Ideas wanted: democracy in an Em world

Democracy grants legitimacy to the government.

What? "legitimacy" is a memetic power-device (ie. weapon) to coerce people to psychologically accept the status quo, not a real desirable thing. Democracy only grants legitimacy to government if the relevant powers have been convinced (by use of other memetic tools) that it does.

Democracy is fair and egalitarian - each person has a single vote.

Why is this a good thing? Why do we need to raise power to a sacred status? I have no power over the actions of google, and yet I don't find myself the least bit inconvenienced by it. Further, I actually appreciate google not being a democracy, because it means other idiots can't interfere. Why should government be different? Why in the domain of government do I have to trust the 99% of the population that is less intelligent than me to govern my life?

(note that having equal votes is orthogonal to more directly valuable forms on egalitarianism, like having equal opportunity)

Democracy aligns the interests of the rulers with that of the ruled.

Not really. People often don't know their own interests, and aren't really capable of steering government coherently (see strategic voting, and the game theory (note that it's game theory, not human interest) behind most of the outcomes in democracy)

Further, democracy creates incentive by the powerful (ie media, education system) to "align the interests of the ruled with their own interests" ie manufacture consent. Hence psychological mechanisms like "legitimacy", "rights", and so on.

Democracy allows the competition of governing ideas.

Yup. Though "allows" is a bit weak. It encourages particular forms of disagreement and factionalism.

Democracy often leads to market economies, which generate large wealth.

Selection effects, correlation, causation, etc. Most rich countries are democracies, but most democracies are third world hellholes. Maybe democracy only works in already wealthy civilized countries and elsewhere leads to political violence? (see africa).

Democracy often lead to welfare states, which increase happiness.

I don't know much about this, but again, may be good to examine the exact causal linkage.

Democracy doesn't need to use certain coercive methods, such as restrictions on free speech, that other systems require to remain stable.

Democracy encourages ruling powers to tweak the beliefs of the ruled. Further, only certain forms of free speech are really allowed. You can't say certain things publicly without losing friends or even having internet vigilantes bring the hammer down on you. There are no explicit laws (except in europe), but the coercion is still there.

Democracy stops a particular group from hanging on to power indefinitely, which can reduce corruption, inefficiency and excessive use of state power for private purposes.

Maybe. This could be seen in other lights. Also, the civil service is more or less permanent.

I don't strongly believe these criticisms of democracy, but please don't just take the religion you were raised with and run with it. I little bit of skepticism is appropriate when dealing with such choices (the entire future!). There are other systems that may be easier and more effective, especially with ems thrown in.

The success of democracy is not really based on design, but more luck in that it turned out to work as well as it does in the conditions under which it works. Em's change enough that it may not be effective at all anymore, and not worth fixing.

Democracy is at best a form of theocracy that prevents violent political conflict (when installed correctly, causes it otherwise). "Theocracy" is not necessarily bad, but let's be realistic about how it works (everyone more-or-less religiously agrees on it). Once you see it like this, there are other possible theocracies, possibly better ones.

Democracy is a political system used by meat-based, baseline humans, who are all fundamentally very similar. The greatest variation is that between Einstein and the village idiot, but 99% of people are far from either extreme.

One of the key ideas leading to democracy is equal rights. It makes sense to give all humans equal rights because their abilities, needs, and desires are really very similar. But ems inhabit a far greater class of possible behaviors, abilities, needs and desires. It's not clear to me why it even makes sense to consider a democracy of ems.

Another problem is that, as you point out, a one instance-one vote system would create a huge artificial restriction on the creation of legal copies. Creating copies is probably very desirable for anyone rich enough to run them. So the only possible outcomes are either a huge majority of disenfranchised copies created without a license, or else a huge illegal underworld of copies that is brutally repressed by the government because, once a copy is created, they have to grant it full rights.

Just look at the state of modern copyright (and patents) - a huge artificial legal restriction on the proliferation of software. Then imagine copyright applied to sentient beings. Enforcing a system of government licensing of em copying would mean enforcing the non-existence of free software and open hardware, or any software or hardware free from government control.

