Simplicity for Second Life Government

Many have proposed various ideas here on the forums from the rather simplistic to the rather complex, often modeling off of First Life ideas of government.

I would say that each person has a different interest, and different viewpoint on what the Second Life Government should be.

However, I think that some simply have an interest in “roleplaying” government. This is not negative or positive, but simply an interest which is not necessarily functional. Others want a simple, fair system of democracy where players will have some say in how the world is governed.

It is likely that a representative democracy or other representative forms of government would become a roleplaying exercise for those who enjoy politics rather than those who truly have an interest in the people or issues at heart. This is what politics is often like in real life as well, it is for those who like to play the “political game”.

People may play the political game if they wish, in their own groups and own land, but this is not what Second Life needs.

Second Life is very much unlike First Life in that it is an electronic interface, and since it is electronic it practically allows a free form direct democracy with the proper tools in place.

I do not see the need for a representative form of government, or particularly any other form of government other than an direct democracy through public referendum.

This would be very simple to do IF Linden Labs puts this program in place, and makes sure in some coded way to involve the entire population of Second Life rather than the voting system we have now for issues.

This an idea situation, and I think if the Lindens were to sponsor any government this is the best idea for a Linden sponsored government project.

Political factions and groups advertising their message will undoubtedly form, attempting to sway the general population to their views, but at least democracy will be taking place.


Now if you want the government to handle dispute resolution, this is an entirely different situation. This idea would need to be expanded upon. I think the system that was being used with a player panel reviewing the abuse record without the name of the defendant listed and deciding if permanent banning is necessary was a great system. However, I believe the defendant should be able to submit an statement in their own defense. I do not think that the legislative and judicial branches so to speak should be connected, and that these should be two separate systems.

In conclusion, I say we keep the idea of Second Life government as simplistic as possible since we have the technology necessary for direct democracy.

My approach is a simple one too. We need no resident government - LL does the job admirably. I will repeat what has been said many times before; those wishing to have some sort of government are welcome to buy a sim and create one there.

Alexa

Agreed, just seems like a Drama Machine otherwise.

This is an interesting short summary of the SL "political" debate so far: a detailed proposal followed by short declaratory statements in opposition.

The proposal is thoughtful, but does not answer what a government in SL would actually do. Dispute resolution is mentioned, but almost dismissively. Those who propose government in SL have yet to frame a set of good reasons why there should be a change in the corporate-controlled status-quo.

The declaratory statements, on the other hand, bring nothing useful to the discussion. In fact they exist to discourage discussion altogether.

Personally, I don't believe SL is anywhere near ready for self-government, technically, culturally, or issues-wise. On the other hand, I don't believe that "buying your own sim and starting your own group" is a realistic option, either - for structural reasons, and because the SL environment does not lend itself to expansive social, political, and economic options.

I'm thinking about a separate grid or grids for those who are experimentally-minded and would like to see what could be done. It's the only way to reassure the opposition and allow the proponents the resources and non-interference they need.

When I think of the political state of SL, I already see a landscape dominated by autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, three very simple-to-implement forms of government.

1. Autocracy is rule by a single person. Examples are individual land and sim owners who retain ownership of land while enforcing a theme or code of conduct.
   
2. Oligarchy is rule by a few. Linden labs is a form of oligarchy (not a dictatorship which is a type of autocracy), where a few make rules for the many.
   
3. Democracy is rule by the majority. Most loosely collected groups operate as democracies using in-world or forum voting tools to make decisions.
   

The problem with each of these simplistic forms of rule is that they each have drawbacks. For instance, autocracies are dangerously dependent on the personality of the individual who happens to be in power (Mao Zedong); oligarchies are often slow to respond to the needs of the people (Linden Labs); and a direct democracy is formalized mob rule (democracy was once described to me as three wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner).

Additionally, direct democracy also suffers from:

1. Poor scaling. How efficient is a system that requires every citizen to vote multiple times in a day? Not very.
   
2. No representation for minorities. Will the majority protect the rights of the minority? Not likely.
   
3. Self destructive selfish voting. Will individuals take short-term gains in favor of long-term gains to the detriment of the society? You know it.
   
4. Uninformed decision making. Can a massive group of individuals make intelligent decisions for a society (by definition their collective intelligence is average)? Not a chance.
   

Most modern systems attempt to get around the problems of a direct democracy by creating hybrid systems. For instance in the U.S. we elect a body of representatives called the Congress (solves the scaling problem). It's a bicameral legislature comprised of the House of Representatives (democratically elected by State population) and the Senate (two seats for every state protects minority states from the majority-ruled House of Representatives). To make sure the legislative branch doesn't violate the Constitution or Bill of Rights the Judicial branch (a meritocracy for making intelligent decisions) can overturn laws. The third Executive branch grants a single individual near autocratic powers. Finally, all the branches are set in opposition such that no one branch can control the entire country at one time.

