> We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things.
This is like saying we need to want to end poverty more than we want to prevent ending poverty. No one is for poverty, but very few people are against it enough to give up their money, power, or time. We need to want these things enough to make sacrifices
> We need to break the rapidly escalating price curves for housing, education, and healthcare
Most of the problems he mentions stem from government. Our government is legacy software and
the author is right that lodged deep within the spaghetti code are leeches who benefit from the current system and fight against change. But they aren't the biggest problem...
Billions of dollars are spent lobbying and the % of that money that is spent pushing for causes like better healthcare or education for everyone is infinitesimally small compared to what's spent lobbying for changes that'll benefit a few at the expense of the many. But this isn't the biggest problem either...
The problem is that the infrastructure that powers our democracy -- the stuff and rules that exist to enable the people to exercise their authority -- is eroding. I asked my grandparents if people always felt like their government was incompetent. To my surprise, they said that when they were young most Americans were proud of the government.
What's the solution? The idea of democracy isn't broken, but our current implementation is. We need an upgraded democracy the way Wikipedia upgraded our old encyclopedias or Amazon upgraded commerce. These aren't new ideas, they're simply new implementations using new tools. Technology is transforming everything around us but our government is stuck in 1776.
You know what the right and left have in common? We all know things could and should be better, but they aren't. Right now we're pointing fingers at the other side, but eventually we'll realize the machine is broken. When enough people feel this way, change will come, and it will come from the bottom up. But it's not as simple as just wanting change as Marc suggests...
First, people need to get angry enough to do something. In retrospect, change seems obvious, but looking forward it's risky. People have to lose a lot in order to put their time, money, and future on the line to fight for something that might not work, and this is hardest for the people who are the worst off in society and most need change to happen.
Second, people will vote for increasingly extreme candidates to try and change the system from within. This will result in incremental change, but it won't reform the system.
Third, a new system will emerge in parallel to our current government. If history is any predictor of the future, this is almost guaranteed to happen eventually. I have no idea what the new system will look like or when it'll emerge, but this is the type of thing we need to build. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone is building it already and we just haven't realized it yet.
Third, non-voting legislative house. 1 member for every 3500 citizens, geography agnostic; get 3499 of other interested citizens together and elect one of you to represent the group, for whatever policies or interests you care for. Members of this body are the only people who are allowed to meet with the Senate during four annual 6-week periods of sequestration. Outside lobbying by non-individuals is banned. Conversely, "legislative marketing" to the public by individually-controlled entities is banned.
In this way, the arms-length nature of the Senate and the existence of a body close to the public are restored, while disrupting the influence of entrenched, established interests.
so it is. Democracy is not broken, but it really needs a modern remake. The problems we face today are more complex than ever, and we should be pushing out solutions based on the best crowd-sourced thinking, for the 99% of the people out there.
Also we need to start codifying the "meta" of government, the same way we have codified the "meta" of software development. Government and society at large should have regular mechanisms to counteract or at least slow the spread of red tape, legislative capture, and other systemic rots.
In particular there are issues that have little to do with government and more with the interaction between people and institutions. For example, it worries me to no end that in the middle of a pandemy the current news cycles centers on finger-pointing and gossip about Trump and the governors, while virology, epidemiology and the intricacies of vaccine development get very little coverage. When was the last time that you saw an explanatory diagram in a wide-circulation newspaper?
At an age where science and technology are more accessible than ever, our media divests attention and citizen time to gossip, instead of motivating people to learn and build more. Admitedly, provoking rage sells more than educating. But isn't social unity and development more important than the bottom line of media organizations? Maybe we should have mechanisms in place to subsidize social utility, and some taxes for toxic content, the same way we tax alcohol and tobacco.
This is like saying we need to want to end poverty more than we want to prevent ending poverty. No one is for poverty, but very few people are against it enough to give up their money, power, or time. We need to want these things enough to make sacrifices
> We need to break the rapidly escalating price curves for housing, education, and healthcare
Most of the problems he mentions stem from government. Our government is legacy software and the author is right that lodged deep within the spaghetti code are leeches who benefit from the current system and fight against change. But they aren't the biggest problem...
Billions of dollars are spent lobbying and the % of that money that is spent pushing for causes like better healthcare or education for everyone is infinitesimally small compared to what's spent lobbying for changes that'll benefit a few at the expense of the many. But this isn't the biggest problem either...
The problem is that the infrastructure that powers our democracy -- the stuff and rules that exist to enable the people to exercise their authority -- is eroding. I asked my grandparents if people always felt like their government was incompetent. To my surprise, they said that when they were young most Americans were proud of the government.
What's the solution? The idea of democracy isn't broken, but our current implementation is. We need an upgraded democracy the way Wikipedia upgraded our old encyclopedias or Amazon upgraded commerce. These aren't new ideas, they're simply new implementations using new tools. Technology is transforming everything around us but our government is stuck in 1776.
You know what the right and left have in common? We all know things could and should be better, but they aren't. Right now we're pointing fingers at the other side, but eventually we'll realize the machine is broken. When enough people feel this way, change will come, and it will come from the bottom up. But it's not as simple as just wanting change as Marc suggests...
First, people need to get angry enough to do something. In retrospect, change seems obvious, but looking forward it's risky. People have to lose a lot in order to put their time, money, and future on the line to fight for something that might not work, and this is hardest for the people who are the worst off in society and most need change to happen.
Second, people will vote for increasingly extreme candidates to try and change the system from within. This will result in incremental change, but it won't reform the system.
Third, a new system will emerge in parallel to our current government. If history is any predictor of the future, this is almost guaranteed to happen eventually. I have no idea what the new system will look like or when it'll emerge, but this is the type of thing we need to build. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone is building it already and we just haven't realized it yet.