[extropy-chat] Politics: Transhumanist Social System

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:

> --- Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Democracy's great achievement is the carefully balanced
> institutions
> > which share power, thus preventing autocracy, but its great
> > embarrasment is the professional politician. A 21st century
> democracy
> > should really be direct, with each citizen having his/her say on
> > issues as they care to.
> 
> While there is perhaps technical for people to represent themselves,
> it is also the case that many government issues are complex enough
> that few members of the public understand them well enough to
> effectively act on them - over and above the vast array of opinions.

This is statist bogosity. I don't need to understand how to clone an
organism myself to have an informed opinion of cloning. Issues become
complex only for those who refuse to operate under a consistent
philosophy. Then again, all of life is complex for those who refuse to
adopt rules of decomplexification.

The general public can understand much of even the most technical
issues if you don't patronize them, castrate their educations, or work
them so hard paying exhorbitant tax and regulatory burdens that they
don't have the time to contribute to civic life.

> It is also the case that, when a deliberating body gets too large, it
> essentially becomes unable to function: the sheer mechanics of
> allowing thousands (to say nothing of millions) of different opinions
> to be voiced about an issue, with each one seriously listened to,
> would bring most legislation to a halt.  

This is a clear shibboleth. That state-wide and national referenda
frequently pass, or not, and are held in a well organized manner by
conventional methods means that, provided email or other communications
protocols can be made more secure, newer technology should be capable
of devolving much legislation to the individual level..

Furthermore, if a polity cannot make effective decisions on certain
issues consistently, that is actually a good argument for why the
decision should not be made at that level, and it should be kicked down
to more local levels. This is why federalism works so well for the US:
if national consensus is impossible for reasons of either divided
opinion, or constitutional restrictions, then it becomes an issue for
individual states to decide one way or another on.


Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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