As kids, we’re told only people who go to college/university for politics/economics/law are qualifiable to make/run a country. As adults, we see no nation these “qualified” adults form actually work as a nation, with all manifesto-driven governments failing. Which to me validates the ambitions of all political theorist amateurs, especially as there are higher hopes now that anything an amateur might throw at the wall can stick. Here’s my favorite from a friend.
I’ve played around with the idea of a very ‘direct’ democracy, where effectively, all citizens have an app and are constantly and directly “engaged” in the process. I was imagining it as being a replacement for a local government. If you don’t want to be involved, you can transfer your vote to someone you trust in the system (and take it back whenever you like). The discussions would all be open and traceable, but the votes would be pseudo anonymized.
That way if its not your thing or you aren’t interested, you can just hand your vote to someone else and let them manage it for you (kind-of like current political parties or representatives), but take it back at will.
I think we suffer from a lack of civil engagement, and I get tired of people who refuse to put in the work blaming “da gubberment” for things. This system would effectively require them to engage at least some level. And if they complain about “the potholes” not getting fixed, well, there is a no excuse for not knowing why they arent getting fixed. I think we all need to take more responsibility for the world we live in.
This sounds good until you think about the reality of it. People will force partners and adult kids who financially depend on them to vote how they want. Then you have the rich and wealthy who will just pay people to vote on something the way they want.
In theory, this sounds great, but the reality of it would be bad.
Or just hackers/scammers/phishers etc. who would try to compromise accounts and redirect votes.
And that’s assuming the population even has an informed opinion on every decision that needs to be made. Many decisions should not be directly democratic, which is (supposed to be) why we elect representatives whose job it is to be informed, consult the relevant experts, and then represent us in a vote.
I’ve been thinking of a similar thing, delegating votes to people you trust. Delegation should be transitive, of course. I think it would also be neat to delegate by category or topic.
I also like the idea of being active with it. I like to imagine someone needs to maintain a certain approval level or be removed, so people have recourse to act if they aren’t being listened to.
Yeah for the short story I write the idea down for was about a high desert town in a western state. no-where in particular, but that gritty, off the grid, sandy desert western culture. somewhere between abbey and le guin, but in a modern context . a story about community having to make real decisions about things like infrastructure.
I put the idea down a couple years ago when I was reading some local politician responding to criticisms about wasting public money and potholes and them basically being like “the budget is public. show me the waste? yall want more done? pay more taxes.”, when the reality of managing anything is costs and benefits in the context of limited resources. like the communal management of resources would have come about basically as an app this community was using to keep track of and develop the land they bought to home stead but it evolves from there.
That local politician sounds like an interesting character. I love that response instead of just trying to talk their way around it. I can see why that would inspire a story.
Did you happen to publish that in some format? It sounds like a good read.
No i have too much writing to do at work to write fiction. I keep a journal of ideas though. Maybe someday.
That’s relatable. I get plenty of downtime during the day but not in long enough stretches to focus on something like that. Society is upside-down. We should be working far fewer hours and spending more time doing hobbies.
I have been thinking about this idea for some time also but a couple of things have always bugged me-
Firstly, how does this interact with privacy? For vote delegation to work, I think the votes would have to be public, or you can’t make a decision on who to delegate your vote to- someone could claim to have one set of views but vote contrary to that. People could come under pressure to vote one way or another.
Also, who crafts the legislation that is voted on? How do you prevent bill rolling (two unrelated ideas are boiled down to a single binary choice) and splitting (a new service is voted through but the taxes to fund it are not)?
You said local government at least so a national or state government could help craft these things, but what if the proposed legislation doesn’t actually hurt local people, but doesn’t take into account the actual problems they have locally? For example, what if it would help to allow building in a particular area, but the state government doesn’t know that and it never becomes a priority?
Yeah idk. One reason is why I said ‘psuedo-anonymous’. And then there is also an element of trust. If you delegate your vote and they vote against your interests, well thats that I suppose and you wont trust them again. So I do think it could be largely private at least in certain directions (we dont’ all get to “know” who your delegates are, even if the system does. But then again, does it need to be private?
