Linux As a Model For a New Government? 509
An anonymous reader writes "The hedge fund investor who prided himself on achieving 1000% returns, Andrew Lahde, wrote a goodbye letter to mark his departure from the financial world. In it, he suggests people think about building a new government model, and his suggestion is to have someone like George Soros fund a new government that brings together the best and brightest minds in a manner where they're not tempted by bribery. In doing so, he refers to how Linux grows and competes with Microsoft. An open source government. How would such a system work, and could it succeed? How long before it became corrupt? Would it need a benevolent dictator (Linus vs. Soros)?"
Open Source IS the ideal behind democracy (Score:2, Interesting)
Man was not meant to rule himself. Some men are natural leaders, but no man is meant to rule.
Pffft (Score:3, Interesting)
I do love these money-sharks turned philosophers. Yeah we took a lot of cash from those idiots, but it isn't our fault they are stupid.. What they forget is that I as a non-expert don't have a snowball chance in hell to find out if my pension is in safe hands. Fortis Bank here in Belgium was marketed as a "good housefather - sleep on it for 20 years" share and now it is poof because some fatcat financial "specialists" burned their fingers on something even they didn't understand.
No "good" government (Score:4, Interesting)
In the history of the world, there has never been a "good" government. When things were at their absolute best, the government was mediocre and it didn't last.
The usual quote for this situation is Thomas Paine:
Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
I am glad this hedge fund guy is moving to a purely theoretical field. If he can't learn from history, at least he can't hurt the economy with silly financial deals.
New governements (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fork. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the lack of the ability to easily fork may be one of the most deeply ingrained flaws and problems with current political systems. It's a privilege largely reserved for corporations and/or the very rich, to easily change into and out of what political system you currently prefer.
It would be interesting to explore the options of more modular political systems where citizens, when they dislike their unit enough, could reasonably easily disengage and join another unit. A system could be designed on multiple dimensions ranging from geographic protection through healtcare through trade-related aspects, and comprise both low-level units up to world spanning organizations. If nothing else it might at least provide more interesting and intellectually challenging politics.
Re:Idealist have great ideas that shouldn't be use (Score:3, Interesting)
The politicians treat the Constitution and it's Amendments as if they have to follow a little bit less every year.
I think fundamentally we have an open source government, but it's too heavy at the top. There are too few people with too much power.
This was mentioned as good idea [thirty-thousand.org] and i have to say I kind of like it myself.
The solution is so simple that it hurts... (Score:5, Interesting)
All "modern" government systems (democracy, communism, you name it), or in fact, all government systems until now, had one giant elephant of a problem sitting right there in the middle of the room:
There are humans governing others.
Now continue to read before you judge.
The problem behind this is, that those people have a conflict of interest, between the needs of the governed and their own interests. So the ideal leader would be someone, where those two match perfectly.... which is of course impossible. But you can approximate it.
The problem with this is, that we have no reliable way of selecting such a person. Mostly because normal people can be tricked pretty easily.
But there is one new solution, that just came up when computers and the Internet got available everywhere:
Do not use an humans, but a very simple mathematical model (one that is so simple that every educated human can check it for himself), that calculates descisions out of the votes of a model of cascading trust relationships. This sounds complicated but it's very simple. (If you know how CSS decides, what rules apply to a HTML element, you already know it.)
In reality, it would work like this:
There is a set of things, where a decision has to be taken. That set is defined by people having differences in these points. Now someone - the typical role, that a politician would fill today - can create decisions for that set. Then another one can say "I want what he wants.... but, i want this specific thing to be different". Of course someone can use the results of that as his base too. And you can combine partial sets too, as you like. For example, you could say "I'm a liberal, but I agree with person X on family matters and person Y on science matters. oh, and I want social skills to be taught in school."
That way you could form a nice set of your own views without voting for every shit out there. (Because, it should make your life better, not worse :)
Now of course, this does not mean that you can get everything you want... because you live in a community.
So you assign yourself to a community/communities (country, state, town) (those are cascading too, and you can define which one has priority over which), and your views will merge with those of the community, to create the rules for that group of people.
So a conflict of interest would not be possible, because you could change your set of rules at any time.
Now there would of course be one simple limitation: You have to be in the same group with people that you share resources (land, water, jobs) with, when it comes to that matter (land, water, jobs). This could be automatically solved via a GPS input (or something similar).
