Funny you mention Landemore, for one of her political science classes at Yale she and her students wrote a constitution for a Mars colony as an illustration of how her Open Democracy ideas might be practically implemented. https://drive.proton.me/urls/X989G6MFP8#9I7DgmtF2ae7
1) If martian citizens thrive and reproduce in large numbers, should governing units be shrunk to city state size to maximize the "laboratories of democracy" aspect of policy making? Have you read Ober's The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece? He makes some fascinating points about Greek city state GDP growing faster than it had in history, and the high living standards in Greek cities. That topped out at the Roman conquest, and began to shrink thereafter, until Greece was quite poor under the Byzantines.
2) What of Switzerland (small population, moderate-sized country) with its direct democracy? It seem to function way better than I'd suspect. Is this because it's so small? Could a large state function with some version of their governing structure?
3) Is there an argument to be made for the impairment of the legislative process? America turns like a bloated cruise ship — slowly, and only after great effort. But yet America does surprisingly well in many regards. America gets plenty wrong, but because it's so hard to make changes, stupid choices are avoided that would have otherwise strangled GDP growth and other positives.
This is a really interesting and thought-provoking article. I think however, that we don't have to wait for Mars to test this out. Though Mars and similar places will be an ultimate challenge, we can test these ideas with charter cities. This is something I'm really excited about. Maybe during this century we will establish dozens of different semi-autonomous cities that could test these governance ideas. Then best practices can be adopted both by the older states and by our new colonies outside of Earth.
Can you link the studies that show that regulators that are funded via fees perform better than both that are dependent on government money? If this is true we should fund the FDA through taxes and make it so that the drug companies can get a tax credit later from the IRS as to reduce the regulatory compliance costs for small companies.
Excellent article! Structure influences so much of the game of politics. Proportional representation and sortition can be very useful. Very nicely done with research supporting the concepts!!!
Actually, I've got one more. Put your utopian hat on.
Is there any chance for our intrepid Martians to become less foolish?
The problem with government is that its run by flawed humans. That's not going to change. The US constitution attempted to adapt to this reality, as Hamilton explains in Federalist No. 51, but that only goes so far.
So are we stuck with today's cognitive biases? Can we do better as a society by instilling better thinking and calling each other out on our foolishness?
Thanks for a thoughtful post. One comment: turning technical things over to “experts” can be disastrous. Economic experts have pushed for lowering federal debt, deregulation, free trade, all with disproportionately bad outcomes for the average American.
Funny you mention Landemore, for one of her political science classes at Yale she and her students wrote a constitution for a Mars colony as an illustration of how her Open Democracy ideas might be practically implemented. https://drive.proton.me/urls/X989G6MFP8#9I7DgmtF2ae7
Good piece. Three questions:
1) If martian citizens thrive and reproduce in large numbers, should governing units be shrunk to city state size to maximize the "laboratories of democracy" aspect of policy making? Have you read Ober's The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece? He makes some fascinating points about Greek city state GDP growing faster than it had in history, and the high living standards in Greek cities. That topped out at the Roman conquest, and began to shrink thereafter, until Greece was quite poor under the Byzantines.
2) What of Switzerland (small population, moderate-sized country) with its direct democracy? It seem to function way better than I'd suspect. Is this because it's so small? Could a large state function with some version of their governing structure?
3) Is there an argument to be made for the impairment of the legislative process? America turns like a bloated cruise ship — slowly, and only after great effort. But yet America does surprisingly well in many regards. America gets plenty wrong, but because it's so hard to make changes, stupid choices are avoided that would have otherwise strangled GDP growth and other positives.
This is a really interesting and thought-provoking article. I think however, that we don't have to wait for Mars to test this out. Though Mars and similar places will be an ultimate challenge, we can test these ideas with charter cities. This is something I'm really excited about. Maybe during this century we will establish dozens of different semi-autonomous cities that could test these governance ideas. Then best practices can be adopted both by the older states and by our new colonies outside of Earth.
Can you link the studies that show that regulators that are funded via fees perform better than both that are dependent on government money? If this is true we should fund the FDA through taxes and make it so that the drug companies can get a tax credit later from the IRS as to reduce the regulatory compliance costs for small companies.
Excellent article! Structure influences so much of the game of politics. Proportional representation and sortition can be very useful. Very nicely done with research supporting the concepts!!!
Singapore's "independent" judiciary always seems to find in the government favor on "political" measures. :)
Actually, I've got one more. Put your utopian hat on.
Is there any chance for our intrepid Martians to become less foolish?
The problem with government is that its run by flawed humans. That's not going to change. The US constitution attempted to adapt to this reality, as Hamilton explains in Federalist No. 51, but that only goes so far.
So are we stuck with today's cognitive biases? Can we do better as a society by instilling better thinking and calling each other out on our foolishness?
Thanks for a thoughtful post. One comment: turning technical things over to “experts” can be disastrous. Economic experts have pushed for lowering federal debt, deregulation, free trade, all with disproportionately bad outcomes for the average American.