Yvain notes in a blog post that governmental structures tend to be suited to the technology of the times:

And a lot of these late Neolithic/early Bronze Age cultures turned out the same way. If Ramesses II, Montezuma II, and Agamemmnon went to lunch together, they’d have a lot to talk about, despite being separated by continents and millennia. This suggests that the Generic Bronze Age Government – a god-king served by a bunch of warrior-nobles, plus massive militarism and slavery – probably just made sense given the circumstances.

...

Countries that avoid liberal democracy usually regret it. China would be a good example. They tried being really Communist for a while and ended up becoming an economic basketcase. If they wanted to compete on the international stage they realized they needed a stronger economy, and so liberalized their market.

Thus, democracy as we know it may not in fact be a terminal value of government, but something that works well enough at the time. Or not.

Pure Democracy seems a poor fit for any system with EM's.

Fortunatly any system with EM's is likely to open up a much better alternative. One of the major problems with most forms of government is that the rulers come from such a different background to the ruled. Democracy or not. They're likely to share few experiences.

But if you can create EM's it's likely you can create composite EM's or trade memories.

Rather than electing a leader why not allow each conscious being to send some subset of their memories to be included in a fabricated representitive. Think your leader doesn't "get" what it's like to live on the breadline or to lose a child? Make your contribution the memories of the experience. Duplicates or similar experiences could be removed or merged.

Duplicate EM's would have few different experiences so no matter how many times you copy yourself you're still only drawing from the same pool of memories and as such wouldn't be able to get more representation than a single person.

Very relevant link: http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4f999d852617e

If an em is running at 10x speed, do they get 10x the voting power, since someone being in power for the next 4 years will be 40 subjective years for them?

One vote for one person already seems suboptimal, given that not everybody has equal decision-making capabilities, or will experience the costs and benefits of a policy to the same degree. Of course, if we started discriminating with voting power incautiously it could easily lead to greater levels of corruption.

Solving the decision-making balance could be done with prediction markets on the effects of different policies, a la futarchy, but that doesn't solve the other part of the problem. If we're assuming prediction markets will be used for policy selection, the "voting on values" part still needs fixing. I don't have any ideas on that, so we're kind of back where we started.

What do EM's want in the first place? What's stops them from wireheading themselves?

I don't think concentrating on democracy is wise. It's but a particular form of human self-organization that is currently popular, but is far from universally good. Some counterexamples to your naive-seeming political assertions:

Democracy grants legitimacy to the government.

So does monarchy or whatever else people agree is legitimate.

Democracy is fair and egalitarian - each person has a single vote.

Depends on your concept of fair and on what constitutes a person. Certainly many readers of this site cannot vote, yet. And those who can cannot really affect the decisions made by the government, anyway.

Democracy aligns the interests of the rulers with that of the ruled.

Most of your country's poor people will disagree.

Democracy is stable - powerful groups can generally seize power within the structure, rather than overthrowing it.

Applies equally or more so to monarchy

Democracy allows the competition of governing ideas.

Yet the #1 democracy in the world is clearly stuck in the governing rut.

Democracy often leads to market economies, which generate large wealth.

Counterexample: China

Democracy often lead to welfare states, which increase happiness.

Is welfare state a good thing? And whose happiness?

Democracy doesn't need to use certain coercive methods, such as restrictions on free speech, that other systems require to remain stable.

If I recall, US jails more people per capita than many non-democracies.

Democracy stops a particular group from hanging on to power indefinitely, which can reduce corruption, inefficiency and excessive use of state power for private purposes.

First, the real power is behind the scenes and non-elected. Second, Pinochet's Chile, for example, was much less corrupt than the neighboring democracies, if I recall correctly. So there is some other factor in play, probably worth isolating.

Anyway, I think a smarter approach would be to figure out possible forms of self-organization suitable for the Em-world, starting from scratch.

...democracy?

/flicks the OFF switch.

(to be a bit more clear, political systems (such as democracy) are about power. Without being explicit about what power ems will have, specifically in the meatworld, the question seems too ill-defined to me)