This is going to be a short, idea-jot post. I have been reading up a storm about sociocracy. The wikipedia article does not really do it justice. It is a very interesting system of governance based on cybernetic principles that claims to achieve decisions that are in the interests of much more people than a voting democracy. See We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy if you are interested in more details. It does not need to be universal, it can spring up in specialized circles and those can gradually “link together” to connect everyone. These are all desirable properties.
But I am no genius, so I cannot forsee all the degenerate cases that might come up, and I am picturing some possible degenerate cases that may never come up in practice. That’s why I want to give it a trial run. So I want to start a game in which we organize sociocratically in a toy country with toy issues to see how the dynamics play out. You could play a game where you get to be a political leader! It would be nice to have as many people as possible. And it doesn’t matter if everyone cares — in fact, in real life, most people do not get involved in political decisions, so perhaps a healthy dose of apathy would be good for the realism of the game.
If you are interested in this experiment, join the announce group so you can know when we’re ready to start. Also feel free to share ideas in the comments.
