Greetings everyone! I had an idea that may be potentially useful in helping to create a tool to hold public officials accountable to their constituents. Some key concepts for this App include;
A voter registry that can be verified in real time in order to prevent voting fraud. This could also be built in a way that allows the individual to voluntarily associate / disassociate with any given level of government. A truly Voluntary Political system.
Another unique concept this app could make possible is a real time time vote of confidence. An example of how this could be used in a City level body politic: Each resident of a city is given a random account number that displays certain information publicly in anonymous fashion. Any given individual would be able to verify their vote was cast and correctly accounted for at any given time. This could potentially eliminate the vast majority of voter fraud that is possible in current electoral systems.
Once again taking the City level body politic as an example, each individual would have the power to change their vote in real time which is another safeguard against corruption & abuse of power by elected officials. An example of how this could work: Each resident of a city is given one vote for the position of mayor. Once a majority choice was established, the Individual selected for the position of Mayor is publicly displayed along with the number of people supporting them, their budget & public project expenses, etc. If this individual loses the confidence of a resident in the city, that resident could very easily withdraw their support of the mayor. If a certain confidence threshold was broken on the downside, the public servant would face certain consequences from being locked out of the public account, to losing their job if their actions deemed that appropriate according to their constituents.
The next major function of this program would be monetary accountability by public institutions. Public funds could be displayed and accounted for in real time so the residents of the city know where money is going. The extent to which public funds were view able could be adjusted to suit the type of public institution as well. An example of this being a small rural town may have a high level of trust in their mayor and/or a very small public budget in which case only the the total city budget would be displayed. A bigger urban area could set the constraints so that all public funds are traceable and displayed in real time up until that money goes to an individual employee or a private business the City hired.
As someone not technically skilled in the area of programming or code writing, Iâm unable to develop this app on my own. It is my hope that some individuals with the technical skill will see the potential & use behind this idea and collaborate with me in developing the app. I also am open to discussing any additional or alternate functions that would serve to limit opportunities for corruption among public servants and the institutions they run.
While I never thought Iâd see the words Public Servant and Accountability used in the same sentence, this is a great idea for an App. The bonus is the publicity a movement to implement such an application would garner would be outstanding. GOA (Gov Accountability Office) in the USA has a budget close to $750M Voter fraud is top of mind lately with The Donald and the Kremlin King buddying up.
Part of the beauty of this concept would be each level of public institutions would be responsible for setting their own constraints and forming the public institutions. The app would give a platform through which the individuals of a city, county, state, country, etc. collectively set the constraints on their public officials. I think the App would be relatively simple for something that could have such a broad influence.
And, yes. It could be set up in a way that the individuals of any given government had the power to remove anyone from office at any time they felt it necessary. It would make .gov employees true public servants.
It would be dependent on the public to get their elected officials to adopt this idea, but I believe you are correct. Current public opinion of .gov is so poor that millions of people would undoubtedly support some type of idea like this. Another critical philosophy of this idea is that it could start at the smallest level of .gov and scale all the way up to the country level independently based upon itâs adoption. It wouldnât be dependent on a whole country adopting it at once and could gain momentum as quickly or as slowly as any given population cared to use it.
These are some interesting thoughts. Of course, one asks for confusion anytime one mixes the concepts of âgovernmentâ and âvoluntary.â
Iâm reminded of some of Neal Stephensonâs fiction, where he envisions scenarios wherein âgovernmentâ as we reflexively think of them have become impossible due to tech like SAFE, and others. What evolved, and what I think is likely, were distributed republics, clans, mutual interest societies, ethnic- or philosophic-based organizations which might have encampments all over the world. Some were technocratic, some monarchic, some democratic, etc., according to the interplay of personal and group interests, motivations, prejudices, and irrationalities. Sort of like things have always been, except on a more individual-empowered basis.
With Bitcoin and other currency options (especially safecoin, I think) the era of dominate political currencies is ending.
The kind of app you describe could well be bridging technology as the existing structure becomes more impossible.
