The line that stopped me: “Unless we get serious about the science of democracy, and figure out some new engineering for our institutions in our new conditions, we might as well kiss self-government good-bye.”
That reframe—from politics as combat to governance as engineering—is the shift that makes structural thinking possible. It’s what lets you ask “why does this system produce these outcomes?” instead of “who do we blame for these outcomes?”
The pluralism paradigm distinction is also genuinely useful. Accelerationism and effective altruism both assume ordinary people are objects to be acted upon (either outrun or redistributed to). Pluralism assumes they’re agents. That’s not just a tech policy question—it’s a design philosophy for democracy itself.
Appreciate the concrete examples too. Theory without models is just aspiration.
From the start of the commercial "Internet era" (mid-90's let's say, and "America Online") IT corporate leadership insisted that in order for the Internet to develop, government had to let this "virtual" community evolve on its own. Otherwise, both its market value and unique free environment would be compromised. Today governments routinely regulate the Internet's use within their respective countries (e.g., Australia), straightforwardly via state laws and regulations, or via investments or policies that aid the development of IT corporations. The branding of the Internet early on as a "virtual" environment and rightly a regulation free zone (a campaign that even cast doubt it could be regulated at all) is an era that has clearly passed. Yet this "philosophy" of the virtual Internet lives on, and is being pitched and endorsed by IT corporate leadership evident in their attacks on the legitimacy of government itself. This byproduct of the Internet's arrival has clearly become an anachronism, and destructive of actual communities' interests (e.g., local utility rates). To Danielle's point, it's high time these arrangements be scrutinized, and the overall model of a balance between the public welfare and corporate interests be readdressed, so that their overall impact doesn't (in effect) dictate policies that harm real people.
Thank you for this timely article. I refer to Dr. Allen's "fix Congress" approach in my video about our signs for our weekly Kirkland WA protest ( browser search "instagram truman jolley"). The video references The Renovator, but I can now tell people about this specific article. THANK YOU!
In Venezuela, we had a saying when power was being centralized on the executive: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And yes, the more power was centralized, and the more the checks and balances eroded, the more corrupt the state became.
The line that stopped me: “Unless we get serious about the science of democracy, and figure out some new engineering for our institutions in our new conditions, we might as well kiss self-government good-bye.”
That reframe—from politics as combat to governance as engineering—is the shift that makes structural thinking possible. It’s what lets you ask “why does this system produce these outcomes?” instead of “who do we blame for these outcomes?”
The pluralism paradigm distinction is also genuinely useful. Accelerationism and effective altruism both assume ordinary people are objects to be acted upon (either outrun or redistributed to). Pluralism assumes they’re agents. That’s not just a tech policy question—it’s a design philosophy for democracy itself.
Appreciate the concrete examples too. Theory without models is just aspiration.
From the start of the commercial "Internet era" (mid-90's let's say, and "America Online") IT corporate leadership insisted that in order for the Internet to develop, government had to let this "virtual" community evolve on its own. Otherwise, both its market value and unique free environment would be compromised. Today governments routinely regulate the Internet's use within their respective countries (e.g., Australia), straightforwardly via state laws and regulations, or via investments or policies that aid the development of IT corporations. The branding of the Internet early on as a "virtual" environment and rightly a regulation free zone (a campaign that even cast doubt it could be regulated at all) is an era that has clearly passed. Yet this "philosophy" of the virtual Internet lives on, and is being pitched and endorsed by IT corporate leadership evident in their attacks on the legitimacy of government itself. This byproduct of the Internet's arrival has clearly become an anachronism, and destructive of actual communities' interests (e.g., local utility rates). To Danielle's point, it's high time these arrangements be scrutinized, and the overall model of a balance between the public welfare and corporate interests be readdressed, so that their overall impact doesn't (in effect) dictate policies that harm real people.
Thank you for this timely article. I refer to Dr. Allen's "fix Congress" approach in my video about our signs for our weekly Kirkland WA protest ( browser search "instagram truman jolley"). The video references The Renovator, but I can now tell people about this specific article. THANK YOU!