[MG] The Will OF The People

Discussion:

Ned Conner

2018-07-23 05:46:16 UTC

This approach to enabling/empowering democracy seems to me to be too

As opposed to what we have now, where not only does the executive
branch not know what we want, but*we* don't even know what we
(collectively) want and so there's no way to even judge the quality of
the management?

My suggestion is that having The Proxies respond to the items of your
purely abstract list would not usefully reveal "what we want". There
would still be no valid way to judge the quality of the management. The
items of the list are too abstract, vague, and overlapped.

Whether responses to the list could be used for proxy matching purposes
is an empirical question. (Given that I myself would not be able to
respond to the list as directed because absolutely crucial information
is missing from the proposal, I doubt that it would be.)

Whether managers would find the information useful when creating new
policy proposals and budget items would depend on what the managers were
trying to accomplish. Again, given how abstract, vague, and overlapped
the items of the list are, the information would probably be mainly
useful as material to be used in political speechifying.

1. When a proposal is "purely abstract" (as all of the line-items are),
it is left to the executive to decide (undemocratically) what the
concrete manifestations of the abstractions will be.

Not exactly: Individual proposals still have to voted on by The
People. Again, the main purposes of this list are to find proxy
matches and so that the managers can use this information when
creating new policy proposals and budget items.

In keeping with rule #2 of the Rules for Rulers, the power puppeteers
behind the "public face" political elite (consisting of the Globality
Manager together with the Locality Managers) can effectively eliminate
The Proxies as one of its keys by presenting a steady stream (four per
week) of "harmless" proposals to The Proxies, thereby keeping them fully
occupied doing nothing.

"Harmless" in this context means "not interfering with the substantive
plots and plans and profits of the puppeteers".

The proposal at hand (having The Proxies respond to the list below) is a
great example of a harmless proposal. The original dozen proposals on
proxyfor.me provide other great examples of harmless proposals: deciding
whether to extend legal personhood to chimpanzees, deciding whether to
shut down SETI, deciding whether to mandate "Idaho Stop" ordinances
globally, etc. It only takes four harmless proposals per week to
entirely neutralize The Proxies as a political force in global governance.

(From the perspective of the power puppeteers, firing Managers is
another class of harmless proposals, since the puppeteers can easily
have full control of who gets into the replacement pools. It would work
just fine for the puppeteers for The Proxies to fire four Managers per
week, forever. That would use up all the democratic decisionmaking,
harmlessly.)

2. Those executives will be operating under to the Rules For Rulers
(beyond any concretely effective vote-driven democratic control).

It's a nice story, but unfortunately really only describes the most
simplistic and primitive form of power, kleptocracy, which is seen
only in the very poorest and least developed places like Venezuela and
North Korea, notably excluding Russia which is a special case because
of the unique one-time ability for Putin to distribute massive wealth
in state assets to his cronies (or people willing to become his
cronies). Far more powerful, and far more common, is rule based on
ideology which that video didn't address*at all*: Hitler, Stalin,
Mao, Castro, and even wannabe dictators like Trump and Erdogan didn't
rely primarily on any sort of monetary compensation for themselves or
their "keys" to achieve their goals, but gained and maintained power
by exploiting ideology in their "keys" and in The People (particularly
nationalism, but also including happy talk about
communism/fascism/some religion or other/etc.) The solution, of
course, is not to hope for benevolent dictators, but instead to
severely restrict the power of the executive branch, including having
a very simple way to remove them (such as when their popularity drops
below that of some obvious replacement candidate, as described in
http://www.matchism.org/managers/)

It sure sounds like you didn't watch the second half of the video.

Ideology does not pay the bills. You are being distracted by all of the
political speechifying.

None of the arrangements discussed on the Managers page, and none of the
arrangements discussed on The System page, do anything to significantly
restrict the power of the executive branch. Individual Managers will
come and go, but the power of the executive branch is entirely
unrestrained. You are conflating "the executive branch" with "the Manager".

