Why representative democracy?

I'm going to slice this post up and make some random comments.

I thought I would point out that there are few problems in most aspects of SL yet solutions to them abound.

For instance, we don't have a problem with exposure to the elements, yet clothing exists. We don't tire and we can fly, yet vehicles exist. We don't require a place to rest or store our property, yet homes exist. Why is it that government requires a "problem" to exist when no other analogy in SL does? Can organized hierarchies not exist simply as an analogy to the real world?

Note that I do believe virtual government solves many problems mentioned below and in other posts. I just wrote the above, to point out that folks hold organized political structures up to requirements that no other RL analogy in SL is held up to.

This is a requirement of all things above the basic environment that LL provides. Whether it's clothing, groups, or animations, they need to provide a benefit or no one will purchase or participate.

The problem with critiques of this kind is that they:

1. exist to dismiss current efforts without providing an alternative working solution.
   
2. forget that preexisting concepts are a fundamental first step in an iterative process to developing new concepts.
   
3. state that the use of existing concepts are suboptimal without providing a logical argument why that might be the case.
   

Stating that the problem is just new users is oversimplification. The problem is actually how to create a self-sustaining virtual organization that can exist beyond the participation of any one member. That's not a trivial problem to solve in SL.

In response to your statement that organized systems are not appealing to members of SL, I can tell you why I personally feel that they are. There are certain shortcomings in the greater SL that can be improved upon, such as the addition of intercommunity contracts, covenants (themes), improvements on the ToS (definition and enforcement), the flattening of the regressive land-use fees, lower-priced land, dedicated open space, accountability to neighbors and community, the chance to engage in an applied political science experiment, engaging group work, block parties, and so on.

Frankly, there's nothing I've done in SL that comes close to the satisfaction that participating in this project has brought me. It feels infinitely more worthwhile and intellectually challenging than my prior SL hobby of cranking out animations for money.

~Ulrika~

Coming late to this thread, I won't try to pick out the individual comments I am responding to, just make a few points.

Branches of Government

Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches don't necessarily need to be separated. In many parliamentary systems, there is no separation between legislative and executive. Its also difficult to consider the judiciary as a meritocracy - positions may be filled for political reasons, not merit. The concept of checks and balances is also not tied to the structure of government. It is a separate concept - in a country with an unwritten constitution, like the UK, the judicial branch plays much less of a role in restraining the other branch (since legislative and executive are combined). In truly backward countries, like Canada, the executive branch controls everything in government - judicial and legislative.

Democracy

Ulrika called it "the minority suffering at the hands of the majority", as opposed to all the other forms, which would most correctly be described as "the majority suffering at the hands of the minority". The question is really how to prevent one group extracting from another group. This is mainly achieved through strong legal codes and property rights - the Magna Carta was required long before any democractic assembly existed in Britain.

The description of the NAlt government is interesting - and would be familiar to someone from medieval times aware of the power of guilds. It really seems to be more of a bicameral legislature, with the artisans being a higher legislative chamber, like the House of Lords. I don't see how you can do away with the Executive branch - someone or some group has to control the budget and the legislative agenda. You can separate the head of state and head of government, as you seem to have done by turning the prime minister position into a powerless head of state. Very similar to systems where the head of state has no real power, like a constitutional monarchy.

The problem to be solved

Neal Stewart identified a true problem in SL that could be suitable for solution by government - griefers. However, this would immediately raise the question of what sanctions could be brought to bear on griefers. Ban them from large stretches of land? There's not much in the way of tools that a RL government would expect to have available. Without the mailed fist inside the velvet glove, few pay attention to the velvet glove.

Seth, why all the scare quotes, why the soi-disant Enlightenment? Or are you saying you're for the Endarkenment? Democracy has been said to be the worst form of government...except for all the others. You know that. Despite whatever Ulrika did in RL in her Trotskyite "socialism in one town" sort of affair "doing away with the executive," quite a few people appreciate the *separation of powers* that comes with having the three branches of government and their checks and balances. Add to that civil society with its demands for accountability, transparency, and justice and you are well on your way to a more liveable world.

These disembodied intelligences that come on the Internet, God knows from where, name-dropping old philosophers and putting together bits and pieces from the flotsam and jetsam of their half-baked college educations...well, who are they to sweep away 2000 years of human history and human institutions? What was the "alternative" you sought, Seth? You were able to identify any kind of "economic system" in SL besides "patch economies" -- the Lindens roll out land, everybody scrambles to buy it, it gets uglied up and griefed up in many places, they roll out more, devaluing the previous land and inspiring hope ever faithful in the human breast that somewhere, there isn't W-Hat?

Neal Stewart is absolutely on the money when he says griefing (and I'd add ugly, obstructive builds to that concept) drives people to seek a need for more governance, if not government. And they are getting it, in the form of the gated communities on island sims where Anshe and others have made it crystal-clear that they will make short work of griefers and put aside all notions of maximalizing freedom of expression and freedom of assembly on the grid. There's your "operationalizing" for you.

