Ask HN: Who is the best libertarian hacker you know?
I recently acquired the domain name judge.me and want to build an online court system, or more precisely, online judging market place (i.e. we build the market place, not the service).
I'm looking for a libertarian technical co-founder. Below I summarize the philosophy of this idea, my background and what I'm looking for in a technical co-founder.
The philosophy behind this idea is that "incentives change the world, technology changes incentives". Specifically, by building a market place for arbitration, we want to incentivize people to not use the government courts, lowering support for a democratic monopoly on justice along the way (but not explicitly). Think of it as building the 21th century equivalent of building the place where common law judges can hold their hearings and judge their cases.
My background is in strategy consulting but I consider myself an economist. I am well read in the relevant complexity theory and philosophy of law to the point where a philosophy of law professor told me my thinking on this topic is worthy of starting a phd. In short, I think I have the "incentives" part covered. I'm also learning Ruby on Rails and the related concepts (OO, MVC, TDD, CRUD, ...) so I can understand and help out the technical co-founder as much as possible.
The ideal technical co-founder loves to "think in technology", i.e. knows and can communicate all consequences and trade-offs in using certain technologies and methodologies. I'm currently leaning to building the site in Ruby on Rails and its related technologies, but ultimately this is to the technical co-founder to decide. Also, the co-founder should have an interest in libertarian thought, so the macro-economic consequences of what we'll be building are clear (and very motivating!) when I explain them (and we discuss them!). Last but not least, this person should not be under any contract that gives away the IP of the work (s)he does for judge.me.
If interested, please leave your contact details below so we can have a Skype video chat about this idea. When we decide to join forces, the goal should be to build a MVP as soon as possible, get feedback from the libertarian community and apply for YCombinator when we start to get traction.
If you know somebody who could be interested, please forward this post.
Hopefully this request will be the start of something beautiful. I honestly believe this idea can change the world and hope you do too.
Kind regards, PJ