You’d probably want to be a 501(c)(4) or a Political Action Committees (PAC).
How would LOCALS find a politician to be in violation of their oath?
That would be a powerful position to have. “Decentralization” is a property of a system, not a description of how a system would work.
Futarchy
I’d love to hear your criticisms of futarchy. That could make a good post.
Mobility
Political mobility is good, but there are limitations. People are sticky. Are you going to make your kid move schools and separate them from their friends because you don’t like the city’s private airplane policy? Probably not.
Experimental Politics
I want more experimental politics so that we can find out which policies actually work! Unfortunately, that’s an unpopular opinion. People don’t like being in experiments, even when the alternative is they suffer in ignorance.
End
I feel that you are exhausting my ability to help you refine your ideas. Edit these comments into a post (with proper headings and formatting and a clear line of argument) and see what kinds of responses you get! I’d be especially interested in what lawyers and campaigners think of your ideas.
I’m not sure if certifying a candidate as a leader and optionally holding them to an oath by holding collateral would count as an endorsement, but you never know with legal issues. It is definitely something to look into, so thanks for that information. It would be better for LOCALS to qualify as a tax exempt organization and charity that accepts donations. However, I am not assuming this is legally possible. I would need to find legal expertise to figure out whether it is or isn’t.
Regarding experimental politics being unpopular, I agree that it would be unpopular if I frame it as an experiment. Framing is very important. The better way to frame strong local self-determination for communities is that it gives the community freedom to make their own rules how they see fit with less interference from external actors who have no skin in the game with the local community, and the fact that it provides us opportunities to get more data on the effectiveness of social policies is a coincidental side benefit for doing the right thing in the first place.
I haven’t done or found any studies on whether kids having to make new friends is a common sticking point for mobility, but in my experience, it isn’t. My parents moved a couple times for jobs they didn’t particularly need because they already had good jobs with little to no concern for that. I also had lots of friends as a child whose families moved away for trivial reasons. I am not assuming my experience is representative of the mean, but I wouldn’t assume it isn’t either.
I agree I should make an official post. I will when I am less busy. Thank you for the help.
I’m expecting Co-co and LOCALS to fail (nothing against you. These kinds of clever ideas usually fail), and have identified the following possible reasons:
You don’t follow through on your idea.
People get mad at you for trying to meddle with the ‘democratic’ system we have and don’t hear you out as you try to explain “no, this is better democracy.”
—Especially the monetization system you described would get justified backlash for its pay-for-representation system.
You never reach the critical mass needed to make the system useful.
Some political group had previously tried something similar and therefore it got banned by the big parties.
You can’t stop Co-co and LOCALS from being partisan.
A competitor makes your thing but entrenched and worse
That’s actually good feedback. It’s better to think of the barriers to success ahead of time while I am still in the development phase. I agree that convincing people to do anything is always the hardest part. I did consider that it would be difficult to stop a competitor who is better funded and more well connected from just taking my ideas and creating a less benevolent product with them, and it is a concern that have no answer for.
I don’t think $10 a month to subscribe to a local official in exchange for extra influence is a big deal because $10 isn’t a lot of money, but I can see how other people might ignore the scale and think it’s a big deal. I’m not married to the idea though. The main reason I wanted to include that feature is to thwart the control of special interests. I’ve considered that special interests are inevitable to some degree, so if we could decentralize them and make the same influence available to the general public at a nominal cost, that would be an improvement. The other reason I liked the idea is because I don’t think weighting every vote identically creates the smartest system. If someone is willing to participate, pay attention, and pay a small amount of money, that should work like a filter that weeds out apathy, and I don’t see how reducing apathy within the voting system wouldn’t increase the quality of the decision making process rather than decrease it. I agree it would be a hard sell to the public though because it sounds bad described in the abstract, general sense like “paying for representation” when the entire concept isn’t considered with proper detail and context. That said, we already have a system like that except you have to have a lot more than $10 to buy representation, so what the idea actually does in theory is democratize the system we already have.
