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.