From: avatar (avatar@renegadeclothing.com.au)
Date: Wed Jan 22 2003 - 21:37:11 MST
Intersting, Emyln. Are you arguing for a more Greek style "direct democracy"
enabled by intelligence augmentation and multiple and fast communication?
Towards Ascension
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34 After Armstrong
In Celebration of the Techno-Rapture
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Maximum choice and minimum non-consensual force
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Alpha Null
Radiant Era
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Axiom Flux
----- Original Message -----
From: "Emlyn O'regan" <oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au>
To: "Extropy (E-mail)" <extropians@extropy.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 11:34 AM
Subject: re: Solar govt in a postmortal world: voting system
> (sorry, this originally, accidentally went to wta-talk but was supposed to
> go here. Cross posting is bad!)
>
> I think that if you are talking about a posthuman world (Eliezer will slap
> me, consider me slapped already ok), then you'd want to do away with
> representative democracy altogether.
>
> Instead, my vague notion is that, where you need government, full direct
> participation is the go. You have groups like commitees for all the
> different functions of government, influencing and directing each other in
a
> complex and self evolving web. Posthumans would, as far as they would care
> to, directly participate for as long as they cared to, in the areas of
> interest to them; no barriers to entry. Assuming that a posthuman mind is
a
> vast and fragmentable thing, a posthuman could devote more or less mental
> resources to each area of interest/concern, and exercise some kind of
> proportional power in the group.
>
> Ideas like specialisation, modularity, and simplicity of organisation do
> tend to go away (or recede) in the face of vastly increased intelligence;
if
> all players can comprehend an entire complex networked social environment
> all at once, the need for central control goes away.
>
> Representative democracy is a least worst system, where communications
> bandwidth & latency is poor (compared to thought, say), and where the
> sentient beings involved are mentally quite limited (single gepographical
> location, ability to simultaneously attend to a few things at most, etc).
> The idea of a few making decisions for the many, in the future world of
> unchained cognition, makes little sense.
>
> Emlyn
>
>
> avatar wrote:
> > In a more postmortal environment I'd propose a two part
> > governmental system, part one being a house elected by
> > proportional representation (with 6,000 members, each 0.1% =
> > seat, i.e. one per million, allowing political swings in
> > cultural/ethnic groupings to have a say). Part two being a
> > powerful local government with one area seat per 1,000
> > persons, i.e. 6 million worldwide - with the ability to form
> > loose coalitions - this is a high rate of representation,
> > with a representative body about half the size of a Western
> > police force, appropriate for a society with less violence
> > and more cultural whims. Executive power within the
> > proportional house would probably be best served with
> > something close to the American system (seperate head and
> > judiciary) but with a much weaker executive.
> >
> > Solar system government? Yes, but decentralized, with very
> > powerful and very small array of local governments (including
> > coalitions) and strict rules about freedom to leave zones and
> > freedom to pass through zones. Freedom to enter permanently
> > might be subject to majority agreement or unaminous blocking.
> > Universal base level human and sentient rights ought to
> > apply. Issues such as allocation of virtuality resources
> > (outside of the individual's brain) would be matters for the
> > Solar government.
>
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