cam: Modern democratic forms: Losers need not apply , probably should have called it \"Greater\", so it always has a positive connotation, and doesnt make a winner/loser split in the minds of people.

The Wired article is interesting, I think the fellow is trying to say, that the modern versions of big-box stores (ie Amazon) now have a means to aggregate. He also tried to make the point that mp3.com failed because it didnt have the mass production stuff and use that as a means to navigate to the long tail.

I think it is more likely that mp3.com had poor means of aggragation coupled with instant recognition. It might have taken nothing more than \"type in your favourite band here\" to kick off the aggragation in an easy and usable manner. Or maybe even something fun and simple like, \"When you listen to music, what colour do you see\" and the bands that people have rated as \"blue\" or \"pink\" might pop up. Rather than using Britney as the seed for aggragation.

The online big-boxes wont have a monopoly on aggragation for long. The newspapers have lost it to blogs. A music version of blog radio will pop up too and Amazon will lose its monopoly there. By the same token, now I read all manner of op-eds in online media, far more diverse than the local paper would ever give me.

I also do a daily run through my favoured aggragators to see what is interesting, SSR, HuSi, K5, Troppo, Quiggin, Road to Surfdom, dailykos, redstate etc etc etc. Not to mention IRC, and my daily delivered Washington Post. I also check the SMH.com.au daily as well.

Ironically webdiary fails IMO. I dont read it anymore. It is too much like a print journal, even with the addition of comments, it hasnt the vitality, or day-to-day commentary of a political blog. It even fails cerebarally, local Aussie blogs outdo it there. Its main claim to fame is that it is on the SMH site.

The E-Petitions is way cool, it needs an MP to sponsor it though? So a community group petitions an MP, who then puts up to the E-Petition to be signed and gauge popularity for the petition?

The evidence based on is interesting. Bush has kicked out all his empiricists, and all that is left is ideologues and yes-men. With all the close confidants he is putting in the cabinet positions means the echo-chamber is tightening. It also means that the White House creates all policy and cabinet heads are media frontmen for White House policy.

Given Rove\'s operating nature, it also means that the politics is driving policy, and not vice versa. I am beginning to doubt that Bush would have allowed Iraq to go ahead if Rove had not said \"we can run on you being a war president\". The ideologues probably had to pitch the political (as in party/campaign) positives of the operation, in order to make it policy.

The Bush Administration flip-flops all over the place for political reasons. There is no hard empirical policy there, just a bunch of ideologues demanding that Bush\'s political base be paid off with policy initiatives, or alternatively ideologues pitching their pet interest but with the caveat that pursuing it will increase Bush\'s chance of staying in power.

I dont think history is going to judge this Bush administration at all kindly.

From the Fractal Democracy page;

Officially convene a group whose diversity is a fair sample of the larger population concerned. Their typical diversity provides the challenges they need to expand their individual perspectives to embrace the bigger picture held and/or needed by the whole community.

This is the function of sortition in a ratification process, so that a suitable statistical sample of the electorate can dampen the corruption of a representative (who will represent special interests, not the people). Technology and education has put us to the point where we can govern our own affairs without the need for specialist representatives. What form it will take will be the big argument, not should we do it.

btw I didnt vote for jug skulling.... :)

Scrymarch: Abstract Democracy: I think it is more likely that mp3.com had poor means of aggragation coupled with instant recognition.

Yeah, I admit I never bothered with it much.  I like music but I don\'t pursue it with any vigour.  You could be right that it\'s a bad example because of the lack of crosslinking.  Presumably the \"People who bought this also bought ...\" feature could be extended fairly simply with to peer-to-peer or even iTunes - \"People who share this also share ...\".

I\'m a big fan of Amazon.  They go to the trouble to do things right.  No amazon.co.uk is one thing I already miss about the UK.

I dunno that media will go to an entirely amateur basis.  It\'s interesting to see that a number of big name bloggers also have syndicated newspaper columns now - Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan (who was already a journalist), Salaam Pax.  I think it\'s just lowered the barriers to entry and the costs of obscurity, which is a long tail effect.