When you don't make at least some kind of loose grassroots movement with a few voluntary norms, when you don't have norms of governance in complementarity with the TOS, when you don't have some kind of government, let's say (even a state capitalist federal game company government), you have blight, anarchy, griefing, blight. People do not want to live in this world. While some will be clamouring for there to be "no government," those harsh realities of virtuality will make the others stampeded into gated communities and "managed democracy". It will make more chaos and anarchy in some spots on the grid that some will celebrate as "art". It will leave some people ducking for cover hoping their sim won't be noticed by Duck.

I'm not an advocate of player government, I'm merely an advocate of fixing up groups so that people can share resources and manage the sims better. Of course, nobody has to be in a group to be on a sim and they can go do their thing. I wonder about the consequences to our world by loads of people shunnind the old institutions of representative democracy, throwing aside the TOS (because they don't believe in old-fashioned linear and hierarchical authority) and using their own lights (often unencumbered by any internal moral compass) to organize the grid. I find it specially worrisome to think of the world of myriad closed societies created by open sourcing of SL-type technology. It will make the Erie Canal, with its elaborate systems check gates and levels and chutes and latters, look like a sieve by comparison.

If the TOS is enforced, it brings many sanctions to griefers, ranging from 3 days to permanent ban. There is only one thing that must be added to the TOS to make its iron fist be felt inside the velvet glove: capturing of ISP addresses, so as to make it impossible for griefers to use alts. This dings husbands and wives using the same computer and credit card, etc. so it's going to take some manual sorting and willingness to examine each case. But a more robust use of ISP-capture could go a long way toward ending a pernicious problem that makes many players feel the TOS are toothless.




It many democracies, and even in some less-democratic systems, the three branches of power are made three branches precisely because the ideal of their separation *is* recognized. They surely do need to be separated, and the separation of powers, and the checks and balances of powers, are part of what makes that separate-branch notion come to life. When I think of parliamentary systems with weak or little separation between legislative and executive (like Russia, where the president appoints many of the senators and controls the majority party through the use of "administrative resources" in the elections), I think of how expectations of the public, as voiced through the remnants of free media, through Internet sites, through demonstrations, through clubs and associations and unions, i.e. through civil society, are still brought to bear on the merging of executive/legislative functions and the notion of their separateness is one that remains as an ideal to many not even exposed to the American system, for example. It remains an ideal because it prevents unfairness and corruption.

To put this in SL terms (this isn't supposed to be about RL politics), if you have web page democracy, and let's say you add to that some kind of citizens' representation by electing people per sim in some fashion, you'd expect that the executive -- Linden Labs -- wouldn't seed through the population various loyalist players or alts of LL staff to throw the elections -- making the branches indistinguishable. You wouldn't expect some people to use connections to Lindens, or the fact that they are now Lindens but with significant old player networsk to "throw" various propositions. You'd expect the branches to be *separate*.

In fact, separation of powers is generally tied to the separateness of the branches in theory as well as in practice. And a country like the UK would be first to explain that. Even though their constitutoin is unwritten, they live under the system of common law, as opposed to civil law, and rule by precedent -- and *that* institution -- a judicial one not just tied to appointed judges* -- goes quite a way to restraining the executive. The notion of the precedent, as a public restraint on future practices, as a ruling that was once handed down, is solidified in the culture. The parliament may play more of a role in restraining the executive, but there are many other restraining features in this country "without a constitution" that still lives under the rule of law -- these include the media, trade unions, even the monarchy.



If you are willing to make property rights the centerpiece of a government of players, then you are well on your way to admitting the need for a representative body of landowners. This would be a smallholders movement that would then engage or collide with plantation owners, etc. This would make many in SL scream with horror at the credence given to "the rich" or "land barons" and despite all the wealth and privileges signified by any person who can pay $9.95 on a credit card and use DSL and a higher-end computer to connect to a digital world, there will be many playing the card of "the landless" and "the poor" to get what they want.

Of course, property rights could belong to a collective of equal partners in a group -- there could be different forms of property as long as the rights are recognized. The strong legal code in this case then is not only the TOS, but some kind of enforcement branch that ends the power of griefers to make the property owners unable to enjoy their property, and sometimes even to have access to it.

I'm less worried about "one group extracting from another group" than I am of one group that believes itself to be "the intelligent one," under colour of "no government" and "open source" and "freedom for me and my friends who are above it all and above everyone else" creating closed, self-referential, hothouse mini-societies that then replicate as a model and create a grid of warring principalities -- as notions of universality, tolerance, respect for a public commons, etc. are thrown entirely overboard.

You sound like Harold Bloom, Prokofy. Don't suppose you hold the Sterling Professorship at Yale, do you?

Naw, that would be too good to be true. Don't mind me, just dropping names again....