You seem to be assuming that nations / governments are desirable in the first place. I actually would strongly disagree. There has to be law, but there does not necessarily have to be government. That is: if you start as I do from the assumption (I probably should make a post about this, though I’m not sure anyone on LessWrong cares to read me pontificate about my ethical system) that people have the right to do as they will as long as they avoid to the best of their ability infringing on this same right in others, then it derives pretty quickly that imposing a set of laws on someone which they did not assent to knowingly is immoral.
Society ought imo to be organized from the bottom up as a complex of freely agreed upon contracts between individuals and groups (in the vein of individualist anarchism—communist anarchism is simply the special case where a group of individuals have agreed to form a commune), and if there is any top-down power, it ought to be one whose sole function is to enforce contracts—this is what I think an ASI should do.
So although I agree with you that constructing better societies is a very important thing to do—in fact it’s probably the thing I’m most interested in putting my time and energy into—I disagree that they have to look anything like nationstates. The separation between law and economics ideally ought to be minuscule. (Note: I am not referring to so-called anarcho-capitalism here. In the absence of coercion from a pre-existing nationstate no one would freely agree to be a wage slave, or to respect the right of a landlord to own a building they do not personally live in, etc.)
You seem to be assuming that nations / governments are desirable in the first place. I actually would strongly disagree. There has to be law, but there does not necessarily have to be government. That is: if you start as I do from the assumption (I probably should make a post about this, though I’m not sure anyone on LessWrong cares to read me pontificate about my ethical system) that people have the right to do as they will as long as they avoid to the best of their ability infringing on this same right in others, then it derives pretty quickly that imposing a set of laws on someone which they did not assent to knowingly is immoral.
Society ought imo to be organized from the bottom up as a complex of freely agreed upon contracts between individuals and groups (in the vein of individualist anarchism—communist anarchism is simply the special case where a group of individuals have agreed to form a commune), and if there is any top-down power, it ought to be one whose sole function is to enforce contracts—this is what I think an ASI should do.
So although I agree with you that constructing better societies is a very important thing to do—in fact it’s probably the thing I’m most interested in putting my time and energy into—I disagree that they have to look anything like nationstates. The separation between law and economics ideally ought to be minuscule. (Note: I am not referring to so-called anarcho-capitalism here. In the absence of coercion from a pre-existing nationstate no one would freely agree to be a wage slave, or to respect the right of a landlord to own a building they do not personally live in, etc.)
Ah! Sorry for being nitpicky then. I understand what you mean now. And I agree!