Comments for Seoism

Comment on How to avoid dirty quick-fixes and encourage longterm solutions in democratic elections by How to avoid dirty quick-fixes and encourage longterm solutions in democratic elections - PlannerFed.

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:30:52 +0000

[...] This entry was posted by Tomas Seo on Seoism.com. [...]

Comment on How to avoid dirty quick-fixes and encourage longterm solutions in democratic elections by Pontus Olin

Pontus Olin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:08:48 +0000

You bring up something that has been frustrating me since I was a teenager. Even before I could vote, I thought it bizarre how so many around me only seemed to care about their personal, immediate future. To my mind, it’s the height of short-sighted stupidity to cast your vote towards effecting a slight, short-term amelioration of whatever trivial egocentrical issues affects you at the time. Oftentimes, it feels like we’re all stuck on an aimless ship with everyone preferring to argue over rum rations rather than to draw up a course. Personally, I have always made sure to vote for the political party whose primary ideological goals I perceive to lead to the brightest future for the country as well as the rest of the world. Even if my vote would lead to my personal life situation drastically worsening, it would never affect my choice. There is naturally no guarantee that the choice I make is the correct one, no matter how informed or enlightened I try to make it, but at least the decision is taken in the proper context. In other words, I do think it’s a real problem.

I find your proposed solution intriguing, with a lot of potential. In my opinion, I’d say the Way Ahead-cabinet should be composed of experts in the field of applied sociocultural anthropology, with a host of more theoretically inclined advisors on hand. Each political party would have their Way Ahead-team present their ideal model of civilization as well as various proposed methods of achieving that state. The people would then, after being thoroughly educated in the risk-benefit analyses of the models and methods, first vote on a model (represented by a political party’s Way Ahead-team) and then on a method (represented by a political party’s Soon-team) with a reasonable risk level and acceptable potential side effects. The election of the Now-team would be last and represent the low-level implementing of the day-to-day details of the method.

The re-elections for the Now-team could be relatively frequent, while the Soon-team should have longer between re-elections in order to allow them enough time to properly implement the method. By the same reasoning, the Way Ahead-team would have to be allowed an even more significant length of time between elections.

The main problem then follows that for such a long-term plan to work, the Way Ahead-team would have to be allowed so much time to implement their plans that democratic influence would, by necessity, have to be proportionally lessened. My opinion is that that is one of the most difficult problems presented by implementing lasting political or ideological strategies. How do you keep a sufficiently farsighted plan from being derailed by the fickle trends of public opinion without eroding the democratic principle?

Comment on How to avoid dirty quick-fixes and encourage longterm solutions in democratic elections by Erik Starck

Erik Starck — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:23:02 +0000

Interesting. Usually it’s capitalism that’s being accused of being too short sighted… Comparing politics to how companies are run there are often different parts of the organization dealing with different timeframes. 10-15 years are probably too far off for most companies (except in some markets like medicine or larger construction projects) but the CEO, the board and middle management all operate on different time frames.

So in a way what you have in your model is the same: execution (here and now), planning (1-5 years) and strategy (10-15 years) roughly mapped to management, CEO and board.

One way to get closer to this would be to vote for the “managers” of politics. In a sense mayors and sheriffs (länspolismästare?) serve this purpose. They are voted on to manage the city or how to handle law and order in a region.

The “planners” would be the current line of politicians and we would need a new institution for the strategy line. This is particularly tricky as most people have a hard time seeing the future 15 years from now. How then do you vote on someone to lead you in to it?

Comment on How to avoid dirty quick-fixes and encourage longterm solutions in democratic elections by Nicolas Belloni

Nicolas Belloni — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:04:10 +0000

I would actually be interested if you set up a mock-up scenario of this. I can see some problems but it is a very interesting idea.

Comment on How to avoid dirty quick-fixes and encourage longterm solutions in democratic elections by Fil Salustri

Fil Salustri — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:55:49 +0000

Tomas for president! I shall distribute this post around my campus.

Comment on How to avoid dirty quick-fixes and encourage longterm solutions in democratic elections by Henrik Ahlen

Henrik Ahlen — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:18:05 +0000

Interesting model. I have always felt that todays political system is inefficient and out of date. Also, the parties we have today are mostly based on ideologies formed more than 100 years ago, they also feel outdated.
And it is very obvious that the faster media etc is causing our politicians to work more and more with short-term fixes, the system does not reward them for looking way ahead. Just look at the major infrastructure problems caused by politicians not wanting to budget for something that will not be in use until way ahead, after the current election period.
There are different personalities that match these three levels.
Key questions are:
1. How to organize the communication, negotiation and power between the groups? The way ahead level would have to cope both with the results of both the previous and the current lower levels etc.
2. What will a system look like that attracts the right kinds of politicians for the three levels?
3. Should the levels have the same election periods? I think not. The debate must be very different, and the longer term levels might need more time.

Comment on From World Wide Web to Closed Country Club by Tomas Seo

Tomas Seo — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:07:52 +0000

Oh I forgot, Spotify. Well you get it.

Comment on Jag minns mitt 00-tal by Henrik

Henrik — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 06:19:35 +0000

Sekelskiftet känns långt borta, men dina minnen överensstämmer mycket bra med mina. Google känns för mig som den stora förändraren, både vad gäller sök och webbappar.
Clay Shirky uttryckte det bra igår: Google gick om Yahoo genom att fatta att det är “Publish then filter” som gäller och inte tvärtom som det varit genom hela historien tidigare.
Och när jag började ordbehandla med Writely (numera Google Docs) år 2005 så infann sig genast känslan, “wow, detta är framtiden!” och vi har ju bara skrapat på ytan av molnbaserade tjänster än.