YC's request for startups: Government 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#181

Post by kaushikktiwari » Thu, May 23, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

kaushikktiwari wrote: post #180

jamesjyu wrote: post #152

In a recent newsletter from Robin Sloan (sci-fi writer), he shares what he's heard from a few engineers that work in China: "The Chinese government is building an OS and, in the not-too-distant future, the world will be split: those nations that adopt it, and those that don’t. This OS isn’t just software – it’s also access to Chinese capital, investments in infrastructure, and more – but it is ALSO software, a very c…

most of the amazing facial recognition tech is actually israeli--and turns out the biggest buyers of military foreign tech tend to be competitors of china, so not sure how much legs this OS idea has, unless you mean small eastern european republics signing up

still love the OS idea--it found its home on a HN thread. The US has been selling the word its OS for the most of the last century, some would say about time another one showed up

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#182

Post by ibeckermayer » Thu, May 23, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

kaushikktiwari wrote: post #177

ibeckermayer wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly right. I can give you a perfect example from a project I'm working on: http://openinsulin.org/ We're working to make medicine more affordable, focusing on insulin in particular. Insulin has been around for decades, it's easy to make. Technology has been improving, things should be getting cheaper. Instead, insulin continues to rise [1]. People with diabetes need this stuff, if they don't have it they'll liter…

This is really cool--did you hear about how a bunch of hospitals are coming together to manufacture generic drugs that are marked up by PBMs--I imagine if something like that where a stakeholder with input in the buying process can come in and guarantee like a monopolistic market for an upstart..the drugs are going to be cheaper but the fact that the hospitals themselves are consumers means people can take long term…

Hmm that's an interesting avenue. I've heard of that briefly somewhere but haven't put any thought into seeking out partnership. Thanks for the tip.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#183

Post by rkagerer » Thu, May 23, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

I've been thinking about creating a platform for discussion of present-day issues, built on a reputation-based contribution system akin to how StackOverflow surfaces quality content.

The goal is to give average citizens a place to go to:

  - become informed about all sides of an issue in a quick and easy way
  - share a new opinion, or up-vote a remark that resonates
  - monitor and engage in affairs you care about while ignoring those you don't

I feel democracy in North America needs to foster more constituent participation, and I think the internet can turn governance into a two-way street.

Anyone could open an issue, no matter how controversial. Anyone can provide their opinion, and one of the challenges is figuring out how to engineer the site such that high-quality submissions float to the top while trolling and inappropriate remarks sieve down to obscurity. Conflicting positions would be grouped into major camps with the top-voted contributions of each equally showcased (picture the Amazon review page with the most helpful positive and negative review on top).

Each issue would have a section organizing fact-checked, unbiased research presented from well-reputed sources (possibly distinguished through community moderation) and make that work easy to cite. It would also track related, real-world events as they occur (e.g. bills being voted on, court cases, protests, breaking news, etc). We'd link to existing sites where it makes sense (e.g. Wikipedia, Factcheck/Politifact, stuff like TheyWorkForYou, etc.)

The site would offer (but not require) to collect your demographics and share anonymized stats with levels or branches of government you choose (e.g. local counselor, municipal utilities, state, etc) or social researchers. You could opt in to lightweight surveys from your representatives (targeted by geography, demographics, or issues of interest) to help them gain more granular understanding of the needs of their constituents.

This isn't fully fleshed out and I know it covers a lot of ground - too much for one startup to do all at once. Some of it has already been attempted by others. Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

One thing I became convinced of pretty quickly is in order for this to succeed it needs to be built and hosted by a non-profit able to maintain a strong public reputation for being unbiased.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#184

Post by breck » Thu, May 23, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #171

breck wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to reduce ambiguity as much as possible, but not eliminate it entirely. Still want judges!

This is the typical programmer misunderstanding of law. In countries whose legal system is based on that of England (including most of the US), ambiguity is a design goal of statutes, not something meant to be eliminated. Statutes are supposed to be specified in broad strokes and then have the details hashed out by intelligent judges to work in particular circumstances that the legislators didn't envision. And "the l…

> not something meant to be eliminated

I said exactly the opposite: "not eliminate it"

> Most of the law is the tradition of judicial interpretation of those statutes.

