The Wikiocracy

This semester has been fun. Along with all the typical classes there are two that are really meshing for me more than usual this semester. The first is a poli sci class called "Dynamics of Democracy." It is basically a class on how democracy forms in countries around the world. This is mostly macro level ideas about governments and cultures, but if worked with enough can begin to look at the micro level of people and community. The other is a class on "Strange Communities." This class has looked at gangs, monks, and now Internet communities. Both classes I really didn't need to take and it would have made my life a bit easier if I hadn't taken them, but without them i would not have gotten to think about certain things. For example:

One of the questions that comes up often in my democracy class is that of what is after the stage of large scale republican democracy when it comes to legitimate government that is also as efficient as it can be. Today my communities class gave me the answer. We will form a wikiocracy. Now to see this as being reasonable we have to look at a few things first. Let's also just use Arkansas as the example of choice.

As of right now Arkansas has a legislature that meets every two years (maybe every year after this election) to decide on all sorts of laws and rules and budgets that the executive branch much follow. To do this the representatives and senators meet and draw up all sorts of bills. Most of these things are minor, but they are still important enough to have discussion over. Right now it is almost totally up to the congressmen (with the aid of lobbyists) to do this.

Now we elect people to do this sort of thing because we are all just too busy to have a direct say in government all the time. Plus, if we all tried to have a debate out on the floor of congress all the time nothing would ever get passed thanks to the pure inefficiency of it. This is all well and good for trying to have a light government that speaks where the people can't, but it is no good as we are entering an era of what many might refer to as postmodern complexity. By this I mean that we are at a point in our civilization in which none of us have the ability to see or understand everything (even within our own fields of expertise) thus we must accept that our views can only become more nuanced when combined with those of others.

Because of this new sense of ignorance the best* way we have developed so far of making law has been through professional politicians and lobbyists. This tends to limit the government's view of the complexity I have mentioned. If we are not careful the result will be that eventually the government will only think like a government and not like the wide birth of people it is meant to be serving.

To solve this we can look the movement of collaborative creation, such as Wikipedia and other wikis. These are places where anyone can enter and add their two cents and get out. This means that anyone can put their view of the world in with everyone else and soon there is a mean view that forms that most people can agree with (this mean is known as Subjective Neutrality). This and its self-correcting nature are what drives the wiki to being a useful tool.

Now what I am proposing is not going to be as open as Wikipedia, but it will allow everyone who wants a say to be able to help shape the way the government is run.

I propose a Legislative Wiki. It will contain articles about things that are legislated (such as an article on Fishing that contains information about what, when, where, and how it is legal for anyone to fish), things that people want to be legislated (such as gambling), and most importantly Drafts of Bills being considered by the legislature.

Now the first two types of articles will be open to the public to edit by making sure that public statements by important people and organizations are constantly added as deemed relevant. Because there are almost always two equally passionate sides to most issues and it will be mostly made up of facts this area of the wiki will only have to be loosely moderated by a constantly rotating group of non-partisan government workers. There will also be locked wiki pages constantly linked in these articles of current or past laws. They will be locked because they are the law and cannot be changed at the whim of the wikifolk. These articles will provide the information desperately needed in order to know where laws need to be put into place and just how the laws need to be structured for maximum efficiency.

These pages will of course have their own discussion pages that will allow them to produce debate from both citizens, groups, and government officials on topics from what should be on the page to whether there are laws that need to be changed.

Now comes the truly awesome part of this new legislative method!

Elected officials will constantly monitor the sections that most interest them and their constituents and as they seen clamor for a change in law they will create and moderate Draft Bill Proposal pages. These will either be locked or unlocked based on what the legislator sees as most useful for the proposal, but they will be hammered out by discussion from the people. Much more quickly than in a committee meeting all the potential flaws will be gone and the kind of reaction the bill gets will help the legislators decide how to vote if/when it gets to be put to a vote.

This whole process might seem complicated at first, but once it is set up it will run very smoothly.

The goal of doing this is to create a more democratic government in which anyone who wants a say in what is being said or heard by politicians. It will also give people a say in just how government runs things by giving people almost direct control over things such as laws. And by having more people than just politicos tinkering with bills there will be a more civilization encompassing tone to what is made into law. All of these things are goods and at one time would have been too costly to allow, but now that we have moved past traditional methods of communication these things are all possible.

*Best is a normative term, but I mean it as the most useful and societally efficient way of doing things.

Wealth

A little over a week ago I got an iPhone. I have to say that I love it. As an avid Apple user it meets all the demands I have for a phone that wants to connect me to the Internet. While there are complaints about it from some slightly more hardcore users, I find it fits my needs fairly well.

As I was getting my iPhone activated I noticed a skuzzy looking guy who was probably some sort of manual laborer getting an iPhone as well. That said I recently saw an article on /. that said that even lower-middle class people are getting the iPhone. Now this makes sense seeing as how the plan it only slightly more than what most people are paying for cell service now and the phone itself is not to prices. This bit of news and the economy have got me to thinking about money and buying power.

The day I bought my iPhone we had a discussion about the idea of wealth in my economics class. One student said that thanks to the market "crisis" he didn't feel that wealthy. To this I and a few others tried to correct him by suggesting that he has yet to worry about getting food or anything else despite the slowdown with the professor chiming in, "The US, where a problem is that the poor people are fat." Our point was that we are so wealthy that we feel poor even when we are able to be overweight if we so please.

