Building an Opt-In Society 182
An anonymous reader writes "In a talk at Y Combinator's startup school event, Stanford lecturer Balaji Srinivasan explained his vision for governing systems of the future. The idea is to find space to set up a new 'opt-in' society outside existing governments, and design it to take full advantage of technology to keep people in control of their own lives. That means embracing tech that subverts existing industries and rejecting regulation on new ways of doing things. '[N]ew industries are simultaneously disrupting existing ones while also exiting the system entirely, he says. With 3D printing, regulation is being turned into DRM. With quantified self, medicine is going mobile. With Bitcoin, capital control becomes packet filtering. All of these examples, Srinivasan says, are ways in which technology is allowing people to exit current systems like physical product production and distribution; personal health; and finance in favor of spaces of their own creation.' Srinivasan's ideas are a natural extension of a few proposals already in the works — Peter Thiel has been trying to build a small tech incubator city that floats in international waters, outside of government control. Elon Musk wants to have a Mars colony, and Larry Page has wished for a tech-centric Burning man that's free from government regulation. 'The best part is this,' Srinivasan said. 'The people who think this is weird, the people who sneer at the frontier, who hate technology, won't follow you there.'"
Re:no thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess America can have fun with it, though.
Somalia is having fun with it right now. I don't think this is what even the craziest teabaggers want.
Fortunately with Obamacare, America is realizing that there needs to be some kind of social security. In the long run, there's no way around it if you want to keep exploiting people and keep them relatively peaceful at the same time.
Re:opt-out? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the opt-in frontier societies of the American West are a precedent, there is no opt out. Once you're in the company town, you're there for your term of service.
Re:no thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you please cite instances of when northern European countries, in the recent decades which have seen welfare states, have kicked people out on the grounds of them following a different religion?
Finland chose not to join NATO during the Cold War and provide for its own defense, with the understanding that the West would not come to its defence in the event of invasion. It nonetheless managed to run a welfare state comparable to any of its Nordic neighbours.
Re:no thanks (Score:2, Insightful)
You're generally shielded from the burden of unskilled migration by your geographical location, shielded from invasion by your southern and eastern neighbors who recently joined NATO, you are far out enough in the periphery of world affairs to not attract the ire of regional powers, but near enough that everyone wants to woo you to their side. You have few people, yet have a claim to large swathes of ocean energy and mineral resources. While you have some exposure to the world and to racial diversity, you still remain one of the most ethnically homogeneous regions in the West, sparing you much of the social strife that other countries experience. Plus, most people have forgotten your country's contributions to murder, slavery, rape, and pillage, or they'd rather focus on someone else's.
Pretty comfortable place to be. Though, not quite a place from which to judge.
Deregulation (Score:5, Insightful)
'The best part is this,' Srinivasan said. 'The people who think this is weird, the people who sneer at the frontier, who hate technology, won't follow you there.'
But people who will be quite happy to exploit your deregulated society will be right there with you!
Complain all you want about 'big banks' unethical behavior (really, keep complaining, write to your local MP/senator/whathaveyou, make sure the issue doesn't get dropped) but government regulation of banking means that if you put your money in a bank, you can be sure (at least up to £85,000 per Bank in the UK) that you will always have access to that money. Without regulation, then you have situations like with Paypal where the holder of you money can just up and decide "Nope, you can't have it anymore. It's ours for at least the next 9 months. Oh, you want an explanation? Too bad!".
Or how about enforcing standards, like power supply? You want a situation where not only does every device have it's own plug, but your house may not even supply the same voltage or frequency as the neighbourhood a mile away? 'No government at all' works fantastically when all your actors are rational and honest. That is also true to Communism. Finding this mythical group of rational and honest actors (and keeping out even a single bad egg) is the hard part.
Re: no thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
2007. 2013 now and 1/3rd of somalians suffer from depression and the common cure is to chain them up.
A few things. First, no country on the planet has 1/3rd of its population suffering from depression. The highest year over year incidence rate has been reported at .8%, with a lifetime incidence of 8-10%, if you're unfortunate enough to be a woman in that country. And that country is not Somalia. Somalia rated 153 out of 192 this past year on per capita depression. You'll never guess who got number one [wikipedia.org]. And Somalia also rated pretty low on incarceration rates. Guess who got number one again [nationmaster.com]?
How should I put my reply to your "debunk" as succinctly as possible.... AMEEEEERICA FUCK YA! I bet they're so jealous of all that freedom we got, eh? -_- Both of you are wrong; Both for "defending" the 3rd world, and for "attacking" it. Somalia is doing just fine; Worry about your own damn country.
Re:Power abhors a vacuum. (Score:4, Insightful)