I just finished listening to The Santiago Boys podcast about the attempts to use cybernetics to run the Chilean economy under Allende in the early 70s. It was very interesting and got me wondering what kinds of technology (hardware or software) that you have come across that you think would be good for managing resources/efforts and democratising society.
What tools do you think could empower people?
The tools are already readily available:
Relational Databases
SAT solvers
The missing bit is social action, which no amount of software can solve.
Yeah, it’s not about automating the decision making, but making the tools available for when the will is present.
The tools are already readily available under FSF approved licenses. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.en.html
Support the FSF if that is a legitimate concern to you
More a comment than an answer, but an old coworker and I used to take walks and discuss how ML could be applied to managing an economy. We called ourselves the Open Source Socialists.
Machine Learning has huge potential. I am more interested in seeing it used to inform decisions and highlight things that may get overlooked than deciding actual allocation.