(snip)

Please share your perception of how their current government manages
the resources (time, money, attention) it expends on these items, on a
scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being "Way too little", through "About right",
Immigrants and refugees
Children's health and welfare
Minimizing degree of economic inequality
Education
Crime and loss prevention (via police and criminal courts)
National security/defense
Acquisition, maintenance, and preservation of parks and open space
Economic incentives and protections for corporations
Infrastructure development/maintenance (transportation, utilities, etc.)
Scientific and technological research
Minimizing government spending and deficits/debt/taxes
Trade policy and protecting local jobs
An independent press/media
Protecting the environment
Economic protection for individuals (via regulation, and civil courts)
Increasing general happiness and decreasing level of stress or fear
Regulation of businesses
Enforcing moral codes (e.g. against drug use)
Supporting churches and organized religion
Improving health care access, quality, and efficiency
Maximizing individual economic efficiency (tax rates, commute times, etc.)
Disaster recovery, loss prevention, and infrastructure resilience
Mental illness and addiction treatment
Maximizing the median standard of living
Preservation of other cultures and traditions
Increasing overall economic efficiency or GDP
Improving individual health, safety, and/or lifespan
Age and benefit level for retirement
Managing per capita resource consumption (energy, land, minerals, etc.)
Ensuring a minimum standard of living (housing and wage supplements, etc.)
Diplomacy and international aid
Compensating for individuals with disabilities

Scott Raney

2018-07-23 20:28:16 UTC

Permalink

On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 11:46 PM Ned Conner <***@earthlink.net> wrote:

I got about half way through this response when it became clear that
one big problem is that Ned and I are talking about different versions
of the Matchism architecture. The major changes in the more recent
versions (that he's apparently not read), and which you all need to
read to have any hope of having a productive conversation about, are
available as:
http://www.matchism.org/will/
http://www.matchism.org/system/
http://www.matchism.org/managers/

Again, as opposed to what? If your claim is that by having *everyone*
fill out this list we learn exactly zero, then you're just being a
troll. I'd go so far as to predict that by taking this simple step
we'd learn more than *everything* we get from polls plus voting
records plus protests in the streets plus every other source of
information we have on the Will Of The People now. What information do
you think we need, and how would you propose to *practically* gather
it?

Whether responses to the list could be used for proxy matching purposes is an empirical question. (Given that I myself would not be able to respond to the list as directed because absolutely crucial information is missing from the proposal, I doubt that it would be.)

Again, what would you propose instead? Require *everyone* to write a
dissertation on their preferred outcome before they can get quality
representation? I also think you overestimate the difficulty of this
task, noting that it's generally about "resources" (attention, time,
money, etc), not just about budget items. Which why IMHO this is a
better assessment tool than even having everyone do a budget, which of
course would be impractical anyway because of how long it would take
them (quantity being far more important than quality when assessing
TWOTP IMHO).

Whether managers would find the information useful when creating new policy proposals and budget items would depend on what the managers were trying to accomplish. Again, given how abstract, vague, and overlapped the items of the list are, the information would probably be mainly useful as material to be used in political speechifying.

And I think you're just being cynical, a classic case of the good
being the enemy of the great. Large discrepancies in responses to this
list would be hugely informative as to what the Will Of The People
really is, and I'm sure we'll all be very surprised by the outcome. As
for using this for demagoguery, again, I'd recommend reading the
section on Managers: There's no need (or provision) for this in the
executive branch selection system I've proposed. And I also think that
it'd be useful information for objectively assessing Managers: If
someone's been in that office for a year and there has been no shift
in the Will Of The People, that's clear and convincing evidence of
incompetence.

(snip, references to obsolete versions. Oh, and you also misunderstood
the proposal in the last beta test of proxyfor.me: It didn't have
anything to do with SETI: It was about *broadcast*, not reception).