Attempting to extend the metaphor, regardless of whether you have a parliament of representatives, I think you still need an executive cabinet.  It would be best with a popular mandate.  The Prime Minister is hence the Britney Spears of Abundant Government.

The E-Petitions is way cool, it needs an MP to sponsor it though?

I was kind of impressed, but yeah it needs an MP to sponsor as far as I can tell in my rereading.  I think they just made a few technical changes to put the normal petition process online and get it out there.  Good on them I say, it\'s easy to imagine emails drumming up support doing the rounds.  Hopefully like any business process captured in software people will now realise the opportunities to do new things and factor out some now useless parts.

Bush has kicked out all his empiricists

There was an article in The Economist some time in the last few years on Evidence Based social policy, but my sub has died so I didn\'t bother looking.  Even the US, even now, under cabinet level, is mostly technocrats in the civil service.  In medicine, in recent history, rules and procedures were set by councils of wise men (yep, almost always men) off the top of their experienced heads.  Evidence based, which is new in the last few decades, and only really coming through for undergrads in the last ten years (I think) improved on this by attempting to organise advice at a new level of systematicity.  That site has levels of advice: roughly, backed by prospective large sample trials; backed by small scale studies; backed by case studies or retrospective trials; professional consensus.  I think any applied wet science could benefit from the same approach, especially things like social work.

Technology and education has put us to the point where we can govern our own affairs without the need for specialist representatives.

This to me is what jury selected reps are for.  I think most people are capable of the average backbencher\'s job.  More than that, they can do a better job by not owing allegiance to an electoral faction.

Democratic politicians are forced by their job to be a kind of cipher of popular consensus.  At the same time we need leaders to have conviction and character.  That\'s quite a tension to put on a job.

The Direct Democracy solution is to remove the representative.  I think removing the representative will short circuit deliberation in policy.

The Sortition Purist / Venetian solution is to remove the election, and have confidence in any citizen to do the job when it is put to them.

Maybe you could have members for constituencies selected by lottery, but then sit in a chamber together with Proportionally Represented party members.  The House of Reps is pretty close to a party list system anyway.  Might be a big chamber.

Foreign Minister selected by lottery?  I\'m not quite that bold.  Extra seats in parliament to mix it up - bring it on.

btw I didnt vote for jug skulling.... :)

I\'m starting to think of it as the CowboyNeal of SSR :)

cam: Music, ....... plus ...... to Egan:

I like music but I don\'t pursue it with any vigour.

The power of aggregators is enormous. As an example of the old style of aggregation, a mate of mine was in DC recently selling defence technology to the US. We played in a band together back in the raging early 90\'s. I trust his choices in music, he introduced me to the Lemonheads, Treepeople, Ratcat and many other bands whose music I dearly love.

He has two kids now, and is a good family man. When we were kicking the crap out of each playing Virtua Fighter 4, he said, \"You should buy Avril Lavigne\'s new album, it is really good. I listen to it all the time.\" I scoffed at him, but a week later I bought her album and endured scoffs from my wife. He is right, it is a great pop album. Lavigne (and Best Buy) made a sale because of my trust in an aggregator that I know not only has good taste, but I have a history with.

That is the long tail that the Wired article is talking about. With internet technology and many-to-many systems (abundance theory?) that form of aggregation is now usable by big-box formats such as Amazon. Best Buy cant use it, they are still stuck with a brick and mortar store, and require my flesh and blood mate to make the recommendation.

But imdb.com? I watch B grade movies on the 400 movie channels of crap you can get on US satellite TV for $70 a month. Since I watch TV with an iBook on my lap, when I come across a B Grade movie, I look it up on imdb. If Netflix could link to that, especially the imdb searches which have like films ...... my movie loving mate is in Lane Cove, long way away, so imdb has a possibility there for me to put B Grade movies on order with Netflix.