In terms of legislation, I was imagining the users of the system themselves do the work of crafting it, and it gets voted on within the system
This is not an idea I came up with, but I haven’t seen it anywhere else and I don’t remember where I heard it.
Basically the rules are:
- Every vote on every question is handled by direct democracy
- But, you can assign your vote to another person at any time. ie Give them your voting power so now they have two votes on any topic
- Furthermore, a person to whom you’ve assigned your vote can in turn assign it to someone else.
- You can always see who’s wielding your vote power, you can see who assigned it to whom
- Any time you want, you can take your vote back
So basically I can assign my vote to Bob because I trust his judgment. Bob can assign mine and his own to Alice, because Bob trust’s Alice’s judgment.
I can check what’s happening with my vote, and see that it’s been assigned to Bob, who assigned it to Alice, etc.
There is no limit to the number of reassignments that can happen.
Basically it’s direct democracy by default, but with an infinitely and dynamically scaleable structure of delegation layers in between.
A person can be as involved or uninvolved as they want. Their minimum involvement would be choosing which friend they trust to handle their vote. Maximum involvement could mean seeking to convince millions of others to trust you with their vote. Or getting thousands of intermediate delegates to delegate all their voting power to you.
I feel like we’re in the garbage-age of MMOs, but when the next golden age of MMOs happens, I want to see worlds where these experimental forms of government are attempted. At least digitally.
The problem with experimenting with government in video games is there’s no death in video games, and handling death is one of the most important roles of government.
That is an interesting thought. If humans were immortal, would we have any government?..hm, yeah, I believe we still would. I think it’s less about the threat of death for an individual and more about the management of resources for a population.
But the intent would not be to see what works in a video game and try to use it IRL, the intention is to see where these systems breakdown in unforeseen ways when implemented at scale.
But mostly, I just want to see new fun ideas in the genre. There are no new MMOs willing to take the risk of letting one player’s experience be dependent on the behaviour of another player, let alone allow a fully player-managed government. For now we live in a world where Destiny 2 is what qualifies as an MMO. But I digress.
Possibly.
I think that one of the basic laws that “governs” people is that if you hurt someone, they’ll get mad and be motivated to hurt you back.
But if you kill someone, they can’t retaliate.
Then it’s up to their kin, their friends and family, to avenge them.
I think government somewhat becomes necessary when societies get large enough that one’s kin network can’t find their cousin’s killer. Then we get police, whose job it is to find that killer and punish them.
I know that’s an oversimplified, single-dimensional model of government. But I feel like when people are facing, en masse, the horrific void of death, not just in terms of murder but also in terms of war, that government really becomes a compelling idea.
Death is like a black hole that nothing echoes back from. Government helps us deal with that void by creating a virtual person who can still play their “next move” even after they’ve passed through that doorway.
Of course video games have their own forms of “death”. Spawn camping for instance takes a player out of the game. Surrounding a person’s bed with lava can “permakill” them in Minecraft.
It’s just that video games sort of have “government” built into the game mechanics. Respawning is a solution to the “no retaliation after death” problem. Anti cheat stuff. Inventory that literally cannot be accessed by anyone other than the player solves theft.
Games are designed to be fun, which is kind of what government does to reality. It redesigns reality to be a playable, balanced game.
I would love to see more games with less balancing, where the balancing comes from player experimentation with governing agreements.
But government’s largely a solution to aspects of reality that are truly, horribly, “not fun”.
I’d say that’s definitely one aspect of a justice system, which is definitely one aspect of a government. But I don’t think you even need “lives” to create a simulation of a government. Just agents and resources.
I would love to see more games…where the balancing comes from player experimentation with governing agreements.