So you see, the only thing worse than an oligarchy is an autocracy and the only thing worse than an autocracy is a pure democracy.

~Ulrika~

I should also say that in the Neualtenburg project, we've laid the foundation for a democratic republic. While it requires more work up front it:

1. provides a well-defined system which allows individuals to share the responsibility of directing the project.
   
2. spreads the decision-making responsibility over as many people as possible to promote fairness.
   
3. allows the project to live on beyond the participation of any single member.
   
4. avoids the problem of "mob rule" found in pure democracies.
   
5. minimizes abuses of power found in autocracies and oligarchies.
   

Remember, as soon as you grant a ruling body real power, it no longer becomes roleplaying. It has real power that can direct or destroy a society real or virtual.

~Ulrika~

I found a real-life example of where democracy can be detrimental to minorities. In this case a group of legislators acting as an ad-hoc meritocracy/autocracy are attempting to amend a bill to extend equal rights to a minority group. (Note that the U.S. judicial branch cannot create a law which protects minorities, it can only strike down laws which discriminate against certain minorities.)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/13/SAMESEX.TMP

Here's a quote:

Note that the legislator specifically calls out the problem with democracy.

~Ulrika~

I have no experience of Neultenburg, so, I can't comment on how your system is working. But I would hazard a guess that a lot of the build rules were already in place before you started your government.

I don't think it would look so cohesive if you ad taken decisions by committee:
"I propose a German medieval design for the buildings in Neultenburg..."
"Well, I like the timber thing going on, but I think we should be free to use modern materials...love breeze blocks."
"Hmm, like breeze blocks but only if they're blue and sparkly....."
etc

So I think you have all the signs of a autocracy who chose the limit of the democratic involvement in the life of the sim by limiting the scope of operations to the day-today running of the sim, AFTER the other design decisions had been made and decided non-democratically...or am I wrong .

I think that operational decisions running by committee can be fine, but it makes more sense within a group to devolve the responsibility for particular areas and allow them to take those decisions independently. I think design decisions need a single vision to work really well, altough collaboration on free-form design can work, I think designing by committee tends not to. Though probably Numbakulla undermines that assertion, as it is a team build and could be said to have been designed by a committee.
Cali

Yes. This is correct. I worked initially as an autocrat and then later as a member of an oligarchy putting together the project. I even ejected problem members.

We then later moved to a stage where I relinquished power and a provisional government stepped in. As a group (exclusive of the provisional government) we hammered out the city's constitution over the course of several weeks. Upon completion, we held the city's first elections.

The city then functioned quite well as a representative democracy (although we didn't have any land-bound citizens so it was more of an exercise than a necessity). This continued until our land lease from the Linden's expired and we moved to a private sim. Because this move required the purchase of land, a large majority of our original group was unable to follow. In many ways we had to begin again.

When we relocated to a private sim, we suspended the government and formed an oligarchy. As a group, we defined the citizenship, deeds, and covenants for the group and added them to the city documents. We then began selling land and have just recently reached a population where we're ready to transition back to a democratic republic. Elections are scheduled for next month when Eugene, a principal member, returns from vacation.

The point of this story is to demonstrate that the three simplest forms of rule, autocracy, rule by one; oligarchy, rule by many; and simple democracy, are the foundation on which more complex political systems are built. For instance, in our three branches, we have one which is comprised of democratically elected representatives, one which is a meritocracy, and another which is corporatist oligarchy. This was done so we could combine the best of each form of rule.

The United States does the same thing, it combines autocracy (Executive branch), representative democracy (House of Representatives), representative oligarchy (Senate), and a meritocracy (Supreme Court). Interesting isn't it!


I understand what you're saying. Sometimes democracy sucks.

To prove your point, I just abandoned a build in the city, because I was receiving negative feedback on it, despite it being two days old! The artistic process was aborted before I could even begin to articulate my vision. My solution is to put the project on hold until the government is elected and then use the power of the corporate oligarchy to push through a build while holding back criticism until it's finished.

Well, we are not running things by committee. The government was specifically set up to provide multiple state branches through which one could exercise power and then to pit those branches against each other to prevent stagnation by committee. Pure democracy is a drag and we'll have no part of it in our sim thank you.

