- the power transmission (systematic treatment method).
Then concretely, what can the powers be ? As we say, they consist of information. As any information, they have a meaning and a user interface.
For the meanings, we give a possible List of main categories of power.
Then we describe examples of user interfaces.
Follow some answers to questions, including the problem of Legislative instability and retroaction.
- A secure information network infrastructure : how all this can be quite well protected from hackers.
- Building freedom : What is a free world order ? What "killer application" can help spreading freedom ?
- More comments have not yet been translated from the Original version in French The short-term software project that would serve as a platform for the implementation of this political system is this concept of forum-based mailing system.
If you are interested in this project, you have questions, you want to be involved, you can contact me (spoirier at lautre dot net). Thank you.
The news is not only that one better political system is conceivable (it is well-known for example that the Swiss system of direct democracy is working and is better than the other current democratic systems but that was not enough to spread it because the politicians did not want it in order to keep their power) but especially that by its nature it can be achieved in spite of the unwillingness of the governments, and progressively, hidden under privacy.
The basic axiom, only condition necessary to its development, is the freedom of communication. The development of the theory is made of concepts of new types of information to be shared, which, provided with adequate data processing methods, will give to the use of this freedom a maximum efficiency, so that the exchange of these types of informations and their proper use by many people will finally be natural and irrepressible (in terms of their competitiveness on the "market" of information, but not a "market" refering to the meaning of purchase, but the meaning of freedom of thought and expression) after a period of installation. And the theory explains how these most competitive information and their use will naturally form a reconstruction of an honest and politically autonomous social order, a form of perfect liberalism whose traditional economic liberalism is the approximation to the case of the situations not involving the political dimensions (this is why we will develop here more precisely the political aspects, which are new). The impact of these political aspects will be the fruit of a natural balance (consensus) between the opinions of all.
The material conditions for communication freedom are gradually emerging by the development of information technologies. These technologies may be not yet developed enough for a complete implementation of the system, but as anyway this implementation will be progressive (in number of members and the range of activities: a time of evolution of the social structures is necessary, as some "powers" not in conflict with governments can be set up before the others), we need not wait. The implementation would take the form of a new software.
There are three economic sectors today: the private sector, the public sector and the associative sector. The change could be expressed by saying that the functionalities of the associative sector would be extended until it competes with then replaces the public sector. There would be thus at the end only two sectors, representing two complementary structures of the free society: while the private sector is that of economic freedoms with free market, the politico-associative sector will be characterized by the principle of free adhesion. Let us insist on the fact that the matter is not to privatise systematically all that belongs to the State (which obviously would often be an aberration - nor about letting everything be purchasable) but to let it pass under control of the liberal powers (associations) as we will describe them.
... basically dispersed and competing but globally serving the general interest !
Moreover, these powers would not have everywhere the form of well identified and separated associations, but also, depending on situations, that of a vast network with a more or less fractal or organic stucture, that is a global network made of a large variety of small independent entities, just like the Internet, offering to free adhesion a virtually unlimited choice.
Far from trying to divide a mythical preexistent global unit of Power given from Upwards, the matter is to build new powers by gathering its elements basically dispersed and defined by the undeniable freedom of communication given to all. Most of the time, the nature of these powers would be only purely informative (bringing more information and not censoring any), not even based on any threat of force, but nevertheless effective. Therefore, the development of this system with its powers once started could not be stopped without a physical regulation or interruption of the communication means. Paradoxically, we will see how, if the informational means are sufficiently good, this principle of free adhesion in such a galaxy of little powers can naturally form on a large scale not a law of the jungle but indeed a coherent society, just and organized, in which the public interest receives the consideration that it deserves, and where the usually so-called intrinsic diseases of liberalism, said as requiring the intervention of the superstructures of the public power, will be solved.
No consideration of territory or nationality could anyhow "legally" limit the freedom of extension of the new system.
Some of its aspects will be written under the assumption that a majority of people in a given territory already joined it, but most features would also work between members even if they are only a minority.
The fundamental element of the new structure will be the declaration which, at any time he wants, each member can freely write/update and send to the web servers of the network, which record all the declarations received in a vast data base. Each user will be held responsible for his own declarations. These declarations can be modified at any time, but the files of former declarations are kept in archives for the case when the responsibility for them would be involved because of the consequences which they would have had.
3) Social contract, positions taken, and eventually an activity report.
Each member of the network can make statements about people he (or she) knows (and should at least make one such positive statement, in order to allow transmission of his powers, as we will explain later) - he may choose the members of this list freely. About each member x on the list, he will indicate whether he trusts x as an honest person respecting the general interest, reliable and responsible in his activities and declarations.
