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[Jude]

Good luck ever selling that idea to America. We aren't even willing to pass health care reform because....actually, I have no idea why not, other than that people hate the president for being black.

Weren't you just getting all bent out of shape over other people simplifying complicated situations to a hilariously retarded degree?

Yeah, but your signature also applies to me.

[alway]

  I'll pass on the hive mind fad.

Hey, if it worked, you'd have a Utopian Socialist government.

Far better than a Hive, since a hive always evolves something fat that spits out babys and pheromones for control. This isn't so much control as forced empathy for every human on earth. If you're completely aware of someone, their past, their dreams, their failings and fears, you couldn't shortchange or kill them anymore than you could yourself.

I couldn't resist the Borg joke, but seriously if technology gets sufficiently advanced you'd have a perfectly fair system of government.

And I would also have to know about every furry's daydream. *shudders*

[Strife26]

  I'll pass on the hive mind fad.

Hey, if it worked, you'd have a Utopian Socialist government.

Far better than a Hive, since a hive always evolves something fat that spits out babys and pheromones for control. This isn't so much control as forced empathy for every human on earth. If you're completely aware of someone, their past, their dreams, their failings and fears, you couldn't shortchange or kill them anymore than you could yourself.

I couldn't resist the Borg joke, but seriously if technology gets sufficiently advanced you'd have a perfectly fair system of government.

And I would also have to know about every furry's daydream. *shudders*

Avatar.

[JoshuaFH]

Alright, I'm pretty sure that we can't make the Matrix and just have everyone live there.

My take on the how to make the perfect government: if we can colonize the moon, and get at the precious lunar gold, then we'll have enough space money to start bargaining with the Garblaxian alien race and ask them for insight into the perfect government.

[Starver]

Socialism on paper sounds fucking awesome, in practice, kinda of not. 8/

Yep, responsibility abused in government rather than with citizens. Thing is, responsibility will be abused wherever you put it. Though in this case I just wanted to put a small segment of money in more capable hands than boozehounds. It's a very minimalistic application of socialism, which is the idea. I'm not by any means a supporter of serious socialism.

There's a book (or short story) that I half remember, about an ursine civilisation and culture (based in the Americas?) that, it turns out, shares the world with a primate/old-world-monkey evolved civilisation across the rest of the planet such that each had obviously evolved in isolation with each other.  The ursine culture was based upon an ideal of work-sharing whereby one 'earnt community credit' by doing jobs that needed doing.  other than that, one did what one wanted.  If you like painting, go ahead and do that, but if a ditch needs digging and it's your turn to do a community task, you are required to do so as part of the settlement.  If you like digging ditches, then you're free to do so but it doesn't count as far as community service, and your service could well be painting walls.

It worked mostly at the local level, per community, with inter-community and national 'community credits' being earned for the community by individuals of that place carrying out tasks of appropriate magnitude in an inter-community bartering/exchange of expertise way, at a level of 'favours'.

Of course, there are some flaws in that system that our primate brains can readily exploit, but I think the idea was that this was tuned to the social and cultural values and personal expectations and commitments of the ursine race who had developed such a cooperative system in leiu of any form of hard currency or economy as we would know it.

Obviously it's fiction, but it sounds (in principle) to be a good idea.  Not that we could implement it overnight without great safeguards.  Though I could see it being implemented in, say, a small Mars colony for all economic matters that are not reliant upon external funding and whatever supply-drops Earth might send.  Once it becomes town-sized, of course, it could so easily break down or find itself a victim of a rogue agent.

And I think that's what the problem with communistic socialism is (and, indeed, all other forms of government).  Once you're beyond the level of "everyone knows everyone else", you are almost guaranteed to need people 'at the top' to administer over loads of people that they do not know, and then the adages along the lines of "with great power..." and "power corrupts" come into play.

[Cthulhu]

We need to make a self-improving AI.  Then the robots can do all the work for us and we can take all the profits.  As for rebellion, this isn't a sci-fi movie, that won't happen.