100% agree. I’ve wondered how an MMO with permadeath + “reproduction” could work. Basically, every new avatar in the game has to be “made” by two existing avatars, and would be granted semi-random stats based on genetic contributions of the parents. This would mean spots in the game are limited, and you’d have to wait for existing players to “create” you, which would rate limit the number of people who can start playing your game, which limits the profits from running the game, which limits the number of studios willing to ever try it…
Part of one - inflationary tax. Eliminate most all forms of tax. Instead only way to fund anything is to print money.
Money earned through criminal enterprise, once found is taken and “destroyed” (excluding damages to victims).
Negatives that go punished reduce inflation and benefit everyone.
This is a regressive tax so it would require a very assertive socialist support system with liberal spending on jobs and education for poor folks.
No tax breaks for big companies because no taxes. There is no such thing as a balanced budget since there is no revenue, only things we decide are worth paying for.
Would require regular currency adjustments. Still haven’t figured that part out yet. Maybe every 10 years decide how many zeros to take off everyone’s money and have a process for upgrading paper currency while most will be handled through banks.
When I was in college, this was literally an assignment in my political science class - come up with a country and a new form of government. Write out a constitution for the country, and then write a travel brochure for it.
What I came up with is a lottery-based council government. The system is designed with none of the “gentleman’s agreements” that the US systems seems to be based on, and assumes that if it’s possible to abuse the system, then the system WILL BE abused. So it’s designed to minimize the ability for the system to be abused.
You want to get rid of career politicians? Make it so they don’t even have the option of running for office in the first place.
Councils
The way my system worked is that all governmental tasks are performed by a council created for a specific purpose. Every council is made up of an odd number of members, with a minimum of 5. Councils can be created to manage a geographical area, such as a state, county, or city, or for a topical purpose, for example, medical oversight. Each council has the ability to create lower councils that report to it, but only within the purview of the parent council. For example, a State Council can create a Municipal Council for a city within the state.
Sitting at the top of the entire structure is the Prime Council, which always consists of exactly 11 members. Decisions of the Prime Council are final except in the case of a supermajority overrule as detailed below.
Lower councils are subject to the decisions of higher councils with one exception - a parent council’s ruling can be overturned and vacated if a supermajority* of child councils that existed at the time of the ruling vote to overturn it. For example, if a State Council outlaws gambling, but 75% of Municipal Councils vote to vacate the ruling, it is overturned. But, for example, if a Municipal Council votes to allow prostitution, the state or national council can overturn that ruling on its own. Again, however, this overturning can be overridden by a supermajority of child councils. However, the chain ends there. A parent council CANNOT vacate a supermajority vote passed by the collected child councils. Child councils must have a reason for existing can cannot be created simply to stack a supermajority vote.
A singular case can only be tackled by ONE council at a time and cannot be interfered with during the proceedings by any other council at any other level. For example, if a Municipal Traffic Council is considering a motion to raise a speed limit on a road, no other council (Municipal, State, or even the Prime Council) can interfere in that case or tell the lower council how to rule on it. However, once the case is complete and the ruling announced, THEN a higher council may take up the issue and/or vacate the lower council’s ruling.
Decisions of lower councils can be appealed, but a parent council has no obligation to take up the issue and can simply deny the appeal.
Courts
Courts, as we understand them, do not exist in this system, per se. Civil and criminal cases are handled in the same way; there is no separation between the case types. Likewise, there is no differentiation between the natures of the decisions that can be handed down. Every court case is presided over by a council created especially for the purpose of hearing this single case. All the other rules surrounding how councils work detailed the Councils section still apply.
The Lottery
Council members are selected by lottery from all eligible citizens. Each lottery is specific to the seat being filled. To be considered eligible for a given lottery, a citizen:
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Must be a member of the geographical area that the seat’s council represents. For example, if the seat is on a Municipal Planning Council, the citizen must live within the city.
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Must meet the qualifications defined by the higher council when this council was created. In this case, perhaps, qualification requires that the citizen hold a bachelor of science degree in any subject.
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Must NOT have previously served on this same council.
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Must NOT have been declared unfit for service by a medical professional.
