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'Open source' politics

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-02 5:33

I had a conversation with a friend last night about the way open source works as an effective way to develop public software. Somehow the conversation turned to politics and it made me wonder: Is it possible to use open source methodology in polticy making (theoretically at least) so that policy is produced and reviewed publicly. Is it be possible to make policy reviews on a 'what works best' basis rather than 'what do most people think is best' basis?

Discuss.

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-02 6:59

No, not all research and development can be accomplished by people who do it for a hobby.

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-02 8:06

>>3

I think it can work for some things.  Scientific and highly technical fields may not work, but I think for most general political stuff it could work. 

I'd love to see an open source take on the best way to educate kids, or maybe open source budget decisions.  I wouldn't like to see open source millitary and deplomacy --- it's not something that most people know enough about to make good decisions.

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-02 17:21

open source take on the best way to educate kids
Lol Wikiversity and Wikibooks

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-05 3:28

>>3
Perhaps politics is relegated to that level due to the paradox of all organizations being politicized thus leaving individuals as the only reliable "think tanks", kind of like heisenburg's uncertainty principle.

The thing is the servers who support open source politics are likely to be biased also as there will be one server for communists, another for fascists, another for fundamentalists and so forth, try as you might to focus them on pragmatic issues the fact remains most people prefer to discuss the interesting controversial issues that relate to their own coping mechanisms in their everyday lives. Like most issues in politics this boils down to people's political culture, for instance democracy has the potential to vote itself out and likewise if people are unwilling to be impartial and objective then political life will reflect that so in order to be a success your idea would have to be approached pretty carefully taking this into account and avoiding all these trapfalls.

One possible avenue for advancement is the politician's reliance on facts to support their appeals to emotion which is one route to drag the ignorant masses kicking and screaming into the light, a politician's promises aren't worthless if they won't work, by creating a reputation for being logical, impartial and unbiased a server for such open source politics could become a bank of knowledge that politicians and their supports have to continually refer to in order to back up their points. 2 levels of information, a series of straight clear cut facts with their sources categorized based on the issues they are a part of and various political group's theories based on the facts.

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-05 5:44

In greece they have started an open.gov site where the government puts planned laws and changes to be discussed. Even though it's greece we're talking about and the government only uses it so that it looks like they are listening to the people (it looks like they never actually read what's written there), if a government actually had the will to make this work, it would be a bless.

Even though I see this move by the greek government as a good initiative (if they had the will to actually make it work), the structure of the site is inefficient and forum-like. Basically the government opens a discussion thread and the people reply with criticism or with their suggestions. Now, having been in forums for a few years, I have rarely seen any discussion being constructive. They usualy go off-topic or end up in flamewars.

I believe for open politics to work, there is a need for a conversation platform better and different than a simple forum. There needs to be a voting mechanism where people can vote for the opinions they agree with and vote against the opinions they dissagree with. This kind of voting could be used to categorize opinions by popularity and to discard opinions that are unpopular. If this is done electronicaly in a secure system, it leaves little room or no room for corruption. BUT it also has a weakness inherent in democracy: the most popular course of action is not necessarily the best course of action. But hey, let's start by building a real working democracy and we can make improvements on it later. Still i think the problems that arise from this weakness are far less than the issues that would be solved if we managed to defeat corruption.

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-05 11:50

open source politics would fit well with the " many anarchy's" model

an ever changing network of polities all experimenting , collaborating, and competing to see which governance is most free and most efficient

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-06 2:30

>>7
Yes, but it definately has a more practical approach.

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-08 16:48

MOAR liek OPEN SEWER politics, amirite guise?

Name: Anonymous 2011-02-08 18:08

Name: Anonymous 2011-04-12 12:28

Good thread bump

Name: Anonymous 2011-04-12 12:46

The problem is people have widely different agendas and unlike modifying software additions aren't cheap.

Name: Anonymous 2011-04-12 15:33

There was a very similar discussion in another thread. Think it was "Democracy". Anywayz, There's discussion about this in other political forums and it's probably doable. Not sure how we'd come to it tho.

Don't change these.
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