Public Servant Accountability App

[Tim87]

@BroadPerspective

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.

Welcome to the forum!

This reminds me, in a roundabout way, of a discussion I had here a long time ago with some die-hard idealists of the (imho) wrong type, who tried to convince me that anything below causing physical harm to somebody else was fine; it came up in the context of outright racism of the non-(yet)-physically violent type.

@BroadPerspective

In my own ideal world, I think a multi-tiered sort of ‘laws’ would be the way to go.

If I’m getting it right, you’re arguing for decentralizing laws in a way that the increasingly bigger communities would agree upon their own preferred set of rules.

This of course raises the question of what kind of rules should be set at what level, and what happens when they conflict (i.e. who overrides whose rules.)

I don’t think it should be strictly hierarchic, either. A small community on the edge could belong to two bigger ones at the same time, thus bridge them.

Over many years, this could result in the abolishment of the nation state, which would be quite the improvement. For one, we would have numerous armed conflicts spread across the globe all the time (humans suck), but none of them could easily escalate to the horrendous scales of the world wars and less well known, but similarly terrible, incidents (e.g. Rwanda not long ago, or what Ethiopia may be heading towards right now.)

[BroadPerspective]

@Tim87

Welcome to the forum!

This reminds me, in a roundabout way, of a discussion I had here a long time ago with some die-hard idealists of the (imho) wrong type, who tried to convince me that anything below causing physical harm to somebody else was fine; it came up in the context of outright racism of the non-(yet)-physically violent type.

Thank you! I’ve had conversations similar to what you describe before as well. Imo the people who would argue anything short of physical harm being acceptable tend to have a very limited understanding of the human body and/or mind. An example of loud music being played and keeping a neighbor awake is a good example. If one would perform an analysis of the hormones one has after a good nights sleep vs. being after kept awake by a pesky neighbor all night, you would get very different results. This is a physical consequence to someone elses bad behavior, but if one doesn’t understand the basics of a human body they would never connect those dots.

@Tim87

For one, we would have numerous armed conflicts spread across the globe all the time (humans suck), but none of them could easily escalate to the horrendous scales of the world wars and less well known, but similarly terrible, incidents (e.g. Rwanda not long ago, or what Ethiopia may be heading towards right now.)

When a better system of documenting current events and distributing unbiased news become the norm, I tend to think this sort of thug state / gang rule would be very hard to maintain. Humans will always have conflicts and disagreements, but the quicker they get publicly documented and addressed the less likely they are to turn to large scale violence.

[BroadPerspective]

@Tim87

If I’m getting it right, you’re arguing for decentralizing laws in a way that the increasingly bigger communities would agree upon their own preferred set of rules.

This of course raises the question of what kind of rules should be set at what level, and what happens when they conflict (i.e. who overrides whose rules.)

I don’t think it should be strictly hierarchic, either. A small community on the edge could belong to two bigger ones at the same time, thus bridge them.

I would be perfectly happy with the current set of laws in USA being maintained so long as the public has the opportunity to change them via an non-corrupt political process. This would allow for an orderly transition from the current system to something better. Existing systems for conflicts between differing jurisdictions could be kept to solve whatever issues come up.

Imo the one-size fits all set of laws isn’t realistic as cultures and religions all have differing moral and value systems. If the core concept is the non-agression principle, that can be forked to each different cultural/religious group so they can apply it however best fits their beliefs and life style.

[Tim87]

@BroadPerspective

When a better system of documenting current events and distributing unbiased news become the norm, I tend to think this sort of thug state / gang rule would be very hard to maintain. Humans will always have conflicts and disagreements, but the quicker they get publicly documented and addressed the less likely they are to turn to large scale violence.

I think it would be more about the lack of the virtually unlimited resources that nation states (especially those on the scale of the United States, Russia, China, etc) can utilize. Smaller units simply don’t have access to that much power to kill.

But it’s also about the “fail early, fail often” principle: small bushfires keep the forest healthy; if you suppress them, disaster awaits.

@BroadPerspective

[…] so long as the public has the opportunity to change them via an non-corrupt political process

You can’t get rid of corrupt politics in the presence of a hierarchy of many levels, when you end up with people in positions of power far removed from the effects of their decisions. There’s no longer shame in abusing their power; numbers and charts don’t have faces.

