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1 Nov 2005 @ 11:03, by bapty. Social System Design
The Prophet Google More >
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16 Oct 2005 @ 13:58, by vector8. Social System Design
Aren't we, humans, clever making up rules as we go along? You can't just receive all good, you have to make sure that what you are asking to receive is also for the good of everyone, or you won't receive it. This is part of the human guilt-trip; I'm afraid to have fun in case someone else isn't. As there is only the One Infinite Intelligence and Love in all, can the One be infinite love in you while being infinite misery in another? Of course not. Of course if you believe in different powers then it is understandable that one power would want joy for one and ignoring another's needs. I believe in the One Power, Intelligence, Love, and Wisdom in all. More >
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13 Oct 2005 @ 14:39, by ming. Social System Design
Hm, that's what it says in the tagline of my blog here.
An old rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up.
... I'm trying to remember what I meant. Trying to notice if it makes any sense to me right now.
An old rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Well, I would only say something rather negative like that if I can point to some kind of alternative. I hold myself to be some kind of optimist, after all.
The old civilization is centralized, bureaucratic, moralizing, closed-minded, unsustainable. Not hard to find many signs of that. But yet it is still there. It has become even more surreal, but it hasn't exactly died. I moved somewhere that was less surreal, but the global civilization hasn't changed much.
So, what's the new and exciting part? Well, in part it was based on a trust in collective intelligence. That somehow, to the degree that people are free to be creative and to communicate, new ways will emerge.
Closed can't compete with open. Owned and expensive can't compete with free. Limited and controlled can't compete with free in the other sense of the word. Boring can't compete with exciting.
At least in the long term. In the short term, those who hold power and control can keep things limited, closed and life-less for quite a while. Based on their ability to manipulate, their ability to coerce people through laws, economic pressure, religious doctrine, etc. We have to make a living, have to stay out of jail, have to appear relatively normal. So there are many things we could do, which maybe we would be more inspired to do, but they don't appear in the short term to be economically viable, legal, or socially acceptable.
My optimism came in part from noticing many little trends that point in the direction of self-organization, of freed creativity, of things becoming free. The Internet is still the best example of that. People making open source software, which is free and of higher quality than closed alternatives. People blogging, sharing their mind, reporting on stuff that otherwise wasn't reported on. People sharing their photos, their music, their thoughts.
But it is a fairly even battle. New ways also appear of making things more closed. Copyright laws are closing more things down, even fair use is at risk. Companies patent large numbers of ridiculous items, like self-evident design elements, software algorithms, business procedures, and life forms.
The media industries try hard to lock down any hardware or software that might play or store or transport any kind of media. They come up with ways of controlling what you do with their words or pictures, to suit their business model. They might succeed in having laws passed, and already have in some places, that make it illegal for you to resist.
I'd like to believe that all of those kinds of efforts will fail, necessarily. But I can't say I am sure.
I believe that sufficiently well-informed people will make different choices. I believe freedom is more powerful than control. I believe creativity beats conformity. I believe there's something inherent in life that makes it impossible to squash in the long run.
I guess the thing to do is to shine the light on the signs of life that appear. The new, open, free, exciting stuff.
And I suppose that's what I'm doing here. I'm just a little out of the habit. More >
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 5 Aug 2005 @ 08:01, by redstar. Social System Design
Recently, there was the brief episode of Live 8 and the issue of debt cancellation for Africa, and I noted some references to my own current country of residence ( Malawi) and how it had been bypassed for debt relief etc and seeing how this somehow related to me, I decided to add my two cents worth to this whole debate... People do not need debt relief.... and in the context of very likely oil shocks about to reverberate with ascending scale onto the global economy - those poverty stricken Garden Farmers of the world who get by without running water, electricity and very little or nothing in the way of finances are likely to be in a much less difficult position than the rest of us.
More >
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 4 May 2005 @ 01:31, by rcarratu. Social System Design
Q: Why do we need a Geodemocracy?
A: Right now, people have almost no control over their world at all. The marketplace is the only place they have any say so, and even then, companies pay big money to advertisers because they can guarantee sales, because the advertisers have applied science to the act of simply stating what products someone has to sell. They are so good at making people subconsciously want what they are selling that 'free will' barely exists in most people anymore. (And most people would probably argue that point, even as they buy what they are told to buy. If it didn't work, how could the advertisers guarantee results?)