This is such a stark contrast to a few generations ago. My grandparents, all of whom have passed, were all never high ranking people. They all came from modest backgrounds where they all made decent livings and knew how to save and make a dollar into more than it was when they first got it. These were people who live through the Great Depression, went to war, and worked until they were able to retire comfortably. For them by the time they were ready to retire they were wealthy.

Now, they were not wealthy in the way that they could have gone out and bought manor houses and rare art. They were wealthy in that they could buy large meaty meals every day and feed me just about anything I could have wanted whenever I was over. They loved watching me eat. They also liked giving me nice things like clothes and toys, but it was being able to see me provided with a thick juicy steak that really made their hearts sing. Not that I am blaming them for my being a bit overweight for a good part of my life. I am just saying that they saw intense value in food and wanted me to have it.

My brother has a kid now, making my parents grandparents. However, I don't think that they will get the same sort of joy out of feeding my niece as my grandparents had for me. This is because they have never felt like food wasn't something people simply just have without much question. Now the quality of food, that will always be something to want to improve, but food itself...

I say this because in our troubled economic times when we are riding a roller coaster of an economy trying to find its way in a post-housing bubble world, we need to have some perspective. We need to appreciate that we are so comfortable with our food supply that even the proletariat can buy what might be considered high technology. We don't have to decide between iPhones and butter. We have both, and by most people's standards we here in the US are pretty wealthy.

Meditations in an Emergency

I was just washing dishes when I got a message asking if I was okay from my brother. Considering I hadn't spoken to him in ages and there was seemingly no reason for me to be not okay I was confused. It turns out there has been a shooting on my university's campus.

As of right now the news is sketchy at best, but I really have to say that I am not sure what to make of the whole thing. It isn't likely that I know any of the people shot. I am safe off campus in my little house. Everyone I would think to call and check on is informed of the situation and is not worried about me, nor I them. But there was just a shooting on campus.

The worst part of it is that some of my first thoughts about the shooting were that I would have to watch my tongue and not make any distasteful jokes. But that is jut how I react to things I guess...

All of this just makes me think about all the press coverage that I have seen over the years of random places with sad people out to make a name for themselves the easiest way possible. But those kids did it in the day where there were plenty of people to shoot and plenty of people to see the shooting.

This means that either we have the dumbest camera-whore of a shooter ever or it has to be an isolated incident that happen for some even more random reason. And to be quite frank, I am not sure which I would prefer.

It seems it has made the national news now.

I am just lucky that I am one of the few kids on campus that have access to HCOL as a place to turn for comfort. It is nice to see all the people I know logged in. All of us with baited breath. Waiting for each bit of information to come down the wire.

May we all find the strength and comfort we need and pass these things on to others who might need more than they have.

Nick and Norah's Infinate Playlist

Given my unabashed loved for all things twee I had to see this movie. And I had to love it irrationally. I am sure I will watch this movie again when it comes out on DVD in a long movie night featuring as many movies as I can find that have something to do allowing trendy music to control our hearts and bring us together. That said, this movie is too full of lost potential for me to be truly happy watching it.

The whole plot involves Michael Cera (played with much grace by Mr. Cera) getting over his manipulative ex, hooking up with Kat Dennings, and getting to see a band that is playing after hours in a mystery location. There is also some wackiness with Kat's Courtney Love-esque friend, MC's gay bandmates, and a lame Jewish band. So it is basically set up to be the perfect into the night movie.

The movie fails many ways, but lets focus on the two aspects of the movie that could most easily be improved.

The paths of the characters:

With a premise like trying to find where the best twee band in NYC is playing should have been the biggest focus of the movie in terms of motivations for each of the hipster characters. MC and Kat (Nick and Norah) seem to be using the quest to find Fluffy as the excuse to learn about each other rather than simply being thrown together by the forces of the night to search for the band and fall in love at the same time. This leads to frustrating scenes where the characters are in fact building a connection, but through brute force alone.

Zanny sidequests are bound to happen, but that really should have been left to sidekicks, who were used quite well for the first part of the movie but then suddenly become nothing more than a plot mechanism to find Fluffy without even any work. I point to Superbad's McLovin for how to use the sidekick in a movie like this. They should interact as almost coincidentally connected stories that don't really have to help solve the primary conflict. They just need to provide that bridge the main characters can use to reach their destination.

The music:

While I am happy that Mark Mothersbaugh took care of the original music. The "playlist" was never stressed enough. In a post Garden State age movies about music really need a soundtrack that "will change your life."

I am no music expert. I can barely make myself listen to the newest Jenny Lewis album, much less any kind of truly underground stuff. But I expect the filmmaker to at least have a friend that might be able to do this sort of thing. I need a list of songs by bands that should be popular and will be thanks to this movie. This would drive up the cred of the movie.

The music also should have been a bigger topic of conversation. The one time they really get into talking about music in a deep way is a conversation about The Cure ("More like The Cause."). If these people are such music geeks who are brought together because of their love of music then we need to see that.



Oh, and more bands should have bunnies as their symbols.

This is just Rotten

I am a romantic. I romanticize. Especially when it comes to the icons who were once cool. I like to think that these people are able to grow up and only become more cool as adults who may be part of the system, but at least it is a system that they seemed to have always been associated with. This is why I like Rush (beyond the music). They were basically nerds who tried to be like Led Zepplin with slightly more competent drummer. This has been their MO from day one and has matured tastefully like wine.

I just don't think of punk when I see this:




Maybe my vision of punk is too much Sid & Nancy and not enough just making a buck. Maybe this is punk and I am just missing it. Maybe if California has happy cows the UK has anarchist cows. Maybe, just maybe, punk was never what I like to dream of it as and Mr. Lydon is determined to tell me this.