[js8]

> Imagine a building whose design and construction was governed by democracy

I haven't seen that, so it's hard to imagine (and I would thus reserve my judgement on that). But I have seen comedy governed by democracy, and it's not as bad as you suggest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python But I do agree it's a mish-mash. :-)

Anyway, I think it's hard to make the OSS model work in politics. In politics (and other fields), you are severely resource constrained. However, in OSS model, anybody can fork the code on their own system.

[kardashev]

It is precisely because of resource constraints that the open source model would work better. Take education for example. What if anyone could start a school with any standard for curriculum? It would instantly solve the arguments that happen over the democracy of curriculum we have today. It would also allow experimentation into redefining how education is done. We could easily see what works and what doesn't without having to change education for an entire state or the country. How many resources have we wasted following fads? How many good ideas have been skipped because they were too risky to implement universally?

There are obvious downsides as well, but history seems to show that the benefits outweigh the downsides for this type of model.