People are manipulated, controlled, intimated, and otherwise set to what the powers that be want them to do. They think what they are told to think by the media, they buy what the advertisers want them to buy, their attention is set into place like their minds have a coating of cement, and because of the illogic of all the existing systems, the planet is spiraling down into the karma, the results, of that control. This power of the 'rulers' comes from knowing and working on scales of mass control most people are not even aware of.
We cannot afford to let it continue.
If you knew that someday someone would set off a nuclear bomb in the neighborhood you live in, would you live there? If you thought that the water coming from your tap will someday become sewage slush, would you drink it? If you knew that the people who say they represent you would sell you out in a fast flash, would you let them represent you? Or do you just toss your hands in the air and say "So what? I can't do anything about it!"?
We tend to let the future take care of itself. This is suicidal. It far out reaches the damage of drugs and alcohol and all the other social ills we face everyday. And we accept them also. There is nothing we can do about it because there is no system which can leverage sane responses to those problems.
We don't need to accept anything. We can create a system which can something about it.
The existing political systems exist essentially no differently than any monarchy in the past. They are top down hierarchies which use force to carry out their plans. America, Germany, England, China, where ever you look, you find the same kind of hierarchy, just tagged with different jargon and nomenclature. President = King = CEO = Prime Minister = Chairman = whatever you want to call them... they all have some kind of illusion that the people somehow pick them and support them. But the world shows that their decision making is irrelevant to survival, and relevant only to their political agendas. usually those agendas either support someone rich or some ideology which could not work even if everyone held them sacred.
But what would happen if everyone actually had some ability to make the decisions which affect their lives and their children's lives?
You love your children. You work hard to feed them, to clothe them, to make sure they stay healthy... so why can't you see the need to create a world for them worth living in? A lot of people who see the way the world is slowly falling apart say "We can only hope our children will do better..." but why should the children do better? Their parents didn't.
The Geodemocracy is just an idea right now. It is just a way that people could connect together to make decisions together then carry them out with Projects they support. There is no requirement for consensus, no elections of representatives, no way someone can intimate anyone into doing things or not doing things, and religions, politics, and all the old systems are irrelevant to a Geodemocracy.
And most of all, it is uncorruptible by interior or exterior social forces. It's incorruptible because it side steps the forces which are used to control our lives. Trying to corrupt it would be like trying to nail a marshmallow into a stone brick. By it's very essence, a geodemocracy is something that nobody can get purchase on to change in any direction, bad or good. It's made of individuals, but no individual can change it or corrupt it. It exceeds the perimeter of all past ways of doing anything, so it is simply beyond the old grasp of the powerful or the political maniacs.
Yes, there is one real drawback, if you see it that way. It requires more of your attention than past organizational models. It takes two hours a day, five days a week for people to run their world, not fifteen minutes every four years like when you go to 'vote'. In a way, it's an attempt to grow a nervous system for the planet, to apply free will to scales most people never usually even think about. It is the only real expression of "Of the People, By the People, For the People" that can ever exist.
A Geodemocracy makes the decisions, generating Projects which do the work. The Geodemocracy is multi-generation, ever growing and becoming smarter, while Projects last only the time they need to do a task, then dissolve. That way no Project can become a hierarchy and therefore a problem.
It's worth doing, this idea. It's time, past time, for people to take control of their world. That which you ignore and don't care about has a tendency to reach into your personal live and shake you like a dog shaking a bone. Depressions, wars, poverty, crime... how many manage to escape these results of the past ways of doing things? Not many, and more and more all those will become evident in your life, like it or not.
We must break the cycles of stupidity and insanity, and get together to do something more about it than neighborhood watch meetings or mailing letters to our 'representatives' or joining news-grabbing disruptive social protest groups. We can do more than standing holding signs or signing petitions or cursing the decisions by 'elected' political officials and the bureaucracy.
Think about it.
