
The Brexit Possibility - thanatosmin
https://stratechery.com/2016/the-brexit-possibility/
======
panglott
Praising the "gig economy" means he knows nothing about what the "gig economy"
means for ordinary workers. The gig economy is when you have to spend more
time scrounging up odd jobs than actually working to get paid. The gig economy
is having to work multiple part-time jobs since companies won't hire full-time
workers—except each of the part-time jobs expect you to be on-call 24
hours/day. The gig economy is non-compete agreements for part-time low-wage
service workers. The gig economy is hiring friendly white people for the
purposes of branding, then firing them all to cut wages once your image is
established. The gig economy is offloading costs of business onto your
employees. In short, the "gig economy" is a rebranding is corporate
exploitation of low-wage service workers in the context of high unemployment
and lack of regulation.

Saying "these sorts of jobs provide the upside to a universal basic income’s
floor: our goal should be to make it vastly easier for individuals to better
themselves if they choose to do so" is just blaming unemployed people for
losing their jobs when the financial industry cocked up the economy with
"financial innovations" (i.e., fraud).

~~~
golergka
You describe the things that you would miss in the gig exonomy in a language
that suggests that you're entitles to those things. May I ask why?

~~~
panglott
I'm not claiming that anyone is entitled to anything; I'm simply pointing out
that the labor market is a shit sandwich for a very large class of workers.
The OP frames nonparticipation in the "gig economy" as a failure of moral
rectitude on the part of those who lack "the desire to better themselves."

Economics concerns the simple exchange of resources, and is unconcerned about
whether it is "fair" for a drought to cause famine and death. But we humans
live in societies that require a high level of trust, social cooperation, and
an expectation of fairness. Those who would tear up the social contract ought
well consider what wind they would sow.

~~~
dd9990
> Those who would tear up the social contract ought well consider what wind
> they would sow.

Which is exactly why the Brexit happened.

------
madaxe_again
He's right, but he's wrong.

The eutopia he describes is feasible, the arguments are rational, the
historical understanding of what he covers is good.

What he misses, however, is social inertia and reactionary forces. The
technocratic ideals he espouses have been espoused before, in similar periods,
yet they have never flourished. The failing has not been technical - rather,
human.

Before any of what he describes is installed, we will descend into chaos - and
from chaos, conservatism and adherence to "old ways" grows, as certainty
becomes the principle desire of an uncertain people. Conservatism, if strong
enough, manifests into nationalism, the desire for strong leadership, for a
return to the glorious past - and from this a whole host of totalitarian
regimes have been born. The two best known examples are Soviet Russia and Nazi
Germany.

Why chaos, you ask? Well, the vote has legitimised behaviour that last week
was not legitimised, and the populace is becoming rapidly bitterly divided.
This leaves the government in a quandary - if they continue with brexit, they
face a brain drain and strong, possibly violent opposition from the remain
camp. If they halt the exit, the same from the exit camp. If they stay still,
the current situation will spill out of control.

We will see the IRA resurge and Scottish nationalism flourish, particularly
given the opposition to them having referenda from Westminster, so the
division becomes geographical as well as social.

I'm afraid to say there isn't a happy way forwards for the UK from here -
every path leads to one form or another of damnation, further division, and
potential descent into civil war.

I've already fled the country - I'm not sticking around for this one.

~~~
illumin8
I agree about the brain drain if brexit continues, but would there seriously
be a brain drain if brexit is halted?

I'm fairly certain the UK would be better off if most of the leave voters left
the UK completely. The demographics seem to trend towards older pensioners and
those on some type of government assistance.

~~~
skwirl
I see it mentioned quite often that the people who tended to vote leave were
older and wouldn't have to "live with the consequences for very long" but it's
never mentioned that they were the ones who voted to join the EU (what was
then called the European Communities) in the first place.

They voted to join 67% to 33% in 1975. They are all 60+ years old now, and
polls showed 60+ voters voting to leave by over 60%.

Why were they in favor of EU membership then but against it now? If they voted
to leave because of stupidity and xenophobia, as I keep hearing here on HN and
on Facebook, why did they ever vote to join in the first place?

It's interesting how the people with the most historical context, the most
experience with the system, and indeed the people who brought it about are
seen as somehow not worthy of having an opinion on it and that their vote
should count less or not at all.