I think that would work great. You could even extensively test it in parallel to the current system, round out all problems, and if it works, you can simply let all people join that system by themselves, until the old government does not matter anymore and goes away. So there is also no need for a "transient" government, like in communism, which for some reason never seems to end its job of transition (again a conflict of interest).
This idea of mine is open and I do not care who implements it, as long as you do not create a slightly modified system that becomes evil, and still associate it with me!
Especially with guys like George Soros at the helm (Score:1, Interesting)
Especially true if you put some investor guy like George Soros at the helm.
Look, let's be clear about these kind of men (Warren Buffett, George Soros, etc). They are very good at making money. I applaud them for that, and say good for them, in general.
But to say they are some kind of wise, beneficial, impartial observers is ridiculous. They'll use the government to make a buck in a heartbeat. Look at Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is practically getting sweatheart deals from the Democrats even now. He constantly endorses democrats and gives them huge scads of money to get elected. They, in return, fight to keep things like the estate tax alive, and estate tax insurance and planning is a huge part of Warren Buffett's company business.
And perhaps even worse is this example. A few weeks ago 90% of the American people cried out to their representatives to not vote in a massive 700 billion dollar debt/bailout package. Buffett, however, endorsed it and pushed democrats and other government leaders very hard the opposite way (against the American people), and then right before it went through bought up billions of dollars in Goldman Sachs, an investmant bank that, if the bailout passed, would then get billions of dollars from the government through the bailout package. And now the Democrats have suggested more bailouts, more stimulus packages and wealth redistributions, and Buffet is pouring even more money into their coffers. And who will be well positioned to benefit from these redistributions and other policies? That's right, Warren Buffett and the other liberal billionaire investors.
Of course, I can hear some of you saying, "Well, it's at best just a wash for him, because his taxes will go up under the Obama plan to tax the rich." Actually, they probably won't, and I doubt he's worried about it. Guess who really gets hurt by these "tax increases for the rich?" It actually isn't Buffett. Buffett's wealth is tied up in stock, which grows without being taxed (it only gets taxed if he cashes out, in which case he pays capital gains tax). His actual income, especially given his thriftiness (which is a commendable trait), isn't all that massive, believe it or not. And this isn't a tax on wealth, so his stocks are safe. No, this is a tax on income, and the people who get whacked the most with that are small businesses and entreprenuers who are just getting started, because they don't tend to have massive stock holdings that appreciate over time like Buffett or Berkshire. Instead, they are growing year to year based on the profits they make on what they produce, which come in as, you guessed it, income. And income, not wealth and assets, are what the democrats are pushing to tax.
So yeah, I'm exceedingly opposed to letting anyone like Buffett or Soros run anything in the government. They already manipulate it now to their benefit and get rich off tax and bailout bills, so the last thing they need is to be made a "benevolent dictator".
Who governs who? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can appreciate certain periods , even recent, of US government.
Talking about the USofA, the majority of it's people will probably support the idea of a Capitalist economy thriving under a Democratically elected government.
The problems of recent are in my view caused by Capitalism ruling the government instead of the other way around.
Democracy will get damaged when special interests are able to significantly buy votes.
I've said it before, here in and in other places, the US needs to ban any financial contributions to political parties in the widest sense by non voters.
And voters should be limited to say a US$ 20.- contribution per year on a party.
Even the poorest voters could afford such a payment and thus the one-man one-vote democracy would be restored.
If a majority of voters decided the parties need more money to operate successful they could allow tax money to be used, many countries have come up with reasonable systems to fund the running of party bureaucracies without distorting the democratic balances.
Until then (especially in the US) the Democratic process is being diverted by funny money instead of votes.
Rapture (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me guess, since all land is already occupied by existing governments it would make sense to build a city underwater, somewhere in international waters, how does the mid-Atlantic seabed sound?
A total theory of government in one /. post. (Score:2, Interesting)
Quite right.
Government, logically, is force. The government is that entity in a society which has a practical monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Insomuch as there are others able to ignore the dictates of the government or to use force to their own ends (think corruption/organized crime), the government is not sovereign.
In this sense the Open Source approach is not suited to government. The actions of government apply to everyone and are supported by the application of force (i.e if you disobey you will be arrested, if you resist arrest you will be shot) while an Open Source project is defined by voluntary action and a pluralistic, meritocratic, approach to system design. The two are inherently contradictory.
