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Comment by starshadowx2 | Hacker News Reader

Government maybe isn't the best way to think of this. I'm thinking more like an international digital "society". This was all more thought up for the need for more rights and freedoms (I'm really against C-51 for example), and the need for inexpensive services.

So think of all the government things without the physical part, that's what I meant by landless. Education, healthcare, international representation, voting, identification, census/population metrics, maybe business services, and have this social network/connection tool built around it.

So yeah, like a "crowd-sourced lobbying organization" but with more perks. Maybe like a global union or something like that.

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Education and healthcare are interesting things. I live far enough from major centres that government-run health care is pretty much the only option without having to travel. Education... could be provided digitally, but there's still (IMO) a lot of value to sticking a bunch of kids in a room together and letting them learn about social interactions.

I'm not sure how something like this would have any impact on C-51. Despite being a member of the digital society, we'd still physically reside in places controlled by other governments, which means that our telecom cables would still run along places where they could be tapped and monitored.

The voting and representation is really interesting. Going back to the C-51 issue... If we had direct representation, is there any hope in hell that this would have passed?

An interesting question is how big of a critical mass would such a system need to start to have actual influence? I don't know the answer, but it's fascinating to think about.

Education isn't only for children, I was thinking more of adults/teens anyways since I don't think kids would get the whole MOOC system. Maybe they would though. And again this wouldn't be a complete replacement for established government, at least not at first, more like a form of protest with benefits.

With enough people voting within this digital society against things like telecoms spying and secret police powers, it would create a sort of citizen lobby group that may have an actual effect on politicians. With enough "critical mass" they would have no choice but to listen and respond.

I'm pretty sure all of the recent polls since before it was passed were mostly against C-51. I'm sure if there was a type of referendum it would've been squashed (like it should've been).

I'm also very interested in your last point's idea.

The land-dependent stuff might be possible for some of the aboriginal peoples. Land title claims have been validated by the supreme court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_title#Canada

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