I also disagree that a project needs to have a single vision. Our city, like Numbakulla, is truly a group project -- it's living evolving community art. A perfect example is our Secret Underground Tinies City. It was Eugene's idea to sell a miniature home, from there I built an underground town, he invited folks to sell goods there for free, and the rest is history. Sometimes groups living and working together can create things that no single member could create alone.

Great post by the way.

~Ulrika~

It's true, I love paradise. I have two plots in Neultenburg and an oceanfront villa in Sakai. The people who inhabit both of these cities are why I think they are great places to live. You get to live amongst intelligent, normal people and exchange views and ideas about the SIM. Democratic SIMS are an exciting option for SecondLife because they allow large groups of people to work together. Representitive Governement works even better because citizens have varying amounts of interest in helping guide the SIM. The dedicated few who have the time and desire to help manage and guide the SIM are held accountable by everyone else through frequent elections.

Neultenburg allows you to be a member of a much larger group of people who are dedicated to helping each other be creative. For instance, if you opened your shop in Neult and came up with a brilliant idea for a city fair to drum up business, it is easy to get the interest of a city official who will propose the project to the group. Naturally all the other shopkeepers in Neult will think this is a good idea, and then instead of one content creator trying to put on a fair, there is a much larger group of people interested in helping.

Ulrika Zugzwang wrote:



So it would appear the financial reality of a private sim forced some significant changes. Are the new rules such that only landowners participate in the government? A variation on the golden rule: "Those who have the gold make the rules"?

In its initial form, the U.S. government was very much an oligarchy, with property requirements for participating that were significant at the time, but for those that remain are meaningless today, given inflation.

The whole concept of separation of powers, while intellectually compelling, doesn't really seem to be an absolute necessity. Britain functions quite successfully with a system that is essentially an elected dictatorship. Canada, with an almost identical system, is a total basket case. Australia incorporates more of the U.S. style of political organization, but still gives far more power to a Prime Minister than a President could dream of. The efficient exercise of political power seems to be more related to the culture of the country than the fine points of political organization.

This is the aspect that would be interesting to see in SL. If groups with similar political culture were to operate locally scoped governments in different areas, we could get some idea of how the common political assumptions of the group influence the actual operation of the government.

As to the many and various jibes about democracy, people involved in forecasting are aware of the "Delphi effect" (see Wikipedia for details). When you take a large number of estimates and combine them, you end up with a result that is often much more accurate than the majority of the individual estimates. I think this is one of the aspects that makes democracy the best of the political systems. Individuals or small groups can easily hold to fixed (and incorrect) ideas that won't succeed in the mass marketplace.

In RL, I end up in political discussions about the role of the politician in terms of representing the views of constituents. I believe strongly that that is the highest duty of an elected person. Many follow the ideas expressed by Ulrika, that average voters can't possibly understand the issues, and if they did, their opinion would be worthless anyway. I have seen clear examples where, if the representative takes to time to explain an issue and encourage public debate, the interest and determination ordinary people bring to considering the issue is amazing. The result is often far more intelligent than if the decision were left to politicians and special interest advocates.

End SL Government difficulty: Just name me Queen of SL.

I'm already Bargain Queen, so adding this title wouldn't be too much of a stretch for me.

Just trying to help.

~Jamie

It's a little more complicated than that.

In the real-world the city is a nonprofit land cooperative and in the virtual-world it is a democratic republic. To be part of the government, one must be a member of the nonprofit land cooperative. There are currently two ways to do this. The first is to be an investor in the nonprofit cooperative and the second is to purchase a share of the sim with the goal of living in the city on a proportional share of the land. Right now we have four who are investors and about a dozen who are land owners.

The reasons for tying politics to land and investment are manifold. It provides us with the capital necessary to survive, those who own a piece of the sim have a system to resolve conflicting visions, and it guarantees that those who make decisions have an interest in the projects success. When we open land to rental, we would extend citizenship to renters as well.

Note that one person receives one vote regardless of their investment.

If what you say is true, that culture dominates the fine points of political organization, then there is nothing lost in going with an intellectually compelling form of organization. However, I think you missed my point in that I'm not interested in maximizing the "efficiency of political power", rather I'm interested in creating a system which provides simple barriers to corruption.

The Delphi effect is only useful for finding the "averaged opinion". It provides absolutely no guarantee that the averaged opinion has merit, which is the whole problem with democracy in general.

I never actually said this. It is my personal opinion that all people should seek to educate themselves and their representatives.

I would say that a representative system is important simply because most people would like to pursue other interests instead of making policy. We had a group meeting today in the city and, while all citizens were interested in voting and understanding the system, very few were interested in being a politician.

~Ulrika~

So....

You're not a radical, Ulrika. You're a Hamiltonian Federalist.

