

Ask HN: Design a government from scratch, how would it look? - smokeyj

The framework for our government was designed in the 1700's, and I can't help but think today's economic problems are a result of the historical tradition of Statism. The founding fathers implemented a government as best they could using information available at the time. It's now 2011 and  we've experienced a technological revolution. If we were to design a new government using today's technology, how would it be different?<p>This question is both exciting and depressing. On one hand there is so much potential to improve  the way humans interact and direct resources. On the other hand, it doesn't matter what solution is found, because governments exist outside any  market. Steve Jobs could have designed the most brilliant Constitution of his  time, but it wouldn't matter because following a new constitution would still be considered illegal.<p>Given I'm a dreamer, why not imagine. The weakest component of a fighter jet is the human pilot. Now we have jets without human operators. I believe the weakest component of our government is also the human. Humans experience emotions, are susceptible to bribes, and aren't consistently reliable. Why not use computers to cut out the middle man, drive down costs, and increase satisfaction? Imagine how algorithms can be used to implement real-time, direct democracy. Imagine how multi-factor authentication can be used to ensure voter authenticity. Laws can be applied to geographical zones, while zones are dynamically created based on voter attributes and commonalities. Computers have restore points, so should governments. If the State gets our of control, a roll-back function could be implemented. Fact is there is infinite room for improvement.<p>If government is a service it should be a commodity. The best and brightest should be competing to write the most effective government. It’s unfortunate we’re content with our one party system. Citizens believe in the notion of Republicans and Democrats, while the only option is war and welfare.
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chad_oliver
Some groundwork: why do we have governments? To allow us to live in peace with
people we've never met before, who we could otherwise kill, rape, and steal
from, without consequences. It's a giant machine to enforce the golden rule,
"treat others how you'd like to be treated". Of course, governments do a lot
of extra things, but they're just that, extra.

The socio-political landscape has changed a lot since the 1700's. I think the
biggest difference now is that nations are much less homogeneous than they
used to be. In america in the 1700's there was a dominant faith that provided
a set of common standards, e.g. that murder, homosexuality, and theft were all
wrong. This is no longer the case, and people have become polarized around
many different issues. Technology allows us to become convinced of the
rightness of our own cause, through association with like-minded individuals.

Another significant change is that people are much more likely to move around
the country, and have friends and family in different states and countries.
Using geography as the basis for government divisions (counties, states,
nations) is still a good idea, but is becoming less and less so every day.

The conventional solution to the first problem is to give more legislative
power to the states, so that, for example, people in the bible belt can have
more conservative laws and people in California can legalize pot. __This isn't
a long term solution any more __, because of the second problem.

So we have widely-differing views on what should and shouldn't be legal, but
we can't just tailor certain laws to certain geographical areas.

Given these factors, I make the following recommendations:

* Remove the states, and combine the Senate and House of Representatives into one. Allow cities and counties to control any and all issues that are linked to specific locations.

* Stop legislating morality. Enforcing the Truth (by any definition) isn't part of the government's core purpose. I personally believe that abortion is murder (although in a certain subset of cases it is justified), but this is an issue that comes down to personal conviction. It is therefore out of scope for the government. Theft, on the other hand, should remain illegal because it is demonstratively bad for social stability.

* All laws should be subject to rigorous logical and scientific analysis. For example, if a particular trade policy cannot be proven to have a net positive impact on the happiness of people, it should not pass.

* This would involve setting up a fourth branch of government, which is responsible for collating and evaluating scientific data, and performing the analysis of proposed laws. This branch, like the judicial branch, would have the power to veto laws. I envision that for every law, a formal scientific proof will be made available to the public. This will provide a degree of public accountability.

We now have a system in which bad laws (hopefully) won't get passed the
scientific analysis, so the negative impacts of populism (rule by the popular)
is decreased. Now, notice that the format of congress was decided when we
didn't have instant communication. Therefore:

* Take away the congressmen, and make parties (rather than people) the fundamental unit. Discussions between parties should take place online, or at least be aggregated online. Copies of the discussions should also be made available at all public libraries.

* Allow people to choose a party to represent them, or create their own. Parties will have voting power proportional to their number of supporters (measured in votes, not verbal declarations), and a party must have more than 0.5% of the votes before it gets into congress.

* Parties must have a declared high-level policy on every issue, and they will be bound by these policies. This is to prevent people from setting up specific-issue parties; people must learn to support a governance paradigm that is bigger than any specific issue. Note that this does not stop parties from negotiating about details.