It sure sounds like you didn't watch the second half of the video.
Ideology does not pay the bills. You are being distracted by all of the political speechifying.

Actually I did watch it all, and appreciated the reference to HOAs,
because that's how I got involved in this social engineering project
in the first place. And yet my experience is exactly the opposite of
what that video described which doesn't even mention personality as a
factor in who rules and how. And yet my experience was almost exactly
what Altemeyer found in his Global Change Game experiment, which, not
to be too fine a point on it, I consider to be *the* prerequisite
reading to doing anything in this field:
http://matchism.org/refs/Altemeyer_2003_RWAInheritEarth.pdf

I still consider ideology (Communist, Libertarian, US Democrat vs
Republican, etc.) to be the primary driver of executive branch
decisionmaking, but personality (e.g., the SDAP classification) is a
close second. And this is what my experience with that dysfunctional
HOA showed: It was run by a SD President (although additionally he was
a psychopath) with the rest of the board being authoritarian, exactly
like the SD + A condition in Altemeyer's experiment. And the outcome
was the same: The HOA was completely mismanaged and was a couple of
million dollars behind in their maintenance. And yet none of the board
members were getting paid, nor was there even any overt corruption
(just like in Altemeyer's experiment: Put an SD or P in charge of a
bunch of As and corruption actually *decreases*). So, again, IMHO that
video has completely missed the point that the two most powerful
forces in hierarchical government have nothing to do with money or
other resources. For SDAPs, wielding power is its own reward.

None of the arrangements discussed on the Managers page, and none of the arrangements discussed on The System page, do anything to significantly restrict the power of the executive branch. Individual Managers will come and go, but the power of the executive branch is entirely unrestrained. You are conflating "the executive branch" with "the Manager".

Being able to replace the Manager with only a month's delay is IMHO
the only power we really need. Nevertheless, I am considering the idea
of requiring putting any "executive orders" into The System and
subject them to a simple approval process. For example, if the
positive rating of an order drops below 25%, it is automatically
rendered null and void. The trick here is to allow The People to stop
a policy without having to replace the manager, yet also produce
something robust enough that it's not subject to attempts to game the
system (brigading, for-pay petition drives, etc.).
Regards,
Scott

(snip)
Please share your perception of how their current government manages
the resources (time, money, attention) it expends on these items, on a
scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being "Way too little", through "About right",
Immigrants and refugees
Children's health and welfare
Minimizing degree of economic inequality
Education
Crime and loss prevention (via police and criminal courts)
National security/defense
Acquisition, maintenance, and preservation of parks and open space
Economic incentives and protections for corporations
Infrastructure development/maintenance (transportation, utilities, etc.)
Scientific and technological research
Minimizing government spending and deficits/debt/taxes
Trade policy and protecting local jobs
An independent press/media
Protecting the environment
Economic protection for individuals (via regulation, and civil courts)
Increasing general happiness and decreasing level of stress or fear
Regulation of businesses
Enforcing moral codes (e.g. against drug use)
Supporting churches and organized religion
Improving health care access, quality, and efficiency
Maximizing individual economic efficiency (tax rates, commute times, etc.)
Disaster recovery, loss prevention, and infrastructure resilience
Mental illness and addiction treatment
Maximizing the median standard of living
Preservation of other cultures and traditions
Increasing overall economic efficiency or GDP
Improving individual health, safety, and/or lifespan
Age and benefit level for retirement
Managing per capita resource consumption (energy, land, minerals, etc.)
Ensuring a minimum standard of living (housing and wage supplements, etc.)
Diplomacy and international aid
Compensating for individuals with disabilities

Ned Conner

2018-07-25 06:15:36 UTC

Permalink

Post by Scott Raney
I got about half way through this response when it became clear that
one big problem is that Ned and I are talking about different versions
of the Matchism architecture. The major changes in the more recent
versions (that he's apparently not read), and which you all need to
read to have any hope of having a productive conversation about, are
http://www.matchism.org/will/
http://www.matchism.org/system/
http://www.matchism.org/managers/

Ned> Scott, I was responding to the version that your link in the
original email of this thread pointed to. Not sure what gave you the
idea that I was responding to an older version.