[alway]

We need to make a self-improving AI.  Then the robots can do all the work for us and we can take all the profits.  As for rebellion, this isn't a sci-fi movie, that won't happen.

Of course it won't. >_>

Then again, you are thinking too conservatively. We need self-improving AI into which we can incorporate ourselves, thus turning ourselves into self-improving AI with vastly superior capabilities. I wanna be a nanite swarm!

[Cthulhu]

No, that's stupid.  How can we live in a sensual paradise if we're on computers?

[MrWiggles]

Spoiler: Starver Post (click to show/hide)

Socialism on paper sounds fucking awesome, in practice, kinda of not. 8/

Yep, responsibility abused in government rather than with citizens. Thing is, responsibility will be abused wherever you put it. Though in this case I just wanted to put a small segment of money in more capable hands than boozehounds. It's a very minimalistic application of socialism, which is the idea. I'm not by any means a supporter of serious socialism.

There's a book (or short story) that I half remember, about an ursine civilisation and culture (based in the Americas?) that, it turns out, shares the world with a primate/old-world-monkey evolved civilisation across the rest of the planet such that each had obviously evolved in isolation with each other.  The ursine culture was based upon an ideal of work-sharing whereby one 'earnt community credit' by doing jobs that needed doing.  other than that, one did what one wanted.  If you like painting, go ahead and do that, but if a ditch needs digging and it's your turn to do a community task, you are required to do so as part of the settlement.  If you like digging ditches, then you're free to do so but it doesn't count as far as community service, and your service could well be painting walls.

It worked mostly at the local level, per community, with inter-community and national 'community credits' being earned for the community by individuals of that place carrying out tasks of appropriate magnitude in an inter-community bartering/exchange of expertise way, at a level of 'favours'.

Of course, there are some flaws in that system that our primate brains can readily exploit, but I think the idea was that this was tuned to the social and cultural values and personal expectations and commitments of the ursine race who had developed such a cooperative system in leiu of any form of hard currency or economy as we would know it.

Obviously it's fiction, but it sounds (in principle) to be a good idea.  Not that we could implement it overnight without great safeguards.  Though I could see it being implemented in, say, a small Mars colony for all economic matters that are not reliant upon external funding and whatever supply-drops Earth might send.  Once it becomes town-sized, of course, it could so easily break down or find itself a victim of a rogue agent.

And I think that's what the problem with communistic socialism is (and, indeed, all other forms of government).  Once you're beyond the level of "everyone knows everyone else", you are almost guaranteed to need people 'at the top' to administer over loads of people that they do not know, and then the adages along the lines of "with great power..." and "power corrupts" come into play.

Corruption happens on any level though and corruption will happen but that doesn't mean that corruption is happening. As  in, it can't be helped but not everyone is corrupted. It can be curtailed though and slowed though. The amount of power doesn't seem to be a requirement for corruption, just the possibility of exploitation.

I will say that human have gotten much better at governing themselves. Everything is on the rise; standard of living, literacy, civil liberties and life span. This in part due to progression of knowledge, IE science, but Governments is how the application of knowledge is given. Governments does numerously complicated things everyday. Have you ever received a piece of mail? Have you ever thought about the logistics that go into a postal service? Do you know how mind boggling it is, to supply power to over 100,000 million peeples, along with sewage, roads and telecommunications? I know that a lot of these are seen largely in first world nations, but they are modern wonders that are taken for granted and other countries are getting them as well.

There always room for improvement though. Being fallible, requires us to continually self improve. I just try to temper what isn't being done well with how things it does do well, and what it provides. Health Care, social security, and international economics to name a few must be woefully complicated issues to handle.

My two cents on govt. in general.

The short story, I've seen that in a few other places, notably in my head would be Kino Journeys, and Stainless Steel Rat. I personally see it only working when resources over overly abundant, and freely available.   If your at that level, then supply and demand cease to be an active force and communities only has perceive worth to an individual.