All citizens of legal age are automatically in the lottery pool by default, and the lottery operates on on opt-out basis.
If a citizen is chosen for a council, they have the option of declining the position. In which case, another eligible citizen is selected.
Additionally, a citizen can elect to be removed from the lottery pool for any or no reason for one year at a time. This election can be renewed indefinitely, but it must be renewed UNLESS a medical professional declares that they are unfit for service. An unfit-for-service declaration can be made for a specific amount of time or on a permanent basis.
Antagonistic Resignation
Any council member can resign their position on a council at any time before their term is over. In addition, a council member may enact the right of “Antagonistic Resignation” whereby they remove both themself and ONE other member of the council. There is no veto or override process allowed. To clarify, any council member can remove any other member from the same council by also removing themself at the same time. The replacement council member(s) will be chosen via the lottery.
Antagonistic Recusement
A council member MAY NOT vote on or interfere with the vote on any issue the results of which they may directly benefit from. That is to say that if a council member could personally benefit from a decision on a matter, they are REQUIRED to recuse themself from the case and may not interfere with the case in any way, including but not limited to public discussion or press releases related to the matter.
A council member with a conflicting interest in a single case must either resign from the council or recuse themself from the case. As with Antagonistic Resignation, the recusing council member chooses ONE other council member that must also recuse themself from the case to preserve the odd number of council seats. Again, there is no veto or override process allowed. However, unlike Antagonistic Resignation, the recusing council member MUST choose one other member for recusement - they do not get the option to decline. If the number of active seats on the council would drop below five for this single issue, interim seats will be created and filled by lottery for this specific case only, after which the additional seats will be removed from the council and the interim council members’ terms will be considered complete.
Protection and Compensation
Serving on a council is a full-time job and may require taking a sabbatical from work. While an individual citizen has the ability to decline a council seat, NO other entity, individual, or organization may punish or otherwise act against a citizen for choosing to accept the responsibility of service. Therefore, it is considered unconstitutional for any entity to retaliate against a citizen for accepting a council seat, punishable by a fine of not less than 50% of that entity’s yearly income. It is understood that this is a harsh penalty, and the severity and calamitous nature of it is intentional and intended to avoid even the outward appearance of impropriety or retaliation. If a citizen CHOOSES of their own accord to decline a council seat out of a sense of duty to an organization, that’s allowed, but it is absolutely not acceptable for an organization to demand, tell, ask, or even imply that a seat should be declined.
It is required by law that an employee (and this shall be construed loosely, to include any person who is in any way a member of an organization) of an organization be reinstated at the end of their council service to their same position, pay, benefits, and tenure as though no sabbatical had been taken at all. This is inclusive of any required “re-onboarding” time.
Council members shall be paid the greater of 125% of their reported yearly income or 200% of the average salary of the relevant lottery eligibility pool. This shall be to incentivize citizens to fulfill their duty and serve on a council.
Councilar No-Confidence
At any time, the citizens may petition a geographical council (Prime, State, County, Municipal, etc) for a status of Councilar No-Confidence. This petition shall require the signatures of 55% of the individual citizens of the geographical area represented. Upon submission of a completed petition, the council will be dissolved, and a new council will be chosen by lottery according to all the requirements for the council being replaced. This action is automatic and cannot be vetoed or overruled.
Branch No-Confidence (The Nuclear Option)
If instead, the No-Confidence petition contains the signatures of 75% of the individual citizens of the geographical area represented, the council and ALL LOWER COUNCILS created by it, directly or indirectly, are dissolved and replaced as above. This is akin to pruning a branch from a tree - every branch and leaf connected to the branch is also removed. Note that this applies to EVERY level of the system, so a No-Confidence petition signed by 75% of the citizens of the entire country and submitted to the Prime Council results in the entire system being wiped away and reset.
It went a lot deeper than that, but I’ve already typed a LOT and think this mostly gets the gist of it.#
This is fascinating. I have no doubt you had to debate this a lot and are already aware of some of the shortcomings of the system you created, but in general I really like this idea. Antagonistic Resignation is especially great.