This is a very good point. You could simply have judges write decisions in a decision language as well, which is defined just as the law language is defined.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#185

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, May 23, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #184

School-Cotton wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the typical programmer misunderstanding of law. In countries whose legal system is based on that of England (including most of the US), ambiguity is a design goal of statutes, not something meant to be eliminated. Statutes are supposed to be specified in broad strokes and then have the details hashed out by intelligent judges to work in particular circumstances that the legislators didn't envision. And "the l…

> not something meant to be eliminated I said exactly the opposite: "not eliminate it" > Most of the law is the tradition of judicial interpretation of those statutes. This is a very good point. You could simply have judges write decisions in a decision language as well, which is defined just as the law language is defined.

Okay fine, let me rephrase. It is not something meant to be reduced.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#186

Post by sillypuddy » Thu, May 23, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

gioele wrote: post #4

If anybody is planning anything that combines laws, versioning/revision control and public access to legal resources, please get in touch with me. I have quite a bit of experience in that field that I'll be happy to share thoughts and talk shop.

Constitutional Amendment by PR? :)

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#187

Post by jakelazaroff » Thu, May 23, 2019, 10:39 PM UTC

Uhhrrr wrote: post #107

JohnFen wrote: post #22

I have to confess, this effort makes me very, very nervous. I already think that business has replaced too much of what government should be doing, and has too much influence over what it hasn't replaced. Also, given the activities coming from the tech industry over the last decade or more, I'm even more nervous that this is aimed in that direction. Increasing the amount of that doesn't seem wise to me.

Bleah - government shouldn't be the default actor in a space unless it's absolutely necessary. It's actually a good thing if community problems can be solved by smaller organizations which don't need tax money or coercive measures to get things done.

I disagree. If the space involves a "public good" (a squishy term, I know) I'd rather have an actor that's paid for and accountable to the community, not one that's only accountable to its shareholders and has the additional motive of squeezing out a profit.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#188

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, May 23, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #184

School-Cotton wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the typical programmer misunderstanding of law. In countries whose legal system is based on that of England (including most of the US), ambiguity is a design goal of statutes, not something meant to be eliminated. Statutes are supposed to be specified in broad strokes and then have the details hashed out by intelligent judges to work in particular circumstances that the legislators didn't envision. And "the l…

> not something meant to be eliminated I said exactly the opposite: "not eliminate it" > Most of the law is the tradition of judicial interpretation of those statutes. This is a very good point. You could simply have judges write decisions in a decision language as well, which is defined just as the law language is defined.

> You could simply have judges write decisions in a decision language as well, which is defined just as the law language is defined.

But how could you write the laws in the first place? You can't write them in a language designed to be unambiguous, because they are meant to be imprecise.

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#189

Post by mLuby » Thu, May 23, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #140

I can't help but feel that with better representation (or at least representation that felt they had to actually do right by voters) then we would be in a much better place and many of these problems would be solved through legislation. I know this is glossing over many things like lobbying, gerrymandered areas, favoritism for incumbent candidates, etc. but I really think there's something to getting more people elec…

Unfortunately I think your point boils down to "if we had better representatives, we'd have a better government". I agree, but at least since Plato, there's been no consensus on questions like "what is a good government", "what makes a good representative", and "how do we identify good representatives".

Once the philosophers give us a decent spec, it should be trivial to implement. ^__^;

Re: YC's request for startups: Government 2.0

#190

Post by tacosx » Thu, May 23, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #5

In Andrew Yang's recent panel at Monetery Tech Summit, he was making the case that most of these are problems that the free market doesn't reward solving: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhNpbPhFwRc&t=957 These are all important problems, but there have been people working on them for decades already without much progress. What we really need is for either government to tackle these problems itself, or else to put in…

Having a bunch of white tech dudes show up with a startup to "solve" something like mass incarceration is just absurd, and reveals both the massive naivete of this project and the extent to which startup funding has become a meaningless ponzi scheme with no expectation of profitability.

It's also just insulting to activists and others who have been in the trenches fighting these problems for decades.