Post by Scott Raney

Category headings are not themselves targets for resource allocation.
Each category heading should be a "drill-down" link that enables me to
navigate (through sub-categories if necessary) to each and every
resource-allocation-target (policy, plan, program, project) that you
have put into the category. When I visit a particular resource target, I
should find all pertinent information concerning that target concisely
presented. At that point you can appropriately ask me appraisal and
preference questions concerning that particular resource target.

Post by Scott Raney

Asking me resource allocation questions about category headings, without
giving me any information at all about the actual allocation targets
that you have put into each category, is just dumb. You should follow
your own stated policy: whenever I am asked a question, all the
information I need (in order to provide an informed response) should be
available to me, concisely presented. (The question is not whether
google is my friend, but whether *you* are my friend.)

Post by Scott Raney

Any large discrepancies would more likely be attributable to widely
varying guesses among individuals regarding what sorts of resource
targets have been put into each category. "Garbage In => Garbage Out".
(So much for being interested in the "correct vote".)

But hey, the proposal is harmless. So go for it.

Post by Scott Raney
As
for using this for demagoguery, again, I'd recommend reading the
section on Managers: There's no need (or provision) for this in the
executive branch selection system I've proposed.

I have read (and now re-read) the section on Managers. You frame the
problems that we have as being personnel problems (rather than societal
arrangements problems), which then leads you to seek to set up a
selection process that will reliably put saints and not sinners into the
positions of great power in your design.

You claim that The People are not competent to select saints rather than
sinners. At the same time, you appear to claim that The People *are*
competent to de-select sinners that they have previously put in office.

But wait! -- You claim that, actually, The People will not do the
selecting in practice, The Proxies will do the selecting. (The People
will just watch, as spectators.) Then you claim that, although The
People are not competent to select saints, The Proxies *are* competent
to select saints, and are competent to de-select sinners.

These are all empirical claims. They need to be tested, harmlessly.

An alternative theory regarding how the tests will go is expressed in
the "Rules For Rulers" video: Managers that keep their (minimized) keys
happy will remain in office. Those happy keys will thereby become
progressively wealthier, and more powerful, and better able to control
the pipeline of prospective Managers.(Controlling that pipeline will be
the primary objective of the power puppeteers.)

Under this alternative theory, our problems are not usefully framed as
personnel problems. To be solved, the problems must be framed as
societal arrangements problems. We need to not have (at all) positions
of great power. Which means (among other things) no hierarchies.

Post by Scott Raney
And I also think that
it'd be useful information for objectively assessing Managers: If
someone's been in that office for a year and there has been no shift
in the Will Of The People, that's clear and convincing evidence of
incompetence.

If *you* don't know what the actual resource targets are in each of your
33 categories, then it is a pretty sure bet that nobody else will
either. Alternatively, if you *do* know what the resource targets are in
each category, then you should share that information with the rest of
us. To the extent that we know what the resource targets are, and to the
extent that the performance of the resource targets is objectively
measured and reported, we can indeed use that knowledge to objectively
assess the performance of the executive branches.

Post by Scott Raney
(snip, references to obsolete versions.
"Harmless" in this context means "not interfering with the substantive
plots and plans and profits of the puppeteers".
The proposal at hand (having The Proxies respond to the list below) is a
great example of a harmless proposal. The original dozen proposals on
proxyfor.me provide other great examples of harmless proposals: deciding
whether to extend legal personhood to chimpanzees, deciding whether to
shut down SETI, deciding whether to mandate "Idaho Stop" ordinances
globally, etc. It only takes four harmless proposals per week to
entirely neutralize The Proxies as a political force in global governance.