Basically game-theory everything because it’s always safe to assume that there will eventually be a bad actor and that bad actor will extort loopholes found.
It’s been 15ish years since that polysci class. The project assigned a geographical location on a fictional continent, and other class members’ countries were on the same continent.
The final work required a fully written constitution, a history outlining relations with other student’s countries, a flag, and a travel brochure.
As I recall, I did get an A on the project.
That is so cool. Things like this make me realize how much I miss school. Like, actually miss some of the learning and studying aspects. If only grad school in the USA didn’t cost a small fortune, I’d love to continue education for purposes like this.
Thanks for sharing!
But who enforces the decisions made by councils? Are they chosen by lottery too?
There would still be things like police departments, federal bureaus, etc; all managed by… you guessed it: a council.
I had more details fleshed out, but this was 15 years ago and some details have been lost to time.
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I haven’t put much thought into it but I recently had this idea that we do not vote for a party that runs the whole government for a few years anymore. Instead we vote project based. That way a whole party can’t ruin everything and they can each do what they are best at.
For that to work, voting needs to be much more convenient somehow because it would happen many times a year.
Projects would be proposed by the parties to an independent board that will organize and validate them and make them available to the public to be voted on, like petitions. Before it starts, details can be sorted out or changed publicly.
After a project is done (or after a specified time) there will be a public retrospective on how things went and maybe it will continue or not.
I’m not sure if/how that would work. I guess there needs to be some kind of long running government with one representative that people can point to? Maybe not?
My hope is also the different parties (and citizens) would be less hostile to each other and actually work on things because they don’t have to fear the next big election.
It could also mean there are more disasters like Brexit.
Anyways, this idea is just fresh in my mind and not fully fleshed out.
Sounds similar to direct democracy.
Everyone must serve. No elections. Every position has a term limit. The current administration is responsible to select their replacements via a double blind selection process that only provides information relevant to experience and knowledge, capabilities.
I think the weak point where a lot of these ideas break down is how competitive they are vs other forms of government. Do you trust a random group of civilians to know how to wield a military? Or conduct international relations with personalities such as Putin or Xi Jinping? I think these other authoritarian governments would see such a rag-tag group of representatives as inexperienced pushovers, easy to out maneuver or manipulate.
We need a wavey system that is designed to self-correct between the extremes of free-market capitalism and authoritarian communism. Both extremes have their downsides, just instead of using a war or bloodshed to trigger a bounce back in the other direction the way we normally do it, we just build it into the system. I expect that it would usually hover near the middle, a sort of democratic socialism.
When resources are plentiful and the economy is strong, we tip toward a free-er market where taxes are lower, regulations are less strict, the market can have its natural ebbs and flows, and risk takers can enjoy their wins (and losses); conversely, when resources are tighter and inequality begins rising, we rein things in, tax more heavily, reinstate certain regulations, and make sure we’re directing the wealth we’ve generated toward those who need help. A sort of exploration/exploitation feedback loop.
We’ll never find ourselves surprised by a sudden economic shift with no plan in place, and several parties all pulling in different directions trying to vote for their own interests; instead we’ve all already agreed decades ahead of time on what we would do for the good of the country when anyone is in need, and we would quantify exactly what needs to improve before we start shifting back the other way. No one should ever have the sensationalist response of, “this is it, the country is going to be ruined forever by these new policies,” but rather, “this may not be ideal for me right now, but I feel my needs are met, and I understand who we’re doing it for, why, and for how long”.
The wierdest one I made for ttrpg was a nation built by orphans in an extrwmly poverty striken nation. Life is short and fast, you do what you can to help each other out and when someone dies they get they’re name, date, and one sentence voted on by people that knew written in the book.
Their is no ownership, but if you take something you better have good reason or people won’t help you out. If you want something done, do it or covince the people that can to do it.