Geodemocracy Site
Created on ... May 03, 2005 More >
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19 Apr 2005 @ 00:05, by vidyagama. Social System Design
Structural Deep Democracy(SD2) is a non-ideological approach to organizing collective action and solving world problems. SD2 uses PageRank as a centrality algorithm to analyze votes to determine the center of TRUST and CONSENT in a human trust network. The top three or five lead such an organization with one of them as the executive. This creates a small and efficient locus of trust and accountability to lead the organization. Frequent rank recalulations are used to keep the leadership accountable to the group as a whole. More >
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 15 Mar 2005 @ 20:50, by tlingel. Social System Design
What if you lived on an itinerant floating city?
What then?
What would your address be? More >
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16 Feb 2005 @ 23:19, by swanny. Social System Design
RETHINKING CITIES
Well all hail the Kyoto Protocol, on this its day of birth.
It'd be your February 16, 2005 and with much foot dragging it seems
the Protocol is now Law and in effect.
It is interesting that its basis is on a somewhat economic model, which is understandable in a capitalistic society and world. Credits to pollute are the order of the day and bought and sold as simply another commodity on the global markets perhaps.
Al-righty then but wait.... We have missed the boat somehow I think.
I think Global warming and CO2 emissions are not the problem but a symptom.
The real problem would seem to stem from the urban jungles and cities.
Cities which by design are unsustainable and serve not people but .... whatever.
Hmmmm really??? What is a city then??? Who does it serve and how many?
Can a city be to big? Can a city be self sufficient? Can a city please all of the people all of the time? Is the city a natural or organic entity or is it a machine or
processor of some sort? What do we really know about cities anyway?
They don't seem to have been around all that terribly long and is there perhaps need to investigate what makes a good and sustainable urban area and what do we base this judgment or reasoning on? Is city designing and building a science or an art? What is the history of the city? What makes a good, sustainable healthy and green city?
A lot of questions true but the questions have to be asked I suppose if we are to do more than just treat the symptom rather than address the real problem. More >
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25 Dec 2004 @ 07:11, by gaiatech. Social System Design
A group of random volunteers was set up in British Columbia to design a better voting system. (LOts of people are unhappy because there is not a close relationship between the votes tally and the numbers of seats in the legeslature that the partys eventually get. So, effectively, Canada and most of the provinces are governed by the largest single minority rather than a concensus of the majority.
Anyways, after a year or so of diliberation and listening to presentations from the public, the Citizens Assembly chose Single Transferable vote as the new system for BC. (It still has to go to referendum and get 60% approval from the voters).
This is the first time in history that voters actually decided which system would be the most in the VOTERS interests.
Commonly, voting systems were imposed from above by partys to further their own ends.
STV provides for open competition (and co operation) between candidates within and between partys before the judge and jury of voters in MULTISEAT ridings. It is a totally different ball game than the first past the post that most people are used to. It is like chess compared to noughts and crosses. Intelectuallyu stimulating!
Check out the citizens assem/blyu website at [link] for details.
Brian White More >
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 6 Nov 2004 @ 01:56, by ming. Social System Design
Slate article The unteachable ignorance of the red states, as part of a little series, of, as it says "depressed liberals analyzing what ails them". Excerpt:The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. ....
Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it.
Next, they tell you that you are the best of a bad lot (humans, that is) and that as bad as you are, if you stick with them, you are among the chosen. This is flattering and reassuring, and also encourages you to imagine the terrible fates of those you envy and resent. American politicians ALWAYS operate by a similar sort of flattery, and so Americans are never induced to question themselves. That's what happened to Jimmy Carter—he asked Americans to take responsibility for their profligate ways, and promptly lost to Ronald Reagan, who told them once again that they could do anything they wanted. The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do—they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable.
Third, and most important, when life grows difficult or fearsome, they (politicians, preachers, pundits) encourage you to cling to your ignorance with even more fervor. But by this time you don't need much encouragement—you've put all your eggs into the ignorance basket, and really, some kind of miraculous fruition (preferably accompanied by the torment of your enemies, and the ignorant always have plenty of enemies) is your only hope. If you are sufficiently ignorant, you won't even know how dangerous your policies are until they have destroyed you, and then you can always blame others. The thing I wanted to comment on is the changed perspective of realizing that lots of other people really don't work like you, and you can't particularly change it directly.
