itistoday2

This is Mike Hearn.

https://lobste.rs/s/82pz7r/curated_links_to_understand_dange...

> Oh sure. I didn't expect an immediate answer to the question. I do hope you get back to me on this, though. :)

Sure, I can do that off of HN if you contact me via email or twitter. My contact info can be found on that site I linked you to.

> This gets even more complicated when such a person exercises their option to perform zero-effort secession.

Who said anything about "zero-effort"? No need to interpret my words in the most absurd way to make it easy on yourself. ;)

> I spent an hour or so digging around for those stats in my opening comment. I've spent probably another hour or two reading your comments and typing up all of my comments.

People do not need to be green on the issues they choose to vote on. Having prior knowledge and expertise is what makes an expert an expert.

Liquid democracy, from every indication, appears to be vastly superior at fairly selecting experts to vote on issues than the silliness we're using right now. Since experts can have legitimate philosophical disagreements it's only part of the solution. A mechanism for the establishment of city-states to create a market of legal systems is one of the other important pieces.

> To apply the first bullet point at the end of the essay [0] would necessarily mean the end of the US's Federal Republic. Do you disagree?

It totally depends on whether groups/states decide to remain part of it. To the extent that they do it will continue to be, and to the extent they don't it will cease to be.

> Is there a national government on Earth that you feel is well-run and adequately represents its citizens? If there is such a government, what is the representative-to-constituent ratio in that nation?

Heh, believe it or not that is a project I'd already set for myself.

It's not something I can answer for you in five minutes right now, but I will point out that Switzerland tops many charts and it actually employs direct democracy.

> If there is not such a government, what are the top five [1] problems with the way the most reasonable national governments of the world govern?

Ignoring for the moment the (non)existence of such a government, I'll rattle off a couple:

- Group rules do not represent the interests of group members. Most governments instead represent either the interests of the most wealthy (plutocracy) or the most vicious (dictatorships), and few (if any) provide explicit mechanisms for secession.

- Member votes are not properly weighed based on their understanding and knowledge of the issue they are voting on.

That last issue could be addressed by liquid democracy, or a group currency group fund: http://groupcurrency.org/#GroupFund

Apologies, reading your comment was like going down a choose-your-own-adventure maze.

For footnote [3] my reply is that representative democracy is one of a vast variety of possible systems you could use. That ratio of yours becomes much less meaningful in say, a liquid democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy

These two links should (hopefully) address any further questions: https://fixingtao.com/2016/01/lunatics-terrorists-and-the-th... + this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10899574

> From what I understand, there's a whole raft of really good, reproducible research on how to tease out what people mean from what they say

Having a game of telephone for a government... sounds like it would result in the sort of legislation that can be found in the OP. XD

> Based on this comment, you appear to be proposing that we dramatically increase the number of Federal representatives per citizen.

Not at all. I again invite you to read my other comments.

That's a fair point, but from what you've shared it sounds more like an invasion of sorts than an actual secession movement. Do you know how much of a majority they had? If it was on the order of 51% of a tiny town that just doesn't seem sufficient.

As you say, it helps for the place to be self-sufficient.

A good example actually are the Amish. Their towns are almost completely composed of Amish and they're entirely self-sufficient except for the standing army part.

For this they actually pay fewer taxes than most Americans, but they still do pay taxes.

The formation of a country seems to require at least two things then:

1. Self-sufficiency in terms of resources

2. Self-sufficiency in terms of defense

(EDIT2: A friend points out that it's a bit more nuanced than this since many existing countries do not satisfy these criteria given the nature of modern trade. So these requirements can be filled by-proxy.)

On that last point, it doesn't necessarily have to imply a superior military. As long as you have some sort of leverage over neighboring countries (like trade agreements), you can arrange to have a truce or even an alliance between yourselves.

An example would be if Silicon Valley and neighboring farming regions banded together and said, "No more tech unless you give us autonomy."

---

EDIT: regarding the question you inserted in your edit, please see if the post I mentioned answers your question: https://fixingtao.com/2016/01/lunatics-terrorists-and-the-th... If it doesn't I invite you to post a comment there to continue the convo.