And, you are right. In addition to giving "Shut down SETI" as an example
of a harmless proposal, I could also have given "Ban broadcasting into
outer space" as an example of a harmless proposal. The point was to help
the reader understand what I mean by "harmless" proposal. The point had
nothing to do with any differences between old and new versions of the
Matchism Manifesto. Harmless proposals are just as problematic for the
new version as for the older versions.

Post by Scott Raney
Oh, and you also misunderstood
the proposal in the last beta test of proxyfor.me: It didn't have
anything to do with SETI: It was about *broadcast*, not reception).

It sure sounds like you didn't watch the second half of the video.
Ideology does not pay the bills. You are being distracted by all of the political speechifying.

Altemeyer's findings are certainly valid, but they do not frame the
problem-space in a helpful way. (Actually, Altemeyer's findings are not
doing the framing -- you are.) You are "betting your farm" on the
ability of The Proxies to select saints rather than sinners for the
positions of great power in your design. And then you are further
betting that when saints are selected, said saints will not be governed
by the Rules For Rulers. Good luck with those bets.

Post by Scott Raney
I still consider ideology (Communist, Libertarian, US Democrat vs
Republican, etc.) to be the primary driver of executive branch
decisionmaking, but personality (e.g., the SDAP classification) is a
close second.

So long as our societal arrangements are such that they vest particular
individuals (plutocrats, Managers) with great power to make
public-matter decisions for their own personal benefit, we (the rest of
us: humanity, nature, future generations) will continue to suffer the
consequences of those decisions. We can fix that problem by switching to
societal arrangements that do *not* vest any particular individuals with
great power to make public-matter decisions for personal benefit.This
solution does not rely on our (non-existent) ability to alter the
ideologies and/or personalities of those vested individuals, nor does it
rely on our (non-existent) ability to select only incorruptible saints
to fill those empowered roles..

Post by Scott Raney
And this is what my experience with that dysfunctional
HOA showed: It was run by a SD President (although additionally he was
a psychopath) with the rest of the board being authoritarian, exactly
like the SD + A condition in Altemeyer's experiment. And the outcome
was the same: The HOA was completely mismanaged and was a couple of
million dollars behind in their maintenance. And yet none of the board
members were getting paid, nor was there even any overt corruption
(just like in Altemeyer's experiment: Put an SD or P in charge of a
bunch of As and corruption actually *decreases*).

You have experienced the problems, but you have not yet experienced any
societal arrangement solutions to those problems. You have placed your
bets, but the "solutions races" that will demonstrate which solutions
work and which do not, have not even started yet.

Post by Scott Raney
So, again, IMHO that
video has completely missed the point that the two most powerful
forces in hierarchical government have nothing to do with money or
other resources. For SDAPs, wielding power is its own reward.

You are conflating motivation with means.

For SDAPs, wielding power (and gaining ever more power) is its own
reward. That provides their motivation.

The Rules For Rulers provide the means -- they are all about how to
acquire, retain, and increase that power.

SDAPs obey the Rules For Rulers, and so do non-SDAPs that arrive in
seats of power (if, for whatever reasons, they wish to remain in power).

Post by Scott Raney

Being able to replace the Manager with only a month's delay is IMHO
the only power we really need.

This is the bet you are placing, that this arrangement will be enough.
You have no Plan B, no hedge, no "checks and balances".

Post by Scott Raney
Nevertheless, I am considering the idea
of requiring putting any "executive orders" into The System and
subject them to a simple approval process. For example, if the
positive rating of an order drops below 25%, it is automatically
rendered null and void. The trick here is to allow The People to stop
a policy without having to replace the manager, yet also produce
something robust enough that it's not subject to attempts to game the
system (brigading, for-pay petition drives, etc.).

Here again we run into the "harmless proposals" problem. If the Manager
floods the democratic voting process with executive orders (4 per week
or whatever), he uses up all the available democratic decisionmaking --
The Proxies are effectively neutralized as a force in global governance.

