 

The question I really have is why the heck would anyone care?

A new world order capable of ending war between nations (war for land and wealth reasons), a government system that can govern the entire planet, and the self-mending platform it is hosted on that can never be fully destroyed unless you were to wipe out our entire species, I DON'T KNOW, WHAT'S THERE TO BE EXCITED ABOUT? NOTHING I GUESS.

 

lol, cliches aside, I'm really trying to drive the idea of absolute political equality, as well as incrementally uniting the world under one flag, I guess it's not as a reason for anyone to care as the reasons to care that it opens up- like once country war is ended and a singular governing body is erected instead of all these weird groups of people that say "oh we think you're cool, but don't come to close or all of a sudden all the rules that you live your life by magically change because of these imaginary boundaries we've created to make up this false sense of difference humans have" then we can start on the important **** that's actually a problem for the human condition like starvation, and poverty, and the really basic stuff we should have solved HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO, but haven't because of the idea of political superiority. Governments can't collide on issues when there is only one government left, and I realize it may be rocky to get there, but there needs to be solidarity goddammit. There needs to be unity amongst our species, and there needs to be a frictionless way of doing it, and so far a unified online government is the only proposed efficient way of achieving this dream.

 

I mean I could be totally full of it, right? But I haven't seen any other way of unifying all the peoples of the planet aside from this strategy. Which granted, is the same strategy proposed by a few others (online gov.), but none of them have gone all the way through with it, and none of them have come close to the level of detail or stability we are currently developing.

 

 

I get the feeling that the main answer to that is something along the lines of "the current government isn't responsive to the people/controlled by the rich/etc. and because the internet is so cool, we can now do it ourselves!"

 

But to me, you could replace "the internet" with "the printing press" and it seems this whole thing is going off into the weeds of thinking that the latest transformative technology is the POINT, and therefore "everything is different" without realizing that it's really simply the grease on wheels that were invented back in time immemorial.

 

Thus we end up with a vacuous framework that does not recognize that political systems ARE indeed all about specific policies, power-centers, log rolling, shifting mores, cultural divides, tribalism, etc. etc. etc.

Had I been born in the time of the Printing Press, or any time, I would be arguing for a system that can efficiently govern all person of the planet, because all it really takes to unify people is a means of communication, right? Some people want more power than the rest and so instead they abuse their system, with the support of their people, to govern unjustly.

 

I don't think the printing press is a fair comparison to the internet. I mean the integrated circuit is considered by many to be objectively the greatest invention since commercial soap. Not to mention technology advances exponentially, so why shouldn't our society advance exponentially with it? It would take big changes to have a society that advances exponentially, wouldn't it? And how would you keep that society on par with its technological advances unless somehow the society was regulated by means of some system ran by the technology the society created? I realize there's some rhetorical questions here, but I hope you realize why I'm asking them as well.

 

On top of all that, I'd like you to consider something. All this corruption, all this backwards policy making, all this unjust war and delusions about power for those who want it, they've all happened under systems of hierarchical rule, where one person or persons rule the rest. That cannot exist with this system of direct democracy, so who is claiming superior political power when everyone can claim equal political power? I don't think it's fair to say this system is about power. You can say it's about policy making, and cultural divides, but when have I said it wasn't? All I'm saying is that this system is much, much more efficient than the bully-ruler systems we've been using. So much so that it has the potential to unify the world under one flag, even if every other government on the planet resists, all the people have to do is chose which they think is better.

 

 

So what if Karl Rove or the Koch brothers pick up your idea and fund the hell out of it as a crazy Tea Party advocacy platform? Are you going to support it whole-heartedly? Or for those of you tea partier's if it were funded by George Soros, fronted by Rachel Maddow, with military backup from the Black Helicopters of the Bilderburgs?

 

The question here is not so much that folks with money could hijack this, but that the *ideas* that get pushed to the front will not find "natural majorities" no matter *what* those ideas are. To a great extent, I think the fact that you've so far seemed to punt on this point is avoiding the most fundamental issue around forming a government: it's not so much how it's implemented, but what you're going to propose to get people to *want* to be "citizens" of it.

I'm really confused as to how the Tea Party would be in support of this system, I mean we're directly aiming to eliminate people like them, did you read the short draft I linked? There's no way for a party like them to even function in this system, half their ideals relate to things that don't even exist in this government. Also, money arguments are null, aren't they, cause this gov doesn't use money internally (and really, that solves a lot of problems now that I think about it). You might say, well someone or a group of people could still be greatly more influential in their law-suggesting and passing than other groups, which is the super-majority argument that CraigD presented, but I will give you the counter-argument I gave him: if someone becomes influential in this system because they have written good laws and have had them passed, then they are deserving of that influence because they are good at what they do, just like football coaches become more influential in play-tactics as they design and are successful with more and more of their plays. I don't see how this is a bad thing tbh, I mean no matter how much the populous likes a super-majority, at any time they can look at the super's new law and say, "naw, this one sucks" and just down-vote it. The only power a super-majority would have in this system is social power, not political power.

