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#policymaking

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Public
A.Stringer

"I think the consequences if we do nothing to reduce #emissions will be terrible, but I also understand that if we actually want to do something about it, we need to understand the problem accurately – and build a broad and durable political coalition that can navigate through the complexity"

#JustStopOil is doing more harm for the cause than good
takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/jus

#climatecrisis
#ideologicalthinking
#climatechange
#climatechangepolicy
#climatechangepolitics
#policymaking

Odds and Ends of History · Just Stop Oil is doing more harm for the cause than goodBy James O'Malley
Continued thread
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Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

I also don't understand why the #US stops applying #socialSecurity #tax beyond a certain amount of #income.

That's regressive, no?

This allows the highest earners to contribute a smaller portion of their income to social security than those who earn only the taxable range. 🤔

If people want social security to be sufficiently funded, one easy way to get closer to this goal would be to remove this #policy's cap on how much income can be taxed by social security.

ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/pl

The breakdown of maximum taxable earning by year (from 2015 to 2024) from the URL in the post.
#economics#justice#law
Public
h o ʍ l e t t

→ Public policymaking: from AI to #decomputing
jrf.org.uk/ai-for-public-good/

“[…] #AI in #policymaking would make it more precarious and increase outsourcing and privatisation under the cover of over-hyped technology. [It's] a form of ‘shock doctrine’, where the sense of urgency generated by an allegedly world-transforming technology is used as an opportunity for corporate capture and to transform social systems in frankly authoritarian directions without reflection or democratic debate”

Joseph Rowntree FoundationPublic policymaking: from AI to decomputingAI seems to offer many benefits to public policymaking, but it can't address the tricky structural issues that impede actual change.
Continued thread
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Victoria Stuart 🇨🇦 🏳️‍⚧️

Citizens’ assemblies: Pioneered 20 years ago in British Columbia, they’re a growing pro-democracy tool
theconversation.com/citizens-a

* citizens called to policymaking duty viz-a-viz calls to jury duty
* ordinary people selected by civic lottery to participate in a citizens’ assembly: mastodon.social/@persagen/1131
* democracy innovation; may be antidote to polarization

The ConversationCitizens’ assemblies: Pioneered in B.C. 20 years ago, they’re a growing pro-democracy toolCitizens’ assemblies bring members of the public into the fold of the difficult trade-offs that need to be made on every decision of public importance.
#democracy#CitizensAssembly#Canada
Public
Creating a Better World

In my previous post, Fantasy Democracy, I proposed using sortition to choose members of legislatures. Within and hour of posting it, I saw a post by Iris Van Rooij on The myth of value-free science, in which she reminds us that it is a mistaken idea

that any hypothesis—no matter how bigoted—can be safely postulated and tested because the ‘scientific method’ weeds out untruths and leave the truths stand. This, however, overlooks two important false assumptions: that hypotheses themselves are value neutral, and that we have unlimited resources to debunk misconceived ideas.

I believe that a partial answer is to democratise science in order to align the hypotheses that we investigate with the values of the communities that fund it and to ensure that the resources allocated are aligned with those values, with particular attention paid to the resources used to debunk those misconceived ideas. That would involve not only direct research on those ideas, but social science research on why those misconceptions take hold and how we can structure society to minimise those risks.

On my fantasy team of ideas for democracy, we need democratic representation within many more deliberative bodies than just government. These should include the policymaking bodies of the systems which inform us. Many jurisdictions already do this with school boards. We should do the same with science and journalism. Science should be easier because a lot of it is already done with public funding. Journalism will require larger changes because it is mostly funded by corporations.

There is the same quadruple advantage of citizen participation as with government.

  1. It helps inform scientists and journalists of the values of the public.
  2. t helps inform those values by deliberating with a body of their peers.
  3. It helps to assure the general public that their sources of information are acting in their best interests rather than the vested interests of professionals who often speak a language they do not understand.
  4. It helps inform the public about the methods and content of the fact-finding performed on their behalf, as members of the public participate in the deliberations and then return to their communities and families and explain what they have learned and why they arrived at the decisions they did.

https://ericlawton.org/2024/03/03/fantasy-science-and-journalism/

Thinking About Social Systems · Fantasy DemocracyI’ve heard of fantasy football where you pretend to be the owner of a virtual team which you assemble the best team you can from real players and compete against others doing the same thing. Let’s …
#democracy#policymaking#sortition
Public
Creating a Better World

I’ve heard of fantasy football where you pretend to be the owner of a virtual team which you assemble the best team you can from real players and compete against others doing the same thing. Let’s play fantasy democracy!

