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  • Commonweal


  • Founder: nemorathwald

    ,

  • Who We Need
    People who like the idea, or who can suggest where to proceed from here.
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  • Mission

    A Commonweal is a new organization, neither government or corporation, locating the scoring mechanism in multiple well-being factors of Gross National Happiness. These are metrics common in such indexes as the Human Development Index and Happy Planet Index.

    Teams compete to improve the common well-being of the society as a whole-- the Common Weal. Teams differentiate by prioritizing different well-being factors, and by the industriousness and talent of their members.

    Prediction Markets determine the laws binding on different teams by predicting what will increase their metric of the common weal. Bets on predictions are placed with points, and track Weal factors.

    Citizens earn points with tasks assigned them by the Prediction Market, and spend points to purchase benefits from competing civil service agencies.

  • What we can accomplish
  • How this superstruct works

    • 11/5/08 04:46 pm - Superstruct: Commonweal I will call the Commonweal’s sub-groups “teams” because they compete to improve the Commonweal with grassroots work and sustainable living. Citizens of these sub-groups are distinguished not by *where* they live, but by *how*, and what benefits they receive in exchange for that compliance. Often states or provinces are a way for a nation’s citizens to have some measure of local independence in variations in their laws and civil administration. With the irrelevance of physical borders to this structure, teams could do that with much more fluidly. If you apply for a different team and the Commonweal puts you there, you are less inconvenienced than if you had to physically move and leave your loved ones.

      Teams with unsustainable policies would atrophy, while the most successful teams would branch off new teams into experimental lifestyles.

      Wait, why would that come about? Immediately this raises the question of how to determine whether specific policies truly resulted in failures or successes they experienced. I propose team membership be like a marriage that does not have any no-fault divorce policy, but has divorce only for cause.

      We need a more objective method than popularity contests, to award citizens to a team from another team. Citizens should not be able to reap the benefits and then jump ship the moment they have to sacrifice. They should be able to prefer which team they would like to apply for when available-- but if they could choose when to switch without objective evidence of incompatibility, the Commonwealth will immediately collapse through ideological blindness, and people simply disliking other people on a gut level because they look funny. Then it would be composed of tiny, weak, ephemeral “teams”, too small for the concept to be of any use.

      Each citizen has a Weal, defined by them in an official internet profile that works somewhat like OKCupid, except not for dating. Instead of being matched to dates, you are being matched to teams who want to live as you do. “Commonwealth” comes from “common weal”, in which “weal” means “well-being”. Your Weal is a weighted and prioritized list of measurable factors by which you personally define the welfare of the entire Commonweal. Make note of that: not just your well-being, or that of your team, but the Commonweal as a whole. If you want something different for yourself than you want for others, your Weal is a declaration of what you want for others in your society. Examples may include:

      the health of the unhealthiest

      the educational attainment of the poorest-educated

      the standard of living of the poorest citizens

      cleaner surroundings

      more free time

      lower divorce levels

      lower violence

      lower prescription of antidepressants

      That is a short sample list. There would be many more factors, each with a clearly-specified description of what is measured, and each considered an end, not just a means. The Weal description system works somewhat like OKCupid's question system: all users may propose matching questions based on a new factor they want considered. The quiz questions are presented in the order of how important each question is to the majority, and you may answer as many as you wish. Your answers are your personal definition of what outcomes would constitute the national well-being in your opinion.

      A computer algorithm like that of OKCupid compares your Weal with others in the Commonweal for compatibility. Shared values would influence what team you are assigned to at the age of independence from your parents, or if you become eligible for reassignment thereafter.

      One of the centralized administrative services shared by all teams in the Commonweal will be a Prediction Market based on points. Citizens propose a new policy in the form of a bet. They state the policy and predict what effect the policy’s enactment would have on various factors of well-being in the Commonweal. Each prediction is a wager. After a period of time to research what they feel the effects would be, all Commonweal citizens from any team may bet points on those predictions, indicating which predictions the overall market predicts to come true.

      When the market predicts a policy would result in net gain to your team’s averaged definition of the Common Weal, your team is eligible to earn points by carrying out that policy, or lose points for counteracting that policy.

      Bets are then paid in points based on the measured changes in Weal factors.

      Citizens pay points for calling the police, being heard by courts, identity documents, nationalized healthcare, social security benefits, education, and any other civil service agencies made available for point-sale to all Commonweal citizens by the weighted calculation of the common weal.

  • Other information
    • Additional Reading:Robin Hanson: "Shall We Vote On Values, But Bet On Beliefs?" Futarchy.pdf contains more detail on Prediction Markets.David Pulver: GURPS Transhuman Space: Deep Beyond. Pages 83 through 87 describe the operation of privately-hired security forces and judges-for-hire in the lawless space frontier of an asteroid field. The system is "maintained through interlocking agreements between business associations, insurance brokers, and individuals."Kim Stanley Robinson: Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars. The Mars Trilogy involves a type of organization called a transnational or transnat. In essence it is a megacorporation in which the employees are citizens with rights and a voice. The idea is that it has so many subsidiaries that it can provide for all their commercial needs. Such an organization would be incorporated in one of the world’s most tiny and dependent nations with a highly lax regulatory environment, in which it would own the entire country. A country in such an arrangement is called a flag of convenience. The reason they use a flag of convenience is to gain recognition from existing nations while retaining independence.
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