I’m thinking about starting a new political party (in my country getting into parliament as a new party is easy not virtually impossible, so it’s not necessarily a waste of time). The motivation for this is that the current political process seems inefficient.
Mostly I’m wondering if this idea has come up before on lesswrong and if there are good sources for something like this.
The most important thing is that no explicit policies are part of the party’s platform (i.e. no “we want a higher minimum wage”). I don’t really have a party program yet, but the basic idea is as follows: There are two parts to this party; the first part is about Terminal Values and Ethical Injunctions. What do we want to achieve and what do we avoid doing even if it seems to get us closer to our goal. The Terminal Values could just be Frankena’s list of intrinsic values. The first requirement for people to vote for this party is that they agree with those values.
The second part is about the process of finding good policies. How to design a process that generates policies that help to satisfy our values. Some ideas:
complete and utter transparency to fight the inevitable corruption; publish everything the government does
instruct experts to find good policies and then listen to them (how would professional politicians know better than them)
let the experts give probabilities on explicit predictions how well the policies will work
have a public score board that shows how well individual experts did in the past with their predictions
when implementing a new policy, set a date at which to evaluate the efficacy and say in advance what you expect
if a policy is found to be harmful, get rid of it; don’t be afraid to change your mind (but don’t make it unnecessarily hard for businesses to plan for the future by changing policies to frequently)
react to feedback from the population; don’t wait until the next election
The idea is that the party won’t really be judged based on the policies it produces but rather on how well it keeps to the specified process. The values and the process is what identifies the party. Of course there should be some room for changing the process if it doesn’t work...
The evaluation of policies in terms of how well they satisfy values seems to be a difficult problem. The problem is that Utilitarianism is difficult in practice.
I like the first link because it is at least trying to move past feudalism as an organizing principle. The second link is about the fact that it is hard to make groups of people act like we want (because groups of people operate under a set of poorly understood laws, likely these laws are cousins to things like natural selection in biology).
Public choice folks like to study this stuff, but it seems really really hard.
in my country new parties can get into parliament easily, so it’s not a waste of time
You may be right, and I don’t know the details of your situation or your values, but on the face of it that inference isn’t quite justified. It depends on what getting into parliament as such actually achieves. E.g., I can imagine that in some countries it’s easy for someone to start a new party and get into parliament, but a new one-person party in parliament has basically zero power to change anything. (It seems like there must be some difficulty somewhere along the line, because if getting the ability to make major changes in what your country does is easy then everyone will want to do it and it will get harder because of competition. Unless somehow this is a huge opportunity that you’ve noticed and no one else has.)
I like the idea of a political party that has meta-policies rather than object-level policies, but it sounds like a difficult thing to sell to the public in sufficient numbers to get enough influence to change anything.
OK, when I said “easy” I exaggerated quite a bit (I edited in the original post). More accurate would be: “in the last three years at least one new party became popular enough to enter parliament” (the country is Germany and the party would be the AfD, before that, there was the German Pirate Party). Actually, to form a new party the signatures from at least 0.1% of all eligible voters are needed.
but it sounds like a difficult thing to sell to the public in sufficient numbers to get enough influence to change anything.
I also see that problem, my idea was to try to recruit some people on German internet fora and if there is not enough interest drop the idea.
Have you floated this idea with anyone else you know in Germany? I’m not asking if you’re ready and willing to get to the threshold of 0.1% of German voters (~7000 people). I’m just thinking more feedback, and others involved, whether one or two, might help. Also, you could just talk to lots of people in your local network about it. As far as I can tell, people might be loathe to make big commitment like helping you launch a party, but are willing to do trivial favors like putting you in touch with a contact who could give you advice on law, activism, politics, dealing with bureaucracy, finding volunteers, etc.
Do you attend a LessWrong meetup in Germany? If so, float this idea there. At the meetup I attend, it’s much easier to get quick feedback from (relatively) smart people in person, because communication errors are reduced, and it takes less time to relay and reply to ideas than over the Internet. Also, in-person is more difficult for us to skip over ideas or ignore them than on an Internet thread.
