What sort of tech level is available? Are we talking a very early colony with not much higher tech than we have now? (ie, need to be super strict because it would be very easy for a malicious or even clueless individual to seriously screw everyone) or way beyond that so that’s not so much a worry?
Hard science fiction, pretty much. Hydroponic farms, meat-vats, and algae-vats for food, more-or-less modern life support systems (possibly assisted by cracking lunar rocks for oxygen), et cetera. Good enough to be self-sustaining, but no magic nanobots, FAI, or anything like that.
Basically, my question was getting at “how easily could one person misbehaving epically screw the entire colony?” or, alternately “How many things to the colonists need to do ‘just so’ to keep it all viable?”
The more easy for an individual to screw things up for everyone, and the more ways the colonists need to all work together in very specific ways, the more “rigid” the system needs to be, but it should not be a shred more rigid than that.
That’s obviously not a complete answer to what sort of government, it’s more my initial thought about how one would start thinking things through.
I agree. The tech level is a pretty major consideration. Government is also essentially a set of rules. A set of rules that will depend on the technology level.
Giving the actual question some thought.
What are the colony’s foreseeable needs in the future? What are its threats? Any governance mechanism setup will have to be one which tries to rationally minimise dependencies and threats.
My personal preferences are for some kind of a mutual credit money system, so that people’s preferences dictate the flow of goods and services.
i’m also certain that David Brin’s transperent society idea is somewhere in the ballpark of right. Radical transperency will help.
Otherwise, not very sure of what structure might help. Some kind of debate graph kind of mapping for arguments with assumptions laid out and having a separation of values and methods to achieve them (like in futarchy) seems to be a good structure.
What sort of tech level is available? Are we talking a very early colony with not much higher tech than we have now? (ie, need to be super strict because it would be very easy for a malicious or even clueless individual to seriously screw everyone) or way beyond that so that’s not so much a worry?
Hard science fiction, pretty much. Hydroponic farms, meat-vats, and algae-vats for food, more-or-less modern life support systems (possibly assisted by cracking lunar rocks for oxygen), et cetera. Good enough to be self-sustaining, but no magic nanobots, FAI, or anything like that.
Basically, my question was getting at “how easily could one person misbehaving epically screw the entire colony?” or, alternately “How many things to the colonists need to do ‘just so’ to keep it all viable?”
The more easy for an individual to screw things up for everyone, and the more ways the colonists need to all work together in very specific ways, the more “rigid” the system needs to be, but it should not be a shred more rigid than that.
That’s obviously not a complete answer to what sort of government, it’s more my initial thought about how one would start thinking things through.
I agree. The tech level is a pretty major consideration. Government is also essentially a set of rules. A set of rules that will depend on the technology level.
Giving the actual question some thought.
What are the colony’s foreseeable needs in the future? What are its threats? Any governance mechanism setup will have to be one which tries to rationally minimise dependencies and threats.
My personal preferences are for some kind of a mutual credit money system, so that people’s preferences dictate the flow of goods and services.
i’m also certain that David Brin’s transperent society idea is somewhere in the ballpark of right. Radical transperency will help.
Otherwise, not very sure of what structure might help. Some kind of debate graph kind of mapping for arguments with assumptions laid out and having a separation of values and methods to achieve them (like in futarchy) seems to be a good structure.