Everyone is responsible for his own declarations, and if one doesn't have a clear and sure opinion about someone that can be useful for the other users, he should abstain from any assessment rather than risking a mistake.
Consequently, the list given by a member can usually be reduced to two or three people of whom he has a sure and well-defined opinion. This opinion can include standard options (multiple nuances and possible additional information within a list), processable by computer, but could also contain comments intended for humans who will undertake possible human aspects of data processing.
One can expect that any two honest individuals in such a world will be connected to each other by chains of trust, i.e. that one declares trust in A, who declares trust in B, who declares trust in C, who (...) who declares his trust in the other. It will be said that an individual is discredited if no chain of trust reaches from honest people to him, and if at least one honest person has declared him dishonest. All this is relative: nobody has the power to decide who is honest a priori, but everyone, considering himself honest, may use the computers to inform oneself of the consequences of this assumption: who are the people one indirectly trusts.
Discredit differs from financial ruin in that ruin is quantitative (it means that the individual is not useful to society, which owes him nothing) while discredit is qualitative (it means the person is mistrusted, known as not declaring correctly (or not known as declaring correctly) how one behaves towards (or how much one deserves from) the society, after the possible gifts received of course. These two things are not systematically related, but are very similar and of comparable importance, the one possibly implying the other, and vice versa, depending on the circumstances.
Like financial ruin, discredit is a factor in social exclusion, from the fact that is deduced by computer from a set of statements, and that this information will follow an individual, being made automatically available to all those who may consider dealings with him and who choose to check it, in the same way as the absence of money to your account follows you into whatever stores you enter.
This is not necessarily irreversible: a discredited individual may appeal and may introduce himself to a known (and not discredited) person and lay out his case. For difficult cases, one could consider a plan to provide for social reintegration, with the final decision-makers specialising in discussions with discredited individuals, in the hope of finding conditions and procedures to reintegrate these people into society.
Each time that two people put forward contradictory statements, the servers which contains the data will detect this fact. Except in the case where one of these two is himself discredited, this situation is considered unstable, and the servers will let these two people discuss this disagreement (by a web forum), in hope it will be solved. Otherwise they can have "conflict"
In a conflict, other people who trusted the 2 involved, the one directly and the other indirectly, will be invited to join the discussion, in order to decide who they agree with (indeed, it is similar to the previous case: a trust declaration that contradicts some trusted other person's complaint declaration).
If someone feels incompetent to judge who to agree with, he can can charge some expert he trust and granted this power (see the below power system) to take a decision in his place.
2 people cannot at the same time disagree and trust each other; otherwise, the one who both trust someone and disagrees with him will have to discuss and consider which to keep: trust or disagreement.
Another way to end conflict is if the causes of the conflict were misunderstandings: the debate can provide clarification, so that at the end, misunderstandings may be solved and each person will be able to update his statements, which will finally form a stable situation.
See other details there, and another way of telling it related to google wave.
Powers are divided according to their source on the one hand, their goal or speciality on the other hand. Each power extends as a chain of individuals which goes from its source towards its goal. The source of the power, first individual of the chain, is the citizen in the name of whom this power exists. Every edge is a transmission (delegation) of power. The last individual is the specialized agent who achieves the required acts or judgements (possibly about other individuals). Any citizen is a priori the source of all kinds of powers (in a natural way, as an inevitable consequence of his freedoms to think, communicate and make economic exchanges), except of course those he chooses not to use.
In each chain of power, let us call the individuals except the source and the goal "intermediate agents": often, a larger quantity of power passes through them, so they carry more important responsibilities. Each individual in a chain of power, has the control and the responsibility for each of his powers (in doing the goal or choosing the next person to delegate this power to).
It is only required from everyone, to transmit his powers only to people he declares honest. Indeed, a transmission of power is a special trust (that each person can address to one or several people).
The sources and intermediate agents at the beginning of chains of powers transmit all their power (with possible exceptions) to one (or two...) people who thus gather these powers from a number of sources, as the small brooks make the large rivers, according to a kind of reversed pyramidal organization; the next ones in the chains distribute the various categories of power with which they are charged of, on various people, each of whom may receive his category of power from several intermediaries receiving this from a greater number of sources. These ones, in the same way, divide this category into subcategories and distributes them to various people; and so on until eventually dividing the final specialized actions into particular tasks according to a small traditional pyramidal organization. To arrange all this, meetings can be organized between intermediate agents of the same level or of close level. (For example, the intermediate agents in charge each one of the power of a few hundreds of sources will meet between them at the local level to make friends, form working groups on certain problems and to redistribute their powers between them by categories or to other people, that will periodically join (each week, month, year...) the meetings of the following levels of powers of their category).
