Good observations.

If I might add, a (possibly the most common) failure mode of democracy is
that the *most* clever/powerful are incentivized to promote ignorance and
pestilence among the rest of the population to keep enough of them malleable
and dependent that they will vote for the elite. Democracy is often
characterized as two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, IMO
it's more like three children and their mother voting on whether to buy candy.
In a pure democracy, the candy-man is king.


Thanks,
Caleb


On 04/15/2014 05:23 PM, Amir Taaki wrote:
> i am just writing some notes here.
>
> you put the tax money into a central repo where it is voted by a
> collective on its allocation. the downside is that majority vote doesn't
> maximise utility of that resource, however it can allow allocation that
> better serves the participates (disregarding corruption). this can
> disenfranchise creative & energetic ppl by imposing limitations on what
> they can accomplish.
>
> an alt model is where you can invest your tax where you choose. this is
> nice because it creates relationship between good being funded and
> person funding the good, and puts the responsibility on the funder to
> ensure the money is well spent. it's susceptible to corruption where
> those with money have more market power. this can lead to development
> which disenfranchises those with less money.
>
> the third model is no common good, which isn't desirable as the means of
> wealth production become privately owned, and people are rented. this
> isn't really a free market as individuals are forced to sell their
> labour at low prices to those who own the means of production, further
> entrenching their position over the market. this doesn't hold true for
> all industries, but where land or some resource is involved, it can lead
> to corporate governance & private military.
>
> when a public good is collectivised, governance is extremely susceptible
> to political manipulation and becomes a magnet for corruption. to ensure
> the process stays fair and just, requires a never ending loop of
> bureaucracy and overseers. the political system itself becomes another
> form of hierarchy.
>
> private goods require impetus to promote individual rights over common
> good. we can often lose utility here or expectation of a resource when
> relations become adversial due to competitve incentives. this is a
> social issue and doesn't always hold true. but in some cases it can
> create extreme effects and lost potential value.
> together with an environment where consumption is separated from
> production, individuals lose responsibility due to lack of observation
> about the hidden cost of actions, passing the buck (or brunt/blame) of
> that cost onwards down the chain.
>
> anyway these are my notes from observations in community and stuff.
> i pefer we try to promote individual freedom wherever possible, but
> sometimes, esp around common interest we require a consensus among those
> participating parties. also i believe we can reach massive gains in self
> organised governance using digital tools for transparency and
> information. by promoting tools of governance, transparency and
> informational resources, we can empower people with a strong form of
> self governance that can scale massively.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>