Kaneda
01-14-2008, 05:45 PM
This is something that i wanted to write about for a long time now. I think a lot of people supporting Ron Paul are somewhat frustrated, due to the seeming little progress our cause shows, a feeling i think every libertarian is used to. All the others have a state of their own, the Democrats, the Monarchs, the Totalitarians, the Socialists, the Communists, the Oligarchs, even the Anarchists. What about us??? A libertarian state? None. I am a dreamer, so i thought about how a perfect libertarian state would look like, and how it would work. And i got an idea. About two years ago. I never published it until now, i didn't know where, as the few libertarian islands in the wasteness of the internet seemed so sparsely inhabited. But three weeks ago, i stumbled upon Ron Paul, and then inevitably on this forum. So, here i am, with strengthed hope and i want to tell you about my idea, not only because i think it may one day be implemented, but also to add yet another idea to the creative flow this forum has started. Although this is not an idea about how to get Ron Paul elected, i hope it may show how the goal we strive to could look like. And of course, i would love to discuss this idea with you !
When i thought about a libertarian state, i didn't asked myself, how to get to it, a lot of people do that already, but i asked myself, how to keep it. Because, that seems to be the bigger problem. A true republic with it's rule of law has to be constantly vigilant about freedom, it must be vigilant about it's leaders, who will likely try to "break the chains of government". In a republic with democratic voting system, for the government to be stable one has to make sure that the people don't vote themselves into tyranny, as has happened, not only in present time, but also in ancient Greece. I think most people on this forum will agree with me, that the democratic voting system is flawed. As i see it, the problem lies in the low interest of people in politics. There seems to be many reasons as to why people tend to prefer to stay ignorant about politics but still think they know enougth to vote. The result is what we see today, the best sounding ideas or people get elected. My guess is, that people take about one minute in average to become acquainted to each candidate and then decide who to vote. And then there is the media bias. So no wonder we get collectivists as leaders, because their ideas just sound so good!
So, how do we change that? Do we force the people to read about politics? Do we give permissions to vote only to those who have a serious understanding of politics? Well, that wouldn't be very libertarian like, would it? I came to the conclusion, that it is not the people that are flawed, but the voting system. It is the voting system that favorites people drawn to power to get elected and wreck the system bit by bit. So, how do we get a voting system, that does not elect people with this tendency about ruling others?
I am an informatician and i always liked to think about the parallels between computational information systems and political or social information systems, the relationships between people. And in the informatics i found what i think is the solution to the voting problem. So to be frank, it isn't really my idea, i just applied an idea from the computer sciences to politics, and this will sound really funny: think about Google. Yeah, i know, this really sounds funny. But why did Google work so well in an environment of millions of pages, each trying hard to get recognition using all possible means? Google is a voting system. A complicated one. But the fundamental idea behind Google is relatively easy, and that is all that is needed in the area of politics.
Google uses pages like one would use voters. Let me give a typical Bavarian example :) Consider all the pages in the internet that are talking about BMWs. How come, that when you type "BMW" in Google, you get the official BMW site? Bullseye. Well, it is the system. Google uses each link as a vote from one webpage to another, meaning something like "you want to know about BMWs? Look that way!". But that alone isn't the magic. What Google does, is that it gives a weighting to pages, which can be seen as "respectability". That means that when there are a lot of links going to a specific page, that page goes up in rank, and it's links get more weight, so that it has more impact on the weighting of the pages it refers itself. You can see that as a trust system. Each page gets the trust of the pages linking to it. So in fact, the official BMW webpage has the highest trust for the word "BMW", because a lot of pages with high "trust ranking" themselves are linking to it. It is an indirect voting system, where pages not only get votes from pages directly linking to them, but also from pages indirectly linking to them.
This system can also work in politics, but its meaning is a different from the one of the democratic voting system. In most of the democratic voting systems, you vote directly a person, which has, or seems to have, the same views as you, but which you, in most cases, don't know personally. It is more a gamble in hope that this person will represent you well. Using the Google system, you wouldn't vote for people you don't know but mainly for people you know personnaly, because it isn't a vote on views, but a vote on trust, which is then propagated by these people. In this system, you vote for people you trust personnaly, simply because you know them well. And you don't have only one vote, but you have as many votes as you like, because you can trust many people, just as a webpage can link to as many pages as it likes. The important thing is that each page, or in politics, each person can only give one "vote-point" to another page or person, but the number of persons or pages is not limited. And each person would gain the influence of other people with these votes, and would be able to us this influence for the benefit of the people she votes in turn.
Why does this work? The important thing about this way of voting is the fact, that each individual can give his influence to more than one person. Let me give an easy example. Imagine, a small town where your typical politician and the local teacher both want to be elected to be the mayor. To make it easy, lets assume everybody knows everybody. And lets assume the politician is really good at convincing people to vote for him, by giving the usual promises. But he isn't that good as to convince everybody. Lets say he convinces 70% of the population to be the best candidate. In a democratic system, he wins against the teacher who has 30% of the votes. Now assume, each person can vote for many candidates. The 70% voting for the politician now can also cast a vote for the teacher, because now they vote for the people they trust. Now it is the teacher who wins, not because he is the most convincing candidate, but because he is the candidate who gets the most trust.
The indirection of votes gives another twist to this system. It permits to "webs of trust" to form, which will always be stronger between honest people as between dishonest ones, simply because dishonest people never fool everybody, so they loose influence in this system. The democratic system works well in small groups, where everybody knows everybody else. Each individual can make up his mind about the others, and communication between the people makes it easier to spot the dishonest ones. This effect dissapears in larger groups. That is why we need a good system, which measures the personal knowledge of each individual to find out who the most trustworthy are.