The whole concept of separation of powers was developed by the Roman Republic 2300 years ago, and has been the basis of popular government in the West ever since, including Britain, Canada, and Australia. What's different is method: Britain, for example, relies on the the credo of common law tradition, whereas the United States relies on the material framework of constitutionalism. You could say that culture differentiated these two approaches to similar political ends. But the ends are similar, and that indicates that it's a complex synergy between culture and the "fine points of a political organization" - instead of one or the other.

Actually, I'm more of a technocrat.

~Ulrika~

technocrats have no soul.

Typical Seth Kanahoe smart-ass/know-it-all reply:

In his Report on Manufactures (1791) Alexander Hamilton became America's first technocrat.

It's all so very clear now....

Jaunai taught me that I was a technocrat.

Are you serious about the Hamilton-technocrat link? I find that humorous.

~Ulrika~

I could make a great case for it. But if I did, I'd be half-joking.

Ulrika Zugzwang wrote:



That is even more of a cultural characteristic than political system. The U.S. has a highly developed political system with well-defined separation of powers, yet there have been many cases of corruption, and much that goes on unreported. Britain, even though more power is centralized, seems to have a rather higher standard than the U.S. Canada, with so much power concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister, is probably the most corrupt of western countries. There doesn't seem to be a simple continuum of political organization you can point to that limits or allows corruption.



The whole point of the technique is that the averaged opinion does have more merit than each of the individual opinions (though of course with opinions, nothing is "guaranteed". I've seen it work too: once when a group I was in was asked to estimate the speed of a vehicle on an advanced driving course, and again on an army target shooting range when we were asked to estimate ranges.




Is that related to Technocracy? I have a whole lot of pamphlets and literature from Technocracy in the 1940's and 50's, when my father belonged to it. Maybe you'd like to buy them... =


Seth Kanahoe wrote:



I have to take some issue with this. The concept of separation of powers in Commonwealth countries has never been based on executive, legislative and judiciary. The executive and legislative are one branch of government, and the judiciary is appointed by the executive branch. The "separation", such as it was, was between Commons, Lords and Crown. This has seriously degenerated as the Crown wielded less and less power. In Britain and Canada, the upper house (House of Lords or Canadian Senate) has become just an extension of the Prime Minister's power, most egregiously so in the case of Canada. In Australia, they went to an elected Senate, following the U.S. model.

There does seem to be some dynamic that causes power to distribute though. The most autocratic of the old Commonwealth countries, Canada, where the Prime Minister appoints all senators, judges, heads of Crown Corporations and cabinet, totally without any limitation or review, has still developed a de facto separation between federal and provincial levels of government. The so-called "First Ministers" (federal PM and provincial premiers) meet regularly (and often hilariously) as if they were totally sovereign governments.

I disagree completely. The presence of transparency and observation along with accountability and punishment reduce corruption in a group. By codifying these into a government itself, it follows logically that system itself will suppress corruption.

Your argument that there is a complete disconnection between political organization and corruption relies on questionable anecdotal data and provides no logical mechanism which links culture to a suppression in corruption. Even worse is that when pressed to find one, I can't imagine any other argument except for one that draws on ethnocentrism (and that's bad).

Again you support a theory using anecdotal evidence (in this case selective). Could you think of situations where averaged opinions fail to have "more merit"? How about asking that same group of soldiers (plus one mathematician) to estimate the annual growth rate required to double the size of an economy in 7 years. I doubt the group's estimate would have "more merit" than the mathematician's answer (which would be 10%).

Finally, how do you define "more merit"? I think there is a very small subset of problems to which this technique actually provides anything but guesses. Can you show otherwise using data that's not anecdotal and by providing concrete logical mechanisms as to how this solution of merit is arrived upon?

Without repeatable data and logical mechanisms you have nothing more than pseudoscience, in this case, polypseudoscience.

~Ulrika~

It was never entirely based on these institutions in the Roman Republic, either. I'm speaking of the concept of separation of powers, not how the concept has been implemented - and it has been implemented in many different ways in western civilization, with varying degrees of success, as you point in this paragraph:



The concept of constitutionalism was supposed to prevent the "migration" of powers from one institution to another relative to time and circumstance. As you say, there've been some problems, and not only in Britain and Canada; the unlooked-for rise of executive power in the U.S. beginning with Abraham Lincoln is another example. In most cases, migration is caused by crisis and precedent-setting responses by government.

Any "government" in SL based on separation of powers is going to face the same problems, constitutionally-based or not.



I would argue that the dynamic is, in fact, the concept of separation of powers. Again, in Britain it's based on common law tradition and is more cultural in nature. And therefore more elastic than the American method.