I keep the term âgovernmentâ because that would be the closest readily understandable concept the majority of people could relate to. I could see technology like this applied to whatever type of âgovernmentâ people could imagine, from a purely communist government, to a monarchy, to a pure anarchy. Perhaps a good way to think of this would be the next evolution of a Constitution as it is intended to constrain the actions of public positions & money to remain within a legal structure. No more pay to play or accounting gimmicks and back room deals that abuse the trust of the people.
Weâre speaking the same language with the same end goal I think. Basically a way for individuals to Self-Organize and have management structures for property and/or jobs needed to ensure the group functions as efficiently as possible. The individual groups themselves would have the power and technology to choose how their âcollective propertyâ was managed, from the structure of the actual managing company (i.e. government) to the information required to be publicly accessible.
I also have some ideas on how alternative currencies could be used and created within this sort of platform that would be very useful :), more on that at a later time though.
Creep in. Make this application simple. Gain a foothold by fixing some aspects, going in with guns blaring will bring out the powerful lawmakers. Government is and will always be in control. We actually want it that way. But we want transparency.
My current thinking is that this would first be adopted on the city / county level outside of the major urban centers. Places like this are more likely to get the grass roots support to leave their immediate political group no choice but to adopt the technology. At this level, it is also less complicated to navigate within existing legal systems to prevent law suits and such. From that point, it would be a matter of the public being able to see the technology working before it could be adopted upstream and in larger urban centers.
Thatâs another critical aspect of this idea, it has to be flexible enough to work within any type of government. This leaves politicians with no legitimate excuse for not wanting to adopt it, as the only material change from the existing system would be the inability to act illegally in a public position.
This is huge imo and something Iâve been banging on about for years too. Anarchy just doesnât work without some kind of effective, decentralised accountability system (and media/information flow really needs to be horizontal for that to work too).
If you can decentralise accountability then youâre half way there to solving the problem of power. No one wants to wield power if they are truly, directly accountable to the people they impact; it spoils all the fun. And no one can wield a lot of power without doing a lot of damage: we just see and understand too few of the consequences to our actions. Power should be awkward, undesirable and scary. We should all shy away from it and be wary of the potential to be held accountable if we do any harm when we find we hold any power for whatever reason.
Accountability without law is the next step imo - letâs just leave it at a universal hippocratic imperative, no need to start writing laws that excuse harmful behaviour on the basis of being âlegalâ. We should all have to think about our own moral roadmap and how others would judge us; I think it would make us all much better people if we had to think about those things for ourselves more .
Decentralised the accountability system and âdo no harmâ instead of laws please . That would really float my boat lol.
I like where youâre going with this anyway @BroadPerspective, Iâm with you bro.
In my own ideal world, I think a multi-tiered sort of âlawsâ would be the way to go. An individual would have the right to do anything on their own property so long as it didnât initiate violence on another person, or harm the property of another person. A step up into public space and a different set of law would apply which the population itself agreed upon. Basically following some universal concepts where both possibilities and restrictions increase as more individuals are included into the equation.
Pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested in doing the programming for it. Iâm very serious about making this a reality. Just need to find the right group of people to build it out.
Yes, any accountability system must be subject to the rules of NAP. Otherwise no one is really free.
I donât swim in those circles, but Iâd happily contribute time or money to the creation of such an app. PM me if you ever need an extra pair of non-technical hands.
Hmmm⌠is this not a little departure from the idea of PSA App? We are looking for transparency and accountability, no? Now you might be trying to rewrite laws established by democratic means? Loud music all night long will affect my health and devalues my property. Will you have a music bylaw? Parking broken down vehicles or a drydocked sailboats on your front lawn devalues my property. Laws are VERY necessary just like fences make good neighbors. This is a very complicated concept âkeep everybody happyâ with out laws and enforcers of said.