Imagine a political system, where it is not the political affiliation, the political party, the race or gender, or the nose which chooses the leader, but the trustworthiness. I think that is as good as it can get.
To implement such a system, well, that's another story... I think that such a "web of trust" could be really useful for a net-based news system, as it would be possible to filter out sources which are not trustworthy. That may be a possible application which isn't so far-fetched.
I hope you like this idea.
When i thought about a libertarian state, i didn't asked myself, how to get to it, a lot of people do that already, but i asked myself, how to keep it. Because, that seems to be the bigger problem. A true republic with it's rule of law has to be constantly vigilant about freedom, it must be vigilant about it's leaders, who will likely try to "break the chains of government". In a republic with democratic voting system, for the government to be stable one has to make sure that the people don't vote themselves into tyranny, as has happened, not only in present time, but also in ancient Greece. I think most people on this forum will agree with me, that the democratic voting system is flawed. As i see it, the problem lies in the low interest of people in politics. There seems to be many reasons as to why people tend to prefer to stay ignorant about politics but still think they know enougth to vote. The result is what we see today, the best sounding ideas or people get elected. My guess is, that people take about one minute in average to become acquainted to each candidate and then decide who to vote. And then there is the media bias. So no wonder we get collectivists as leaders, because their ideas just sound so good!
So, how do we change that? Do we force the people to read about politics? Do we give permissions to vote only to those who have a serious understanding of politics? Well, that wouldn't be very libertarian like, would it? I came to the conclusion, that it is not the people that are flawed, but the voting system. It is the voting system that favorites people drawn to power to get elected and wreck the system bit by bit. So, how do we get a voting system, that does not elect people with this tendency about ruling others?
I am an informatician and i always liked to think about the parallels between computational information systems and political or social information systems, the relationships between people. And in the informatics i found what i think is the solution to the voting problem. So to be frank, it isn't really my idea, i just applied an idea from the computer sciences to politics, and this will sound really funny: think about Google. Yeah, i know, this really sounds funny. But why did Google work so well in an environment of millions of pages, each trying hard to get recognition using all possible means? Google is a voting system. A complicated one. But the fundamental idea behind Google is relatively easy, and that is all that is needed in the area of politics.
Google uses pages like one would use voters. Let me give a typical Bavarian example :) Consider all the pages in the internet that are talking about BMWs. How come, that when you type "BMW" in Google, you get the official BMW site? Bullseye. Well, it is the system. Google uses each link as a vote from one webpage to another, meaning something like "you want to know about BMWs? Look that way!". But that alone isn't the magic. What Google does, is that it gives a weighting to pages, which can be seen as "respectability". That means that when there are a lot of links going to a specific page, that page goes up in rank, and it's links get more weight, so that it has more impact on the weighting of the pages it refers itself. You can see that as a trust system. Each page gets the trust of the pages linking to it. So in fact, the official BMW webpage has the highest trust for the word "BMW", because a lot of pages with high "trust ranking" themselves are linking to it. It is an indirect voting system, where pages not only get votes from pages directly linking to them, but also from pages indirectly linking to them.
This system can also work in politics, but its meaning is a different from the one of the democratic voting system. In most of the democratic voting systems, you vote directly a person, which has, or seems to have, the same views as you, but which you, in most cases, don't know personally. It is more a gamble in hope that this person will represent you well. Using the Google system, you wouldn't vote for people you don't know but mainly for people you know personnaly, because it isn't a vote on views, but a vote on trust, which is then propagated by these people. In this system, you vote for people you trust personnaly, simply because you know them well. And you don't have only one vote, but you have as many votes as you like, because you can trust many people, just as a webpage can link to as many pages as it likes. The important thing is that each page, or in politics, each person can only give one "vote-point" to another page or person, but the number of persons or pages is not limited. And each person would gain the influence of other people with these votes, and would be able to us this influence for the benefit of the people she votes in turn.
Why does this work? The important thing about this way of voting is the fact, that each individual can give his influence to more than one person. Let me give an easy example. Imagine, a small town where your typical politician and the local teacher both want to be elected to be the mayor. To make it easy, lets assume everybody knows everybody. And lets assume the politician is really good at convincing people to vote for him, by giving the usual promises. But he isn't that good as to convince everybody. Lets say he convinces 70% of the population to be the best candidate. In a democratic system, he wins against the teacher who has 30% of the votes. Now assume, each person can vote for many candidates. The 70% voting for the politician now can also cast a vote for the teacher, because now they vote for the people they trust. Now it is the teacher who wins, not because he is the most convincing candidate, but because he is the candidate who gets the most trust.
The indirection of votes gives another twist to this system. It permits to "webs of trust" to form, which will always be stronger between honest people as between dishonest ones, simply because dishonest people never fool everybody, so they loose influence in this system. The democratic system works well in small groups, where everybody knows everybody else. Each individual can make up his mind about the others, and communication between the people makes it easier to spot the dishonest ones. This effect dissapears in larger groups. That is why we need a good system, which measures the personal knowledge of each individual to find out who the most trustworthy are.
Imagine a political system, where it is not the political affiliation, the political party, the race or gender, or the nose which chooses the leader, but the trustworthiness. I think that is as good as it can get.
To implement such a system, well, that's another story... I think that such a "web of trust" could be really useful for a net-based news system, as it would be possible to filter out sources which are not trustworthy. That may be a possible application which isn't so far-fetched.
I hope you like this idea.