I dunno that media will go to an entirely amateur basis. It\'s interesting to see that a number of big name bloggers also have syndicated newspaper columns now

I expect mass media not to fade away but to become niche, like Fox is, it exploited the perception that conservatives/republicans had no voice in the big media. They are the first symptom of mass media turning to niche media. As to the bloggers, it appears in the Au circle Troppo, Quiggin and roadtosurfdom are the big aggregators. They write op-ed style articles. I read them more than the op-eds in the SMH/Age.

I am not a fan of Andrew Sullivan\'s blog. I don\'t like blogs that are a quote with a sentence either side of it. I know he is acting as an aggregator, but I prefer the op-ed style that put a bit of thought into and offer up a good opinion, rather than so and so says. Considering Sullivan has no comments on his site, a quote and one sentence cant even be for creating discussion. Maybe he just likes his inbox over-flowing. Sullivan\'s performances on \"Real Time with Bill Maher\" haven\'t been that good either.

I think it\'s just lowered the barriers to entry and the costs of obscurity, which is a long tail effect.

Very true. This site is running on a mini-itx system that is in my basement. For the cost of an internet connection this site is publishing to the world for whoever wants to read it.

Even the US, even now, under cabinet level, is mostly technocrats in the civil service.

But they are useless if they are being suppressed by the political arm. The GAO is about the only one left that has the guts to defy the white house. You see what they plan to do to make the Social Security changes politically palatable ? It is Enronomics. From the article;

As they lay the groundwork for what will probably be a controversial fight over Social Security, Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration are examining a number of accounting strategies that would allow the expensive transition to a partially privatized Social Security system without -- at least on paper -- expanding the country\'s record annual budget deficits. The strategies include, for example, moving the costs of Social Security reform \"off-budget\" so they are not counted against the government\'s yearly shortfall.

It is criminal. This kind of accounting was why the tech bubble popped and the stock market along with it. It will be why America pops and drags the world into recession/depression along with it. At least be honest about it. They just don\'t care. I cannot fathom it, they know they are lying. The same as Kenneth Lay did. Unbelievable.

The Direct Democracy solution is to remove the representative. I think removing the representative will short circuit deliberation in policy.

I don\'t think it will. Already with the internet in its infancy humanity is proving how civic an animal it is. We have all manners of civic communication, newsgroups, forum boards, blogs, www.ratemy[insert-bodily-extremity].com, websites that are one way, instant messaging, SMS, skype - plus all the old world stuff like face to face communication, phones, etc.

I see town hall meetings, community meetings, living room meetings, on line chat, phone chat, conference calls etc etc etc. Humanity will communicate any way it can. Adding some responsibility to the political process in the individual will give direction to that communication.

I don\'t think deliberation will suffer. I expect legislation to be debated and dissected more widely and vigourously than ever before. Either way it has to be better than staffers slipping in legislation just before going to vote .

Foreign Minister selected by lottery? I\'m not quite that bold. Extra seats in parliament to mix it up - bring it on.

Maybe not initially, but rather than the EU being the model for World Government, I expect a ratification/sortition process will be what replaces it, removing the need for the nation-state. Might even one day devolve the representative system and the state to the point that Egan\'s \"stateless\" is a possibility.

cam

avocadia: Casting on the Long Tail:

I dunno that media will go to an entirely amateur basis.  It\'s interesting to see that a number of big name bloggers also have syndicated newspaper columns now - Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan (who was already a journalist), Salaam Pax.

Salaam Pax was one of the few news bloggers who had genuinely original news. As opposed to, say, the knitting bloggers and the teenager bloggers, the two niches I am led to believe dwarf every other blog genre by an order of magnitude. Everyone else is just an aggregator or op-ed (with shades of grey). Until that changes the big media will be the big kids.

Salaam was jammy anyway. If the war had come a year earlier, we\'d probably never have heard of him. Big media, influential and powerful media, can reduce the luck effect.

I don\'t know if that offsets the adverse effects of that influence and power; that when they are beholden to the bottom line rather than the jounalism, they have a warping effect on public perception.

I think it\'s just lowered the barriers to entry and the costs of obscurity, which is a long tail effect.