~~~
madaxe_again
Because they've had 25 years of anti-EU propaganda blasted at them, mostly by
Boris Johnson.

By his own admission, when he was a journalist in Brussels in the 90's, he
fabricated stories from whole cloth - he compared it to chucking stones at the
neighbour's greenhouse for fun. He was fired for this repeatedly, and
therefore entered politics.

------
Bartweiss
This is a thoroughly worthwhile read. Push through the opening if it seems
boring; the opening is standard market/governance theory but things perk up
afterwards. There's a coherent vision of a new social footing: UBI funded with
high taxation, supported by low regulatory burden and a gig economy.

Unfortunately missing from the piece is any acknowledgement of just how
strongly we seem to be trending _away_ from this outcome. Supranational
corporations have neatly sidestepped taxes, so UBI is unaffordable. Regulatory
burden and protectionism trend steadily upwards (in opposition to a high-
upside, high-tax-value tech industry), while credentialism, debt, and
licensing cripple the labor side of a gig economy.

It's certainly an interesting worldview, and I'd love to see a more formal
treatment of it. But I'd also love to see a good breakdown of how it compares
to the trends we actually face.

~~~
RobertoG
"Supranational corporations have neatly sidestepped taxes, so UBI is
unaffordable"

That's not necessarily true and depends of your conception of money. States
with their own currency are not the consumers of money but the source of
money.

I know that it's a strange idea but it's how it really works. The reason we
don't heard a lot about that, it's because then, the things that you are
describing become possible and people could start asking for them.

[http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2014/06/24/modern-
money-t...](http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2014/06/24/modern-money-theory-
the-basics/)

~~~
poof131
States being the source of money and not a neutral arbiter of it’s value is
the major problem in my opinion, not the solution. With a set amount of money
(or a slow fixed increase) markets are stable and operate efficiently
(assuming minimal other burdens) in the allocation of resources and goods. But
when governments ‘make’ money, the markets don’t allocate it, a small set of
people do. This micromanagement of the economy leads to declining productivity
and stagnation as money flows to the politically connected. The former USSR
being a good example in the extreme.

So money becomes politics. We’ve seen that those with money have used this to
make even more: regressive taxes, bailouts, corporate inversions, etc. But the
spread between rich and poor is becoming worse, so now the talk about UBI. The
affect of this money distributed by bureaucratic fiat is that the middle class
dies. The rich get richer with access to the new money, the poor get poorer
and live off handouts, and those surviving in the middle get pushed to the
poor side or figure out how to get to the rich side. A fairly standard state
of affairs throughout history (lords and serfs), but not the future I’d like
to see.

~~~
RobertoG
Money is always politic. It seems to me that it's the people that more benefit
of the current politics who more insist that this is not the case.

"With a set amount of money (or a slow fixed increase) markets are stable and
operate efficiently "

A set amount of money was the gold standard or the Bretton Woods agreement
later. The reason those disappeared is not because some governmental
conspiracy, but because those kind of systems generate very fast unbalanced
situations.

A modern example of that, with small differences, is the Euro. A big economy
where states have almost nothing to say in the quantity or the use of money.

------
djaychela
As someone who (after considerable deliberation) voted to Remain, and now
feels that my country is being dragged to the edge of a very high precipice,
this makes for interesting reading.

I sincerely hope that there will be an (unexpected) upside to leaving the EU,
but I think that is a forlorn hope. Most of the people I have spoken to about
it who voted to Leave have done so on the most narrow-minded of reasons -
typically either "stop immigration" or "take our country back" \- both of
which are definitely in the "old view" of the world in this article. No-one I
know of who voted Leave gave even a moment's thought to the immense amount of
work needed to unpick 40 years of integration; to the practicalities of it
that will mean it will be the work of Parliament for years to come to simply
get to the point where we are today. I am someone who had severe reservations
about the European project (i.e. the development into a plan for a superstate,
rather than the originally presented idea of a common market), so I really
hope that the information in this article turns out to be true, and that
somehow the knuckle-dragging imbeciles that I saw on the news last night
(Canvey Island piece, if anyone watched it?) have somehow created a
masterstroke in political maneuvering which will at least give my step-kids a
stab at a decent future. I know none of them think that is the case at the
moment.

