Personally I don't think any system of government that exists today is actually fully effective at doing it's job. With democracy there is always two or more parties trying to push their agenda and it always results with a long drawn out debate which causes the government to be unable to make decisive decisions. Any elected officials make most of their decisions based on politics even if they know it's not the right decision.

As far as a dictatorship goes, it may be better at making decisive decisions but even if a good leader is elected they tend to over look things which have dire consequences. On top of that they tend to only see things from one prospective and they tend to ignore the rights of their citizens.

Seems to me the only real solution would be an Open Source Government which would be decisive yet still be able to take into account more than one perspective. Every time I have purposed the idea to anyone they tend to outright reject it without giving any reason. What I'm asking in this thread is simply why not an open source government?

The critical mistake is assuming that government exists for you. Government exists for itself, and for the people who control it -- this means big money interests in the US. Any sort of openness whatsoever damages the interests of those people. Just look at the furor over Wikileaks, Pvt Manning, etc, and the total lack of anger over the crimes they exposed. For the people involved in government, openness is far more dangerous than actual criminal activity, inefficiency, or any of the misc things that concern the 'masses'.

Most Government = Take money, argue forever amongst themselves, get nothing done.
Most Open Source = Take money, argue forever amongst themselves, get nothing done.

[color=#1C2837][size=2]Personally I don't think any system of government that exists today is actually fully effective at doing it's job. With democracy there is always two or more parties trying to push their agenda and it always results with a long drawn out debate which causes the government to be unable to make decisive decisions. Any elected official make most of their decisions based on politics even if they know it's not the right decision.[/quote]A country is a business. They make the profitable decisions. That's also why big corporations have a lot of clout. They put the most money into the system, so keeping them happy is profitable. Otherwise, they'll do take their business elsewhere, and put money into someone else's business/country.

Most Government = Take money, argue forever amongst themselves, get nothing done.
Most Open Source = Take money, argue forever amongst themselves, get nothing done.

[color="#1C2837"]Personally I don't think any system of government that exists today is actually fully effective at doing it's job. With democracy there is always two or more parties trying to push their agenda and it always results with a long drawn out debate which causes the government to be unable to make decisive decisions. Any elected official make most of their decisions based on politics even if they know it's not the right decision.

A country is a business. They make the profitable decisions. That's also why big corporations have a lot of clout. They put the most money into the system, so keeping them happy is profitable. Otherwise, they'll do take their business elsewhere, and put money into someone else's business/country.
[/quote]

A country is not a business, it can be run like a business and whether or not that is a good thing is up for debate.

The centralization of power which government is based on is detrimental to the general populous, We have hierarchy in society to prevent what you're suggesting. An open source government would be closer to my anarchist ideals, but they're ideals, not practicalities. Even if the government was open source, might there not still be forces of domination that subvert the general will and pursue their own interests?

I don't think we can change the government, but i think people can become more politically active, find better news sources (because TV/paper news is shit), and best of all: GET PISSED.

Of course, even in that article you linked, it talks about limiting the level of participation of citizens. So in other words, they'd let us decide what color the carpet of the white house should be while they decide whether we go to war or not.

A one word answer of why such an idea will never actually function:

Trolls.

Elected officials do enough trolling in government as it is.

While some opensource ideas could be applied to government most really can't, representative democracy works well since people in general don't care about the details.

There are areas that most democratic governments can improve in though, transparancy being the primary flaw (In order to make good choices on voting day the people need to know what their representatives actually are doing)

representative democracy works well[/quote]
Wait, what? You're an optimist! :-)

There are areas that most democratic governments can improve in though, transparancy being the primary flaw[/quote]
True. Lack of transparency, in my opinion, is one of the three major reasons why democrycy does not work (but, don't ask me what works better... other systems don't work considerably worse, but I can't name one that truly works). The other reasons why representative democracy fails are the total lack of liability, and the sheer unlimited stupidity of voters.