 

As to your point of why anyone would want to be a part of this, I guess you don't have to have drive and willingness to lead the world to a better future, a unified planet, the idea that all information and knowledge should be openly accessible and freely available to all peoples, especially in relation to how we decide to govern ourselves, but you also don't have to think world-wars, genocides, slavery, and political power abuse are bad things either. I didn't want this to sound so much like a chocolate vs. vanilla kind of a thing because I don't think a new government a long time coming is that trivial, but you're reducing it to seem like the governments we have now are totally fine, fine enough to the point where nothing needs to be fixed. If that is not true, and you think things need to be fixed, what will you do to fix them? You and me both are rendered powerless to change our current government, even if we were able to lobby something to be finally presented in front of that group of old men who know nothing about how the world works anymore, we have no direct say in whether or not they chose to pass it (I guess unless we bribe them until their anuses bleed). In our current representative republic, we have no direct say for almost anything, and it's pathetic. I'm a little dismayed as to why you think there is no good reason for a person to say, "**** that, ideology and political power have to stop being so contrived and misdirected away from the people they are supposedly taking into account when screwing us, us meaning the nations we **** out of resources, as well as our own citizens." I think there is plenty of reason that an individual should have direct access to the power of his/her government, NAY, it is our right to have direct political power of our government. I guess I'm just more tired of having it beaten out of me than you are, maybe you've grown comfortable with all that soap that you drop, but I'm upset that this is what humans have been doing since forever and that we haven't gotten over it yet. Please tell me I am not the only one.

 

Let me ask you why someone wouldn't want to become a citizen of a truly free society, limited only by equality? The only reason I can think of is power, but if 99% of humans on the planet want equality, then I think that 1% is going to have a hard time oppressing us without money or political strength backing them. I just realized that may be mistaken as an occupy reference, it wasn't, I'm talking about 99% of people who live normal days, doing normal jobs, that want **** to be fair. I mean if you break down the proportion of all the people with top military or political power in relation to the rest of humanity, it's way less than 1% of people that are these ultra-corrupt and power thirsty oppressors, the only reason they rule over so many for so long is because of their financial and political inequality. I mean, unless there's some secret I'm missing from all of recorded history.

 

 

The new comedy 1600 Penn on NBC here in the US had an interesting commentary on this this week, with a bunch of people protesting the White House advocating for Mass Transit: they eventually get invited in to meet with the president and it deteriorates from there:

I'm confused as to what you're implying with that quote other than if everyone is talking, nothing is heard. You are obviously extremely unfamiliar with how we're going to handle everyone's say in this system, and I don't want to bother re-typing half the linked constitution into this post, so I suggest you just read it again and realize there are already all kinds of web-based voting systems that handle millions of people daily without thinking twice about it.

 

 

And as far as I can see so far, there's not really any argument here that's a convincing reason to come up with an entirely new constitution/government: what you're really going to end up with is a web site that ends up advocating something specific, and if its just "we support doing a new constitution on the internet!" I think most people will have the same response that I have: "okay, so what?"

Shall we direct that response to Mr. Jefferson? Or how about John Adam? Or even ol' Benjamen? "Mr. Benjamen, there's not really any argument here that's a convincing reason to come up with an entirely new constitution/government: what you're really going to end up with is a paper that ends up advocating something specific, and if its just "we support liberties and a three-branch government" I think most people will have the same response that I have: okay, so what?"

 

Yea, I think the people of my generation have just as much reason to work towards a world government as the founding fathers had to work for liberty from tyranny. It's only the next logical step in human progression, and it really should have been done a long, long time ago.

 

 

So what are you *really* trying to accomplish here?

To shut up anti-freedom terrorists like you, lol (I say that in jest).

 

 

The government is unresponsive to the needs of the little man. Under 5'7", it is impossible to get your congressman on the phone, :phones:

I'm 5'8", try and stop me.

 

 

Matthew, based on your response (thank you for the detail) and the reality check from Buffy, I am forced to ask - "Have you actually ever managed anything? A small group of a dozen, or maybe fifty people? Do you understand the complexities involved in building an administrative machine from scratch? The devil is in the detail and you seem unaware of that.

Yes actually, I'm the project coordinator for a development team, as if that matters though, this type of government doesn't need me (or any single person) to manage it...

Maybe you're talking about managing the programmers involved in coding the system initially. I'm totally cool if someone wants to take the reigns on that, I mean I haven't called it or anything, so if you feel someone can do it better, by all means, present yourself. I don't need to be involved in this any further technically, I've already sown the seeds, someone just need to finish writing the constitution for it and implementing the system via interwebs. I guess anyone can tackle this really, so again, I don't see how it's necessary for me to be the manager of it. All I want is for there to be a world government implementing pure democracy (direct democracy), and this is the only viable way of doing it that I've ever seen proposed.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Matthew Garon

[Buffy]

I'm sorry that it's not clear what we're asking about here, but in your response you indicate a few assumptions that are germane to the issues we're talking about that have little to do with an "internet based direct democracy", so it might be best to take these in small chunks.

 

Let's start with this: you say pretty directly that this is intended to be a world government and you seem to be implying that the 99% of everyone in the world would want this if we could just get the rich and power-hungry overlords out of the way.

 

Can you think of any issues that might be an obstacle to that concept? Or is it "obvious" that everyone would think that if they just "thought about it for a while"?

 

 

If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong, :phones:

Buffy