Xerographica
Member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2010
- Messages
- 1,345
Let’s Use Facebook Groups To Test Steering Mechanisms
All political and economic issues boil down to group decisions. For example, group decisions in a market are made by individual spending. When you buy toilet paper you’re helping the group to decide how much toilet paper to supply. And when you donate to the Red Cross you’re helping the group to decide how much disaster relief to supply.
My theory is that there can only be one best system for making group decisions, given that group decisions all have the same goal… group benefit maximization. Democracy and dictatorships are very different systems, so they can’t be equally effective at maximizing group benefit.
On Facebook I’m a member of nearly 100 groups (mostly about plants) and all of them are dictatorships, except for the plant group that I started, which is a market. We use donations to make decisions.
How is it possible that out of nearly 100 groups that not a single one is a democracy? Why are we so accepting of dictatorships? Wouldn’t these groups make much better decisions if they were democracies? It’s certainly easy enough to create polls.
One thing about FB groups is that if you don’t like the decisions made by a group’s dictator, you can simply leave it and start your own group. Starting a group on FB is ridiculously easy.
So here’s an idea. Let’s create FB groups to test and compare different ways of making group decisions. We can have FB groups for direct democracy, representative democracy, socialism, communism and all the other isms. We can simultaneously participate in and get a feel for numerous different systems.
Will it become clear which system is the best? Let’s find out! If you create a group let me know and I’ll add it to this list…
Decisions By Donations
Questions, concerns?
All political and economic issues boil down to group decisions. For example, group decisions in a market are made by individual spending. When you buy toilet paper you’re helping the group to decide how much toilet paper to supply. And when you donate to the Red Cross you’re helping the group to decide how much disaster relief to supply.
My theory is that there can only be one best system for making group decisions, given that group decisions all have the same goal… group benefit maximization. Democracy and dictatorships are very different systems, so they can’t be equally effective at maximizing group benefit.
On Facebook I’m a member of nearly 100 groups (mostly about plants) and all of them are dictatorships, except for the plant group that I started, which is a market. We use donations to make decisions.
How is it possible that out of nearly 100 groups that not a single one is a democracy? Why are we so accepting of dictatorships? Wouldn’t these groups make much better decisions if they were democracies? It’s certainly easy enough to create polls.
One thing about FB groups is that if you don’t like the decisions made by a group’s dictator, you can simply leave it and start your own group. Starting a group on FB is ridiculously easy.
So here’s an idea. Let’s create FB groups to test and compare different ways of making group decisions. We can have FB groups for direct democracy, representative democracy, socialism, communism and all the other isms. We can simultaneously participate in and get a feel for numerous different systems.
Will it become clear which system is the best? Let’s find out! If you create a group let me know and I’ll add it to this list…
Decisions By Donations
Questions, concerns?
