I find it fascinating that programmers like to discuss governance at such great lengths without any reference to the vast knowledge of Political Theory that lies at their fingertips.
At the end of the day, I suppose this is simply yet another form of NIH
It's a fundamentally different problem. There are extremely limited commonalities between an opt-in group based on a technical project, and a society. I think people actually illegitimately apply all sorts of concepts from mass politics to small working groups, without paying attention to the actual reason why these concepts are necessary in society, and what problems they exist to solve.
They settled on Condorcet, a method almost unheard of outside of electoral/political theory, and your criticism is that they didn't make use of political theory?!
That defines the voting system, but not governance and representation
It's also almost exclusively used by other software foundations like the Debian SF so if anything this just proves my point that programmers by and large are not equipped and do not invest time to become equipped for discussing governance.
I think it goes beyond NIH, although NIH certainly part of the problem.
I think the moment political theory is mentioned, the response is basically that politics are gross and we should do better than that. This appears to stem from the idea that politics and all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources. This thought process is both ridiculously naive and a highly ineffective way to go about running a community.
This thought process is not unique to engineering. You see it all the time in various utopian projects on both the left and the right. The idea that you can escape the grossness of political processes to a land of total freedom from capital/tyranny (left & right respectively) is extremely popular, and extremely silly. Time and time again we see these movements immediately recreate the problems they decry because the problem was people all along.
>all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources.
This only serves to express your view (or rather, ideology) that we're living in a post-ideological world in which battles are no longer fought over beliefs but only material access to resources. This is only valid as a pretty bad caricature of Marxism, in fact.
>to a land of total freedom from capital/tyranny (left & right respectively)
The left not only opposes capital but tyranny too. If you've read any leftist works after the year 1920 or so you'd know that most of them deal with various 'gross' ideas.
>because the problem was people all along.
No. The work in political philosophy isn't only to criticise our systems we currently have, it's to explain how these systems arise out of individuals and perpetuate themselves. Of course the problem was "people all along" - but people also have a habit of conjuring systems bigger than themselves[0]. Societies change people but people also change society[1].
The very notion of utopia has been criticised on the left, in particularly of course in the light of the Soviet experiment. What you're saying seems to imply we must abandon (i) any and every plan towards a better society (ii) any superindividual critique of totality, because both are doomed in failure due to the human condition. This is known as the 'human nature' argument against social projects and it's not very convincing.
[0] "Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." (Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto)
[1] "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach)
> This only serves to express your view (or rather, ideology) that we're living in a post-ideological world in which battles are no longer fought over beliefs but only material access to resources.
I said no such thing. I also note the use of ideology as a subtle dig, as if I’m some extremist.
> This is only valid as a pretty bad caricature of Marxism, in fact.
The idea that my post was anti-Marxist exists only in your own head.
> The left not only opposes capital but tyranny too.
I know this is probably shocking, but a one sentence summary wasn’t intended to be a complete explanation for an entire system of political thought.
> If you've read any leftist works after the year 1920
I’m not sure where accusing someone of being poorly read is an acceptable debate tactic, but it’s not one here. Stop.
> you'd know that most of them deal with various 'gross' ideas.
The hilarious thing is that I’m encouraging people to engage with these ideas, and you’re attacking me as if I’d said the exact opposite.
> What you're saying seems to imply we must abandon (i) any and every plan towards a better society (ii) any superindividual critique of totality, because both are doomed in failure due to the human condition. This is known as the 'human nature' argument against social projects and it's not very convincing.
What you imagined to be your grand coup de grâce is rather soiled by completely misunderstanding my original point.
At no point did I say that improvement is impossible, that’s an obvious and shoddy strawman of an argument. My point is that politics comes from humans, thus any attempt to completely eliminate politics is doomed to failure. This is an encouragement for people to engage with political systems and political theory in order to improve our existence.
My point on ideology wasn't to say that ideology is extremist, rather it was to say that we are all ideological. Ideology in popular speech seems to mean something extremist, because we figure outselves to be free of ideology: rational, economical etc. - but these are ideologies in themselves. You and I are both steeped in ideology and that's not a bad thing. The bad thing is thinking we are free of it, or the world works as if it's free of it, or that societies don't perpetuate themselves through Establishment ideology.
I also didn't want to imply you're poorly read, or that you should be well read on something as arcane as 20th century leftist theory, I only wanted to bring your attention to the idea that the left doesn't shy away from grossness in any future society.
The question is never of eliminating politics in the most general sense, it's to eliminate current politics in a constantly revolutionary fashion. Communism is a political movement, for instance, and the very existence of the party shows that they don't want to get rid of politics - they only want to move away from bourgeois democracy which supports (and is supported by) capital. Not even the anarchists deny the role of politics. But the idea that politics is merely a disagreement about resource allocation is ideological (and this time I do mean it in a bad sense).
At the end of the day, I suppose this is simply yet another form of NIH