Like I said above. There\'s probably more people collectively reading the knitting blogs and the teenager blogs then there are any other genre. And the knitting bloggers are the kind of people who aren\'t too cool for webrings. That\'s the future of blogging, common interest, not amateur journalism.

Actually, there\'s a new political group right there. My wife is a knit blogger, and from her complaining about constant politics, I gathered that the US knit bloggers are overwhelmingly democratic. Forget the Soccer Mums and the NASCAR Dads...the Knitters!

cam: Knitting bloggers: By knitting bloggers, do you mean that literally? They write about knitting?

The teenage blogs are cool, I am so glad when I went through that age a bulletin board was the highest tech. Even in my early twenties, IRC was about the pinnacle. Those trainwreck blogs are going to be something, whether anthropological only or something more, they will be something.

As to most bloggers being aggregators; one aspect of that is it gives you a chance to refute/push-back on the mass media writers as well. Which is more empowering than ranting and raving about Novak\'s latest op-ed in the living room with an audience of the cats.

cam

avocadia: Knit blogs:

Literally. They write about knitting. Forget what you know about knitting. Knitting has somehow become cool. I ride the train from Campbelltown to North Sydney daily, and this last winter there would be women, young and old, knitting. My wife has a few US friends she met through the knit blog scene who would tape, DivX, and FTP episodes of a knitting show off one of the lifestyle shows on US cable. I swear, the host of this show could have been on MTV; she was rock! My wife\'s US friends live in McMansions near Atlanta and Boulder. One of them is in New York, NY; they are thirtyish; the one in New York has young kid. This isn\'t your grandma\'s past-time :- )

So they write daily on what they are knitting, what yarn they are buying, the patterns they like, the needles they like. It\'s pretty much like any other genre of hobby blog, except that knitting and blogging seemed to have an upswing in activity simultaneously.

Teenage blogs are a whole different world to me. When I was growing up, I was in a small town. Bulletin boards were something you may have heard about; they happened in America, that place with Disneyland and thirty-one whole flavours of ice-cream. So I don\'t really have the background to see myself in them. Which is a shame really, because is is probably a sign I have succumbed and "grown up".

Everything is more empowering than ranting to the cats :- ) But point seen and recognised.

Scrymarch: Knit blogs: That is fantastic.  My wife just asked if you were taking the piss; I said I didn\'t think so, and Google proved it.

I\'m sneaking in a blog entry in between gift baskets and phone calls and waxing

-- http://carrie.prettyposies.com

Knitting blogs.  That is so 21st century it hurts.  I feel like I\'m living in a Bruce Sterling novel.

cam: Leave No Niche Interest Behind: The site you linked to will probably have a look at its referrers, click on a link, have a look at ssr and say wtf? There are people that discuss republicanism in Australia for hobby? That is whacked!

cam

Scrymarch: Aggregation: Lavigne (and Best Buy) made a sale because of my trust in an aggregator

That\'s almost a reverse tail effect.  You went from Ratcat to Avril Lavigne because of a recommendation - the difference being that there\'s no Ratcat at Best Buy.

Fox ... are the first symptom of mass media turning to niche media

Well you\'ll know more about Fox than me, but it\'s struck me as more of a function of media deregulation.  It\'s now like the British broadsheet media, which is world class precisely because it\'s so intelligently biased.  The old objectivity thing was always a myth, in my opinion, and it had started to be a dangerous myth.  The New York Times is better off being a kind of American liberal Guardian, and stating its beliefs up front, than hiding behind a pretence of objectivity.

So yeah, I think you\'re right about mass media going niche, but it will always have to be a big niche.  This is what the Long Tail article cleverly points out - some catchy songs are always going to be popular with everyone.  It\'ll only be niche in the sense that syrupy pop ballads are niche - lots of people like them, but not everyone.

I also saw an article in Prospect last year which pointed out the artistic economics of the burgeoning DVD market.  When your main revenue stream is opening weekends, your films are going to be bread and circus jobs.  When a big revenue stream is afficianados buying lovingly annotated copies of films for careful repeat viewing, it supports a more thoughtful kind of film-maker.

