Abe's new idea: Wikilaws

[ApostateAbe]

Ever notice how many laws are stupid? I live in Colorado, USA. In Colorado, there is a law that says chain retailers can't sell alcoholic drinks with an alcohol level above 3.2%, in all but one of each owner's stores. So, most grocery stores sell watery beer. Many gas stations have a separate room and cash register just to sell beer and wine. Why do we have this law? Certainly not because of the majority of voters. Colorado is otherwise a beer-lover's paradise, and it is unfathomable that most voters would support this law, but the law is a relic of the Prohibition era, and ever since then liquor store owners have made big money off the law at the expense of grocers and consumers. A special interest group is keeping the law the way it is until consumers and non-liquor-store retailers stop being lazy and rally to change it. Unfortunately, it is high on the list of priorities for the special interest group but low on the list of priorities for everyone else, so the special interest group has greater political power.

Here is how to make it more likely that stupid laws will change for the better, in spite of the special interest groups: motivate engagement by making changes in law more accessible to everyone. Wikilaws. Wikilaws would be like Wikipedia, but, instead of editing the text of shared knowledge, normal users can edit the laws.

Of course changes in laws would not happen with only a simple user edit, but it would be the start. Existing laws would be in black font, but there would be a highlighted superscript at the appropriate place of the text that links to a page containing a suggested edit: an insertion, deletion or replacement text, and an argument for the edit written by the editor. Each page would be the start of a conversation of potentially many other users with their suggested revisions, criticisms or words of support. Users may vote either positively or negatively for each suggested edit. The Wikilaws home page would contain a list of links of each new suggested edit, sortable and searchable by time, topic, and popularity.

When a suggested edit has been through enough discussion, it may be nominated by a Law Geek. There would be a core community of Law Geeks (lawyers, judges, paralegals, advanced law students, and lay heavy-duty law geeks) with mixed partisanships (non-partisan in principle) and the power of nominating a suggested edit either for promotion or for archiving (trash). The Law Geeks decide by vote who gets to join them, and continued membership among the Law Geeks would require continual participation. A set of promoted edits would be automatically formatted into a legislative bill, periodically given to a legislator who supports Wikilaws, and the legislator would bring it before the legislative body for a vote. Each legislative action would have its page on Wikilaws, with transcripts of the arguments and a list of names of people who voted for a bill and against a bill, or a list of names of the members of the committee who held it up, complete with links to the contact page of each legislator.

What do you think? Would this put a little more power of the law in the hands of the little people?

 

[Togo]

I think this makes a lot of sense.

I've noticed that legislation is not only badly written, but that it seems to be getting increasingly badly written over time, as part of a move shifting political negotiations from broad principles to attempts to kill bills through revision, deadlock, and amendment. Having a crowd-sourced pool of possible legislation could well save time. Provided the bill goes through the usual exiting political gates before becoming law, we could see an increase in legislative clear-up of minor matters.

There are potential downsides, of course, in increasing the amount of legislation that gets made, but I think the increase in quality would be worth it.

 

[Jayjay]

If wikipedia is any indication, this would mean that there would be a massive amount of very detailed regulation involving anime and popular culture.

All kidding aside, it sounds like a great idea and would like to see someone set up a trial.

 

[dismal]

The commonly proposed solution to archaic laws is requiring laws to have an expiration date.

 

[ApostateAbe]

I don't have much experience with Wiki, and it will be a long project if I decide to act on it. This needs to be a team project.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You would end up simply creating a new class of lawmakers except this one wouldn't be subject to election. That part of the idea is terrible.

On the other hand a discussion of the law and explanations of why the laws are the way they are would be a good thing, especially if it had a system for pointing out things that should be fixed.

 

[NobleSavage]

So you want to create a new legislatures; they will be every bit as bad as the old ones. Your hierarchy of moderators will have all the foibles of humans. But don't let me stop you. The laws are all public, wiki software is free, and hosting is cheap.

 

[Draconis]

Could they not sell a box of matches with free (non-watery) beer for the normal price of the beer instead?

 

[ApostateAbe]

You would end up simply creating a new class of lawmakers except this one wouldn't be subject to election. That part of the idea is terrible.

On the other hand a discussion of the law and explanations of why the laws are the way they are would be a good thing, especially if it had a system for pointing out things that should be fixed.