~~~
_puk
The UK has always had the "islander mentality". The development of a European
Superstate would either have had to drag the UK along unwillingly (barring
apathy), or happen without them.

The positive I am taking from it all is the fact that for once people are
actually talking politics again.

The next general election won't be as apathetic as the last few, which is
likely why Boris won't call one if he becomes leader of the party.

This article pictures a gig economy built upon a universal income as a pre-
requisite, which I just don't see happening.

Given the current state welfare system, there is potential for something like
this to be gradually introduced, such that those on lower/no income could
start building the gig industry on top of any basic state benefits (as opposed
to earn a pound, lose a pound in benefits).

That would require a huge shift in current mentalities though, possibly
greater than the admission that maybe we would be better off as an integral
part of any EU superstate.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
If Labour don't sort themselves out expect an election pretty quickly.

------
IsaacL
Stratechery has many insightful posts but I don't think this one is accurate.

The author writes that the new order will be made up of government, tech and
individuals. "Corporations" are intentionally absent from the new order. But
people will still need to form organisations to achieve collective goals,
which will need legal documents stating their purpose and governance, i.e.
"corporations". Corporations will still have to be funded by either selling
goods and services, donations, or state funding, ie be for-profit, nonprofit,
or governmental.

I don't think the gig economy is a replacement. Unless AI gets much, much
better than the state-of-the-art, I don't see skilled professionals or
managers being replaced any time soon. All this automation/AI/DAO hype assumes
that AI is much more capable than it really is and that most jobs are much
simpler than they really are. For a concrete example, visit a large and busy
McDonalds and notice how much work the shift managers have to do to deal with
surprise situations and blockages (there's a rulebook they follow, but it's
nontrivial to apply to reality). That's just one job which couldn't be handled
by a deep learning algo. And McDonalds is a well-oiled machine, most
businesses are much more error-prone and inefficient.

------
apalmer
Brexit is a little over-focused on at this point.

As far as the article, the beginning half was pretty good, relatively straight
forward and even if you disagree with the conclusions the thought process
behind them is well laid out and reasonable.

the second half, which is everything after 'TECH AND A NEW SYSTEM' is just
ideology, without much foundation in empiricism... again whether you agree or
disagree, its just not coming from a place of reasonable logical conclusion
built on basic empirical data.

...

~~~
1337biz
" is just ideology, without much foundation in empiricism"

That's pretty much how politics work nowadays...

~~~
Bromskloss
I think that most political issues (as well as personal ones) are matters of
opinion anyway, not lending themselves well to mathematical quantification.

~~~
bduerst
That doesn't mean the facts and predictions from economic experts should have
been ignored in this vote. This was an issue with some pretty clear
ramifications.

~~~
Bromskloss
I was talking about politics in general. In this particular case, some
economic aspects might be matters of fact to which one can apply forecasting
techniques, whereas other aspects (e.g. whether one does or does not accept
that power over one's country is given to the EU, and whether one wishes to
strive towards or away from being one country with the other European Union
countries) are more matters of opinion.

~~~
bduerst
Of course - It just seems weird to say that when leaving the E.U. isn't _just_
a matter of opinion. There are certainly some political issues that are _only_
a matter of opinion, but this issue was much, much more.

If anything, it shows that the leave voters in the U.K. are not very
interested in facts and forecasts made by experts.

~~~
Bromskloss
> If anything, it shows that the leave voters in the U.K. are not very
> interested in facts and forecasts made by experts.

What you describe is at least one possibility. Another one is that the voters
consider other aspects more important.

~~~
bduerst
>Another one is that the voters consider other aspects more important.

Which is the same as saying they are not very interested in the facts and
forecasts made by experts.

The majority of the leave voters are undeducated, older, and xenophobic. [1]
The misinformation spread by the leave campaigners fed into their fears about
immigration, which lead them to ignore facts. [2] [3]

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-
interactive/2016/jun/...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-
interactive/2016/jun/23/eu-referendum-live-results-and-analysis?CMP=twt_b-
gdndata)

[2] [https://www.rt.com/uk/346342-brexit-voters-ignorance-
misinfo...](https://www.rt.com/uk/346342-brexit-voters-ignorance-
misinformation/)

[3] [https://www.ipsos-
mori.com/researchpublications/researcharch...](https://www.ipsos-
mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3742/The-Perils-of-Perception-
and-the-EU.aspx)

~~~
Bromskloss
> Which is the same as saying they are not very interested in the facts and
> forecasts made by experts.