Accordingly, I must correct myself: it should not be a (very) hierarchical system, but a rather flat one, where the largest unit is still small enough. Something like the Swiss canton system I guess, but I’m by far not an expert on that

[polpolrene]

This topic seems to move a way from the OP which is about an App for voting and monetary accountability by public institutions. The #apps category on this forum is for discussing Apps that might run on SAFE. So please focus on the implementation of the idea, the pros and cons, the “logic” of the App and how it could be build and how it could function etc. For more general discussions about politics and society we have an #off-topic category where everyone is free to discuss whatever they feel like. Thank you.

[BroadPerspective]

So I slept on some of the ideas that were put out yesterday afternoon and it’s now clear that the original concept I posted really just wants to be one small part of a larger Group-Organizing tool. With the hope of limiting the amount of unhelpful / unorganized ideas coming out of my mind, I’m going to take a few days and draw out the structure & utility of this tool as I see it. I’m more of a visual guy so that will probably be the how I can most clearly communicate the idea. Hope everyone has a great weekend an I’ll be back with updates as they develop.

[fergish]

I’ve been thinking about it some, too.

Definitely more than an app. There are aspects of it that are related to the Crowd Found Hub, discussed here and in this podcast, a project which @chadrickm started, and @MrAnderson and myself were working on with him for a time, though stalled currently (temporarily, I hope).

Also, some aspects of what Daniel Dabek talked about for the SAFE Exchange as discussed in this podcast. He’s still pursuing some of this effort, less (or perhaps not) connected to the SAFE Network. I’ve not kept up.

I’m thinking about everybody having a vested share or equity stake in whatever group, public-utility, company, town, distributed organization, clan or whatever. Their vesting could be weighted according to what they have invested in terms of time, money, effort, heritage–i.e., value or stake–that they have earned or been granted.

They then can vote those shares, or proxy them to anyone they trust to know more about the matters at hand, or whatever, but the proxies would be revocable at any time. Perhaps their share, or whatever you call it, could be set to revert to them at the end of some term, or on demand.

We have heard political voting being referred to as “a franchise.” This was probably much more true in the past but has become rather less meaningful in the current state of political organization, but using these tools, perhaps things could be made much better.

If the representative (mayor, congressman, president, judge, sheriff, whatever) acts way out of line, people just repossess their share tokens to depower the “official” or trusted “public servant.” No need to wait till the next election to vote an errant politician out. Just neuter them.

This is somewhat like holding voting stock in a company but more granular.

Of course, what I’ve said above opens up all sorts of cans of worms to be sorted through. Not a panacea, but perhaps a tool. Any of it has to function within a really clear perimeter of trust, including social agreement and culture, so by itself the technology couldn’t be an end-all. But could be a pretty effective tool in the right scene.

Culture is a real key, but the structure–if well formed and initiated–might help evolve the culture in a cohesive yet generally voluntary way.

More thought needed, but those are some stabs at what I think you may be reaching for. Definitely something I’m interested in.

[stw]

IMHO, I think this body of people should recognize there are three different subjects being discussed. They must be separated and handled as individual but related topics. First is the main topic of the process of creating a decentralized app that has the potential to bring transparency to the political process. Second is the organization of community input or the formation of a processing committee to determine the intentions and scope this app would have. Third should be the creation of an oversight program or process that safeguards the public from the shortsightedness of mob rule.

While these are the topics needed to implement the goals expressed BroadPerspective, this threads creator, the order in which they are implemented will have much influence on the success or failure of its adoption by the masses. Again, IMHO, you need as the originator requested, people to create the app and or programming tools to create this app. Then you need a completely separate group to determine the desires, direction, abilities, and punitive powers or actions this program will have. Finally, you must have yet a third independent group look at the long term protections against short sighted massive group decisions.

It is one thing to make the world transparent. It’s another to have hard and fast consequences to what may become an unpopular action or group of actions. Then there is the determination of whether the unpopular action was ultimately the right action for the society as a whole. In such cases there should be some way to restore the position of the person or group displaced by the process.