I got off topic a bit there, youâre right. That was simply my own personal view of what would be ideal. The big caveat being âas long as another or anothers property isnât harmedâ. Meaning if I do something on my property that effects the value, safety, etc. of your property then I would be responsible for correcting it.
I wouldnât be intending to re-write any laws or legal/political systems with this idea, as the app itself would be able to adopt whatever local laws/ordinances/etc. it was used in.
As long as humans are involved in the equation, I doubt there is a way to
eliminate unwise choices from being made. This would primarily be an
attempt at stopping illegal actions and mis-allocation of public money
as well as preventing voter fraud.
Laws certainly arenât necessary, as evidenced by the many forms of human society and organisation that evolved and function perfectly well without them. Laws usually only start to appear when societies get so large that power structures require them to maintain their control. Very few smaller, independent communities find they have to bother with defining written laws, morality is usually quite obvious. I agree that most people are not even close to being ready for such a big paradigm change in the modern world, but that does not imply that laws are necessary or that we should not be headed away from that realityâŚ
Thatâs the whole point isnât it? In order for odd little things like that to be taken account of you have to write millions of laws and they will be written by a few individuals, with their own biases, who will miss lots of unethical and harmful behaviours that will then be legitimised as âlegalâ and their laws will cause much unintended harm too. If itâs just hippocratic imperative/NAP instead of law then all harmful things are covered and societies judgements are fluid, as is our moral and social world - what was illegal yesterday is not today. It was only a few decades ago that the legal system chemically castrated Alan Turing for being gay after all.
Anyway, Iâm getting further and further off topic and what Iâm suggesting requires decentralising information flow too, which is arguably a bigger part of the challenge than accountability.
Laws are not necessary though, Iâll argue that to death. They are instruments of dominion, not reflections of public morality. All we actually need is accountability for harm we cause, not legislators to tell us the difference between right and wrong. I believe that actually does a lot more harm than good!
Anyway, enough derail, love the ideas behind this app, which doesnât have anything to do with the things Iâm now discussing .
Just thinking about this. While I like/love the idea will we end up with the Mayor making decisions on the popularity rather than the need?
Agreed, this would be crucial, because the views of the masses are easily controlled by those with power and money for their own interests.
Voting isnât enough without education in how to assess information, and access to reliable sources. This is why we elect representatives - in Greek democracy the citizenry were not sufficiently able to do this, and the solution developed in Britain was a parliamentary democracy. It has faired very well, but without sufficient safeguards, representative democracy is easily subverted too - which is the cause of the current rise of popularism in opposition to corrupt establishment.
The solution does I think require some form of decentralisation, and the app described sounds like a useful part of that. The idea of a hierarchy could work well - especially if access to education and information can also be decentralised in order to keep powerful hands from the levers of knowledge and awareness.
You are right about this being necessary in order for the political process to be fixed. Iâve put together some preliminary ideas about how to do that, but my main focus is on detailing the PSAa at the moment. Some quick thoughts;
For education, I see a type of central distribution hub (think a youtube without the censorship or human agendas for the video component) where the educators get paid per video or per lesson series. Something like $.25/hour lesson or something reasonable like this. Teachers (or groups of them) could use these videos as the main teaching component while they focus on helping students with projects or hands on curriculum to develop actual skills and cooperation. Would allow the parents and/or students to map out the education path they choose while also cutting out all the administrative waste weâre paying for now. I donât see this happening in mass until there is a way around the political corruption though.
For news my current thoughts are a digital model space that represents the world. Current events would be tied to a physical location with the ability for anyone to upload an event and anyone also able to verify / dispute what has been put forth as fact. A separate branch would hold the opinion pieces of the significance of these events and each article/video could be tied to one or a series of factual events to help verify and give credibility to the opinion pieces. This would allow people to outsource their understanding of reality to whatever extent they wish, or they could bypass the opinion pieces all together and just accumulate their own factual data if they were so inclined.
Both of these are probably best treated as a separate topics, but I have been thinking about how they could be build upon the PSAa fairly efficiently.
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. That would really float my boat lol.
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