I don't see how that would be the same thing. What I'm saying is that even if
you trust a certain forecast that says that X will happen if you vote A and Y
will happen if you vote B, and even if you consider X to be more beneficial
than Y, you might still choose to vote B because you find it better in other
respects.

By the way, I'm not sure linking to Russia Today adds much. I'd be wary of
trusting their angle on things. It's all good, though, since you included the
original link.

~~~
bduerst
Just like with your hypothetical political policy, sure, that hypothetical
X,Y,Z situation could make sense somewhere. Except that the facts are
different with this political issue and what is known about those who voted
for it.

Russia Today is quoting an FT article that's behind a paywall saying the same
thing, if you're still uncertain.

------
Animats
The solutions are the usual bullshit. Deregulation, etc. "There should be a
significant loosening of the regulations and taxation around business
creation." This is YC. Anybody in the US having problems filling out their
incorporation forms? Getting a business license? Getting an employer
identification number? Getting permission to connect to the Internet? Didn't
think so.

"The bookkeeping requirements are far too onerous" usually means "we can't go
public with the creative accounting we used while private." The Sarbanes-Oxley
bookkeeping requirements don't kick in until you go public, and by then you
should be big enough to have a real accounting department.

~~~
rqebmm
"We could create more jobs if we just got rid of these onerous regulations
that require us to hire accountants!"

------
tim333
I think he misdiagnoses "the 2009 rise of the Tea Party on the right, and the
2011 Occupy Wall Street movement on the left." as being down to globalisation.
Those both arose in the aftermath of the 2006-2008 crash which is rather
reminiscent of the 1929 crash and the depression of the 30s. In both cases a
lot of money was borrowed in the boom against assets that looked valuable but
then ceased to be. In the collapse people were left with large debts, spending
and hence employment and tax revenues went down, the environment became
deflationary as prices were subdued due to low spending and anti immigrant
groups arose blaming the lack of employment and money on immigrants and the
like. I hope it all plays out better than in the 30s. At least this time round
the economists understand it much better.

I agree with the ending "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste" and maybe it
could lead to saner anti deflationary policies reducing the crappiness of life
in the industrial heartlands, through smart government spending as opposed to
WW2 as happened in the 30s.

------
jkot
This reads like old 1918 Soviet Constitution.

------
FussyZeus
This is an excellent read, and the only thing that I really want to add is at
this bit:

> Each of these factors is critical: a universal basic income alone offers
> some degree of financial security, but it does not offer dignity to the
> recipient, or any return for society beyond a reduction in guilt.

It's time we re-thought the idea that you need to work for your fill. Speaking
as a strong capitalist, it's simply not the reality anymore. To put it in the
context of the tribe working to survive that most people think is a good
metaphor, this is akin to having 3 incredibly good hunters in the tribe who
catch enough food to feed the tribe 4 times over yet still requiring the other
men to go hunting and not letting them eat if they don't catch anything on a
given day. Why? We have the resources to feed everyone, and all the lower ends
of the economic classes doing all the busy-work they could possibly do in a
day cannot generate the kind of wealth that workers at the upper end create
with a regular work day on a bad day.

The notion that you MUST do SOMETHING to earn your money is quickly becoming a
barrier to efficiency, and with automation on the rise, it's only going to get
worse. Simply "getting a better job" is not a sufficient answer for the vast
groups in the population that we're set to unemploy.

~~~
apalmer
once again this is ideology over reality. Yes, at one level there definitely
is factual that the top hunters can supply the rest of the tribe with all
necessary resources. The problem is one of motivation... Why should they?

It is the most basic of driving forces behind trade at the conceptual level,
and society itself at its most fundamental and basic. IF your world view
cannot handle this most basic of questions, it is just ideology and not even a
sensible one at that.