* Elections at the moment are a sham, so instead have rolling elections. After a person votes for a party, they cannot change their vote for 3 months + (some random number less than 14) days. Note that the random number is different to each person, and changes each time the person changes their vote. Within a few years every day will be equally an election day. The purpose of letting people only vote every 3 months is, again, so that people realize that governance is bigger than their one pet issue.

* Any party in congress can propose a law, as can any group of citizens larger than 1% of the population. It passes into law when it (or a later revision) has the support of 50% of the votes in congress, as well as the support of the fourth branch of government.

Finally, because we're a global community now, no law will be passed if it
steps on the rights of people from other countries, as given in a extended
Universal Declaration of Rights. Declarations of war will have to be proven to
be beneficial to everyone in the world, not just citizens of the USA. This
should hopefully prevent another Vietnam or Iraq.

~~~
nrkn
As a though exercise, how would you extend this to work across national
boundaries without triggering the usual arguments against world government?

~~~
chad_oliver
I did a quick google search for "the usual arguments", and as far as I can see
it boils down to three objections: loss of control, governments becoming out-
of-touch with their populations, and having a single point of failure.

In regards to the single point of failure, I've got no real answer except that
governments have scaled well so far. However, this answer doesn't deal with
the fact that so far we've always had other governments to compare ourselves
to, which keeps the population in a healthy state of mild envy.

Loss of control is a big issue, and not one that's going to go away any time
soon. To take the extreme case, there is basically zero chance that any
country currently under sharia law will adopt this form of government, because
it gives human science the right to veto Mohammad's commands. Likewise, any
attempt to join Canada and the USA will suffer from dissidents who don't like
to give up their national character.

It is inevitable that large governments will be less attentive to the needs of
individual communities, but not to the degree that it is often expected. The
simple fact that 200 million + people can have one president indicates that
social stability is more important that actually being able to make an impact
on the people who rule the country.

I don't really feel like I've given a very good answer to your question.
Perhaps the only route to world government is to start with a small country,
demonstrate that it works better than the current forms of democracy, and
aggressively support national revolutions during times of world turmoil.
Because the fourth branch of government is based on independently verifiable
science, it wouldn't be too difficult to set up an international confederation
of government science. The social laws of different countries would tend to
converge simply because everyone would be working from the same data and the
same conclusions, and hopefully after fifty years or so the international
confederation would collude to vote through policies of non-aggression in
their respective countries.

So, yeah, the linchpin in the system - the property that allows it to work
across national borders - is that government policies would be able to be
verified and tested using internationally-standard science.

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shubber
As much as there's ways that computing could be (and is unevenly) used to
increase retail-level government, there are good reasons to continue to
include human beings in the governing process.

A few notions to look into:

* Condorcet voting systems * Mechanism Design Theory * Parliamentary systems

Finally, consider strongly the problem of the influence of capital on any
system. In the US, there's the issue of campaign finance, for instance. But if
you were to program a government, the problem would be worse: you'd only have
to buy off the development team once, rather than bribing members of
government repeatedly over time.

~~~
nrkn
You could make the development process completely transparent, with input from
a wide variety of people, checks and balances etc. and not begin implementing
it without plenty of debate, examination etc. The bias is that those who are
most interested in the process and/or the most vocal could end up being those
with the most influence. But there's no reason not to at least start examining
the problem from many angles and for as many people as possible to start
trying to pick holes in it.

~~~
shubber
Believe it or not, that's the premise of a republican democracy. There's just
more prose and less code involved.

------
duylamnguyenngo
I think a government made of computers and algorithms has the same issue as
A.I. What costs do you speak of? What sort of satisfaction?

As far as the "best and brightest", it sounds like you're spewing elitism.
What should dictate best or brightest? IQ? That's not democracy. Democracy is
a representative sampling of everyone's opinion and while not everyone has a
high IQ they still deserve to get represented. What you speak of is the 21st
century Electoral College.

Beneath your argument, I see your point that we all have a few core values
that we want served by the government. Agreed. We might be better served by
these zones based on voter attributes. I think if more power is handed to the
states, our current government can achieve what you're looking for (cutting
out middle man, drive down costs, and increase satisfaction). K well back to
dynamics now...

~~~
olegious
What makes you think that Democracy is the best system? I think the reason why
the 1st world nations are successful is not due to Democracy but due to
capitalism.

I realize that the two go hand in hand (capitalism/free market requires a
hands off/light regulatory approach), something that so far only a Democracy
has been able to deliver (although it will be interesting to see how the
Chinese model evolves).