I’m thinking about starting a new political party (in my country getting into parliament as a new party is
easynot virtually impossible, so it’s not necessarily a waste of time). The motivation for this is that the current political process seems inefficient.Mostly I’m wondering if this idea has come up before on lesswrong and if there are good sources for something like this.
The most important thing is that no explicit policies are part of the party’s platform (i.e. no “we want a higher minimum wage”). I don’t really have a party program yet, but the basic idea is as follows: There are two parts to this party; the first part is about Terminal Values and Ethical Injunctions. What do we want to achieve and what do we avoid doing even if it seems to get us closer to our goal. The Terminal Values could just be Frankena’s list of intrinsic values. The first requirement for people to vote for this party is that they agree with those values.
The second part is about the process of finding good policies. How to design a process that generates policies that help to satisfy our values. Some ideas:
complete and utter transparency to fight the inevitable corruption; publish everything the government does
instruct experts to find good policies and then listen to them (how would professional politicians know better than them)
let the experts give probabilities on explicit predictions how well the policies will work
have a public score board that shows how well individual experts did in the past with their predictions
when implementing a new policy, set a date at which to evaluate the efficacy and say in advance what you expect
if a policy is found to be harmful, get rid of it; don’t be afraid to change your mind (but don’t make it unnecessarily hard for businesses to plan for the future by changing policies to frequently)
react to feedback from the population; don’t wait until the next election
The idea is that the party won’t really be judged based on the policies it produces but rather on how well it keeps to the specified process. The values and the process is what identifies the party. Of course there should be some room for changing the process if it doesn’t work...
The evaluation of policies in terms of how well they satisfy values seems to be a difficult problem. The problem is that Utilitarianism is difficult in practice.
So, there are quite a few open questions.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Swarmwise-Tactical-Manual-Changing-World/dp/1463533152
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2710
I like the first link because it is at least trying to move past feudalism as an organizing principle. The second link is about the fact that it is hard to make groups of people act like we want (because groups of people operate under a set of poorly understood laws, likely these laws are cousins to things like natural selection in biology).
Public choice folks like to study this stuff, but it seems really really hard.
A pdf copyof Swarmwise from the author’s website.
You may be right, and I don’t know the details of your situation or your values, but on the face of it that inference isn’t quite justified. It depends on what getting into parliament as such actually achieves. E.g., I can imagine that in some countries it’s easy for someone to start a new party and get into parliament, but a new one-person party in parliament has basically zero power to change anything. (It seems like there must be some difficulty somewhere along the line, because if getting the ability to make major changes in what your country does is easy then everyone will want to do it and it will get harder because of competition. Unless somehow this is a huge opportunity that you’ve noticed and no one else has.)
I like the idea of a political party that has meta-policies rather than object-level policies, but it sounds like a difficult thing to sell to the public in sufficient numbers to get enough influence to change anything.
OK, when I said “easy” I exaggerated quite a bit (I edited in the original post). More accurate would be: “in the last three years at least one new party became popular enough to enter parliament” (the country is Germany and the party would be the AfD, before that, there was the German Pirate Party). Actually, to form a new party the signatures from at least 0.1% of all eligible voters are needed.
I also see that problem, my idea was to try to recruit some people on German internet fora and if there is not enough interest drop the idea.
What about the process of gaining consensus? I find it hard to believe that lay people may be attracted from meta-values alone.
Have you floated this idea with anyone else you know in Germany? I’m not asking if you’re ready and willing to get to the threshold of 0.1% of German voters (~7000 people). I’m just thinking more feedback, and others involved, whether one or two, might help. Also, you could just talk to lots of people in your local network about it. As far as I can tell, people might be loathe to make big commitment like helping you launch a party, but are willing to do trivial favors like putting you in touch with a contact who could give you advice on law, activism, politics, dealing with bureaucracy, finding volunteers, etc.
Do you attend a LessWrong meetup in Germany? If so, float this idea there. At the meetup I attend, it’s much easier to get quick feedback from (relatively) smart people in person, because communication errors are reduced, and it takes less time to relay and reply to ideas than over the Internet. Also, in-person is more difficult for us to skip over ideas or ignore them than on an Internet thread.