~~~
FussyZeus
On the note about the social issue: I recognize the primary obstacle is the
social stigma we attach to "people on benefits" or "the welfare queens" and
all that other nonsense, it doesn't make the situation any less clear. We
spend vast amounts of money subsidizing through inefficient programs the
people who are either incapable or unwilling to take care of themselves. We're
going to pay for it either way, either by just giving them what they need to
live a relatively healthy lifestyle, or by forcing them to live an incredibly
unhealthy one and then subsidize the prisons to hold them or the hospitals to
keep them on the edge of life.

The question we need to answer as a society is whether the latter option which
is much, much more expensive is worthwhile to do just to keep this imagined
requirement going. Frankly I think if all the counter arguments boil down to
"that's just the way we are" I would reply with "that's not good enough for
me, because we can change."

~~~
djrogers
> The question we need to answer as a society

The problem is that society is made up of individuals, so if you can't answer
the 'why should they' question for the individuals it doesn't matter what
society at large decides.

------
spyckie2
My reading of the article:

1) "Tech industry" is infrastructure that leads to mass efficiency at scale.
When this happens it means that individuals can now compete on a cost basis
with corporations. Brands will retain their power as long as they retain their
relevancy, but I suspect even branding can be made more efficient through
tech.

Corporations will have to go 1 of 3 routes:

\- become infrastructure (reduce goods and services until they become part of
the tech industry) \- be an infrastructure/goods + service hybrid (develop
their own tech infrastructure while keeping their brand) \- become a goods and
service provider that relies on tech infrastructure (become part of the gig
economy)

Corporations will benefit from access to volume discounts, but the big winners
will be the tech platforms.

2) Tech is already too profitable and will suck the world dry in the same
manner as corporations since globalization. It's about what generates the best
efficiencies. Previously, economies of scale drove it. Now, tech is driving it
and will drive it into the future.

3) Being too profitable is not the issue; being too greedy is. Tech, by
nature, will be extremely profitable compared to the rest of society. To
restore that balance on a social level, tech should pay more taxes, not less.
Otherwise, the rest of society will revolt as history has shown.

4) Government is the mediator that moderates efficiencies and society. It
exists to make sure massive efficiencies don't suck society dry, and that
society doesn't revolt because of it. It does this by siphoning off the wealth
of extremely efficient industries and individuals and redistributing it
through basic income.

5) With this view, the world is not split between the lazy and hardworking
(which has never really been the case), but the efficient and inefficient
industries and workers.

------
altern8tif
Insightful read and an interesting thought experiment. Unfortunately,
executing this in reality is much harder than it seems.

While he rightly observes that the new order will largely be built on
supranationals (like Google & Facebook), it is still difficult to run away
from nationalistic & economic realities (Brexit is a case in point).

Different nations, states, regions and people are experiencing growth at
vastly different rates (in the old order). And it is this widening gap between
the haves and the have-nots that is preventing us from achieving the utopia
the author speaks about.

We see this in the US, the UK (as seen in Brexit poll results), Europe in
general (with Eastern Europeans moving west in search of opportunities), and
also in Asia (which sees a growing gap between the affluent and those left
behind).

It's well and good to think about ideals, but the real question is really what
is the route we must take (and the obstacles we have to overcome) to reach
that objective.

------
carlmcqueen
I found the way the author put together how the system came to be amazingly
well written, very quickly stated of a very complex reality.

As he got into universal income and a gig economy I was lost, not because I
think they're terrible ideas but the ideas presented just don't stick in my
mind. Regardless, a good read to hear a different way of thinking from my own.

------
johnrob
In the 'new system', the government gives basic income to labor, which pays
taxes back to the government. It's probably likely that more goes out via
basic income than comes in via income taxes, so one has to wonder: do income
taxes really make sense in this model?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
When business can shift profits around the world the biggest change we need to
make is to shift away from corporation tax, probably towards more land,
purchase and income tax.

------
saynsedit
The assumption that exporting manufacturing to the third-world is generally
good for humanity is a bit hard to stomach.

------
rwhitman
Even this is outdated and backwards. By the time it would ever become a
reality the "Government" portion of this system will have already been
replaced with "Tech". We are already at a place where software could
successfully manage many of the functions of government. We simply haven't
found a nation to prototype it, yet.

But I think the test case would be less the UK and more Venezuela