Sullivan

I don\'t read Sullivan in detail and I don\'t even like his analysis that much, but I find him interesting because he\'s on several political boundaries, and boundary conditions interest me.  He\'s a small government conservative, federalist, immigrant (ex-Pom), foreign policy hawk, openly gay but not stereotypically camp, believer in individual rights, &c &c.

Enronomics

Great diary btw.  This is what happens when politicians talk to themselves for too long - they think they can legislate reality.

humanity is proving how civic an animal it is

Hmm.  I think humanity is certainly proving how social an animal it is.  But flamewars, spam, crapflooders, and so on, are not my model of civility ... :) ... The institutional framework is important; it shapes the patterns of interaction.    Depending on how you shape it you can have a sober deliberation on matters of the day, a hothead salon of argumentative radicals, or a freeway full of pseudonymous blobs people who shift around each other in orderly formation, communicating no more than a flick of the eyes.

EU being the model for World Government

I don\'t think the EU government is new.  They\'re just reinventing aristocracy.

ranomatic: Reinventing Aristocracy: I for one would like to hear you expand on this.  I\'ve never considered the EU as any form of government.  Maybe it\'s a meta-government?!?

Scrymarch: Meta-government: Reinventing Aristocracy

Well, maybe I let my rhetoric run ahead of myself.  The EU has been sold as a very loose customs and now currency union of nation states, with a small degree of confederation weaker than even the original United States of America.  It\'s not, or it\'s not anymore.  It\'s a new pan-European government with an appetite for standardisation and some strange constitutional mechanics.  It has a parliament, a high court, a bill of rights, a civil service, an executive with president, another national presidency, and a senior council of national representatives.  But they\'re arranged in a different order to the expected: the executive cabinet is appointed by the president but the president is appointed by the national reps; the executive writes legislation and the parliament simply reviews it.  

It\'s also a massive exercise in obfuscation and regulation.  The people in the EU are sincere technocrats, genuine guys.  They wouldn\'t dream of a parliament being appointed by any method but election - proportional representation, even.  They have a bill of rights that they believe in.  But they think nothing of passing tomes of detailed environmental or microeconomic regulations.  The EU has a ridiculous amount of languages, so it\'s sideshow parliament is deathly boring to watch.  It also has a local jargon that seems designed to make things mind-numbingly dull.  Only Brussels wonks can follow it, even more so than government as usual.

This is going to sound like red-faced Tory indignation; it\'s not.  But with this combination of centralisation, regulation, and disocciation from working citizens, it\'s effectively government by specialists.  The experts are chosen from shifting party lists and the horse trading of national reps (ie national governments).  I seem to rememeber Aristotle calling that aristocracy, though you could also call it technocracy or meritocracy.

The EU does spend a lot of time building up sub-national regions.  So maybe you could see a loose grouping of 50-100 autonomous, democratic European regions under a central EU banner, with nation states becoming diminished.  But it\'s mainly centrally doled out pork, and there\'s little to suggest the managers in Strasbourg have any instinctive commitment to political devolution.  Giving people a choice would mean they might choose wrongly, you see.

cam: Rat - cat - rat - race:

You went from Ratcat to Avril Lavigne because of a recommendation - the difference being that there\'s no Ratcat at Best Buy.

Yeh but when he recommended Ratcat to me was way back in 1990, when they couldn\'t even fill the Hopetoun Hotel. That was before they became rockstars and then were punished for being popular. But if he recommends something that can only be got on itunes or emusic then they get the sale.

I got some treepeople albums I was missing off of emusic. I know my wife downloaded some Rancid stuff off emusic too before we stopped our subscription. She has been buying off itunes recently.

I also saw an article in Prospect last year which pointed out the artistic economics of the burgeoning DVD market.

I bought \"Bad Taste\" as soon as I found it on the web as a DVD release. Oddly enough, we also play \"Rat Race\" alot.

cam