This is great! I've always wanted something like this, and even tried launching my own app for this. My app failed to gain traction but happy to see the same idea succeed.

Who should they blame when things go wrong if customers and managers are building the system themselves? Or when they change their minds, who should they gaslight?

Reminds me of a colleague who, upon seeing every little issue of a massive program, complains the whole thing is "completely broken". And when people try to explain why the issue happens, he would interrupt and say "I don't care, just fix it right now". The intention is obvious - to show authority and frame everything as urgent.

...unless every time you try to make meaningful changes, people try to urge you to hack in stuff quickly so the code only gets messier to the point the maintainer gets a mental breakdown ;)

Recently I was booking a trip to Finland, so my booking app showed me suggested destinations to other nearby countries like Estonia. That's normal.

Then, my friend asked me where do I want to go the most if I am to go scuba diving. I answered "Phillipines". My friend then said "Maldives is also great". We never searched for anything, just casual conversation. A few minutes later I look at my booking app, guess what were the top suggestions - Maldives, followed by Phillipines. Must be coincidence.

Yet they somehow manage to publish a huge amount of propaganda. They don't simply block the entire platform. They allow a few actors to access it.

If we put on the authoritarian hat, it should be easy for us to tell how easy it is to implement default blocking for all and whitelist a few source IP to everything. No?

That's Hong Kong

"If you can play it slowly, you can play it quickly"

How's office work not feeling like the same every day? I think it's worse, cause you see the same people, same expressionless faces (mine included) every day, unless you go out occasionally with friends.

And it definitely doesn't feel like retirement...You still work every day, even more because people expect you to be around at any moment. This is bad but easily fixable with just ignoring messages at night. In office, if you're there people could just approach you even when you're leaving.

Sounds like dystopia to me. At least now we could flee to another country from tyranny.

Ugh to your credit I should have precised that I do NOT envision this integrated Earth to be anything else than a democracy.

Sorry, it was obvious for me.

A democratic earth would stand a decent chance of marginalizing your social-political-religious group. There's a while lot of demographics on Earth.

Think about a random sampling of all humans. Most are in Asia, esp India and China, and most are traditionally religious.

Would women's rights be a priority? Fair employment? Gay rights?

I do think that an integrated and conscientious Earth is important, especially with reasonable immigration and emigration rights, but I'm not sure I want to vote in a Earth President election.

Gays are a minority in every democracy, and this does not make them marginalized in all those countries.

To the contrary: democracy makes it more likely that they are tolerated and included.

So your argument is not at all compelling.

Also, to help you see it: take European Union as an example.

It is only a loosely integrated democracy, but still, we elect EU MPs etc.

EU does not prevent at all to have traditions and to "respect" the existence of geographically distinct "samples" of humans (its member countries, or its member intrastate regions, etc).

Any minority group that is not acknowledged by the majority as being worthy of basic rights will struggle and probably be marginalized.

Western nations do well with certain minority groups (they have many allies). Other cultures do not. The question is whether the majority of people would fall into a western like mindset or not. I think not.

> To the contrary: democracy makes it more likely that they are tolerated and included.

There is a correlation here, but it isn’t causal. Democracy has been around in countries that support gay rights for much longer than they supported gay rights.

What’s made the difference has been cultural shifts wherein the majority supports gay rights rather than opposing them.

The key difference is that between a universalist democracy and a pluralist democracy.

I'm not sure how being a democracy makes it any better, since it might very well be a tyranny of the majority. Democracy hardly guarantees the freedom to leave.

Some people don't want democracy. Some people just want to be left alone. Would those people be forced into your hypothetical global set of laws?

The problem is that without a democratic system, you have no right to be listened to when you ask to be left alone, unless you're part of the dictatorial governing body.

An authoritarian government does what it likes, not what you like.

i’m not sure that’s any better? do i want to grant literally half the world — the majority of whom i will never otherwise interact with — power to determine my legal rights? it’s bad enough when people 1000 mi away demand things of me which i find morally indefensible and then use the power of democratic law to force that on me. amplify that by 10, and suddenly it’s better?

although Balaji tends to play PR to libertarians, i do think there’s a real diffuse desire for increased freedom of association and less large-group adherence. those desires contributed to the creation of US democracy: a desire for the colonies to associate freely with each other, other states, and with GB in a different form than before; and freedom of religion (group adherence) is enshrined.

democracy is a step up from previous forms of governance in that the people enforcing their views on me are necessarily more likely to have common views (lesser separation of ruling class from the majority class: “by the people for the people”). but this aspect degrades as you widen the democracy, either demographically or geographically (by proxy). i accept democracy as the best tool we’ve got today, but i hardly view it as an ideal end-state.

i would prefer to work towards a state where i don’t have to sacrifice my values to conform with the will of people i don’t care for. that’s necessarily a movement away from one global democracy. we’ve effectively achieved that in the digital landscape via the internet, which is fundamentally anarchic but works because people want to cooperate and associate freely and have voluntarily developed tools to do so. Balaji dreams that there’s some way to take this same achievement and apply it to on-the-ground governance. i appreciate that dream. blockchain is an ironic tool to use for that given its requirement for consensus which it achieves via democratic or shareholder governance (e.g. proof of stake). on the other hand, it makes it more difficult in certain ways for the ruling class to break its own rules, and can lessen the need for (and power of) representatives and push us towards a flatter democracy (where the ruling class more mirrors my own class). it’s just another (hopeful) step along that path toward gradually increased freedom of association. i would like to at least be given the choice as to whether i want to participate in my present representative democracy or in a different, experimental state. i would very much dislike for that ability to be strongly denied me by some global government (democratic or otherwise).

When you tell US people that they can just live in their state and not worry about the morals, crime rates, rents, and laws in other states, they look at you like you're crazy.

Everyone loves a good unilateral decree, as long as it reaffirms your beliefs.