The Metaverse Republic

Dedicated to avatar virtual freedom and self-governance.

http://slcongress.com

It’s important to be fair to everybody working on the Metaverse Republic: doing these things take time. It’s pointless to “cook up” a set of rules over a weekend or two, and then expect everything to run smoothly forever and ever. So many projects started in Second Life only to stop after a few weeks, just because of not enough planning and thinking; the long-term projects, that will be still around in years to come, are the ones that took time, patience, and a great deal of planning.
I understand Desmond’s point of view: as a company promoting rental services, time is crucial for a business to begin offering services — after all, if you take too much time, someone else will copy your business model and compete aggressively. This is specially true in the virtual world of Second Life, where time is “compressed” and things happen incredibly fast.
However, the Metaverse Republic isn’t — or, rather, will not be — “yet another business in SL”. It’s something completely different. It’s almost a pure service provider — no land is sold, no items/content are created, no labour is outsourced. Instead, it will provide mostly an organised way of dealing with the anarchy of the lawless grid — a service that no one else is currently offering, at least not grid-wide. The mere fact that the Metaverse Republic has shown that it takes a lot of time to plan is proof that no one is seriously considering a “quick & dirty” competing system — everybody that truthfully and honestly thinks about the way this kind of “service” should be provided is already part of the Metaverse Republic (or at least endorsing it). I believe that Desmond is too tied to a narrow view of SL — the notion that everything needs to be “fast and furiously” done to succeed. It’s simply not true. Even Linden Lab sometimes plan the delivery of their own services in months or even years, and do not launch those without first thinking a lot about it…

The executive summary proposes an impossibly complex system that will almost certainly fail. People tend to assume that a government works the way they are familiar with from real life. (Lawyers are especially guilty of this) All you’re really doing is suggesting a top-heavy, lawyer-heavy that, far from promoting openness or transparency, will be opaque to mist residents.

I think a metagovernment is a good idea. What you’re proposing at this time is not. You need to reconsider the heavy emphasis on professional legal knowledge. You need to redesign the legislature to make it simpler, more open, and more accountable. You need to address the underlying reality that the Lindens are unlikely to accept a metagovernment, officially voluntary or otherwise, that supplants them from decision-making.

The legislative arm, as planned, would be a committee of high achievers. The solution is to incorporate a citizens assembly that is elected at random and large enough to ensure that everyone feels represented.

Members of the assembly would serve relatively short terms. They would be restricted to a single term. They would be a real and salutary check on excessive legalism. They should pass all laws (with or without a senate). They should elect the chief justice. They should have sole right to propose amendments to the charter.

Linden is looking for a feedback mechanism. The vast majority of residents want a way to e heard, not a system that empowers high achievers who are often, in reality, no more than high competitors.

Alberik: your comment contains a large number of assertions, but very little analysis to support them. Why, exactly, will the Metaverse Republic fail, and how do you think that it will fail? What is the basis for your underlying assumption that a system can be any simpler than is proposed whilst at the same time being fair and effective? Making a legal system simple is easier said than done, and unthinking “simplification” almost inevitably results in additional complexity and unpredictability resulting from vagueness and unintended consequences.

As to your points about the legislature, what is your reasoning for suggesting each of the things that you do suggest? Why exactly would a legislature be better being “elected at random”, with all of its members being restricted to one term? What exactly do you *mean* by “elected at random”, anyway? Do you mean that people nominate themselves, and then a certain number of nominees are chosen by a random number generator? If so, I have to say, that is quite absurd: why on earth should people possess political power on the basis of a deliberately arbitrary mechanism? How on earth do you think that that is superior to democracy?

Having a politically appointed judiciary, as you suggest, is extremely dangerous, since that fatally undermines the principle of the separation of the powers. If the legislature get to decide not only what laws are passed, but also who interprets the laws, the checks and balances necessary to ensure the upholding of individual rights is not present. Furthermore, how would a randomly selected bunch of people have any idea of what the necessary qualities of a judge are? The system will certainly fail if the judges are not highly capable, since people will never support a system that produces arbitrary judgments of the sort that unskilled judges would inevitably make.

Your claim, in your opening paragraph, that there is something special about SecondLife that means that governance systems that work in every other field of life do not work when applied here: what is this unspecified special thing? What feature(s) of SecondLife entail that the need both for democracy and the rule of law, so important everywhere else, is mysteriously lacking in SecondLife, such that an arbitrarily-selected legislature with a politically appointed judiciary can be fair and effective in the way that it can never be elsewhere? Without analysis of any sort, this seems like an ad-hoc argument, similar to all of those who claimed that, of course it was possible for a bank in SecondLife to give returns of 60% per annum without being highly questionable, because things are *different* in SecondLife.

