Technologically illiterate UK porn filter MP gets hacked and threatens reporter

> no politicians have the expertise or mandate with regards to technology, the internet

That's easily disproved. This guy is in parliament in Italy:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefano_Quintarelli

He's quite clearly competent with regards to technology and the internet, as even a translated version of that page ought to show.

Lets call it - the only know counter balance to experts running the show. We have a lot of geniuses on Wall Street and Silicon Valley and it hasn't prevented serious meltdowns that have effected millions of people.

Not to mention a law professor in the White House smart enough to interpret the law which ever way is most convenient.

What do we mean by mandate here?

In the US, now and then persons with a technical background turn up in high office, though not always for long or with the best effect: Herbert Hoover (mining engineer), John Glenn (engineer), and Harrison Schmitt (Ph.D. in geology) come to mind.

Children's welfare? It is probably more common for elected politicians to have children than not to. It is true that some of what one hears about their children makes one wonder about the parents' interest or expertise in the matter.

Who is "we". I sure as hell didn't vote for her, and neither did anybody I've ever known. I've never heard of Devizes and never met anybody from there. There's absolutely nothing I could have done to stop her getting elected.

While I agree that this the way to go, I grew up in the neighboring seat and sadly tech issues are never going to get a foothold there due to the demographics and local political class - if you need a pop culture reference, Simon Pegg's Hot Fuzz is a practically a documentary about the area...

whoosh.

Is it? I live in Australia, granted but it's not so different here and for the most part everyone's lives are pretty awesome. I think the biggest mistake idealists make is assuming that there is necessarily a better way of doing things that we are capable of as a society right now. That's not to say I disagree there are better ways of doing things per se, and that given another 5,000 years many of these issues will have been resolved but I think it's a mistake to look at a system that's basically working and focus on all the bits that don't work because all the bits that do work have become so commonplace that you take them for granted.

I quite like the system Hong Kong has:

http://www.gov.hk/en/about/govdirectory/govstructure.htm

"The Legislative Council is the law-making body of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It comprises 70 members, with 35 elected directly by geographical constituencies and 35 elected by functional, occupation-based constituencies. Apart from its law-making function, the Legislative Council debates issues of public interest, examines and approves budgets, receives and debates the Chief Executive's policy addresses, and endorses the appointment and removal of the judges of the Court of Final Appeal and the Chief Judge of the High Court."

So their legislature is 50% industry experts. The Executive Council can be made up of experts as well, but it doesn't have to be.

Take education as an example. The Secretary for Education is a businessman, however there is an educator in the legislature, the Voluntary Chief Executive (Development), Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union.

Structure is irrelevant while the electorate refuse any responsibility for their voting. Problem is people who have political bias and stick to it in a bigoted prejudiced way. On top of that, we have political apathy. Numbers wise, the majority is a non vote.

A change I would make is to make voting a legal requirement, but there must be a none of the above option. If "none of the above" wins, we vote again. Tedious, but hopefully it would force thought. Under no circumstances should a forced vote not include none of the above. I would personally freak if I were forced to vote for what we have now. I would be a NotA people.

Over all though, its down to us. The system is there for us to use. Information to base decisions on is out there like never before. Even in the US where both parties spend 100s of millions of $s lying and trashing, Americans could get to the truth, ignore the BS, and vote accordingly. But like every one else in a democratic country, the vast majority just dumbly vote for their usual party with out any thought what so ever. So, its hardly surprising that the politicians rig it all accordingly, and take very little notice of any one but their core vote, and their prejudices.

Tangent: If you want a real leap, this why I partly understand (and please, not condone, justify, excuse, support, or anything else) terrorists attacking civilians. No point attacking military or politicians as they are enforcing our democratic will. Logically it makes sense, especially from afar. They think that if they change our votes, things will change for them. We are responsible for the actions of our democratic governments, because we validate them with votes. On the flip side, in a dictatorship, there is no point attacking civilians as they have no power and the government doesn't really care since it doesn't need votes. Its like my mum used to say to me, "Don't hate or fear the Soviet people, they don't get to vote" But of course, there is an implication there.

My feeling on this:

There is no effective science for this. Determining a more effective structure, for such a horribly non-linear dynamical system, requires mathematics which we do not have. I suspect that we are operating within a conceptual framework which is poorly serving our purposes. I think that a good number of problems that we currently face are rooted in this poor framing. How do you effectively parallelise code? How do you create systems that effectively satisfy objectives within dynamic environments? How do you build general AI? What is the mechanism that underlies the function of the brain? Where does life come from, what is it's driver? What is computation? What precisely is complexity? And... how do you construct a society which is, in the ways that we prescribe, optimal?

I would wager that there is a single big fish out there that recasts these problems into a framework which renders them at least partially tractable. We are in limbo waiting for a genius to find us a way out of this mess.

Citizen policy juries, selected by random sampling of the electorate, with access to experts making public recommendations on policy.

Even if they don't have formal authority to legislate or execute policy, politicians enacting laws in conflict with those recommendations would have to at least explain why.

Some Australian experiences: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2010/08/10/behind-the-sce... http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/jury-still-out-but... http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/cit...

People who have invested their life in excellence in a discipline other than politics are going to be beaten at politics by the power-hungry sociopaths who want to be politicians. So we always end up with unskilled, unethical people in government.

Ministers are (mostly) appointed from the pool of voted-for politicians, who are nearly all lawyers or politics graduates.

Well, there are hardly likely to do themselves out of a prime job, are they? But in a way they sort of do, they appoint advisers....

We could have a whole new official layer of experts, but that would be shot down by cries of bureaucracy.

Initially I like the idea of expert opinion being mandatory. So, like with the drugs advice, I would like to see government forced to adopt their proposals. But would I be happy with police experts forcing legislation? Doctors, probably, but army?

In the end, I have to come back to general population ignorance an prejudice. "We" have to smarten up, and vote accordingly. Its the only way I see.

Or in the British case at least, appoint people from the Lords who have got their through contributions to their fields.