As far as following through, I plan to try my best even if it fails because I will feel better having tried my best and failed than to have never tried at all and let things spiral down the drain.
Regarding being non-partisan, I have decided the only way to do that is to be explicitly apolitical other than supporting democracy. I could put that right in the charter for both organizations and create incentives for keeping to it and disincentives for abandoning it. If both organizations can’t take sides on any issues, then I don’t see how they can be partisan. Personally, I don’t have strong feelings either way on most issues other than I don’t want an expansive, homogeneous government that is so large that it is very difficult to escape from. We only have such a government because of the advantages of a centralized military power which is rife with abuse.
Regarding moving being bad for children, just a quick skim shows me that those studies aren’t necessarily telling you what you think they are. For instance, one portion cites 3 studies that show “ High rates of residential mobility have been associated with social disadvantage including poverty [1, 2, 4]” yet they didn’t appear to control for these variables in the studies I skimmed. Even for the children in those conditions, moving might actually be beneficial. I would assume it depends on what alternative we are comparing it to. In the many cases, moving may be less harmful than staying such as when they are moving from a bad neighborhood with bad schools to a good neighborhood with good schools. I think the same thing applies to complaints about democracy not protecting minorities well enough which was the trigger for this conversation. Compared to what? I am open to suggestions. Which system of governance protects minorities better than democracy? If the answer is none, then that is an argument for democracy, not against it.
Ultimately, I probably should have waited to post about this on here until I had a very detailed outline to put everything in context with all of the supporting arguments and proper citations. Either way though, even if not a single person here likes the ideas, I would still write the book and attempt to carry the plan out, but I would use the criticisms to modify the plan. Like l’ve said before, I love it when people shoot holes in my arguments. I don’t want to cling to bad arguments or bad ideas and I value both positive and negative feedback as long as it is honest.
More bad news:
“a section 501(c)(3) organization may not publish or distribute printed statements or make oral statements on behalf of, or in opposition to, a candidate for public office”
You’d probably want to be a 501(c)(4) or a Political Action Committees (PAC).
How would LOCALS find a politician to be in violation of their oath?
That would be a powerful position to have. “Decentralization” is a property of a system, not a description of how a system would work.
Futarchy
I’d love to hear your criticisms of futarchy. That could make a good post.
Mobility
Political mobility is good, but there are limitations. People are sticky. Are you going to make your kid move schools and separate them from their friends because you don’t like the city’s private airplane policy? Probably not.
Experimental Politics
I want more experimental politics so that we can find out which policies actually work! Unfortunately, that’s an unpopular opinion. People don’t like being in experiments, even when the alternative is they suffer in ignorance.
End
I feel that you are exhausting my ability to help you refine your ideas. Edit these comments into a post (with proper headings and formatting and a clear line of argument) and see what kinds of responses you get! I’d be especially interested in what lawyers and campaigners think of your ideas.
I’m not sure if certifying a candidate as a leader and optionally holding them to an oath by holding collateral would count as an endorsement, but you never know with legal issues. It is definitely something to look into, so thanks for that information. It would be better for LOCALS to qualify as a tax exempt organization and charity that accepts donations. However, I am not assuming this is legally possible. I would need to find legal expertise to figure out whether it is or isn’t.
Regarding experimental politics being unpopular, I agree that it would be unpopular if I frame it as an experiment. Framing is very important. The better way to frame strong local self-determination for communities is that it gives the community freedom to make their own rules how they see fit with less interference from external actors who have no skin in the game with the local community, and the fact that it provides us opportunities to get more data on the effectiveness of social policies is a coincidental side benefit for doing the right thing in the first place.
I haven’t done or found any studies on whether kids having to make new friends is a common sticking point for mobility, but in my experience, it isn’t. My parents moved a couple times for jobs they didn’t particularly need because they already had good jobs with little to no concern for that. I also had lots of friends as a child whose families moved away for trivial reasons. I am not assuming my experience is representative of the mean, but I wouldn’t assume it isn’t either.