I would instinctively always expect that I could appeal to reason in other people. I'd expect that if the facts are brought together, and we talk about things, we'd all reasonably come to relatively similar conclusions about what is going on. We might have different preferences, but we ought to be able to form a common picture of what is there and what the factors are.
And the, at first, depressing truth is that there's a large number of people that don't seem to work like that, that certainly don't believe in stuff like that, and that won't respond to it. I.e. for them it is not about getting the facts together. They can't be convinced with facts. It is not about talking it all over as reasonable people. They don't listen to certain things at all. It is not about reaching a consensus, because they don't believe in consensus.
But, see, it is only depressing if you mistakenly assume something different about others than what is there. You only get disappointed if you expected something to happen that then doesn't happen. If I expect to be able to reason with somebody and I can't, it is disappointing. But if I didn't expect it or assume it, there'd be nothing to be disappointed about.
If I kept lions as pets, I might assume and expect certain things from them. Being able to reason with them wouldn't be one of them. Them being sincerely concerned about my well-being would probably not be one of them either. They're wild beasts, but within a certain framework we might enjoy each other's company. But I'd always be on guard and knowing where the tranquilizer gun is. And I'd keep them well-fed and not turn my back on them. But I wouldn't be disappointed if I couldn't talk reasonably about the philosophies of societal structures with them. They probably have no concept of that, and that's no big deal, as long as I don't depend on it.
Likewise if certain groups of people are living within a certain worldview which from my perspective is very limiting and even ignorant concerning the facts of life. Or cruel and inhumane, for that matter. It is only something to be depressed about if I assumed it to be otherwise and only found out late that it wasn't.
If it were very clear that people living in different cities lived by different rules, and the rules were clearly posted by the entrance, one could live with that. If I knew that in City B one could get shot on sight if one was caught chewing gum, I'd refrain from chewing gum if I went there. Or if I couldn't live with that, I'd stay away from there.
The trouble is that the world isn't marked up like that. Well, it is to some degree by countries, but that is too crude. It is hard to see the geography of people's worldviews. So we tend to default to assuming that everybody else is more or less like us.
Which for stereotypical "liberal" people tends to be to assume that people are fundamentally good and decent and that if we just bring out the facts and talk everything over, we could reach a consensus, and everybody's needs could be taken care of. And for stereotypical "conservative" folks, it is to assume that everybody's out only to get the best for themselves, and it is a dangerous world out there where only the strongest and most disciplined people survive, and it is a waste of time to listen to the people who have the wrong ideas. OK, those are U.S. categories. Looks different in other countries.
The differences in worldviews are so pervasive, and so hard for any of the "sides" to perceive, that it becomes very frustrating to try to agree on anything.
But my point is that it is less frustrating once one realizes that the worldviews really are different and that it isn't easily changed. I.e. instead of trying to reason with people who can't be reasoned with, adopting a more simple stance of working around that, above it, below it, rather than against it. Treat lions as lions rather than as people. But put a fence around them.
On a related note, I'm right now on various mailing lists about success, entrepreneurship, wealth-building and similar things, because, well, I need to figure out some more sustainable ways of making a living, and need some inspiration. One of those newsletters sent me a thing yesterday about "Believe That You Deserve To Be Wealthy". Which generally is a good theme, of course. If you want to be succesful and make a lot of money, you'll have to believe it is a good thing. If you love money, you're more likely to have it. But then they give this advice: No amount of effort on your part will overcome a faulty philosophy. If, deep down, you believe that wealth is a sin or that money is dirty, or wicked then the first step is for you to correct this error or give up all hopes of wealth for you and your family.
What is a 'wrong' philosophy with regard to making money?
Anything which could be described as altruistic, socialist, collectivist, communist or any one of its thousand manifestations no matter what the label, no matter what the disguise, no matter what the smokescreen.
Without exception, every self-made millionaire I have met was a rugged individualist. Most of them despised government, although many were clever enough not to say so in public. And believe me, there were approximately zero socialists amongst them.
A socialist, whatever he calls himself, is someone who believes that brute force should be used to loot from the productive, in order to provide handouts for the unproductive. No matter how you disguise it, or make it look fancy, that's the plain truth of the socialist doctrine.