Government can do just what it wants, there is no liability, no retribution. In the very worst case (if you were caught in the act of a serious crime) you have to resign and get paid a 5-figure monthly tax-free pension for the rest of your life. Oh heck, what a harsh penalty.

Burned 10 billion euros in one go because you're a stupid dickhead who can't anticipate the next 3 days' development? Burned another 100 millions because you did not listen to all the experts who told you not to? That's fine, someone else will pay for it, and if in doubt, we can always raise new taxes. Or build less schools, who needs schools anyway. As long as we have enough money to get involved in the next uncalled [s]war[/s] peace mission in a country far far away, all is good. Man, I don't know why everyone hates us. We need more airport security, more passport controls, and more cameras in the cities to protect ourselves from those vicious terrorists. You know, they are everywhere, maybe you are one of them.

If you acted like this, you would be held liable for the damages and you would likely go to jail. Or to a psychiatric ward. For a government, that's perfectly acceptable.

The problem is that the system calls for it: People vote B because they are unhappy with A, then they blame B for what A decided, and finally vote A again because the things A decided for took effect when B was in charge, so clearly it's B's fault. So, from a government's point of view, there is nothing to worry about. They always win.
Also, most people don't know what they want and don't care anyway. They want "more everything" but don't want to pay for it, and whatever it is, it's ok as long as someone says it will get better.

It also really doesn't resolve issues of knowing what you're talking about. Currently, we have a mass of voters (half the population in an election with good turnout) who really don't understand many (if any) issues at stake. These voters elect a representative who also doesn't really understand many (if any) issues at stake. These representatives then pass sweeping and binding legislation based on their own feelings and opinions of things that they don't know anything about, at all. My current favorite example of this is Joe Barton saying that wind energy could exacerbate global warming by stopping wind, which is god's way of distributing heat. It doesn't matter what else Joe might know about in governance-- he is still able impact a discussion in which he can spew this nonsense which clearly shows that he doesn't understand a single thing about that discussion.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a technocracy. But I am saying that the "collective wisdom of society" can only have a beneficial policy result if people who know what the hell they're talking about get their way over the multitudes who don't. Otherwise we end up with a huge pool of ignorant people directly altering policy because of anything but relevant and accurate knowledge. How much does the average person know about modern economics? Finance? Law? Chemistry? Ecology? Climatology? Hell, in the US there are a lot of people who have a very weak grasp on civics.

Even if we could resolve the massive logistic challenges of such a system, I think that it would be corrupted and ineffective anyhow.

It also really doesn't resolve issues of knowing what you're talking about. Currently, we have a mass of voters (half the population in an election with good turnout) who really don't understand many (if any) issues at stake. These voters elect a representative who also doesn't really understand many (if any) issues at stake. These representatives then pass sweeping and binding legislation based on their own feelings and opinions of things that they don't know anything about, at all. My current favorite example of this is Joe Barton saying that wind energy could exacerbate global warming by stopping wind, which is god's way of distributing heat. It doesn't matter what else Joe might know about in governance-- he is still able impact a discussion in which he can spew this nonsense which clearly shows that he doesn't understand a single thing about that discussion.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a technocracy. But I am saying that the "collective wisdom of society" can only have a beneficial policy result if people who know what the hell they're talking about get their way over the multitudes who don't. Otherwise we end up with a huge pool of ignorant people directly altering policy because of anything but relevant and accurate knowledge. How much does the average person know about modern economics? Finance? Law? Chemistry? Ecology? Climatology? Hell, in the US there are a lot of people who have a very weak grasp on civics.

Even if we could resolve the massive logistic challenges of such a system, I think that it would be corrupted and ineffective anyhow.

I actually thought about a solution to this. Simply require voters to take a test of facts where 50% of the questions are from the right and the other 50% are from the left. You can either base the value of their vote on the percentage of correctly answered questions or reject all votes that are below a requirement of correctly answered questions. Either way you effectively solve this problem.