As to what Linden Lab wants, we will let them be the judge of that; but the Metaverse Republic does not purport to “supplant” their decision-making. We will not be telling the Lindens what to do: our system will be quite independent. We do not have to have approval from Linden Lab in order to be effective.

Overall, I think that you grossly underestimate how immensely complicated that law necessarily and inherently is. In a “simplified” system, for example, what would be the rules of procedure in court? For example, (1) what, if any, duty do parties to litigation have to disclose to the other parties information adverse to their own case; (2) what is the correct way of determining whether a case should be adjourned where one party wants it adjourned, and the other party is accusing the first of just trying to delay matters; (3) what is the means by which a party should set out its case against the other party, and in what, if any, circumstances, should that be allowed to be amended; (4) what are the circumstances in which an appeal should be allowed - should an appeal be as of right, effectively, an automatic further stage in all proceedings, or should there be a requirement of permission of the appeal tribunal, and, if so, what exactly should that requirement be; (5) what should be done about a party who refuses to respond to an accusation; (6) in what order should evidence be called; (7) what are the limits of acceptable cross-examination; (8) to what extent are parties under an obligation to put other parties on notice about the evidence and/or arguments that they intend to call and make; (9) what, if any, time limits should there be for each step of the proceedings; and (10) what sanctions should there be for those failing to comply with procedural rules? That is just a tiny selection of all of the difficult questions that *necessarily* arise in any given legal system, and is precisely why, in every single country in the world, bar none, law extremely complicated, requiring a highly specialised profession. If it were possible for law to be “simple”, one would expect that at least some legal systems in the world would display that characteristic: none do.

So, far from being the cause of its failure for unspecified reasons, the professionalism and sophistication of hte Metaverse Republic is the only thing that will save it from failure through collapse through system failure, or universal unpopularity in consequence of arbitrary judicial decision-making. A legal system cannot help but be monumentally complicated, but if the various complexities are there by design, rather than as unintended consequences, people at least have a chance to understand the system, work effectively with it, and predict the outcomes of potential litigation in it. Far from being “opaque”, therefore, a sophisticated system is the only sort of legal system that can truly be understood by anybody.

Ashcroft, the tone of your reply pretty much confirms my point. If the Metaverse Republic is going to be residents getting lectured by lawyers, then that’s just not an activity most residents would like to add to the range of choices on their HUDs.

There’s room for a serious conversation about a Citizens Assembly on the model of British Columbia, the Netherlands and Ontario, about giving control of the republic to high achievers, about giving control of the republic to lawyers, about a legislature with more veto points for entrenched interests than the pre-1911 house of lords, but it has to start with the idea of equality. Your proposal does not have priority until it starts attracting some support.

For the record I do not underestimate or misstate the complexity of litigation. I say nothing about those issues in my first post. I will say here that there are more legal traditions in the world that the US version of common law and some of them are procedurally simpler than US law. South Africa, for example, has excluded by constitutional provision, any notion of standing from the jurisprudence of its new constitutional court. Canada refuses to adopt the idea of prosecutorial immunity because their supreme court regards the doctrine as a threat to individual rights.

Random election was the dominant form of election in ancient times and well into the Renaissance. It’s peculiarly suited to the culture of SL, where legal knowledge is not a desirable threshold to participation and the mergence of a permanent governing elite would be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a threat to many residents’ creativity. Aristotle regarded competitive election as a feature of oligarchy, not democracy, and argued a society that practices competitive election will inevitably degenerate into a tyranny.

Aristotle says: ‘The underlying principle of democracy is freedom, and it is customary to say that only in democracies do men have a share in freedom, for that is what every democracy makes its aim. There are two main aspects of freedom: 1) being ruled and ruling in turn, since everyone is equal according to number, not merit, and 2) to be able to live as one pleases.’

Many residents oppose metagovernment because they do not trust authority. Are they going to prefer handing everything to high competitors or a system that that gives them an equal chance of participation and where permanent legislators and politicos cannot emerge?

There’re been multiple ideas for metagovernment. What is the point of publishing another that’s a variation on the same theme and trying to exclude any alternative? Can we have have a debate, not a dictate?