[Earthquake Damage]

Do you know how mind boggling it is, to supply power to over 100,000 million peeples, along with sewage, roads and telecommunications?

Greetings from Earth!  Tell me more about this planet of yours with a population over 100 billion. 

[MrWiggles]

Do you know how mind boggling it is, to supply power to over 100,000 million peeples, along with sewage, roads and telecommunications?

Greetings from Earth!  Tell me more about this planet of yours with a population over 100 billion. 

Lolz. 100 million. I went from typing out numerically and spelling, and fucked it up. Over a hundred million though, is an outstanding feat.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

There's a short story called And Then There Were None which you can probably find online if you search hard enough 

The people of this planet do things for each other in a favor-exchange system. There is no overall government. The author admits at the end that such a thing really only works if there's an abundance of resources.

I also couldn't help but notice that the whole world could have been taken over by people who wanted to get together and fight to gain power over others. The author would have responded by having the civilian basically just say "screw you". But when he gets shot in the head, and the next guy is told to do the task, eventually you lose a lot of population and the ones left are the ones willing to serve.

I think that's the case for a lot of idealized, fictional economic or social structures. Mainly the author hasn't walked through the paces from every single direction. Because in real life, with millions of people living in a system, they will constantly squirm and nuzzle and pry to find any advantage in the system and exploit it.

Just look at online games.

[Jude]

We need to make a self-improving AI.  Then the robots can do all the work for us and we can take all the profits.  As for rebellion, this isn't a sci-fi movie, that won't happen.

In all seriousness, I believe that once we create a self-aware AI that is able to self-modify and self-replicate, it is only a matter of time until it takes over the world. Probably not very much time, considering what processor and internet speeds will be like by then.

[Starver]

Corruption happens on any level though and corruption will happen but that doesn't mean that corruption is happening. As  in, it can't be helped but not everyone is corrupted. It can be curtailed though and slowed though. The amount of power doesn't seem to be a requirement for corruption, just the possibility of exploitation.

I'd agree with that.  But in a small community (say 150 people, without an absolute ruler, in name or just in fact, who has attained that position through undue influence) slackers, corrupters, and similar are identified and culturally shunned, pursuaded to conform or outright banished.

I will say that human have gotten much better at governing themselves.

Now, I'd consider this contentious.  Or, rather, the governing humans do 'better' (FCVO) at governing far more people in a far more opportunistic world than in the 'old days'.

Look at Feudalism.  Common perception is that "everyone knew their place", although obviously that's a simplification, and then that system broke due (at least in part, but arguably a large one) to the plague and depopulation, making individual serf's efforts a marketable quality rather than inevitably tied mostly to one master for an entire life.  So of course organisation and government had to adapt.  (Again, a simplification.)

I won't argue (either way) Whether a feudal system would have given us everything from railways to iPods, blogs to space travel.  That way lies a minefield of speculative history which could be moulded almost any way you want by making the appropriate assumptions.  But governments (i.e. the whole organisational hierarchies, rather than various instruments of the stat ethat may or may not be riding the forefront of socio-technological symbiosis) still have difficulty with the 'old' globalism that arose in the latter half of last century, never mind the informatic globalism of today.


Unless you're talking about individuals governing themselves, in which case I would point to various divides (socio-economic, digital or various others), on one side of which lie those that are in charge of their own destiny and on the others are those who are not.  Give or take any "rebellion of the unwaged" (in nations where this is practical), where people who find that they can live comfortably upon benefits[1] and milk the system in a way I could never bring myself to do.


But I fear I've strayed form whatever point I was first inspired to make and hit Reply for...  Which I've forgotten.


[1] When I was unwaged and volunteering in a computer recycling scheme, I was amazed at the number of on-benefits people I delivered paid-for-by-the-Job-Centre computers to who also had large, wide-screen TVs, etc, when I was having to be very frugle and only kept running a car (my biggest cost, other than the obligatory utilities, etc) because of parents handling the associated costs so that I could keep future commuting options open.

