Dynamist Rules (Thoughts on Improving Our Community)

Terry Donaghe (tdonaghe@yahoo.com)
Thu, 17 Jun 1999 09:28:18 -0700 (PDT)

Here are Virginia Postrel's suggestions for forming rules for Dynamic Societies. These are from her book, "The Future and It's Enemies." BTW, it's an excellent book, and one that I think all Extropians could profit from.

She suggests that Dynamist Rules:

  1. Allow individuals (including groups of individuals) to act on their own knowledge.
  2. Apply to simple, generic units and allow them to combine in many different ways.
  3. Permit credible, understandable, enduring, and enforceable commitments.
  4. Protect criticism, competition, and feedback.
  5. Establish a framework within which people can create nested, competing frameworks of more specific rules.

I think that for us rules number 2 and 4 apply most directly. We need simple rules that apply to as broad an audience (the mass public) as possible. Right now, I'm not sure that we have ANY rules, and that may be the problem.

Whatever we come up with should be firmly rooted in the Extropian Principles, primarily the ones concerning rational thought and open societies.

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Terry Donaghe: terry@donaghe.com
http://www.donaghe.com
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams


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