~~~
kbenson
In what way is tech supposed to replace the legislative duties of government?
Whatever you say about lawmakers, I think they have a higher than average
understanding of the laws and how they interact, and the consequences of
certain actions (even if "higher than average" isn't that high). I don't
believe a true democracy where everyone votes yields a better system, just a
more democratic one. For example, brexit. It was truly democratic, but that
doesn't mean it was a good idea, or that if everyone was presented with an
impartial, truthful display of the facts the same people would have voted the
same way. There are some negative aspects of our psychology that we haven't
found a good way to curb yet.

~~~
rwhitman
Most of the management of government services could be automated, direct
democracy is possible with software. There's certainly a lot of potential for
AI augmentation in day-to-day governance.

It certainly wouldn't be perfect at first. I'm sure some people would suffer
from the mistakes made in the prototyping phase.

But this isn't about Brexit. The question I believe will be answered is would
someone living in an already failed state suffer worse with an augmented or
fully automated administrator, or under current horror of war, starvation,
fear? Civil wars start over ideological differences, political failures are
the result of corruptions of government officials, power plays of individuals,
mistakes of management. Nations split and crumble against the best interest of
the people because leaders have human agendas. The cold impartiality of
software takes the politics out of governance, it favors sustainability over
the long term.

We in the tech world see things from a position of privilege, protected by
relative wealth, a large seemingly stable system of governance, but in many
places in the world a new system of administration would be a gift to cherish.

~~~
kbenson
The problem with immediate and direct democratic representation is that humans
have many mental foibles due to our evolution which can combine into feedback
loops which have disastrous consequences (lynch mobs are inherently democratic
in nature). Non-representation or representation that is delayed too long is
problematic because it disenfranchises people and they eventually resort to
violence to reassert their representation. These are the extremes we need to
walk between, Democracy and the Dictator. If you think just allowing people to
vote directly will somehow circumvent the natural tendency of people for herd
mentality, confirmation bias, and valuing anecdotes and personal experience
over statistics, then I think you're vastly underestimating those problems.

The role of technology is to help is increase the positive aspects of whatever
point along that spectrum we've settled, and decrease the negative aspects.
For example, making it very easy for representatives to quickly and accurately
poll their constituents (and making these polls and their results public)
rather than relying on lobbying and the varying abilities of special interest
groups to activate advocates would probably yield much better representation
for the average person. A very vocal 2% should not drown out the other 98%,
but they should not necessarily be _ingored_ either. Good polls would likely
have a question and a scale of how much you strongly agree, somewhat agree,
abstain, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree, and have the question asked at
least 2-3 different ways, from different perspectives.

~~~
rwhitman
_> > If you think just allowing people to vote directly will somehow
circumvent the natural tendency of people for herd mentality, confirmation
bias, and valuing anecdotes and personal experience over statistics, then I
think you're vastly underestimating those problems._

That's why software makes it possible. Large scale polling systems are well
understood at this point. Abuse detection is a solved problem, correcting for
bias is well understood too. Giving people access to information, while at the
poll, will increase the number of truly informed constituents when voting.

This doesn't completely reinforce my point, but if you're interested in the
topic it's worth the listen:
[http://www.flashforwardpod.com/2016/04/19/episode-11-swipe-r...](http://www.flashforwardpod.com/2016/04/19/episode-11-swipe-
right-for-democracy/)

~~~
kbenson
> Abuse detection is a solved problem, correcting for bias is well understood
> too.

What about the bias introduced from the initiative name and/or description?[1]
Who decides this? Who writes the laws that are proposed by initiatives? What
if there's no counter side to a law proposed, or it's very complex, and hard
to understand? Right now we have people whose job it is to keep track of these
laws, make sure small provisions don't overstep, and come to an agreement on
what should be acceptable to vote one. We elect those people (or we elect the
people that employ and control those people). Who does this in a direct
democracy? Do we still elect officials, and they do everything except they
don't vote?

> Giving people access to information, while at the poll, will increase the
> number of truly informed constituents when voting.

