Hard cases make bad law is a general legal maxim.
I agree.
I don’t want to constantly create new laws, but instead constantly shine light on things that go wrong (This may or may not happen already, depending on which news you consume. Sadly however, mostly nothing comes of it, since change is hard). From there, if patterns emerge, then new laws should be proposed (For example, one pattern could be “unemployment in sector XY increases due to automation”. For how many sectors should this have happened, before general action is warranted?)
You can’t reliably compute the effect of laws via unit tests
I don’t think there currently is an alternative that works. Politicians just claim that stuff will work, and either way, things just chug along. But for example, at the moment there are flesh and blood voters that think Trump lowered their taxes, when he did the opposite. A unit test like the one proposed above will work in that case.
I am also hoping that states in federally organized countries can copy each other. An example would be for example tax law or drug legalization in the US. Currently drugs are increasingly legalized. This could be a trivial change, just copy a state that does it well. Similarly, everybody seems to be fleeing California due to its high taxes.
In general, trying many different ideas, and letting the bad ones die, is quite an effective method of exploring a large number of options. Federalism in theory allows for this, if it weren’t so sluggish.
and thus didn’t pay attention to the one page that talked about Netscape
You may or may not suffer from a case of Gell-Mann Amnesia. The Brexit negotiations in general did not seem to me to be well-managed (or even well-intentioned). I don’t think this is the exception to the rule. I still get your point though, but my answer again is, that if the process were easier, then it would probably work better.
Well, currently, a lobbyist provides the desired changes, and your politician implements them. I am proposing to make it possible for everybody to propose changes easily.
I agree. I was thinking more of something like wikipedia vs a classic encyclopedia. Many people determine what actually makes up wikipedia’s content, but far fewer are in charge and oversee the final approval. As an example, in the past it would have been very hard to convince an editor of a classic (digital) encyclopedia to include a list of all Star Trek episodes. Nowadays, If you want one, you can write it yourself. And if it is factually correct, then it will probably be included.
So in short, the “masses” determine what is interesting, or needs fixing. They may also contribute ideas, or general directions as to how to fix it. The commit rights stay with the regular politicians.
Exactly. So by making it as easy as possible for everybody involved, things might get better. The most upvoted proposals, if implemented, make the most voters happy, which makes live easier for your local politician, if he ever runs out of interesting topics.