> So, it is physically impossible to even pay lip service to what you propose in either fourty-six, or fourty-eight of the states in the US.

lol, that is the opposite of my proposal, and your post (thank you for it btw) just further solidifies my point.

When math says it's impossible for your representative to represent you, perhaps at that point we realize that the system has reached the end of its shelf life.

See the rest of my comments in this thread for a clearer understanding of what I'm saying (and my apologies for the comments that HN makes difficult to read due to downvotes ;).

Replying just to the last part of your edit:

> Witness the neo-Nazi group that tried to take over a town in North Dakota as an existence proof of the phenomenon. That's the kind of thing you'd explicitly have to allow, if you pursue the concept to fruition.

If you are referring to a military takeover-type situation, the concept does not endorse that as in that instance the group members are not being represented.

On the other hand, yes, if the group members choose a set of rules that you (an outsider) disagree with, they should still be allowed to do so. To quote from the post itself:

Through awareness of the mortality of all systems (including our own), we should ensure a means by which any group is able to abandon our system in a conflict-free manner if its members want to adopt something else—even if we might disagree with their choice. Systems that explicitly allow such secession are called voluntary systems.

I'll copy a reply I wrote to a similar question elsewhere.

This is a reply that was written in response to a comment on this post: https://fixingtao.com/2016/01/lunatics-terrorists-and-the-th...

And is copied from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/40uevh/lunatics_t...

<Begin>

> The system is forced onto Canadian Citizens, there is no way to opt out.

This is not entirely accurate, you can certainly opt-out by leaving Canada.

Canada is a group that has chosen to play by these rules.

So long as the rules reflect the interests of the group members, there is no problem.

The problem occurs when a substantial portion of the group membership feels no longer represented by the rules and wants to play by a different set of rules (and mass-migration is not an option).

It is not about making taxes voluntary per se, but about allowing new groups to form. If a portion of Canadians wish to form a new group, separate from Canada, then they should be allowed to. They can opt-out of paying Canadian taxes, but they will lose all of the benefits that you refer to, and I'm sure they will miss them and therefore decide to implement their own taxation system that they feel represents their interests.

Does that address your question?

</End>

> Withdrawing consent is withdrawing from the system to which you no longer consent.

You haven't actually defined "withdrawing consent" there, you've just repeated the phrase "withdrawing consent".

> Pretending you can reap the rights of participation in society without shouldering your share of the responsibilities concomitant to those rights is spectacularly delusional.

Nice feigned outrage + strawman.

> Show us what you've done.

My C.V.: https://fixingtao.com/cv/

EDIT: just noticed you stealth-edited this in:

> And I mean what you've done about withdrawing the consent, not about tech projects.

Tech projects can fall under (4). Tor, BitTorrent, Bitcoin, Silk Road, etc. were all tech projects representing withdrawal of consent through the creation of "new establishments". Creating a new country (if that's what you're referring to) also falls under (4) but requires a more cohesive community that does not knee-jerk downvote when told they have options. ;)

I am saying that if a large group of people feel they are being abused by a system that does not represent them, they are always free to reject that system and adopt another one that does work for them.

If you walk into a casino and notice that the rules appear to be rigged against you, do you try to work within the casino's system, perhaps petitioning the staff to change the rules to be more in your favor?

You have other options: (1) Leave the casino, (2) attempt to cheat the casino, (3) fight the casino using either violent or (preferably) non-violent means, (4) create a new establishment that you and your group are happy with.

Your other choice is to continue to play the slots and vent online when you keep losing, and although that might make you feel better it won't change the reality of the game.

So go ahead and create your own country. You won't be the first (nor the last) to have done so.

> Rejecting the entire concept of having leadership and structure because these particular leaders aren't perfect...

That's not what I'm suggesting at all.

I'm saying pick a structure and leaders that really do represent you. That's a very different thing from voting for pre-selected candidates whom you've never met and don't interact with, and then crossing your fingers.

