21st century Democracy

Britt Blaser
Aug 28, 2017 · 2 min read

How will history describe 21st century American democracy? Clearly it will reflect the values of:

21st century voters

Currently they are the youngest 1/3 of voters, who became 18 after 1999.

Small, Simple, Smart Laws. In 1917, Sears sold a single big electric motor for each home and enough pulleys to power a home’s appliances. Fractional horsepower motors and ubiquitous, modular computers and crowdsourced code made 21st century America possible. 21st century legislation demands a modular code base as rigorously developed as the code behind the Internet.

The Collaborative Caucus. In 1917, a legislator was required to project his voice to the back of a large hall, dispense chickens to male voters and earmark legislation to bring projects and jobs home every year.

Styles change and will again. 21st century legislators will collaborate with their constituents using agile methodologies to add modules to the U.S. Code written by those best qualified, not staffs or lobbyists. Joy’s Law: “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else. Todd Park: “There will always be an infinite number of other, smarter people employed by others.

Of the VPAs, By the VPAs, For the VPA’s People

Individual Virtual Personal Assistants will serve every 21st century American, and every citizen will be credentialed as a constituent to her representatives, tracked as carefully as corporations track and serve their shareholders. A representative’s VPA will resonate with every constituent’s VPA. Legislative malpractice will be no more possible than cheating phone Solitaire.

Scientific Politics

Political Science, a specialized form of sales & marketing, is even more dismal than Economics. Its purpose is to mislead a tiny slice of the public to anoint smiling narcissists who use 18th century methods to manipulate 15th century technology to transfer constituents’ resources to corporate managers who’ve never visited the district.

When legislation becomes as rigorous and scientific as computing, maybe Scientific Politics will become a branch of Computer Science while Poli. Sci. withers over at the Marketing Department.

  • Computer programmers and legislative programmers perform identical functions: Draft, edit and manipulate blocks of arcane text which have real world, unintended consequences and so need immediate and continuous updating.
  • Computer programmers use 21st century tools to track thousands of code modules written by hundreds of thousands of unpaid skilled contributors.
How we will (one day) legislate
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Britt Blaser

Written by

Founder & CEO, NewGov.US. A public utility for managing politicians.

Britt Blaser NewGov Articles

Thoughts on 21st century governance.

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