Post by Scott Raney
Regards,
Scott

Scott Raney

2018-07-25 19:58:46 UTC

Permalink

Post by Ned Conner
Ned> Scott, I was responding to the version that your link in the
original email of this thread pointed to. Not sure what gave you the
idea that I was responding to an older version.

Because of the misunderstandings evident in your post:
1) There is only 1 vote per week, not 4 as you implied. In the final
implementation there might be 2 (one local, one global), but it may be
sufficient to do something like alternate weeks instead.

2) The manager-replacement process is completely separate from the
proposal queue: Stuffing the queue would have no impact on the ability
to remove a manager. Indeed, it would only accelerate their
replacement because people would quickly recognize this attempt to
manipulate them.

3) Proposal stuffing wouldn't work anyway because the queue is sorted
automatically by vote count, not by the manager (i.e., you could still
fire a manager by proposal if enough people vote for it). There will
probably be some need for an "emergency vote" over-ride to give the
manager the option of moving a vote on something time-sensitive
(disaster response, declaration of war, etc.) to the top of the queue,
but of course if they tried to move up a non-substantive proposal
using this method it would be a big red flag that they're trying to
game the system and so need to be replaced...

I'd also like to take the opportunity to correct the misrepresentation
that the proposals in the last beta test were non-substantive. You may
wish to classify them as such, but this would only expose your naivety
about what our existing governments are actually doing now: *Most* of
the stuff they vote on is far less substantive than *any* of the
proposals in that queue, including renaming buildings, recognizing
"national carrot week" or whatever, creating unfunded mandates, or
voting on things they know aren't ever going to be made law (like the
Republicans in the US congress voting over 60 times to repeal
Obamacare).

Post by Ned Conner
Category headings are not themselves targets for resource allocation.

They're not a budget, sure. But that's not what they're being used for here...

Post by Ned Conner
Each category heading should be a "drill-down" link that enables me to
navigate (through sub-categories if necessary) to each and every
resource-allocation-target (policy, plan, program, project) that you
have put into the category. When I visit a particular resource target, I
should find all pertinent information concerning that target concisely
presented. At that point you can appropriately ask me appraisal and
preference questions concerning that particular resource target.

No, that's a "budget" which is a completely different animal, and one
that only "activerts" will be willing to fill out (i.e., it's a recipe
for reproducing our existing governments). I've been told that even
the 30+ items on the list now is way too many and that I'll be lucky
to get people to fill out the mini-match (3 items from the personality
assessment, 3 from the "will" list). Again, the main goal here is to
identify people who would vote like you would, with secondary goals of
gaining some insight as to what people (as a whole!) are dissatisfied
with and possibly being able to use shifts in that to evaluate the
quality of the executive branch.

Post by Ned Conner
Any large discrepancies would more likely be attributable to widely
varying guesses among individuals regarding what sorts of resource
targets have been put into each category. "Garbage In => Garbage Out".
(So much for being interested in the "correct vote".)

Again, this isn't a budget, it's a matching tool. Trying to dismiss it
by claiming irrationality or low information you have it exactly
backwards: Those are the important things to match on! Both of those
issues should be dealt with at the proposal-voting architecture, not
trying to change people by requiring them to have fully-informed
general perceptions about how society is working.

Post by Ned Conner
I have read (and now re-read) the section on Managers. You frame the
problems that we have as being personnel problems (rather than societal
arrangements problems), which then leads you to seek to set up a
selection process that will reliably put saints and not sinners into the
positions of great power in your design.

Obviously you didn't understand it, then. I'm only proposing to put
competent people in executive decisionmaking roles. They will still
most commonly be SDAP (i.e., not "saints"), but will at least be
competent. The biggest problem with Donald Trump isn't that he's a
psychopath, it's that he's incompetent. The same was true of Stalin
and Mao, but notably not of Hitler. I'm with John Gill on this one
(http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/John_Gill): The problem with
Hitler wasn't that he was a SDAP, it was the fact that he was actually
competent but The People had no way to direct him away from war and
persecution and keep him focused on keeping the trains running on
time.