Of course, this diagram is not an absolute law but a possibility which is likely to be often used; sometimes, some particular goals can be managed locally, by only a small number of people (or even that the source himself chooses the goal). It may be possible that a person transmits the same type of power to several people, who share the responsibility in question then.
Description below is not a final classification; it is likely to be reconsidered, as some described categories may in fact represent more or less the same questions, and other categories could be added. Precisely, each one is free to define as he wants the division of his powers.
Ideological/legislative power . This power has as a source any citizen having particular convictions. The final agents are the spokesmen of these convictions, better able to argue in words and to make concrete studies and investigations. The goal is to define the general criteria of what it means to respect the general interest, such as to assess the damage of some actions on the environment and to define their price (rates of taxes to apply to them); what sort of business practices are fair ; to ask for something from some people, or to define details or promote a modification of the social contract.
Example of nowadays: petitions are an expression of this power; some associations also represent this power.
Power of public interest expenses. The source is the taxpayer, and it goal is spending money to do useful things for the society as a whole (or a large number of people), or for charity. If taxes were an obligation, the intermediate agents of this power will be the object of a particular surveillance by other people, to check that one does not give money to oneself. But let's hope that voluntary taxes can be enough.
Media power . The source is the televiewer or the reader, and the goal is the production or selection of interesting programs or articles. Each person in this power chain, as a power delegation, selects between the possible next ones (sources of information) like televiewers select channels, on behalf of the previous ones. (Or course, this method will more especially be interesting for the time when one will have the choice between thousands of programs; it hould help build a credible media world, resisting against misinformation and the mediocrity currently imposed from the top).
Thus, corruptions can escape this investigation and justice only if the value is paid in nature, which is already definitely less practical. Or, the Maffia can develop a criminal monetary system (also virtual) in parallel with the honest system, allowing for operations among its members whereas payments in nature from the outside can happen separately : there will be practically inconvertibility between criminal currency and honest currency, any operation with the criminal currency being prohibited by the authorities of the honest world (transfers of honest currency being observable and having to have a reason).
One can notice that this power is close to the power of public interest expenses, except that this one acts negatively while the power of public interest expenses acts positively.
Diploming power. The sources are the potential employers, and the goal is operated by the jury which grants a diploma to the candidate. (Indeed, the meaning of a diploma relies on the fact it is trusted by the potential employers; if an employer decides not to consider your diploma, he is free to do it and your diploma will be as if there did not exist).
Financial power. The source is the saver, the goal is the investment. Today, it is what is called the financial market. But one notices that each chain link of loans from the savers towards the investors supposes an act of trust of the lender to the borrower, which is the reason why this act is usually named "credit". But we can distinguish between simply granting a credit to someone (taking the loss if he does not give back) which is a simple relation between 2 people, and granting another person the power to grant credit to other people in one's name. See the monetary theory for more information.
Such a change of mode of treatment of the financial market is justified as follows: the current banks are great institutions forming a big group (a sort of monopoly, even though they are several) setthing up an abusive tariffing of their services, and this change will mean the rupture of this monopoly into a freer and wider competition. The predominance of these institutions resulted from the need for a wide-area network to treat certain operations. But the functions of this system are basically of two kinds. On the one hand there are completely automatizable and impersonal operations (not implying taking human responsibility), they will be treated by a system of protocols and public software integrated into the Internet, thus not requiring any particular institution. On the other hand, the particular acts of credit requiring an appreciation and human responsibility, will often be handled on a more or less individual level. The need of scaling to share the risk between many businesses can also be satisfied by an individual delegating the financial power he received into a number of other people who grant a number of different credits each. These individuals may in general not be pure bankers but have competences in connection with the activities of the businesses which are investing by these credits.
It may be that the financial power sometines more or less follows the diploming power.
As regards borrowers, one notes the present difficulty in lending to the poor who do not present the sufficient guarantees. This comes from the distant institutional character which is that of the banks, which do not have sufficient close information on the situation and the honesty of the potential borrowers. Instead, with this new system the financial operations would be rooted in the direct human relations beyond any question of belonging to a large firm. This would open new possibilities of economic development.
For the savers: since there are more opportunities for borrowers, the real interest rate may be even better for savers; also , it could prevent risks like bankruptcy of banks as it still occurs in some countries, as to create recourse possible in the event of monetary devaluation which meant the ruin of the savers refunded in devaluated currency.