In fantasy democracy, instead of picking the best politicians, I pick some of the best ideas for a more perfect democracy system. You are welcome to pick your own system, let’s see whose is best! I’m still working on [[Workbook/Workshops/Democracy/A Better Democracy Index|A Better Democracy Index]], which could act as a scoring system; I’m certainly open to ideas on that too.

One of the worst parts of current representative democracies is the power of political parties and the fact that many people keep supporting one of them for years if not for life, because it’s “their team”, even though those “teams” change not only their policies but their values much more quickly than that. So one of my picks is to abolish or severely weaken political parties. It seems they do very little other than to limit people’s choices.

I’m not sure yet if there is a role for much weaker parties. One of the things about systems is that the parts interact and that the behaviour of the whole system is not easy to predict from the behaviour of individual parts, so I’ll have to assemble more of the team before I decide.

The centrepiece of my team of ideas is that participatory democracy is better than representative democracy, which has many problems. I mean, look at Donald Trump as a representative! Or Boris Johnson!

Why? Because if people actually participate in policy-making, rather than selecting appealing people who then have no obligation to enact or carry out the policies that people need and want, then they will be far better informed and make far better decisions.

This is one reason I’m in favour of an unconditional basic income. People would be able to work less and would have the time and energy to participate in policy-making on an occasional basis.

We would still need people to take part on a more full-time basis, both in the legislature and executive. For that, I pick sortition, where representatives are picked at random from the public at large, so that they are truly representative in the sense of being typical members of the public, not in the other sense of being chosen to speak on behalf of the electors. This is how we pick jurors and is good for much the same reason. The people who usually get elected under our current system have very little idea how their policies affect most people and it is a flimsy supposition that they truly speak on behalf of the people they supposedly represent.

For a little twist, I would weight the random selection in favour of people who participate on a voluntary basis in democratic processes, but would include a term limit on those who were previously selected and paid for their service. The weighting would be small enough that we still had inexperienced recruits—perhaps an extra ticket in the lottery for spending an hour attending any one of a deliberative body at any level, including trade unions, local councils or non-partisan political discussion groups. This would encourage people to participate more, get more people involved who had learned at least a little about the issues and recruiting fewer people who had no interest whatsoever in participation. I’m not 100% sure about this, but I believe it’s worth more thought.

I am using this blog post as the start of a workshop with the same title in my main workbook. I’ll add a little more there, later today.

For those who follow me on Mastodon, now you know why I mentioned American Football, with a little joke. I had to look up “Fantasy Football” to be sure I got it right, then noticed that in all the images on the page in Wikipedia where a player touched a ball, the player actually used their hand. Which is illegal in association football, except for the goalie. Everyone else has to use their feet or their head. I propose new names: carryball (because handball is taken) and head-and-football, or football for short. 🙂

https://ericlawton.org/2024/03/03/fantasy-democracy/

en.wikipedia.orgFantasy football (gridiron) - Wikipedia
#democracy#policyMaking#sortition
Public
Miguel Afonso Caetano

#AI #AIPolicy #PolicyMaking #PublicParticipation: "New uses of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are rapidly making their way into our everyday lives – from deciding whether we are approved for a loan or hired for a job, to making healthcare diagnoses. It’s becoming increasingly clear that AI is not just about technology; it’s also about people. Yet people are often absent from decisions about how these technologies are used, and conversations around their potential benefits and harms.

Including the perspectives, experiences and visions of those affected by AI technologies is vital to ensure their uses and regulation are aligned with societal values, rights and needs. And it is an important part of ensuring that AI technologies are used in ways that are just, legitimate, trustworthy and accountable. It will also help create a more equitable society, as frequently it’s marginalised people who are most impacted by data and AI.

As national and regional governments, and supranational organisations (like the EU) try to establish adequate regulatory frameworks for the use of AI and data technologies, it is important to understand how those in power across policymaking and industry can engage the public effectively and meaningfully.

This post is the first in a series of blog posts that explores existing evidence on and experiences of public participation in policymaking in diverse contexts across different geographical regions. We hope this wide range of perspectives, voices and lessons learned can inform how to engage the public in present policy efforts to regulate AI."

adalovelaceinstitute.org/blog/

www.adalovelaceinstitute.orgMeaningful public participation and AILessons and visions for the way forward
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