If we have a direct democracy, there will be a lot more initiatives. 15 things
every day, if we are keeping up with congress, according to to the
flashforward link you supplied (thanks, I'm listening to it in the background
right now). Looking up all the relevant information for each initiative to
make an informed decision will take quite a while. Assuming a minimum of 15
minutes per item to research and consider each item, that's close to four
hours, each day. Even halving that is a significant time investment. I think
people will naturally defer to authorities they suggest. There's even less
incentive for the random authorities people might choose to be accountable for
their speech, and I'm also quite worried that people would choose non-
qualified people for their queues on what to vote for very poor reasons (pick
your Kardashian or their relation). If we want to defer to someone for our
vote, why not our elected official?

What I think _would_ be interesting, was a way to wrest my vote from my
representative on a by-vote basis. That is, we all get a _chance_ to have a
direct vote, but if we don't, our share goes to our representative. For
example, if I'm in CA, and my senators are voting on a bill, and I vote
specifically a certain way, then their votes count for (CA vote eligible
population -1)(CA vote eligible population) each, and my vote counts for 2/(CA
vote eligible population), one for each senator, and assuming nobody else
votes directly. For important issues, we can wrest control from our
legislators, but otherwise the system will perform as it has. I'm still not
entirely sure it would be a good idea given our predisposition as a species
for poor judgement in certain situations, but I think it's a lot more feasible
than a direct democracy on everything (and it keeps people around to design
and present bills, and still incentivizes them to do so).

1: [http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/dec/10/states-
ballot-l...](http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/dec/10/states-ballot-
language-rules-worth-imitating/)

~~~
rwhitman
To your first block of questions - the crowdsourced moderation methods
employed in public forums (like for example HN, Reddit, Wikipedia) have
evolved to a point where they work very well. It's possible that a government-
grade moderation system could be developed by augmenting with machine
learning. There could be a grading system employed for the quality, fairness
of any legislation submitted that uses both machine-based checks and human
moderation to balance the quality grade of the legislation up for vote. "Hard
to understand" is something we can detect with software even today. A check by
both a human panel and a machine that's parsing language should be enough to
ensure that a law is being fairly presented. (Which is a hell of a lot better
than the system we have today, where politicians create bills even the people
who wrote them don't understand.)

> What I think would be interesting, was a way to wrest my vote from my
> representative on a by-vote basis. That is, we all get a chance to have a
> direct vote, but if we don't, our share goes to our representative.

That's a very clever idea. I like that a lot.

To this second block, here's my brainstorm on how it could work - it's
possible to counter the potential fatigue by clustering the vote in tiered
node cluster groups.

Let's say we made the smallest vote cluster maybe 150 people at any given
point, and we'll distribute these groups evenly by geography and population
density (adjusted in realtime as demographics shift). The group is politically
neutral - assigned based on political sentiment (not party affiliation) using
a set of simple surveys and voting behavior so there is an even representation
of the political voices in each sample. This is collected with voter
registration, or after non-participation for X time period.

Anyone can log in and vote on any legislation they chose each day but the
cluster always stays neutral. We apply abuse detection to detect if the
cluster is being stuffed or gerrymandered in some way, and the software
rejects and reorgs a cluster when abuse is detected. If someone suffers voter
intimidation or outside influence they simply report abuse and the system
identifies their cluster for review.

Take that model and scale it up, each cluster node is part of a larger node.
The vote from each node counts as a whole for that node. If the system needs
an extra human layer in a node to recount a vote, it can get swapped with no
consequences to other nodes. One node fails, the vote is rerouted elsewhere.

The question really comes down to the participation rate. In social network
systems this is best solved with physical rewards at first and later with
social rewards. Same can be applied. If nodes get low voter participation,
they trigger an automatic vote reward system. Some will try to game the system
to get the rewards, pick random answers. This will trigger fraud detection by
inserting control questions, honeypots.

Anyhow it's all doable just a matter of prototyping and iterating in a test
environment. And the political willpower to implement it.

Probably wouldn't become reality in our lifetimes, at least at the national
level, but a fun thought exercise nonetheless

~~~
kbenson
> the crowdsourced moderation methods employed in public forums (like for
> example HN, Reddit, Wikipedia) have evolved to a point where they work very
> well.

That's an interesting thought, but I have to wonder how resilient they really
are to manipulation. I think it's a matter of expected return on investment.
As of right now, there is really very little usefulness to gaming the
moderation system in these sites. You get internet points, but those points
are worth very little (reputation within that system only, really). If
internet points could be traded and had some market where they could be
monetized, we might have stories about how it's much harder to keep things
from being gamed. The closest we probably have to this is Twitter and
followers. I'm fairly certain there are companies that sell followers by
tricking people into following. It doesn't conceptually map to moderation
exactly, so it's a stretched comparison at best, but I think it should cause
concern.