The social contract is the statement of the general principles of honesty which one claims to accept (as regards socio-economic behavior and declarations on others, rules of good behaviour and respect of the general interest, having vocation to be interpreted humanly and not too formally). Each person is free to state his own social contract. Models of social contracts will be diffused to guide people in making theirs, or to let them simply choose one. This contract, understandable by all, simpler and less formal than a legislation, will be used as guide for the life of members. Each one can sign the commonly accepted social contract, or sign a modified contract, with the risk to be discredited for this fact. (One can thus be judged and discredited, either for non-observance of the signed social contract, or for signing of a non-acceptable social contract).
Some people will have to sometimes add to this an activity report presenting in short one's achievements. Namely (maybe not exclusively) the people paid as public interest expenses as a way to justify their payment to the people (charged with this power who are paying them), who are free to assess this.
The biased beautifyings, if discovered, would quickly be sanctioned with discredit (and the same for the biased beautifying of advertisement practised by the commercial companies !). This declaration can be possibly assisted by a superviser corresponding to the domain of activity, charged with power by others. This specialist can block in no way the freedom of the person to declare what he wants, but he can add to this his motivated approval or disapproval.
Any act, any economic exchange, any monetary operation (the currency being virtual), any judgement including what is carried out in the name of the general interest, is archived with the name of its actors who will keep their responsibility. Thus, a customer discovering the bad quality of a product after having bought it can successfully complain against the salesman and obtain a compensation (after debates...) if his complaint is legitimate; the "court expenses" are small or zero thanks to the great flexibility, simplicity, reactivity and with the good common sense of this social order. This information will be at least accessible to the people charged of power (as described below); The question of knowing up to what point the various kinds of information will be accessible to the public, can be discussed.
We will consider here the practical aspect of the powers, to be implemented. To simplify the description and focus on the main idea without caring about technical difficulties, we can imagine things as if there was only one server centralizing all the data.
Each member may have only one account, but with his account he can add several pseudos (for example, one personal and one professional).
The machine knows the relation between these pseudos and maybe the real identity of the member. (a charge against one pseudo affects the member in all his functions, except maybe if some activity does not need honesty...).
Different power categories can be implemented based on various interface models. For each one, the revealed information about the real identity of the people is reduced to the minimum compatible with the full efficiency of the operations, everyone always being responsible for his actions.
Each category of power can be implemented in the form of one or several of the following interface models automatically related by the computer, whose roles are then complementary. This list of models does not pretend to be complete; it is here just to illustrate the possibilities.
The aim is to let each member as a source or intermediate of powers, get information from and control these powers.
The tree of these powers is accessible visually or as links between pages (one page per person listing his powers received from oneself, linking to the next ones).
The handling of powers by someone takes the form of a document he made, where his delegation to someone else appears as links to the corresponding web pages of the people he delegates to, with comments.
Like in any personal page, if of the author is object of a charge, that could be indicated in a frame or separate window. One enters this this tree by one's own page (which is part of the Declaration). One can add to this the functions of automatic research in the tree by key words, or of downloading or display the whole tree.
On each link one can intervene by cancelling the transmission of power from oneself to someone, or on the contrary by reinforcing it, in a quantitative way for example (while bringing an additional financial assistance) or by defining the force of one's agreement with it (the strength of support to someone as holder of this power). This defines the legitimacy of this power : the legitimity of a person holding powers can be quantified for example by the numbers of sources whose power were delegated to him with each strength of support.
One makes an anonymous portal of the powers, by categories, subcategories and specialties, whose access is reserved to the members.
This portal is structured in a logical way independent of the humane structure of powers. The final elements of this portal can be Web sites of documents, with the pseudos of their authors who recieved the corresponding powers from a number of sources. Each one carries some info on the base of his legitimacy (quantitatively, or identified with associations labels, or as coming from a particular source).
Then, one can ask for a consultation with this person. For this, one first sends a massage with information of what the problem is about. The person in charge with power who receives this request can accept the work or transmit it to another more appropriate authority, according to its contents.
One opens a recorded dialogue, engaging the parts.
According to the cases, it may be a written conversation, or a lively exchange using webcams.
3rd interface model: how to authenticate "the honesty of the machine" to the individual.
The machine will select one or several optimal chains of trust and will send them to the individual, in the form of a succession of signed trust declarations, each one specifying the public key of the next one. This series begins with oneself's declaration, and ending in a declaration attesting the honesty of the control of the machine.
4th interface model: right of access to the data.
Each individual can choose somebody whom he will authorize to access his own data, who can transmit this right to someone else. The concentration of this power makes it possible to one authority to access and compare much data at the same time.