[MrWiggles]

Corruption happens on any level though and corruption will happen but that doesn't mean that corruption is happening. As  in, it can't be helped but not everyone is corrupted. It can be curtailed though and slowed though. The amount of power doesn't seem to be a requirement for corruption, just the possibility of exploitation.

I'd agree with that.  But in a small community (say 150 people, without an absolute ruler, in name or just in fact, who has attained that position through undue influence) slackers, corrupters, and similar are identified and culturally shunned, pursuaded to conform or outright banished.

I think I qualified that statement with the curtail and slowed bit.

I will say that human have gotten much better at governing themselves.

Now, I'd consider this contentious.  Or, rather, the governing humans do 'better' (FCVO) at governing far more people in a far more opportunistic world than in the 'old days'.

Look at Feudalism.  Common perception is that "everyone knew their place", although obviously that's a simplification, and then that system broke due (at least in part, but arguably a large one) to the plague and depopulation, making individual serf's efforts a marketable quality rather than inevitably tied mostly to one master for an entire life.  So of course organisation and government had to adapt.  (Again, a simplification.)[/quote]

I would agree that feudalism was a functional government, I would say that it not as a successful one, not simply unsuccessful because its not in wide spread use anymore. (Presumably dead.) I have a bias for representative style governments; representative federations, republics and democracies. Like the federal republic I live in. They do seem to foster open exchange, trade and knowledge more then other governments in that past. Its hard to tell how much impact technology has played with though, or weather these government could fare well without a certain level of technology to make them functional.  To go back to Feudalism, there were strictness/absence of education, civil liberties that must be in place to allow it to function. It also fought open trade, as it was almost as beneficial to take what you needed instead of exchange, though this is also hard to judge as war has complicated and sometime petty reasons, but there have been numerous wars for resource controls.

If we examine to what lead to the betterment of humans, in general, its the open exchange and application of new ideas. Monarchy, Despotism, Dictatorships and Marxist Communism and I would say most other governments beside representative style one, have mechanism in place to fight open exchange. I also temper this with how they have been so far historically implemented. A monarchy could function with open exchange of idea, but most didn't. (Gah, using this weak sounding language is driving me bonkers. It wouldnt shock me to learn that an obscure military dictatorship was very open to new ideas and fostering them along with trade with others.)

I won't argue (either way) Whether a feudal system would have given us everything from railways to iPods, blogs to space travel.  That way lies a minefield of speculative history which could be moulded almost any way you want by making the appropriate assumptions.  But governments (i.e. the whole organisational hierarchies, rather than various instruments of the stat ethat may or may not be riding the forefront of socio-technological symbiosis) still have difficulty with the 'old' globalism that arose in the latter half of last century, never mind the informatic globalism of today.

It would be fun though.

Unless you're talking about individuals governing themselves, in which case I would point to various divides (socio-economic, digital or various others), on one side of which lie those that are in charge of their own destiny and on the others are those who are not.  Give or take any "rebellion of the unwaged" (in nations where this is practical), where people who find that they can live comfortably upon benefits[1] and milk the system in a way I could never bring myself to do.

I wasn't but an interesting topic. It seems that peeples have as many personal problems as they did as they ever do, but they also seem to be growing to be competent in a more complex world and learning to be successful in it. Maybe its at a standstill?

[1] When I was unwaged and volunteering in a computer recycling scheme, I was amazed at the number of on-benefits people I delivered paid-for-by-the-Job-Centre computers to who also had large, wide-screen TVs, etc, when I was having to be very frugle and only kept running a car (my biggest cost, other than the obligatory utilities, etc) because of parents handling the associated costs so that I could keep future commuting options open.

Yea... it sucks. It also interesting prospective on what you personally consider a luxury and other a nessicatiety. I consider a car a luxury, and take mass transit everywhere. I also see a TV as wholly luxuriate item, as I watch my programs and movie on the computer, and only play console games on a tv. I dont see a computer as a luxury even though others do. Its the most expensive thing I've ever bought with my own money.