Create a government from scratch.

Version control the laws.

Compare the laws with all other countries.

Hoard data.

Write code to replace government employees and to make laws easy to implement. (If done well consider selling a product or service)

Make everything modular so that the establishment can steal it.

Get people involved. Doesn't matter if you need to write a sim and convince them it is a game.

Pretend the whole exercise is writing code so that you can imagine you are perfect for the job.

I learn that people from all political angles like the idea of voluntary taxes (but no one believes it can work)

If the whole thing can run on donations and volunteers with a few "state" owned companies a hot swap becomes inevitable.

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post-it 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not sure you can code your way into having a monopoly on violence.

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dredmorbius 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

NB: Weber's definition of government (which your quote misstates, so to speak, as is often the case), is that the state is that entity which has the monopoly on the legitimate claim to violence. It's legitimacy, not violence, which is key.

For the longer explanation, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37366751>.

That said, legitimacy is a political property, and one which cannot be attained through purely technical means. To that extent I agree with your critique.

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econ 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To state the obvious: If anyone can code his way out of something it is someone who codes.

If enough people want something badly enough, when existing governing structures will bow is a question of how many people.

You should pretend your code isn't good enough. That way you can own the problem. You will get plenty of help from those making things worse. Empires crumble eventually.

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Gigachad 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That was the obvious issue with all the blockchain smart contract stuff that was getting pushed previously. Any time it interacts with the physical world the blockchain goes out the window the moment on someone on the ground decides they don’t agree with it. Your cryptographically signed deed means nothing and can’t evict someone off the land.

	▲	jeremyjh 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is little room for a property or money transfer system that leaves no avenue for legal recourse. And the DAO fork made it crystal clear why it was always just window dressing on the same social consensus game.

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incompatible 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are already N governments, why would making government N+1 improve anything.

	▲	econ 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Imagine we had a versioned database with all the laws from all countries where one could compare them side by side. We could begin to understand the mood or spirit of each effort. Law makers wouldn't need to pretend they are doing something unique. You might do the same with all infrastructure projects. They can't all be cheap. Half should more expensive than average. It should be fascinating to see where the extra money is going. Some goes towards corruption, some into incompetence but there should also be plenty of praise worthy efforts. It seems we have the tools to do such things now without breaking the bank. Think of the law as a truly outdated code base. Why would you do a rewrite you ask? Because we've learned a thing or two along the way?