Post by Ned Conner
You claim that The People are not competent to select saints rather than
sinners. At the same time, you appear to claim that The People *are*
competent to de-select sinners that they have previously put in office.

I suppose this proposal runs the risk that some people will base their
approval on moral or character grounds (an inappropriate criteria
IMHO), but I think Donald Trump is a very good counterexample for that
argument: People voted for him because they (mistakenly, as it turns
out) thought that he was competent and incorruptible enough to "fix"
the broken system and they seemed to not care at all about the fact
that he was by pretty much everyone's definition a "sinner". But if
you just look at the way approval ratings works in the real world,
Trump never would have been installed as Manager under my system, and
would be quickly replaced if he had somehow managed to stumble into
it. Instead we'd now have Charlie Baker (governor of Massachusetts,
and the governor who has the highest approval rating in the country).
It's true that I don't believe people are competent to choose a
leader, but I do believe that they are capable of recognizing whether
they've got a good or bad one.

Post by Ned Conner
But wait! -- You claim that, actually, The People will not do the
selecting in practice, The Proxies will do the selecting. (The People
will just watch, as spectators.)

No, everyone gets a say in Managers (it'll be a form with a top level
menu link to it). Proxies don't apply here because there's no need:
It's not too burdensome to express an opinion on a few people at each
level of government.

Post by Ned Conner
These are all empirical claims. They need to be tested, harmlessly.

Agreed, although I think there's not too much worry about the
"harmlessly" part because this system can run in parallel with our
existing system indefinitely. You worry too much: Our current system
is so screwed up that unless you propose a dictatorship (or a
government that is so incompetent that it quickly devolves into one)
we could hardly do any worse.

Post by Ned Conner
An alternative theory regarding how the tests will go is expressed in
the "Rules For Rulers" video: Managers that keep their (minimized) keys
happy will remain in office. Those happy keys will thereby become
progressively wealthier, and more powerful, and better able to control
the pipeline of prospective Managers.(Controlling that pipeline will be
the primary objective of the power puppeteers.)

How can they do that, though? Anyone can submit their name to the
candidate queue. Really the only risk I see is that people or groups
will *campaign* for one of the names on the list (either the current
manager or some replacement that would be suitable to the oligarchs).
This should be made explicitly illegal, but I'd also expect that a
social/cultural shift will occur as part of that (i.e., if you see any
advertising or other propaganda for a candidate it's your civic duty
to change your rating of them to "disapprove").

Post by Ned Conner
Under this alternative theory, our problems are not usefully framed as
personnel problems. To be solved, the problems must be framed as
societal arrangements problems. We need to not have (at all) positions
of great power. Which means (among other things) no hierarchies.

Good luck with that. Matchism is designed to be implementable. Any
system that proposes eliminating hierarchies I'm quite sure is not.
It'd also be amateur social engineering: Supporting hierarchies is as
natural to humans as talking and breathing. Remember: The goal is not
to change humans, it's to design a system that fits them *as they
are*.

(big snip, all dealt with above, and are mostly the result of not
understanding the *current* proposal)

Post by Ned Conner
So long as our societal arrangements are such that they vest particular
individuals (plutocrats, Managers) with great power to make
public-matter decisions for their own personal benefit, we (the rest of
us: humanity, nature, future generations) will continue to suffer the
consequences of those decisions.

So you've never heard of a competent and non-corrupt manager at any
level of government nor as head of a corporation nor even for
management of an HOA? I have, many times. Even Charlie Baker I think
is doing reasonably well, as is Colorado's governor Hickenlooper,
though unfortunately people say he could never be elected president
because apparently he's too geeky. Which means the problem isn't with
the concept of hierarchy (which IMHO is clearly a requirement to have
a functioning executive branch), its with our inability to select the
right people into those roles (and, when necessary, to select someone
to replace them).