I agree I should make an official post. I will when I am less busy. Thank you for the help.
I just skimmed this, but it seems like a bunch of studies have found that moving causes harm to children. https://achieveconcierge.com/how-does-frequently-moving-affect-children/
I’m expecting Co-co and LOCALS to fail (nothing against you. These kinds of clever ideas usually fail), and have identified the following possible reasons:
You don’t follow through on your idea.
People get mad at you for trying to meddle with the ‘democratic’ system we have and don’t hear you out as you try to explain “no, this is better democracy.” —Especially the monetization system you described would get justified backlash for its pay-for-representation system.
You never reach the critical mass needed to make the system useful.
Some political group had previously tried something similar and therefore it got banned by the big parties.
You can’t stop Co-co and LOCALS from being partisan.
A competitor makes your thing but entrenched and worse
That’s actually good feedback. It’s better to think of the barriers to success ahead of time while I am still in the development phase. I agree that convincing people to do anything is always the hardest part. I did consider that it would be difficult to stop a competitor who is better funded and more well connected from just taking my ideas and creating a less benevolent product with them, and it is a concern that have no answer for.
I don’t think $10 a month to subscribe to a local official in exchange for extra influence is a big deal because $10 isn’t a lot of money, but I can see how other people might ignore the scale and think it’s a big deal. I’m not married to the idea though. The main reason I wanted to include that feature is to thwart the control of special interests. I’ve considered that special interests are inevitable to some degree, so if we could decentralize them and make the same influence available to the general public at a nominal cost, that would be an improvement. The other reason I liked the idea is because I don’t think weighting every vote identically creates the smartest system. If someone is willing to participate, pay attention, and pay a small amount of money, that should work like a filter that weeds out apathy, and I don’t see how reducing apathy within the voting system wouldn’t increase the quality of the decision making process rather than decrease it. I agree it would be a hard sell to the public though because it sounds bad described in the abstract, general sense like “paying for representation” when the entire concept isn’t considered with proper detail and context. That said, we already have a system like that except you have to have a lot more than $10 to buy representation, so what the idea actually does in theory is democratize the system we already have.
As far as following through, I plan to try my best even if it fails because I will feel better having tried my best and failed than to have never tried at all and let things spiral down the drain.
Regarding being non-partisan, I have decided the only way to do that is to be explicitly apolitical other than supporting democracy. I could put that right in the charter for both organizations and create incentives for keeping to it and disincentives for abandoning it. If both organizations can’t take sides on any issues, then I don’t see how they can be partisan. Personally, I don’t have strong feelings either way on most issues other than I don’t want an expansive, homogeneous government that is so large that it is very difficult to escape from. We only have such a government because of the advantages of a centralized military power which is rife with abuse.
Regarding moving being bad for children, just a quick skim shows me that those studies aren’t necessarily telling you what you think they are. For instance, one portion cites 3 studies that show “ High rates of residential mobility have been associated with social disadvantage including poverty [1, 2, 4]” yet they didn’t appear to control for these variables in the studies I skimmed. Even for the children in those conditions, moving might actually be beneficial. I would assume it depends on what alternative we are comparing it to. In the many cases, moving may be less harmful than staying such as when they are moving from a bad neighborhood with bad schools to a good neighborhood with good schools. I think the same thing applies to complaints about democracy not protecting minorities well enough which was the trigger for this conversation. Compared to what? I am open to suggestions. Which system of governance protects minorities better than democracy? If the answer is none, then that is an argument for democracy, not against it.
Ultimately, I probably should have waited to post about this on here until I had a very detailed outline to put everything in context with all of the supporting arguments and proper citations. Either way though, even if not a single person here likes the ideas, I would still write the book and attempt to carry the plan out, but I would use the criticisms to modify the plan. Like l’ve said before, I love it when people shoot holes in my arguments. I don’t want to cling to bad arguments or bad ideas and I value both positive and negative feedback as long as it is honest.