Alberik: what are we having now but a debate, or at least, something that would be a debate if you engaged in reasoned argument rather than argumentation by assertion? You accuse me of “lecturing” you, but is that not exactly what you are purporting to do to all of us who work on the Metaverse Republic? Pronouncing that a system upon which a great many people have spent, and continue to spend, a great deal of time and effort to create will fail, without explaining, beyond mere assertion of complexity, why it is that you think that it will fail is not engaging in a constructive dialogue of the sort that all of us who work on the Metaverse Republic are always willing to engage. You are simply purporting to tell us what is best for the system that we are designing, and expecting us to accept unquestioningly what you write, not because you have provided good reasoned argument in favour of it, but merely because you have asserted it. If anybody’s tone needs revision, it is yours.

It is unclear what you mean about our proposal “having priority”. What kind of priority are you imagining here? The system will be effective only in so far as people subscribe their land to it: the extent to which our system is functional at all necessarily depends on support. None of us can force anybody to accept the system.

As to the complexity of litigation, merely stating that you do not underestimate it does not mean that that is true. Your further comments in that paragraph seem to be simply ad hoc remarks, wholly failing to address the questions that I specifically asked in order demonstrate that it is not possible to have a “simplified” judicial system, nor do you provide any explanation for not answering them. The fact that South Africa has no standing requirement for its constitutional court, and the fact that Canada’s Supreme Court has held that the Attorney-General of Canada may be liable (including vicariously liable) for damages for malicious prosecution cannot possibly in themselves mean (and it is not even clear that you are suggesting that they do mean) that the legal systems of Canada and South Africa are so simple that anybody chosen at random could be good judges or even lawyers in them. You do not appear even to have attempted to address the substantive point that I made about the necessary complexity of law (both procedural and substantive). Do you have answers to the ten questions? If not, how can you honestly claim that you have not underestimated the necessary complexity of law?

As to random election, thank you for the link to the interesting Wikipedia article, which sets out very well precisely why no modern government has legislatures (or anybody else) allotted at random, for reasons which are no less applicable because the world is virtual:

“[Socrates] taught his companions to despise the established laws by insisting on the folly of appointing public officials by lot, when none would choose a pilot or builder or flautist by lot, nor any other craftsman for work in which mistakes are far less disastrous than mistakes in statecraft;”

and

“There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. […] Everything ought to be open, but not indifferently, to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty or to accommodate the one to the other.” (Edmund Burke)

Just as the blood-letting medicine of ancient times has given way to more enlightened medical practices, so too has the ancient practice of randomly allotting officials given way to modern practices of appointing officials by skill, or electing them by popular ballot. Ancient does not entail good; indeed, there is usually a reason why such practices did not persist beyond ancient times.

As to whether other people will support or oppose the Metaverse Republic, the obvious answer in the abstract is that some will support it, some will oppose it, and that many will be indifferent. What neither of us can sensibly predict is whether those who support it will be so few in number as to make the system ineffective. What we can be fairly sure about, however, is that bungled decision-making by arbitrarily appointed legislatures or judges, or anybody else of any importance, will almost certainly make the system both actually and perceptually worthless, and a certain failure.

I haven’t advocated random selection f judges or argued the South African and Canadian examples as proof their systems are simple enough to allow random judicial selection.

I’ve suggested only that one branch of a legislature might be randomly selected and that would be a better result in Second Life.

If you want people to join your conversation or support your proposal, you need to find a less take-no-prisoners way to argue. Actually addressing what I say than frothing about what you believe or misrepresent me to have said would be a good start.

Alberik: I am sorry if I have misrepresented what you have written; if I have done so, it is because what you had written was unclear. I did specifically ask you what you meant by random selection in my original reply to you, to which your reply was to link to a Wikipedia article referring to the ancient Greek practice of allotment for all public officials. I do not think it unreasonable in the circumstances to have assumed that you meant to refer to the system described in the Wikipedia link that you provided.

Indeed, I am still unclear on what you mean; what do you mean here by “one branch of the legislature”; are you suggesting a bicameral arrangement? The Metaverse Republic’s Founding Charter provides for a unicameral Parliament. You have also still not elaborated on your argument as to why you think that random selection would be better, especially given the reference to all of the reasons that allotment ceased to be used in ancient times that I addressed in my last post (far more detail on which can be found in the Wikipedia article to which you linked).

As to the form of arguments, I match my tone to the tone of the comments, and address all of the points in so far as I understand them; however, I can only understand points in so far they are explained. If you do not state exactly who it is that you think should be randomly selected, even when asked to clarify, you cannot really complain if people get the wrong impression about what you are arguing for.

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