> Paying fines and/or avoiding jail (within the system) are not free as in beer.

Well, in terms of copyright law it really depends. People violate copyright law all the time (see torrents) and vast majority don't pay anything for doing so.

Sometimes people do have to face consequences, but one of the reasons that is so is because of the folks who disagree with and vehemently complain about ridiculous laws that do not represent their views, while simultaneously taking actions to re-enforce the system that gives them those laws (like downvoting comments on HN that remind them they actually do have a voice and a choice in the matter).

lol @ HN downvoters who can't handle reality. That's OK, I understand and respect that you've chosen to subject yourself to rules you don't like. Just less whining and complaining, OK?

> No, actually you are not free to do that. You can declare it, but it doesn't change anything in practice.

Sure you are. People do it all the time.

Look, if as per the article you need an army of lawyers to fix your tractor, that should be your first—no probably 10th—clue that your problem is not copyright law, but the idea that copyright law is something that you need to respect and obey.

You are always free to withdraw your consent from having your life be ruled by what a handful of people you've never met (and whose names you don't even know) have decided about how you and your community needs to conduct itself.

Ethereum is going to do that in about a year.

Thankfully you're right, Facebook is not—yet—capable of disempowering the entire world by its mere existence. But it does disempower its users, and the more users it gets, the more it disempowers even those who don't use the system thanks to those "network effects" that everyone is after.

It's not inconceivable that at some point some country (perhaps very close to home) might decide that having a Facebook profile is mandatory in order to operate a business. With their Real Name™ policy it might even be useful for registering citizens. You can see this already happening on a smaller scale with some companies requiring Facebook login in order to use their product or service. I see others calling Facebook a "public utility", seemingly unconscious of where that road leads.

Sure, you can say all of that is still "voluntary". You don't need to use that product and you don't need to even be a citizen of the United States. You could move to some part of Africa where Facebook has not yet commandeered the social infrastructure. But, somewhere around that point I think most would agree that the word "voluntary" ceases to have any real meaning.

With Mark, saying and doing are two completely different things.

Example: "Helping poor people in third world countries get online" turned out to be: "Deceiving poor people in third world countries into using something called 'Internet' that's actually 'Facebook with apps', and depriving them of real online access."

That whole thing ended up being an attack on the free and open web.

"Share with friends only" is short for "Share with friends and FB employees and PRISM-subscribers while we decide who gets to see what you shared."

I could go on for quite some time.

Somehow all the "help" he tries to provide ends up increasing his control over other people's lives while disempowering them.

They can monitor, that's fine, and the correct/ethical thing would be to inform the employees about it and show them a little thing in Chrome to indicate they're being monitored.

Informed consent, in other words.

pdkl95 also makes excellent point about the current default behavior being the problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10630375

The article replies to that argument, and you are welcome to respond to it.

Did you miss the part of the article that responded to that link?

Sure. We'll post a followup review with some of the ones we missed (including Matrix and Kaiwa).

> I wish that someone would build an easy-to-use layer on top of an open protocol like IRC or XMPP.

They have: http://getkaiwa.com

> It's trivial to make a bot that sits in a channel and logs it. And it's trivial to hook up a search engine to that bot.

I have actually done that, and I know it's not trivial.

Few want to spend time tinkering with bots and hooking together archiving services. They want a nice Slack-type experience.

> eh... slack has consistently said that large communities shouldn't use its services.

That has nothing to do with Slack-like apps, and everything to do with Slack.

> Go talk to the hundreds of FOSS communities that use IRC. they have all fixed the persistence / search problem

I am part of many FOSS communities on IRC. None of them have "fixed" that problem. There might be one or two that archive the channel somewhere. That is no substitute for real in-app persistence and search.

Rocket.Chat does have an open issue with discussion about this: https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues/36

IRC simply lacks important desirable features, making it poor for community building (given the existence of better alternatives). The two biggest missing features are persistence and search.

Other important missing features are ease of use in terms of creation of topic-focused channels, private channels, and high quality mobile and desktop clients.