[liberationtech] Building a System for Trustworthy Representation..

[Peter Lindener]

Dear Fellow Liberation Technology Members,

My research is on what I term *Information Theoretic democracy*, which I
think is of critical importance to liberation technology. I use the above
term, as there are many insights, such as the one introduced bellow, that
can be gleaned, as one looks at the democratic group decisions in terms of
information flow.


Building a System for Trustworthy Representation

The inequitable distribution of power makes current representation systems
profoundly flawed.  The fundamental issue with our current representational
approach appears to be that trust relationship management does not extend
well towards the many-to-one, infrequent, group-selected single
representative.

Social networking sites, properly devised, have the potential to implement
systems that are more democratic and responsive to the desires of the
electorate.  Personalized choice of one's representative, independently
customizable across any given class of issues, with the freedom to adjust
one's representational preference at any time or ones choosing, promise to
profoundly improve the current representational situation.

Social networking sites could effectively light a burner under politicians
as they would know they would be held accountable on the particular issues
they represent on one's behalf.  A simple drag and drop of one's social
network based proxy directives, can shift who one chooses as one's
representative on that particular class of issues.  With this approach
representational social relationships are much more fine grained,
responsive, and accountable in nature.

What if: You enjoyed personal friendships with everyone who represents your
interests in government
AND:  You could *remove any of them* from their role and replace them with
anyone else you individually preferred, any time, at will, with just a few
clicks of a mouse?
Further more: Your right to make such adjustments, towards your own better
representation in government, at ANY time of your choosing, were protected
under constitutional law?

Thus, social networking sites not only permit people to decide collectively
that they want freedom and proper representation but also can deliver a
paradigm for, effective, multi-hop proxy-based, issues-driven,  personalized
representation.  For additional reading on this topic one may want to check
out this paper on proxy based
representation<http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/%7Earmytage/proxy2010.pdf>
written
by James Green-Armytage <http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/%7Earmytage/>.

-Peter
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