Good point. Maybe Law Geek candidates can be popularly approved or vetoed by elections of the registered members, instead of choosing themselves. The primary purpose of the Law Geek community is to prevent the delivery of a bill with a lot of stupid clauses to a lawmaker. Otherwise, I wouldn't have them, and I can't see a better way around it.

 

[NobleSavage]

If you are just talking about errors and things that are illogical and anachronistic, you might as well work on a bot. Someone will write a bot to do this. That would be more fun that trying to manage a bunch of Law Geeks.

 

[ApostateAbe]

If I could write AI capable of correcting bad laws, then it would be capable of solving a lot more problems than that.

 

[zorq]

You would end up simply creating a new class of lawmakers except this one wouldn't be subject to election. That part of the idea is terrible.

On the other hand a discussion of the law and explanations of why the laws are the way they are would be a good thing, especially if it had a system for pointing out things that should be fixed.

No, I don't think that they are proposing a new class of lawmakers, this is a new class of special interest lobby. The only difference is that this special interest is people interested in a broadly well functioning society and not a typical selfish one interested only in it's own profits and ideas. It would be like a foil to ALEC proposing legislative templates but with fewer evil ones.

It sounds like a good idea to me.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You would end up simply creating a new class of lawmakers except this one wouldn't be subject to election. That part of the idea is terrible.

On the other hand a discussion of the law and explanations of why the laws are the way they are would be a good thing, especially if it had a system for pointing out things that should be fixed.

No, I don't think that they are proposing a new class of lawmakers, this is a new class of special interest lobby. The only difference is that this special interest is people interested in a broadly well functioning society and not a typical selfish one interested only in it's own profits and ideas. It would be like a foil to ALEC proposing legislative templates but with fewer evil ones.

It sounds like a good idea to me.

His top guys pick new members of their group--in other words, if they go bad there's no way to recover the situation. Why in the world should we assume they won't go bad??

 

[ronburgundy]

Abe,
Specific to the CO law on 3.2% beers, you might want to read this article which argues that the thriving local micro brew boom and partly due to that law, because it has created thousands of small independent liquor stores that specialize in craft beer and, unlike massive corporate grocery chains, do allow major corporate breweries like Coors to control what they carry. Small liquor stores push quality local craft beer, and thus fuel consumer demand for it, leading to more and more craft beer producers. Corporate groceries gravitate toward only the biggest selling beers and get big pay-offs to push corporate piss beer and carry as little craft beer as they can get away with and still sell something to most of the customers that want to buy beer. Basically, many beer novices look for something "different", but in a corporate grocery that is likely to mean something non-local and a corporate brew masquerading as craft beer (like Blue Moon). When they are forced to go to a liquor store to get anything above 3.2%, they are more likely to see and be recommended to try a new local craft beer that is outside the boundaries of what they are used to. That not only fuels the local craft brewery industry, it fuels demand for novel beer styles, which fuels innovation in the industry.

You might still object on the principle of consumer choice to people not being able to buy above 3.2% beer in groceries. But the local craft breweries generally oppose changing the law as do other interests that know that it will result in about a 50% decrease the % of revenue from liquor sales that stay in-state versus go to out-of-state corporate headquarters. In the long run, increasing choice at the grocery chains will decrease choice of beers overall and especially harm local producers, and in-state revenues.

 

[zorq]

No, I don't think that they are proposing a new class of lawmakers, this is a new class of special interest lobby. The only difference is that this special interest is people interested in a broadly well functioning society and not a typical selfish one interested only in it's own profits and ideas. It would be like a foil to ALEC proposing legislative templates but with fewer evil ones.

It sounds like a good idea to me.

His top guys pick new members of their group--in other words, if they go bad there's no way to recover the situation. Why in the world should we assume they won't go bad??

Right now ANYONE can write a bill and suggest it to a legislator. So the most ignorant contribuitors to Stormfront, Rapture ready and Yahoo answers all have this power already. I'm sure bad bill suggestions are sent to legislators every day.

If Abe's organization starts suggesting useful laws they will become popular. But if Abe's organization fails to suggest useful laws they will lose popularity with the public and legislators will refuse to introduce the bills. I don't see how this is an irrevocable situation.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

His top guys pick new members of their group--in other words, if they go bad there's no way to recover the situation. Why in the world should we assume they won't go bad??

