<story><title>The NSA Can&apos;t Tell the Difference Between an American and a Foreigner</title><url>http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/27/the_nsa_cant_tell_the_difference_between_an_american_and_a_foreigner?page=0,0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrewljohnson</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t become depressed, but I&amp;#x27;ve become angry, and thoughtful. I often have new software ideas, and my more recent ideas have turned to ways to organize voters to democratically overthrow the corrupt incumbents.&lt;p&gt;Basically, I imagine a political party, defined by the software it runs on. The first incarnation of the software (website) focuses on organizing party members (users) to win elections, but it then gets iterated to include tools for distributed, direct democracy (i.e. the site will let the party members cast votes on what the elected leader votes on, but I also imagine most people proxy their power to others, which is a feature of the site).&lt;p&gt;The website first needs to get a few local leaders elected... city council, uncontested state positions, maybe a state senator if the v1.0 launch goes well. We need to both recruit people to run for office, then build the software to help them get elected, then build tools to allow transparent governance with direct oversite from the people.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to imagine capturing national congressional seats or the presidency on the first go, but I think that applying iterative processes to the formation of a political party and its infrastructure is one possible way to overcome the existing machine.</text></item><item><author>ck2</author><text>Has anyone else become seriously depressed over all this?&lt;p&gt;I mean the TSA was one thing, they are still horrible but I never fly or take a bus or train, I just hate the idea of them existing.&lt;p&gt;But since the NSA exposure, I just feel seriously depressed about the state of who is running this country and the &amp;quot;just try to stop us&amp;quot; thug mentality. It&amp;#x27;s a weight on my mind constantly this past month.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cturner</author><text>The Australian Democrats had a deliberate structure along those lines, although less revolutionary than what you&amp;#x27;re proposing. They&amp;#x27;d been a successful minor party for about thirty years, but imploded from in-fighting about ten years ago.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re a useful case-study for talking about ideas around direct democracy. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs_papers/Others/Gauja.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adelaide.edu.au&amp;#x2F;apsa&amp;#x2F;docs_papers&amp;#x2F;Others&amp;#x2F;Gauja.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The causes of the party&amp;#x27;s decline is controversial. My take - that they ran into scaling problems when their parlimentary party grew large. Parts of their parliamentary party felt hamstrung by a membership who were free to take positions on issues that weren&amp;#x27;t well-considered or practical. They needed to move quickly on issues, and the direct democracy process stalled them. The federal parliamentary party went rogue, and a large section of the membership felt betrayed. This killed the collaborative culture that was the heart of what they stood for, and the party collapsed in infighting.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m pretty frustrated with the way freedoms are being eroded in the west, but direct democracy is not a strong response to this. It&amp;#x27;s complicated, ripe for gaming and diffuses responsibility - bad qualities. When it fails, people will look to a &amp;quot;strong leader&amp;quot; who &amp;quot;gets things done&amp;quot; to replace it. Danger.&lt;p&gt;Keep thinking though, because there will be better models out there. I suspect that if you could draft a new constitution, you could produce a free society with strong real democratic qualities using a structure similar to the old Icelandic Commonwealth - basically lots of statelets.&lt;p&gt;The major weakness of this kind of system is that it&amp;#x27;s hard to fight big wars, even to defend yourself. That&amp;#x27;s a reason that the awesome original Articles of Confederation were replaced with the current US system.</text></comment>
<story><title>The NSA Can&apos;t Tell the Difference Between an American and a Foreigner</title><url>http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/27/the_nsa_cant_tell_the_difference_between_an_american_and_a_foreigner?page=0,0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrewljohnson</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t become depressed, but I&amp;#x27;ve become angry, and thoughtful. I often have new software ideas, and my more recent ideas have turned to ways to organize voters to democratically overthrow the corrupt incumbents.&lt;p&gt;Basically, I imagine a political party, defined by the software it runs on. The first incarnation of the software (website) focuses on organizing party members (users) to win elections, but it then gets iterated to include tools for distributed, direct democracy (i.e. the site will let the party members cast votes on what the elected leader votes on, but I also imagine most people proxy their power to others, which is a feature of the site).&lt;p&gt;The website first needs to get a few local leaders elected... city council, uncontested state positions, maybe a state senator if the v1.0 launch goes well. We need to both recruit people to run for office, then build the software to help them get elected, then build tools to allow transparent governance with direct oversite from the people.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to imagine capturing national congressional seats or the presidency on the first go, but I think that applying iterative processes to the formation of a political party and its infrastructure is one possible way to overcome the existing machine.</text></item><item><author>ck2</author><text>Has anyone else become seriously depressed over all this?&lt;p&gt;I mean the TSA was one thing, they are still horrible but I never fly or take a bus or train, I just hate the idea of them existing.&lt;p&gt;But since the NSA exposure, I just feel seriously depressed about the state of who is running this country and the &amp;quot;just try to stop us&amp;quot; thug mentality. It&amp;#x27;s a weight on my mind constantly this past month.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sliverstorm</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Basically, I imagine a political party, defined by the software it runs on.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You realize you are essentially proposing that we switch from the Republican Party vs. the Democratic Party, to the Vim Party and the Emacs Party- right? We all know how vim vs. emacs debates go down.</text></comment>