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DemocracyOS

democracyos.org

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Re: DemocracyOS

#51

Post by gvilarino »

yourad_io wrote: post #31

This is amazing. I have dreamt of a system like this and armchair-proposed it to friends countless times. I am always faced with derision in such conversations[1] - but I believe that a secure implementation of such an idea could be the future of democracy. Or rather, its past. Ancient Greek democracy wasn't perfect (slavery; not everyone was citizen) but it was much better than our current system of professional pol…

Thanks for your insights!

Totally agree; finding out what democratic interaction should look like and how it should work for societies in the current hyper-connected paradigm is -at best- something that will take a lot of time.

There is, undoubtedly, a technological challenge to address, but moreover I think the greatest challenge is the cultural one. We're risen to think communites (countries, towns, organisations, etc.) should be managed in one of so many fashions, but we're willing to ask ourselves time and again what other possible ways there are for doing this, and implement on that.

We may not nail it soon, but we'll definitely try as long as we can.

Re: DemocracyOS

#52

Post by piamancini »

gghootch wrote: post #49

Love the direction this is going. Dreamt about such a system in the past as well. Looking forward to a mobile first experience which enables me to weigh-in on (local) issues in real-time.

hi! some pilot live implementations with council-members in the US: marfarrell.democracyos.org (SF) benkallos.democracyos.org (NYC). Would love to know your thoughts. pia@democracyos.org

Re: DemocracyOS

#53

Post by piamancini »

rbf_ wrote: post #37
jtmurphy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with wyager. A political system should be a strong constitution that defines the rights of individuals. Something like DemocracyOS should be used to engage the population into ensuring that political actions are in fact constitutional and just.

I think what we really need is ConstitutionalRepublicOS which would be a bit more complicated. But by defining strong constitutional invariants with regard to individual rights perhaps we could pre-strikedown unconstitutional laws before they are enacted. That would require a more precise legal language that let's you run some kind of static analysis against against the laws however.

maybe we could think about a two-tier system were we delegate only decisions that should be taken our of the hands of majority and to the citizens the huge number of decisions that we can make that affect our every-day lives. I think the only way for citizens to be responsible for the decisions we make is by start making them. We've outsourced decision-making for a far too long time.

Re: DemocracyOS

#54

Post by gus_massa »

When this is successful, I don't understand how you will combat the capture of the platform form the traditional parties.

A traditional party can ask their supporters to vote for them in the elections, and then ask them to vote for the same laws in this platform. They don't ever need to discuss, or they can discuss and discuss and vote for the official party decision nevertheless. So the party gets double votes, unless the other parties also try to abuse the system. (If everybody abuse the system, the biggest party get double votes.)

In the comments sections of the newspapers is very usual to see very politized users and real or alleged accusations of astroturfing, shills, suckpupets, meatpupets, 50-cents-army, choriplaneros, ...

Re: DemocracyOS

#55

Post by [deleted] »

alecco wrote: post #40

Very questionable people behind it (close second hand). All hype and self promotion. Zero experience. Shunned often in most online forums in Argentina, save TedX. I really don't get how YC decided to back this project.

[deleted]

Re: DemocracyOS

#56

Post by dataker »

As a Brazilian, I find this initiative to be extremely important.

However, I've recently seen 'democratic' videos urging for a military dictatorship. Millions of Facebook users shared the message and ~1M people protested last sunday, while trying to kick out our president.

So I wonder if, contradictorily, some might exploit DemocracyOS to install anti-democratic regimes.

Is there a way to ensure such thing won't happen?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HR9vqx9oTQ

Re: DemocracyOS

#57

Post by santisiri »

dataker wrote: post #56

As a Brazilian, I find this initiative to be extremely important. However, I've recently seen 'democratic' videos urging for a military dictatorship. Millions of Facebook users shared the message and ~1M people protested last sunday, while trying to kick out our president. So I wonder if, contradictorily, some might exploit DemocracyOS to install anti-democratic regimes. Is there a way to ensure such thing won't happ…

Check the implementation of DemocracyOS done here: http://euvoto.org

Re: DemocracyOS

#58

Post by santisiri »

alecco wrote: post #50
santisiri wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not easy being an entrepreneur and building a network of likeminded people from around the world :)

It can't be that hard if that is most of your time. But maybe you are burning older contacts even faster than my limited sample. YC: ask his previous investors and employees what they think, independently and in private.

please do, more than willing! i still hang out with a lot of the people that worked with me during 12 years, and all my investors are very happy (they actually keep supporting us as a nonprofit, can you believe it?). I'm really proud about this. It's the main force behind the fact that we are able to be here. And also, I have no idea of who you are.. so don't pretend you know stuff you really do not. Ahh.. haters. Gotta love'em.

Re: DemocracyOS

#59

Post by vezzy-fnord »

The idea of "open source governance" is hardly new. I'd imagine such a system in the form of a web app would be swamped with irrelevant queries. Assuming an idealistic direct democracy where citizens draft new laws or modify existing ones, the feedback loop of constantly changing legal information to its application would be overwhelming. On the flip side, too much unaddressed issues and slow or wasteful processes would create apathy.

Personally I always thought the most attractive model for such an endeavor is to store laws in a markup format, and go through the old school route of mailing lists and patches. You'd be making use of highly tested infrastructure and actually require for participants to put a little effort in learning.

Re: DemocracyOS

#60

Post by gvilarino »

gus_massa wrote: post #54

When this is successful, I don't understand how you will combat the capture of the platform form the traditional parties. A traditional party can ask their supporters to vote for them in the elections, and then ask them to vote for the same laws in this platform. They don't ever need to discuss, or they can discuss and discuss and vote for the official party decision nevertheless. So the party gets double votes, unle…

Super-valid concern. The truth is that very-politically-involved people aren't that big a percentage of the overall population (at least from the numbers I've seen - usually around 10%). So we're trying to find ways of making it easy for that other 90% to engage in civic participation. If we get to nail that, then even any 'arranged' participation would not account for a significant part of the votes for a given issue.

Also, from our experience with DemocracyOS, users actually participate in stuff they actually care about, and not equally on every sort of issue. So it's interesting to see how larger userbases would unfold with apps like DemocracyOS or similar.

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