Right now ANYONE can write a bill and suggest it to a legislator. So the most ignorant contribuitors to Stormfront, Rapture ready and Yahoo answers all have this power already. I'm sure bad bill suggestions are sent to legislators every day.

If Abe's organization starts suggesting useful laws they will become popular. But if Abe's organization fails to suggest useful laws they will lose popularity with the public and legislators will refuse to introduce the bills. I don't see how this is an irrevocable situation.

I'm not talking about the proposing of laws--that part of his system would would be reasonable.

The problem is his approval system.

 

[zorq]

Right now ANYONE can write a bill and suggest it to a legislator. So the most ignorant contribuitors to Stormfront, Rapture ready and Yahoo answers all have this power already. I'm sure bad bill suggestions are sent to legislators every day.

If Abe's organization starts suggesting useful laws they will become popular. But if Abe's organization fails to suggest useful laws they will lose popularity with the public and legislators will refuse to introduce the bills. I don't see how this is an irrevocable situation.

I'm not talking about the proposing of laws--that part of his system would would be reasonable.

The problem is his approval system.

So you think that various special interest groups will either by chance or ambition infiltrate the upper echelons of his organization and seek to drive it towards their preferred ideology or economic agenda.

As an example, maybe most of the law geeks will happen to be anti-abortionists and prevent approval of user suggested law revisions that add needed nuance to third trimester abortion bans?

Sure that could happen. Corruption is an element of almost every organization of people. But other rules could be added to the organization to help limit that. Term limits, chair rotation, random selection, credential verification, and other measures could be part of the Law geek selection process. I don't know. But if corruption is an excuse to not form a group then I don't see any point in forming any groups anywhere.

 

[ronburgundy]

It could easily result in even more control over our laws by major corporations and religious organizations.
Major corporations will enlist massive armies of people to overtake such sites and control the proposed laws, with thousands of people all "revising" them with the same particular language provided by corporate lawyers. In fact, new companies will be created who sole "service" is providing such armies of "everyday citizens" to be contracted for hire to various corporations and other special interests. Not to mention, you'd have churches and religious organizations who already have mindless drones willing to do their authorities bidding for free.

Right now, corporations buy "access" and sometime that allows them to directly dictate the language of laws, but at least they have to get control of a corrupt enough politician to assist them. Legislators have educated staff members that help them research and write bills, many who are actually decent people with ideals, who research the issues and seek out relevant experts to speak to. It is easy to imagine that the proposed "grassroots" (you know, like the Tea Party) system would be more controlled by the religious, the uneducated, and the corporate drones than the current law writing and approval processes already are.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Abe,
Specific to the CO law on 3.2% beers, you might want to read this article which argues that the thriving local micro brew boom and partly due to that law, because it has created thousands of small independent liquor stores that specialize in craft beer and, unlike massive corporate grocery chains, do allow major corporate breweries like Coors to control what they carry. Small liquor stores push quality local craft beer, and thus fuel consumer demand for it, leading to more and more craft beer producers. Corporate groceries gravitate toward only the biggest selling beers and get big pay-offs to push corporate piss beer and carry as little craft beer as they can get away with and still sell something to most of the customers that want to buy beer. Basically, many beer novices look for something "different", but in a corporate grocery that is likely to mean something non-local and a corporate brew masquerading as craft beer (like Blue Moon). When they are forced to go to a liquor store to get anything above 3.2%, they are more likely to see and be recommended to try a new local craft beer that is outside the boundaries of what they are used to. That not only fuels the local craft brewery industry, it fuels demand for novel beer styles, which fuels innovation in the industry.

You might still object on the principle of consumer choice to people not being able to buy above 3.2% beer in groceries. But the local craft breweries generally oppose changing the law as do other interests that know that it will result in about a 50% decrease the % of revenue from liquor sales that stay in-state versus go to out-of-state corporate headquarters. In the long run, increasing choice at the grocery chains will decrease choice of beers overall and especially harm local producers, and in-state revenues.

Seems to be a great point. My thinking defaults to the free market, but sometimes exceptions are a good idea whether I like it or not.

 

[nightwyrm]

After spending some time on 4chan and reading the comment section of anywhere, i would not trust the average netizen to write up a grocery list, let alone a law.