Additionally, the idea that a foreign power could game, or outright hack,
either the law moderation or the voting itself, is fairly worrisome. I'm not
too worried about millions of foreign agents showing up to skew an election,
or the buying of enough legislators being persuaded to vote a specific
direction to significantly affect us (it might change the outcome of a vote,
but it would have to have significant support anyways, legislators rotate out
of office, and it only takes one to talk for it to all fall down).

> The group is politically neutral - assigned based on political sentiment
> (not party affiliation)

> The vote from each node counts as a whole for that node.

Does that mean each group ends up with one "vote", sort of like the electoral
college, but more direct? If so, I really don't think we want it to be forced
to be neutral. Any smoothing you do might end up having odd unintended
consequences.

> Anyhow it's all doable just a matter of prototyping and iterating in a test
> environment. And the political willpower to implement it. Probably wouldn't
> become reality in our lifetimes, at least at the national level

Indeed. It has to be made as constitutional amendments, which requires a two-
thirds majority vote by people that would be voting away their own power and
authority, and weakening a system that they generally buy into as working
(thus their current position). That is to say, _not very likely_.

> but a fun thought exercise nonetheless

Yes it is! To be clear, if we could find ways to mitigate a lot of our current
technological and psychological shortcomings, it would be very interesting to
implement. As it stands _right now_ , I have serious misgivings about the
ability of the average citizen to make informed decisions on the scale
required, the ability of the population as a whole to sanely assess issues,
the functionality of the social constructs required, and the technology
involved. Multiple decades in the future, that may be a different story. Then
again, maybe buy that time some nations will have less cohesive identities,
and we'll have free-floating blocks of political identities with exert more or
less power based on the issue, and people will generally have membership in
multiple of those, and _those_ will be the guiding and warring force in
politics that craft the majority of the laws and individuals then vote on.

------
hasbroslasher
While I agree with the tenets of this article (global capitalism is bad and
needs to be replaced with technological socialism (which, in my view, would
ultimately enable the formation of a true Marxist society)), there's some
really bad assumptions being made that I have to point out:

> Companies like Apple and Google should strive to be technology leaders, not
> tax avoidance ones...

Yeah, they should, but... it's not going to happen. The executives of Apple,
Google, Amazon, etc. benefit from a system of political and economic highway
robbery where their massive influence in their respective markets allows them
near monopolies. These institutions have become so powerful that they can flip
off the government/"we the people" to their hearts' content (e.g. when the USA
wanted an iPhone backdoor, when Verizon decided to just give the government
everyone's phone calls without permission, when many of the world's workers
have little choice but to work in a so-called sweatshop to make the goods that
Amazon sells).

These are not the type of people who care about what they "should do" \-
they're businessmen who are in it to make money, after all. Assuming some
degree of morality from the executives of multinational corporations is
essentially the height of naivete.

> What makes today’s world so different than the 1950s are the means with
> which ambition and creativity can be realized...

This is just blatantly wrong - it might be correct if you're an American white
person whose parents can help pay for college and you have the natural
aptitude to excel in a technical or business field. But if you're like a lot
of people, your opportunity to start the next Facebook is close to zero: you
don't have the skills, money, free-time, friends or family support you need to
succeed.

> It would be against the self-interest of both consumers and politicians to
> hold tech back...

The problem is that "tech" isn't just one thing or one group of companies -
pretty much every multinational corporation has a deep interest in technology.
It is in these companies self-interest to avoid paying taxes, eliminate labor
from the production pipeline, create consumers who depend on their products
entirely, and maximize their own outcomes at the expense of anything else they
can externalize costs unto.

It is then in the both the interest of consumer (whose money will fuel global
inequality, destruction of the environment, corruption) and the interest of
the government (or society as a whole) to limit the influence of these super-
corporations: they care only for themselves, despite their vaguely liberal
public appearances. They exist to serve the stock holders, nothing more. To
suggest otherwise is, again, the height of naivete.

------
bwb
fantastic post!