I think that to apply Open Source principles to government would require a Minimalist, Libertarian, style government. The Government Proper, the entity with the monopoly on force, would be restricted to ensuring that the various open development units don't attempt to use force against each other. Other than that policy would be left up to non-government units.
For instance, rather than having a monolithic federal welfare system, we could have a plurality of nonprofit organizations for the reduction and alleviation of poverty. If you have resources or skills and are concerned about poverty, you could join one of the existing organizations (the one which takes the approach that you find most appropriate) and contribute your time or money to helping them. Or, if you don't really identify with the approach of any of the existing organizations, you could get together with a group of like minded people and start an organization of your own.
Rather than taking a single ad hoc approach to solving civic problems we could have a diversity of parallel approaches being undertaken. Those that prove most effective will draw more and more contributors and donors, and, if they become too big and crufty, concerned members can fork off, or fledgling organizations can step in to break new paths and undercut the giants.
Under such a system, enlightened people would ask each other what organizations they work with, rather than what party they support. Instead of flaming each other in bars about which set of leaders should rule us, we could argue about which social projects take the best approach. Instead of sitting around reading the news and getting pissed, we could be designing new tactics and strategies for our favorite organizations. In other words, we could have real participatory "government" (as opposed to submitting a laughable, 0 = Democrat, 1 = Republican, every two years).
I think that this has been the major failing of the Libertarian movement. They've failed to paint a picture of a compassionate Libertarian world. Eliminating federal programs to assist the needy (poor, unhealthy, undereducated) does not mean that we'd all selfishly go around ignoring impoverished people begging on our doorsteps any more than legalizing drugs would mean that we'd all be out shooting heroin the next day. It just means that, instead of passing off our problems as a people to some faceless bureaucracy, we'd take responsibility for them ourselves.
Individualism isn't about greed. It's about standing on your own two feet and taking care of the world yourself, like an adult, rather than handing all of your problems over to our paternalistic government and then wallowing in childish self-pity when the world goes to shit.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is very true of course. Further of note is who decides who is the most capable. Is it the engineers? The lawyers? The social scientists? The scientists? The English PHDs? The doctors?
Then we look at the systems the 'elites' have created.
The lawyers make the law more and more convuluted each and every year so only they can navigate the system.
The financial geniuses use leverage and central banking to manipulate the market to enrich themselves.
The universities become places of entry for the elite. You must pay them in order to gain access to the other elite professions.
The doctors become guardians of the medical system. You're surely incapable of diagnosing or treating yourself.
No doubt, there are valid reasons to 'trust in the elites.'
There are also reasons to believe they will abuse their power to enrich themselves.
Meanwhile, 'ye old JoeSixpack' doing productive work in the warehouse or farm is left at the mercy of this system.
There is a balance we must reach between democracy and a meritocracy.
Re: what really happened with the Baht (Score:4, Interesting)
Note: This is what really happened with the baht
Soros was also making contacts for a ceasefire deal through JP Morgan.
He was losing money on his short-term positions, which were not covered, but subsequently would make money on his medium-term positions. In general he was not in big trouble, unlike other speculators who had attacked the baht in the spot market and were trapped in the guillotine of the two-tier currency system. (The two-tier system made it impossible for speculators to attack the baht from offshore.)
Soros' position was largely medium-term, which would be matured in six months. That was the big chunk of the attack. Rerngchai realised that come August, the Bank of Thailand would not have the dollars on hand to deliver to the speculators, as obligated by the currency swaps.
But Soros also realised that the carry-over, or interest, cost of his baht positions would not be worthwhile due to the abnormally high interest rates on the baht.
Rerngchai reached a broad agreement with his aides that the Bank of Thailand would settle only half of its US$14.8 billion in offshore swap positions, which confronted the speculators face to face.
Paiboon Kittisrikangwarn, then the central bank's chief trader, received several phone calls from speculators through local banks asking for a truce. But his reaction was stern. He would not meet the speculators, but he agreed to cut a deal at an exchange rate of Bt23 to the dollar or the forward rate of 9 per cent.
"Take it or leave it," he said.
The speculators wanted Bt26, meaning that the deal would have left them with a loss of Bt3 for every dollar. The speculators were fuming with rage.
It was evident that strong political backup was necessary if this mission was to be successful. When Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, then prime minister, was informed about this plan to talk it out with Soros, Chavalit agreed.
His tone was conciliatory. "It's alright. Let's do it. I am ready to help," he said.
