I need to apologize; my last post was such an obtuse mess that even I didn’t understand it when I wrote it.  Let me try again, now that Rob Dailey’s great comment to my last post has enlightened me a little. (Thanks Rob!)

Peter Pronovost’s list, ISO guidelines, Carnegie Mellon’s Capability Maturity Model (CMM), the initial ruleset in Nomic, etc., are much less about the result that is produced and much more about the process used to produce the result.  Let’s take the CMM, specifically: its basic premise is that if the software that a software engineering organization produces does not meet the software requirements, then the organization itself needs to change. The organization needs to raise its “Capability Maturity.”

The way in which the CMM suggests raising an organization’s maturity is through successive iterations of process improvement.  And thus the CMM requires all processes used by the organization to be written down and constantly re-evaluated and revised. Basically, the CMM looks at software production as a factory; if the products pumped out by the factory don’t meet the need, then the factory needs to change its assembly-line processes somehow. The factory’s “intelligence” is raised through process improvement.

It seems obvious to me that the process of government (all over the world) needs a huge dose of CMM.  In analogy to Dr. Pronovost’s intensive care unit, governments all over the world are killing their patients.  The CMM, applied to government, would mandate that all government processes be written down and then (heavily) revised.  This mandate would apply especially to all the unwritten processes of government: the logrolling, the constant 24/7 fundraising, the lobbying, the campaigning.

If we consider the current structure and processes of US government, they seem guaranteed to produce socialism. A quote from Mises is a great case in point: “Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.” (Human Action, p. 879)

I infer from the Mises quote that to avoid a result of socialism from a system of government like the one in the US, you must have the electorate trained in (basic) Austrian economics.  In the words of George Stephanopoulos to Ron Paul: “That ain’t going to happen.”

So what is the solution?  Have a “Linus Torvalds of law” (and a few other specialists) control all changes to a law code? Or at least the kernel of a law code? That seems to work for the (complex!) Linux kernel code. Or is the problem a problem with humans ourselves? Is the problem not solvable by (“irrational”) humans? Do we actually need an artificial intelligence to keep track of the complexity, and the process, as rationally as possible?

(Side note: For those interested in AI, the inherent reflexivity of “meta-law,” i.e., laws about laws, raises interesting questions about how an AI handles the consistency of a law code.  Zeno’s paradox enters in here, with abominations akin to “This is not a law.”)