You’re expected to use contraceptives unless you know the orphanage can handle more kids. If you want to do something good with what little you’ve got helping to take care of poor kids like yourself at the orphanage is one most sure fire ways to do that. Holden up to raise just a kid or two out by yourself is no way to make a mark and who’s gonna write your sentence some snot nosed kid isolated from the rest of the world by you? Why?
The moment that defined them as nation instead of just a community was when a nearby kingdom was preparing for a war path. They set out to create the equivalent of nuclear bomb, with many lives being lost trying to save themselves and each other. They finally made it, with many sentences being written of the kids that built a sun, and founded a nation. Their neighbors gave them a different sentence, because when they demonstrated it others had to turn they’re heads from the blindly blaze, but the kids “did not look away” instead smoke glasses adored admired what their felllow orphans did with them.
Basically an anarchist society built on communal child rearing, and shared mythology of legacy of brief meaningful lives.
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I think we should approach law as code. Leverage modern tools not unlike github to manage it collaboratively. We need an issue tracker and so on and so forth. Foss.
As someone mentioned we need task forces to tackle specific issues. Like representatives for a specific issue. These have to work together, but each has a specific goal and perspective with clear qualifiers and criteria.
Further, we shouldn’t all be running the same code. We need diversity in order to be resilient and to discover new possibilities. Some jurisdictions should be cutting edge and others conservative, so results can be compared.
Like, we need to stop using violence as a form of resolution between different systems. We need the tools to reason together. As someone mentioned we need clear qualifiers that express our values and interests, such as the happiness index.
Lastly, everyone should be able to get involved. I think nurses need to be involved in legislation surrounding healthcare. The tools need to be accessible for anyone, so it should most likely take a human form so it can properly communicate. Most likely some combination of specialized maintainers and LLMs.
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Everyone listens to me and gives me things. I eventually get shot in the face which causes societal collapse. Or something.
I had a super cynical dystopian idea. Never got around to fleshing it out, so its stability is doubtful at best, but here goes:
So a problem with democracy is that advertising is a powerful force and the candidate with more money to throw into their campaign tends to win, not to mention various forms of bribery coming into play after the elections. A ton of money is being wasted on shady behind-the-scenes deals. Lets get rid of all that and bring it into the light!
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Get rid of elections AND politicians, since they are just middlemen. Instead create a kind of stock market for various spheres and levels of lawmaking and have megacorporations and other interested parties bid on those.
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Money that would have been secretly funneled into politician pockets instead goes openly into the government budget.
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Save more money on elections and government official salaries since there are none.
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Corps that make laws that benefit consumers get to use that in their advertising. Buy from ProcLive! The company that brought you halfway decent healthcare!
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Voting with you wallet ends up being mandatory. You don’t like that Disney took away weekends? Give your hard-earned cash to Sony next time. They promised to reduce mamdatory weekly working hours to 65!
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Maybe sometimes a local citizen initiative manages to raise enough money to get governmental powers in a small town or something. I mean, probably not, but you gotta give people some hope, right?
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I had to go through the book shelf to find this one because I’ve talked about it before and wanted to share.
Arthur C. Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth (audiobook)
The wiki unfortunately doesn’t go into details enough. Basically the plot takes place on a distant planet after the Earth has been destroyed by a supernova and the society was created by a seed ship. The officials are elected by a lottery and there’s a form of direct democracy if my memory serves me right in a passage. I wish I could expand on it more but the book is just amazing and I don’t want to spoil it to much for those who are interested. If you have the time I linked the audio book and it’s based off a former short story of his with the same title.
A 3 tiered system: person → community → supercommunity
- Small Towns: communities no larger than 5000 people, every local vote matters
- Democratic: communities can embody any belief, and all members are free to leave
- Representative: an overarching supercommunity of rotating representatives of all communities governs the country/world in a flat hierarchy, influenced by votes from each person.
- Socialized Resources / Federated Usage: the supercommunity exes out total resources based on community sizes, the local communities can use their share however they want
