InstaGov/introduction

InstaGov is the working name for a possible solution to the problem of government, and more specifically as a solution to the flaws which have become apparent in the American system of government due to their carefully-targeted exploitation by the Bush II administration.

Note: although this introduction was written for an American audience, using the US government as an example, it is intended to be globally inclusionary; I should probably write another essay explaining how this would work. In short, there should be no arbitrary barriers to prevent anyone with an articulate opinion from participating to the fullest. "Articulocracy" might even be an appropriate word to describe the idea's essence.

This solution does not require the bestowing of any official authority, deriving its power solely from the consent and will of the participants; given this, it may tend to appeal most to those with little regard for such authority. It might even be thought of as "government for anti-authoritarians", who are notorious for being difficult bastards to govern. (Among the names I rejected was "CatHerder", and only because catherder.com was already taken, as were several other variants.)

While it is intended to improve on the current system of representative democracy by increasing both transparency and democracy, it does not need to replace the existing system – it does not need to be formally adopted by any government, much less stage a coup of some kind, in order to be effective. Indeed, it can be useful even to a relatively small number of people in "governing" themselves, and its usefulness scales up as more people and more groups use it. This feature is an essential part of the design, as no new governmental system is at all likely to be successful – in the absence of some opportunity to create a government from scratch, as was the case with colonial America over 200 years ago – if it requires top-down acceptance. (Aside: investigation of brand-new-from-scratch government designs may be possible using off-shore artificial colonies.)

The Problem

Let's look at what is perhaps the most egregious example of governmental failure in the past 7 years.

On a wave of disgust at the Iraq war and other horrendous abuses by the Bush administration, America elected a Democratic congress in 2006 with a mandate to clean out the neocon corruption and impeach Bush and Cheney.

What happened? Very little. The newly-elected democrats seemed to buy in very quickly to the neocon meme of "supporting the war effort" – never mind that much of the country by this time regarded the terror threat as a shadow puppet and the Iraq war as completely the wrong solution for dealing with such a threat even if it was real. Multiple mass demonstrations calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney were met with the response that "impeachment is not an option", or "is off the table", or with no response at all.

Cries of "do something!" filled the blogosphere. We were told we needed to wake up from our slumber and take action! What action? We were urged to write to our congresspeople, stage more demonstrations, sign petitions!... but this had already been done, and congress had willfully ignored it.

What, then, could we do? The government we elected was going against our explicit wishes, the very reason they got into power. We got them into the control room, and they too shut us out. We passed them the ball, and they kicked it back into our goal. We let them cross the chasm first, and they ran off with the rope and the treasure.

The Purpose of Government

The United States was founded on the principle that a government has a responsibility to act in the best interests of its citizens, and that the best way to ensure this is to keep ultimate authority in the hands of the citizens (caveats aside) – indeed, to recognize as a basic truth that government only works by consent of the governed; if there is no consent, what you have is an occupation – not a government. Government only has authority because we give it authority.

That authority comes in many forms, some of them rather slippery.

If a policeman arrests someone for smoking marijuana even though all of his neighbors think it should be legal, by what authority is he doing so? If the government makes a rule that passengers on a plane may not take more than 3 ounces of liquid with them, even though neither the passengers nor the owners and crew of the plane think this is sensible, where is the authority coming from?

In both of these cases, we've (implicitly, and in theory) agreed beforehand to follow rules arrived at by a certain process, whether or not we agree with the outcome of that process. Further, the process has authorized the use of force if we don't comply. In theory, we agree to the use of force because there are a small percentage of us who would otherwise violate their agreement and violate the law, including laws with which we agree (which in theory should be the majority of them).

What do we do, though, when the process becomes broken and corrupt, and starts authorizing laws with which we strongly disagree? Authoritarians would argue that laws must be obeyed because the alternative is anarchy and chaos.

Authoritarians say a lot of stupid stuff, though – like equating dissent with treason when the main author of the founding principles of our country believed the exact opposite. While dismissing the stupidity of the idea that we have to do stuff that most people agree is stupid, we can nonetheless take their warning to heart: let us not too casually dismantle the mechanisms of government which have kept us (mostly) prosperous and (mostly) safe for over 200 years, even as the termite holes get larger and the timbers creak ominously. It's still all we have at the moment.

Let us instead build a new one, first, and then – through those new processes – decide what to do.

Another Way to Look At It

Despite the best social engineering available in 1786, our system of government still favors the powerful and those who seek personal gain at the expense of others. (They couldn't have been expected to foresee the industrial age and its attendant problems, much less the information age.)

In other words, it is still essentially an authoritarian device, and works best for those who are of an authoritarian mindset (and it's getting worse).

What we need, then, is a tool to give power to non-authoritarians.

The internet has allowed most of the essential components to be created and laid out right in front of us, but we haven't yet put them together.

The blogosphere is full of opinions and analysis and thought-work and data-gathering. These are tremendous assets to any society, and based on all that analysis and data and counter-arguing we are able to arrive at some very good, well-informed opinions on how things should be done.

The problem is that we are all like individual workers trying to haul a huge stone. We each go up to it, grab a rope, and try tugging a little. Sometimes a few of us will get together and try at the same time -- but the damn thing weighs a hundred tons, and we can't even budge it.

Meanwhile, if an authority wants to move the stone, he simply orders a thousand of his minions to move it. They attach 50 long ropes and assign 200 minions to each rope, and they all pull in unison. They don't need to debate where the stone should go, or decide if they really agree on the principle of moving it, or send out pleas for volunteers to show up at a certain time to help out, or decide which stone they should be working on; they just do it, because their superior said so. And so the stone is moved where the authority directs. In this sense, it is true that division is weakness; this is where we are forced to play on the authoriarians' home turf.

What we need, then, is a tool which allows large numbers of people to reach consensus quickly, so we can all agree on which stones to work on, where to move them, and what time to show up (and who brings the ropes, and who orders the pizza for afterwards) – so our need to arrive at really good, accurate, and non-politically-driven solutions can be assuaged while minimizing the incapacitating effects of "dissent" (and maximizing its usefulness as a positive influence – one of our few advantages).

There are several tasks involved in reaching a true consensus:

• Working out what we already believe: what are the major points of view, and how many people agree with each one?
• Working out why we believe it: What are the facts used to justify each point of view? What are the objections to the points of view you don't agree with?
• Sharing all that information, and seeing if we now come closer to universal agreement
• Individual stipulation that if the community believes strongly enough in implementing a certain action, each individual will cooperate even though not all of them will agree that it's the best action (i.e. setting a threshold for commitment to cooperate; when you vote for president, you are essentially agreeing that the candidate with the most votes will be your president too, even if you voted for someone else)

All of these things can be managed by software, and the web will make a perfectly serviceable (if not perfect) interface.