In short what I’m taking forever to say is; There is NO WAY to have all these discussions at the same time and by the same people. You are creating a tool that has the potential to change the world by giving power back to the masses. Take the time and put forth the effort to get it as right as our founding fathers did with the Constitution of the United States. What ever faults or disagreements you might have with the Constitution, everyone must admit that this SMALL group of people created a document and a process that changed the world. My question to you is “How much better of a job could this world do at creating a process of future governess of mankind when we have the power to include all of mankind in the process itself?”

Having said that, I agree with Polpolrene who said THIS forum is and should be dedicated to the process of creating the basic tool, the decentralized app, that will give us the power to treat humanity with humanity.

[BroadPerspective]

Here’s a very rough example of the Public Side of this conceptual app as I’m envisioning it. Some quick notes / explanations;

Executive Level - This spot can be singular at the top of the organizational structure, or it could be duplicated so that it can adopt to any particular form of ‘government’ that wants to use it.

• A Schd, Mtg, Etc: Daily schedules, meeting minutes, video of speeches & public meetings, etc. all go here for transparency of public officials. (Question for the community: Is there any way to modify the linux open office software so it automatically saves documents to the SAFE network? Something like a public servant version of the software that helps automate where certain pubilc documents go?)

• B $$$: All documents related to state budget, and public monetary use are stored here. For major items I'm thinking just a plain .pdf file of the formal document, with an easy way to add notes referenced to a specific section, paragraph, etc. for the executive to publicly review and comment if appropriate. Also, all formal budget proposals would display several options. The executive's current stance on the proposal (i.e. Reviewed, Reviewed with Comments, Not Supporting, etc.). The public would also be able to vote (which is anonymously displayed in public) in a largely symbolic manner to so there is a way to judge the full extent of the body politics stance on any particular issue.
  

• C Policy: All documents related to national policy discussion & proposals go here. Individual documents can be duplicated between this folder and the $$$ folder if both policy and public money are being used. Similar to the category above, each publiclly viewable document would have a quick view of the executive's stance, whether or not he's reviewed and commented on the document, and what the public opinion of the policy is in real time.
  

• 1 $Fund Request: This is where the levels of government directly subordinate to the Executive filter up project funding requests, which go through a similar vetting process to topic B above for all monetary issues not addressed in the initial budget by the Exec.
  

Administrative Level: Individuals selected to server directly under the Executive as heads of a specific department get displayed in this area. This spot can be duplicated as well to accomodate any sort of government (or company) leadership structure.

1. A2 Projects: directly headed by one of the people in the Administrative Level are displayed here. Each project folder would have an a2/b2 set of subfolders for documentation specific to each individual project

2. B2 Proposals: Can be initiated by the Administrative level directly and placed here for public opinion and/or vetting. Can also be sent from Department Branch / Subbranch levels for review/comment/debate

3. C2 Mtg. Minutes, Schd. Etc: Similar to the Executives subfolder. All the individuals responsible at this level of government publicly display their schedules, meeting notes, speeches, etc. here for transparency.

Department Branch level: At a national .gov level, this would be a duplicate of the ‘Administrative Branch’ directly above, with the individuals in charge of each specific department. At a corporate level, this could be used for a specific office or physical site.

1. $$$: Documents related to operating costs of the actual site are stored here (i.e. land costs, building maintenance, staff costs, office supplies, etc.) Staff salary could be displayed in an anonymous fashion, perhaps a total cost of site staff, total number of people staffed at the site, and the top 5 - 10 salaries of site staff (could be displayed anonymously).

2. Projects: Any site specific projects get documented here. Costs, project reports & analysis, budgets, etc.

Subsets of this level can be branched downwards as well so any independent operation using another departments facilities can be documented & recorded in similar fashion.

[BroadPerspective]

Some other features I think would be appropriate for this app;

Public Servant side email: Include in the application an email program. All correspondence between .gov employees and private email addresses could be publicly displayed. All email communication between .gov employees could remain private.

Public - Private Interaction: A restriction could be built in requiring any private company getting money from .gov coffers would need to make it’s services to .gov publicly viewable. All employees of the private company could remain anonymous perhaps, but the amounts and services rendered to the public should be recorded somehow.