To get some idea of what the list would look like, I highly recommend
this article:
https://morningconsult.com/2018/04/12/americas-most-and-least-popular-governors/

Post by Ned Conner
We can fix that problem by switching to
societal arrangements that do *not* vest any particular individuals with
great power to make public-matter decisions for personal benefit.This
solution does not rely on our (non-existent) ability to alter the
ideologies and/or personalities of those vested individuals, nor does it
rely on our (non-existent) ability to select only incorruptible saints
to fill those empowered roles..

Right, all it requires is massive quantities of unicorn farts to drug
*all* people into behaving completely different from their current
natures (i.e., apparently you plan to change them all into communists
who will rearrange their lives so that decisionmaking can be done via
soviets). Unlike you, I'm actually *not* proposing to change anyone or
even expecting them to make more than a trivial effort to change the
system. It's just to apply simple filters to keep the incompetent
people out of the executive branch and to boost participation rates
(by automating them) to prevent the elites from running the
legislative branch primarily to benefit themselves like they do now.

Post by Ned Conner
You have experienced the problems, but you have not yet experienced any
societal arrangement solutions to those problems.

Right, because there aren't any, and even if there were, it'd be
impractical to implement them because changing "societal arrangements"
is a classic Catch-22: You can't change them without a functioning
decisionmaking system, and yet you can't change the decisionmaking
system because the current arrangements don't allow for this. IMHO
we've got to go outside the current system to change the
decisionmaking system (i.e., cause a technology disruption) after
which, if the right new system is in place, we won't *need* to change
any "societal arrangements". Whereas going outside to change the
"arrangements" first is a prescription for anarchy from which only a
dictatorship (the natural state of a mob) can emerge.

Post by Ned Conner
You have placed your
bets, but the "solutions races" that will demonstrate which solutions
work and which do not, have not even started yet.

Right: Although at present I seem to have this entire domain to myself
because, excepting a few work-within-the-system types exactly *no one*
seems to be working on anything beyond handwaving proposals about
collecting and repurposing unicorn farts (and I don't even count
Liquid Democracy and the Rousseau systems because those have already
been clearly (and scientifically) shown to not work, so they're not
even "proposals" at this point, just ways of wasting time and effort).

Post by Ned Conner
For SDAPs, wielding power (and gaining ever more power) is its own
reward. That provides their motivation.

Agreed. Most of them would do what they do for a living wage without
even the promise they'd get rich off it.

Post by Ned Conner
The Rules For Rulers provide the means -- they are all about how to
acquire, retain, and increase that power.

No, that's not about power in the general sense, it's only about money
(a very limited source of power).

Post by Ned Conner
SDAPs obey the Rules For Rulers, and so do non-SDAPs that arrive in
seats of power (if, for whatever reasons, they wish to remain in power).

Again, does that video explain Hitler or Mao or Stalin? Or even Trump?
Most of the kleptocrats have already been driven out of the Trump
administration, and even Ivanka has now closed up her business. I
don't even think money is Trump's main motivation: He's a psychopath
and does it more for the kicks than the money. He's not even promising
his supporters more money, and this whole tariff thing is about
jerking people around rather than funding his "keys". They support him
because they'd rather see everyone's suffering match their own than
ordinary competence from the executive branch.

Post by Ned Conner

Post by Scott Raney
Being able to replace the Manager with only a month's delay is IMHO
the only power we really need.

This is the bet you are placing, that this arrangement will be enough.
You have no Plan B, no hedge, no "checks and balances".

If you can't replace the Manager, it's not an issue of "checks and
balances", what you've got is a "failed state". Like what the US is
now IMHO because even though just about everyone (and probably *all*
senators and congressmen) realizes we need a different president,
there's nothing they can do about it because there is no practical way
to remove him.
Regards,
Scott