~~~
yzhengyu
I would say first world nations are economically successful because their
economies became diverse, i.e. a heavily distributed, highly concurrent and
parallel system of systems.

Given our current circumstances, it seems capitalism - i.e the central idea
that a capitalist works for profit, etc - is now appearing to create economies
which are now centralized around people/institutions which engage in nothing
moving capital from one place to another, one industry to another, without the
attendant in-betweens of the businessmen. And there's goes the concurrent
property.

And I wouldn't knock democracy much. You might hate American politics now, but
the Chinese version isn't better by any much.

~~~
olegious
I agree that engaging in the movement of capital doesn't build any real value,
however this applies to only certain sectors of the economy- if you look at
places like Silicon Valley, we are creating value through the start up scene,
and this is real value because it creates jobs and new ecosystems that fuel
further growth.

I think you will begin seeing a trend away from the "no value creation"
capitalism of the past 20 years- we're seeing people becoming more interested
in physical inventions (see the popularity of the Make Fest and workshop
clubs) and a rebirth of US industry (opportunities will open up as China and
other "low-cost" centers see wage growth and people see other openings in
fields such as shoe production, just to name one.).

------
Osiris
It's an interesting question. While at University we had an exercise in my
Comparative Politics class (I majored in Int'l Relations) in which we were
provide with a description of a fictional country and asked to write a
constitution that we felt would best unify the country and address all the
political needs of the various demographics and social groups within the
country.

What we learned from the experience is that it's the social structure of the
country, its history and traditions, that are the driving factor behind how
we, as a class, wrote the constitution.

In our case, the fictional country had various social groups of different
sizes in tribal areas. Each member of the group was assigned to one of the
groups based on the group's size.

We developed a constitution quite similar to the U.S. constitution with a
federal system, though I believe we used a proportional representation system
rather than a winner-takes-all voting system like the U.S. and U.K. use.

In short, I don't think that modern technology would have a significant impact
on how a constitution would be written because, as you said, it's all driven
by human emotion, ambition, morality, and ethics. While certain aspects of the
implementation of a government may be different if modern technology were
applied consistently, the overall structure, design, and operation of
government would be still end up being a compromise of the various ideologies
of the citizens (assuming a democracy, of course).

------
nrkn
Fork this democracy on Github?

Something similar:

<https://github.com/rbjarnason/open-active-democracy>

~~~
nrkn
Wikipedia:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_democracy#Electronic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_democracy#Electronic_direct_democracy)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_e-democracy>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_transparency>

------
danbmil99
> Imagine how algorithms can be used to implement real-time, direct democracy.

It's like you have _never_ read a single dystopian sci-fi classic. What you're
describing sounds like GOogle writ large.

Count me out! (of course opt-out is not allowed in a system like this)

~~~
edambauskas
Can you recommend some of the classics to read?

In particular about real-time direct democracy.

~~~
nrkn
Not completely pertinent to where I suspect your line of questioning is going,
but Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an interesting take on computer
aided government.

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sjs382
I'd want the reset button to be hit every 100 years.

~~~
shubber
The thing is, existing politics has analogies for all the programming-inspired
ideas that come up here. To wit: fomenting revolution. If you want to tear it
all down and start from scratch, rise up and overturn the standing government
by force of arms.

Too hard? They have all the good weapons? Then you don't care enough, and
that's the check on reseting the government.

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notahacker
Algorithmic real-time, direct democracy doesn't remove human emotion from the
equation. On the contrary, it makes it easy for key decisions to be made an
emotive reaction to yellow journalism without those making the decision having
any accountability or any penalty for failing to weight up the consequences.

------
staunch
We just need a reliable way of keeping a Good King in power at all times.
Nothing could be more efficient or ideal.

The Immortal Good King will be an intelligent computer. I, for one, shall
welcome our new silicon overlord.

~~~
duylamnguyenngo
All hail the Good King.

------
pdaviesa
It's interesting to see Skynet posting on HN! How about a government where all
citizens get to vote on all bills in real time by texting/tweeting/facebook
"liking" yay or nay?

~~~
edambauskas
Very good... as long as my programs count your votes :-)

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wmboy
> If the State gets our of control, a roll-back function could be implemented

But who decides when it gets out of control?

