[dredmorbius]

This and your earlier comment presume that code is a way out. Much of the push-back here is that evidence is strongly suggesting that 1) it is not and 2) code tends in general to be a power-amplifier for those already in power. Put another way: your reform-minded hacker is not the only coder, and the opposition (or more accurately, the establishment) likely has far vaster resources.

The problem in your initial proposal comes in the first step: "Create a government from scratch". That is a political process at best; at worst, one predicated on violence (rebellion, insurrection, coercion).

Again, the solution is inherently political, not technical. There might be technical elements to such a political process, but those follow from rather than lead to.

This represents a significant shift in my own views over the past 20 years or so. In the 1990s I would have tended to agree with you. I no longer do.

[econ]

> This and your earlier comment presume that code is a way out.

For you yes. If you were a song writer I would suggest you write something like El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido in stead of a new shaking my ass song.

You do what you know. It's much less of a waste of time if it progresses your skills.

A baker in 1683 created the croissant to symbolize eating the ottoman empire.

Did he make a relevant contribution? I honestly don't know.

[dredmorbius]

Just to be clear, I agree in part: people should assist as they can. The examples you cite (protest songs, protest food) work as part of the battle for hearts and minds, and can be quite effective. They're working at the political level, within epistemic space, itself a significant element of political dynamics. When epistemic systems change, so do political ones, and we've seen this repeatedly through history.

I do have a technical background, I write code. I've also been spending much of the past decade or two coming up to speed on things I'd paid less attention to in my near six decades on this rock: political theory, philosophy, and history. David Runciman, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, has been a significant part of that.

There is a code associated with governance, and that is law, along with regulation, constitution, and court practice (which may or may not include case law / common law, depending on the political tradition). Coming up with ways of making law itself clearer and in particular changes to it more apparent (as with revision control) could help in some regards, though my experience from the world of software is that complexity-management constrains complexity, and that the inevitable consequence of more capable complexity management is greater levels of complexity. Beware what you (or others) ask for.

I suspect that there are changes necessary at a more fundamental level, though even deciding on what the aims of that change should be is an open question: is liberal democracy a proper goal, or should we be looking at effective governance based on a changing set of conditions, constraints, and capabilities? There are numerous suggestions for electoral reforms (reduced voting age, increased voter restrictions, ranked-choice, and a whole host of others, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform>). I'm particularly taken by the notion of sortition and how it might be applied. "If you can't choose wisely, choose randomly" has topped my list of most interesting reads for nearly two decades now: <https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-can-t-choose-wisely-choose-ran...>.

Other reforms would include finance (personal, business, government, political); economics; technology; social welfare; education; property rights and restrictions; informational autonomy (combining speech, privacy, and choice in numerous manners), etc., etc., etc.

I fear you're prematurely optimising based on misconceptions and ignorance.

I'm not claiming total knowledge, by a long shot. But I do believe my scope of consideration exceeds yours.

[econ]

>Just to be clear, I agree in part: people should assist as they can.

Actually, one should do very little. We should all do very little. That will already produce a terrifying force that may crush everything precious to us.

And you should only do what you are good at. If you can't sing and dance or can't give a speech - don't do it. You will ruin everything.

> I fear you're prematurely optimising based on misconceptions and ignorance.

If you are going to take on the impossible wilfull ignorance can be a useful tool. You can't think it's impossible, if you do you should just quit.

Coding isn't a bad hand of cards. You can build something awesome without scaring the shit out of the old guard.

>the inevitable consequence of more capable complexity management is greater levels of complexity. Beware what you (or others) ask for.

Law makers keep tagging on new features. It's an incomprehensible mess. If someone wants to build something we don't offer them a nice spec with all relevant information. You get a pile of trash that immediately convinces most to abandon all hope.

If the application has become unusable from technical debt you have to.... well... face the music.

The traditional way is to give a war of some kind, burn everything to the ground and start over. We have it down to an art. We are going to [have to] keep doing this until we come up with a better idea.

It's kind of awesome how the foundation of all advanced civilizations was build by people with few of any tools or resources. I'm sure they had people who thought it couldn't be done not to forget those who paid the ultimate price.

Today the naysayers have airco, washing machines, bubble baths and a super computer in their hands.

> I'm not claiming total knowledge, by a long shot. But I do believe my scope of consideration exceeds yours.

There wouldn't be a need to write this if that wasn't the case. It's not a competition tho. It's a puzzle as old as time. It sits there waiting for someone competent enough to solve it.

>There are numerous suggestions for electoral reforms (reduced voting age, increased voter restrictions, ranked-choice, and a whole host of others, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform>). I'm particularly taken by the notion of sortition and how it might be applied. "If you can't choose wisely, choose randomly" has topped my list of most interesting reads for nearly two decades now: <https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-can-t-choose-wisely-choose-ran...>.

Those are fun reads. Thanks.

I wrote this funny thing called subjective sort.

Rather than pick your preferred option you are presented with two random ones.

https://subjective-sort.go-here.nl/

Provide the 2 election programs, make people sit down and read them for at least 30 minutes and if enough votes are cast this will sort the list from best to worse.

I came to this after wondering what the signal to noise ratio was in elections. I examined Facebook likes and YouTube views and came to the conclusion THERE IS NO SIGNAL.

The 200ish views on the videos from the us Green Party aren't enough to account for journalists. Further down the list the number of Facebook likes didn't even account for friends and relatives.

It also reminds me of conversations where I proposed tiers of voting diplomas and told people I didn't need to read their response or listen to their arguments. I can just disagree without knowing what I'm talking about.

Another fun thought was to make election program legally binding.

The way it currently works is exactly like looking if the bird is on our left or our right while pretending it matters.

But I think it's better to work on documenting existing government before considering changes. The later will limit participation to much.