I believe that it is impossible for you to attempt to get rich if you have some nagging doubt that money is the root of all evil, that Capitalism is bad or that wealth should be divided up amongst the needy. You have surrendered the philosophical high ground if you sign up for any of these positions. I don't think I'd be wrong in guessing that this guy voted for George Bush, even though he is probably an intelligent and successful person. And, now, I'm not going to swallow that at all, or that that's any prerequisite for being successful or wealthy. First of all, it seems a bit upside down. Last I looked, it was marxism that promoted that wealth should go to the productive people as opposed to the unproductive people. I.e. to the people who do the work. Capitalism, on the other hand, is about being able to multiply money without any need to do actual work, by organizing others to be productive and to give the results to you. Oh, that's not an easy task in itself, and not for dummies. And it is not necessarily a bad thing to be able to organize others to do work. But it certainly isn't based on rewarding the productive people. Maybe rewarding the most inventive people, who can get the most people working for them. And one of the tools is to coerce governments into taking money from productive people and converting them into handouts to your companies. It is a different kind of socialism, the socialism of the elite, and the anti-thesis of a truly free market. Anyway, I've said enough things about that before.
My point here is that there are plenty of people who deeply believe that it is moral and good and right to serve only yourself, and that it would be immoral and wrong to try to do good for all people. You know, the only moral thing to do is to maximize your own profits, and if you actually think you can care about other people doing well too, you're misguided, soft and ineffective, and probably some kind of commie subversive who wants to steal from good people.
Here's another area where I instinctively would tend towards making the mistake of expecting that other people would work roughly like I do. I'd tend to assume that everybody else of course would prefer that everybody was doing well, and that everybody's basic needs were taken care of. That everybody were successful. It both seems logical and feels right to have concern for the whole, for how our whole society and our environment might be organized for the maximum benefit of all.
But again, some people have absolutely no interest in making things work for everybody. On the contrary, that's a ridiculous and immoral idea, running counter to everything they believe in. Listening to everybody's ideas and trying to reach consensus is crazy wishful thinking and a waste of time. The only logical thing to do is to do the very best you can for yourself, whatever it takes, and to keep the losers away from you, who'd just want to steal what you've done.
I find it rather revolting to even try on for size that kind of mindset. Feels a bit like becoming a racist slave owner. Or a gangster. Anyway, I don't plan to. I will choose to believe that people can be successful together and, for that matter, that they can become a lot more successful together than they can in one-on-one combat against each other.
But the point is, again, you can't argue with strongly held views like that, if your basis for arguing is outside the boundaries of that which they believe in. So, you will often be more effective by recognizing that and not try to cozy up to sharks. Sharks eat you if they're hungry and you seem to be tasty. Not because they're mean, it's just what they do. Arguing doesn't make a difference.
What rather might make a difference is to step up a notch, into a meta level, below which those various worldviews live. The more effective change takes place by changing the game itself.
You might fail utterly in trying to persuade a predatory capitalist to be nice to poor people. Or in persuading a fundamentalist christian to freely discuss the nuances and assumptions in different kinds of beliefs. Or in persuading a shark to not eat people.
Sharks haven't changed evolutionarily for several millions of years, because they're very good at what they do already. Efficient killing machines. One human is no match for a great white. But, on the other hand, organized humans can take them out any time they want to.
Some people have fairly predictable, but effective, ways of behaving, which maybe seem repulsive to you. If you meet them alone on their turf, you might well lose. But if you're organized enough and resourceful enough to change the environment they live in, they might suddenly be the weaker species.
A predatory capitalist who has no moral but profit can only survive well in a certain type of environment. Which exists in abundance at this point. But if a sufficient number of people, instead of trying to pursuade him to change, will rather change the rules of the game, he'll have little chance.
And I do happen to believe that different rules are gradually emerging, which eventually, in our collective evolution, will outcompete the individualisticly predatory behaviors mentioned.
But such a different environment or a different game doesn't exist yet, other than as a vision and as pockets here and there, and in certain areas of the internet. It is not what runs the economy or your government. A global collaborative society organizing for the well-being of all is just a dream at this point. It is a jungle out there, and there are cannibals and wild animals who'll eat you for lunch and not think twice about it. So, organize amongst yourselves and around them, but don't argue with them. And don't have a battle of wits with anybody who doesn't have any. You might lose. More >
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