Photo: Brian Turner

A couple days ago I posted about the intriguing notion that anyone can write bills, which with a little hard work and a lot of luck can become a law.

Open Source Movement
I just started reading the book “Drive” which examines the motivation for human beings to behave the way we do. The hypothesis is that a simple cost benefit analysis is not enough to explain human behavior – there are other factors that must come into play because we do not always act in our own best interest.

An obvious example of this is the current trend of open source software. Why would anyone spend 20+ hours a week of their free time to work on open source programs? THEY AREN’T PAID FOR IT! But they do feel challenged, get the feeling of contributing to something larger than themselves, and develop their programming skills. Sometimes this is enough to convince a software developer to contribute.

A Wiki For Writing Bills
Let’s take the whole concept of Wikipedia and apply it to laws. Anyone can contribute to bills on the Wiki and therefore the whole responsibility does not rest on any one person. A mother in Ohio may work on one section, a farmer in California another, and a retired lawyer in Florida can make sure the wording is correct. By combining our efforts we can accomplish much more than individually and hopefully patch up the holes in our legal system.

This is inherently more difficult than Wikipedia – whereas Wikipedia is based on facts, Wikilaw is based on opinion. But this could be the best part about it! Your goal should be to produce bills which both Republicans and Democrats support. This can best be achieved with a bipartisan effort working together online on the same bill. Once the bill is complete, the community can vote on it – if it passes it is time to find a sponsor, if not it is back to the drawing board. Continue reading →