Yes, there will be discriminations because information being better, nobody will be forced by ignorance to deal with people recognized as dishonest persons by others if they do not wish to. Neither more nor less. If you are against that, that means that you refuse the right of people to know with whom they deal and force them to take the risk to be abused because it is necessary that there are people to be abused to make it possible to the robbers to live. Then ? In the case of a minority new society, the simple solution is thus to avoid untrustworthy people. If the new order dominates, other solutions should be sought. Until then, there will be enough time and people to study the problem and seek for solutions. However, manking would indeed feel better if dishonest people did disappear. If this were be the next direction of the darwinist evolution of mankind, well, it would not be worse than any other direction !
"What means honesty ? It is a transitory quality, today I am it but tomorrow? "
Honesty is not an option. It is an obligation of every moment. If at one moment you get the desire of being dishonest and that somebody observes it, that will not go through. You will pay it, in proportion with the chances that you had to profit from it without being noticed, and depending on the unwillingness that you expressed to elucidate the problem and to repair the tort. When you have paid you are allowed to continue your business, but that remains in the files. No, no the world does not stop turning round then.
Thus this system will have educational value to oblige people to be always honest, so that precisely it is no more a transitory quality. To be against that, would mean to make it possible for people to make dishonesties. It is not acceptable. A very acceptable thing on the other hand is for example to behave not very well but to declare it frankly and pay for all the damage which one causes. By not doing well one's work for example, being lazy, and agreeing to receive only a small pay for that not so good work. That is honest, and there could be many people who will choose it. It is not a hard problem, considering the productivity of our economy one can live very well "modestly" and without seeking to have the same income as more productive people, can't we ? Something as to have a half of the minimum western salary working at distance for Western customers while living in a poor country where all is 5 times cheaper.
On another hand, one can dispute the rules of honesty agreed by the others if one does not agree to respect such or such principles. Each one chooses his social contract and his ideological representatives. The condition is whether that forms a justifiable or acceptable thesis by those which will have interactions with you (including all the world if you want to pollute the atmosphere...), they will be free to choose it after reading your declaration. In this case, you will be able to make deals with people who chose to admit your values, styles of negotiations or principles of work, without disturbing those who do not agree.
Question: Is it not necesssary for a system to be rather simple by having stable rules with predictable ways and times of possible change ?
- If the danger is unforeseeable, subscribe an insurance.
- If you do not have sufficient competence to assess the repercussions of a method, a decision, you must call upon specialists in charge of the adequate power to make the necessary study. When their investigation about your project is made, they pose their signature above and you will then be protected by their signature from eventual consequencies if you respect the methods that you presented to them: you transmitted the corresponding responsibility to them, and then they would be the responsible people to pay the damage, to assume the consequences in case of any problem.
(and then consequently also those who gave them this power, and so on so that the responsibility finally extends to the whole society, because the report being public, those who dispute it can complain against these experts, organize a new reports etc).
Then, if you change your methods you must ask for a new report.
Accusing of dishonesty certain methods, whether or not the responsibility was transmitted to the representatives of the community by such a contract, can be done only by means of solid arguments: a law cannot be a purely arbitrary convention but it owes to root in the truth by means of the dynamics of the debates and coallitions between the agents of power. Such a rooting in the truth can then justify the retroactivity of certain laws. According to the case: either the society recognizes you did right and you are allowed to continue your project or one pays you the adaptaton to new collective decisions; or one must highlight your lack of respect of the general interest in what you undertook, so that you take the responsibility of it and that the cost of your adaptation to the new rules holds on you.
If there are things like legislative instabilities, it is that there are people who made bad legislative decisions which must be corrected by others, or that some legislator changed his mind. Those who did this bad work are thus responsible of it and must pay for it, because the question of which are the good laws is an objective question which refers to the ideal of justice. Being responsible for opinion that one gives, one engages to affirm that what one says is right, and if it then proves not bo be, that means that he was betrayed his engagement and he must pay it back to the community. Or in the case of agreements particular to the practices of a certain company, one commits oneself accepting that the range of this opinion perdure in a certain time (up to paying for the consequences of them), or one does not do it but then this opinion will be of little value and influence because the agreement given is a contract between the legislator and the people concerned with the application of the legislation.
In the same way, any signed declaration implies a certain engagement, so that the one who changes it must financially compensate for the consequences (including the possible disorganization caused by this change) that a possible error could have, according to his responsibility. This according to the methods stated in the social contract voluntarily agreed by all.
http://www.p2ptrust.org/ : little portal presenting the present realisations and researches about systems of trust and reputation.
Future Imperfect , by David D. Friedman.
Transparent society: a discussion page on the book by David Grim, arguing that a society where all information on everybody is accessible to everybody else can be a good one.
Segregated Monetary Functions and an Objective, Global, Standard Unit of Account : a text about the problem of reference value of money.