Questionable Source (offline) outlined a set of public policies (including foreign policy, national security, employment, immigration, monetary policy, trade, energy, healthcare, education, taxes, and crime) that will “facilitate the reemergence of civil society as the most efficient, gentle and comprehensive provider of social services in America by expanding the rights of the individual and providing the best nonprofits with the support they deserve.”

Everyone agrees that the American economy has transformed from an industrial base to an information one, so why is our society still structured as if industrialization never ended? It’s as if we’ve invented fire but refuse to use it to cook. Let’s start cooking.

We all want the same things – security and high quality social services for all – but many of us disagree on how to achieve that end. One side views government as the solution, the other views it as the problem. The debate has raged for hundreds of years, but technology is making it increasingly irrelevant.

In the past, we needed government to solve collection action problems because we, the people, couldn’t communicate with each other. Networked information technologies have changed that. The internet, GPS and mobile phones enable free people to organize solutions to collective action problems more efficiently the government ever could. Properly utilized, existing technologies will enable civil society to reconstitute itself exponentially stronger than ever before, allowing the people to organize their own comprehensive social services faster, better and cheaper than our highly centralized government.