But the political situation at that time was highly precarious. Engaging in this kind of clandestine operation required a stable administration; otherwise, the slightest jab by the opposition could bring down the government. In the meantime, rumours of ceasefire negotiations with Soros quickly became widespread.
Euromoney wrote in its September 1997 issue: "Undeterred by the freeze, those who needed baht offshore to cover short positions became more inventive. One particular exposed speculator - local gossip-mongers reckon it was George Soros - went cap in hand to the central bank to ask for baht and offered to play the bank's game in return by easing off hammering the currency. The Bank of Thailand declined the offer."
In the end, negotiations with Soros would never take place because the finance minister lacked the political back up. Amnuay was about to fall victim to coalition politics, engineered by the Chat Pattana, which wanted to take over economic management from the New Aspiration Party.
In early June Arminio Fraga, a former deputy governor of the central bank of Brazil, who worked for Soros, contacted the Bank of Thailand to cut a deal. Fraga, who would be appointed his country's central bank governor a year later to save the Brazilian real, was then the managing director of Soros Fund Management.
Fraga, who frequently visited Bangkok to investigate the business climate, came over to talk about the possibility of ending the baht war.
But after Amnuay's resignation in late June, he sensed victory. When one of the central bank officials tried to call him to reach a settlement, he said: "I think we can wait a little bit more".
With that sentence ringing in his ear, Rerngchai realised that the Bank of Thailand was about to lose the currency war.
Re:Did you read my comment? It wasn't long. (Score:3, Interesting)
You mistakenly believe that the fruits of your labour are going to the poor. But by and large, they're not. The poor in North America are getting poorer all the time. For the most part, the fruits of your labour that are taken from you are going to the super-rich, and their share gets bigger every day. Why should the value of your labour go into Warren Buffet's pocket? or Soros'? or any other multi-billionaire?
The fact is, we could probably bring all the poor up to a middle-class standard with very little expenditure on our part. But there will never be enough money (=value=labour) to satisfy people who are literally addicted to making money. If you work in a big company, how much more would you make if everyone in that company made the same wage? I would wager that the only people to suffer a wage decrease would be the directors and/or the board. That's it.
The problem with the laissez-faire capitalist system is that it's just as fictitious as a pure communist system. The system we have now is rigged in favour of the richest few people on the planet, and most of us don't even see it. They've conned us into thinking we all can be as successful as they are, if we just work hard enough. But it's bullshit. The game is rigged.
In a world with men who are so rich they can't possibly spend all their money, there should be nobody starving.
Gnu Public Social Contract V.0 (Score:1, Interesting)
1) The freedom to run the government, for any purpose
2) The freedom to study how the government works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the government and its laws is a precondition for this.
3) The freedom to redistribute government, so you can help your neighboring countrymen
4) The freedom to improve the government, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
----
Seriously though, I think that we can make the government more like Linux by allowing average citizens more input into our government. There should be venues where there can be quick changes and innovations in the law and in society, to see how they work out. There should be free and quick access to our societies laws. And laws should be simple enough for ordinary people to understand. You shouldn't have to be a political scientist or a lawyer to figure out how to vote or how to sell a house, for example.
Re:How long before it became corrupt? (Score:3, Interesting)
While this sounds funny, it isn't really all that unusual... or even an original thought other than rephrasing the idea into modern engineering terms.
The American republic pretty much was an attempt to fork the English government into a new rev.... which even the English government by the 1770's had gone through several revision cycles and a couple "forks" of its own as well with a couple of revolutions and some knights and noblemen who tended (in England) to tell the King off from time to time. Very few English monarchs ever had absolute control over their country.
The point here is that in the late 18th Century, English colonists in America decided to "fork" the government and try a new direction on how things could be run. That process was repeated, at least in America, as new states were created. Whole communities of individuals can and did pack up everything they had and created new cities in what was previously wilderness.
One "luxury" that people in the Americas had (regardless of if you think it was something good or not) is that they had large tracts of land that were populated with only hunter-gatherer nomadic tribes... and a few smallish civilizations compared to Europe. Such major areas for people to expand into are now quite rare... if you can even find them. I can name a few areas around the world, but they do tend to be places that are difficult to live at such as on a steep mountain or in Antarctica.
Assuming that we might become a spacefaring race, forking of governments may once again become fashionable in a big way. It would also be interesting to see what governmental forms would thrive in such an environment.