open source government

As a representative of the Metagovernment project, I would like to invite you to have a second look. The current website is a wiki while we develop the software, but the end goal is by no means a simple wiki editing system. It is a distributed mesh of communities engaged in governance. It strives to provide the tools to enable community members to be the government of the community, without any power structures or other means of aggrandizing one person as the ultimate authority over the lives of the other members of the community. We have given this a lot of thought, and of course we aren't just hoping that everyone in the world will just get along. We are building a framework where people who hate each other can nonetheless achieve a synthesis to their conflict. As the previous reply says: is any current system any better?

Thank you for the thoughtful reply, Guido. What Metagovernment is doing is ambitious, but not as unrealistic as it may at first seem. Sure, we may have difficulty imposing our "consensus through synthesis" principle on international politics. But we're not starting there, we're starting in the smallest communities, where the "government" is the administration structure of say a chess club or a professional association. But yes, even in those small groups, there are intense disputes over political issues. So what is the best solution: to leave those disputes up to "our betters?" Why do we have to have a leader make the decisions for us? The main reason is because large groups have difficulty coming to single conclusions. So I see no problem in making software that facilitates that process. After all, that is what Web 2.0 is all about: mass participation. This is not a confusion of science and politics: it is a proposal for something better than "let the leaders decide what is best for the rest of us." When two leaders sit in a smoke-filled room deciding our future: what mechanism do they use? Why is that technique better than a formalized piece of software that lets everyone contribute? And perhaps as importantly: that lets everyone know what is going on (transparency).