A good article, but missing one very important word: trust.

Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing. Said society also finds it incredibly important to remove or nullify those who aren't trustworthy because "a rotten apple spoils the whole bunch". Trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, and it only takes one person exploiting the trustworthy without consequence to ruin a good thing.

So no you can't build a system that's meets all of the article's criteria because almost all of them rely on the unspoken rule of trust in civil society. Everything built for good can be abused for evil.

Technology cannot solve social problems. Societies can solve social problems using technology, just as they can without using technology, but ultimately it is the society that solves the problem.

> Should multinational corporations instruct local executives to be loyal to their parent company or the rulers of the country they live in?

Legally, to the rules of the country. That is not even a question.

But if we talk about morality, the answer is to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and what it implies.

There is no moral nor legal reason to follow the parent company when it in conflict with the rule of law. People are starting to attribute to corporations a power that they do not have, and that is very dangerous.

(The article is good, thou, and opens a lot of interesting questions)

> How would you design a system that simultaneously achieved all these goals:

> Rapid sending of messages

> Careful checking of the content of messages

> Ability to quickly target a specific geographic area

> Inability to mistakenly send a test message

> Requiring strong proof that the message is authentic before sending

> Resilient enough to work after significant damage to infrastructure

> That networks have the ability to vet and ignore

> That networks are compelled to send

> Which can only be used for good

> And cannot be used for evil.

Considering the last two, I'm assuming this must be tongue-in-cheek.

I think that the best approach for public utilities is to design them in such a way as to minimize, or preclude if possible, their ability to choose their customers or level of service. We want them to have a set of rules/instructions, written beforehand and publicly available, that everyone can point to after an event that says, "well, those were the things they were supposed to do, so they did them." The entities that write the set of rules are separate from the utility: the utility solely exists to implement the rules/instructions as efficiently as possible.

There's obviously a reasonableness factor here: it's impossible to foresee all situations. The effort spent on specifying exactly what should be done should be proportional to the potential impact of that possible decision.

I heard stories from friends where such a system is used to broadcast ads to wide areas in South Korea, never had to deal with it myself but the way they described it made it sound like they were sent using that very same emergency message system.

Technology is, of course, downstream of society.

We have treated government with a startling glibness, a deep unseriousness. At the end of the day, the government can kill you and your entire family, and the only thing that can stop them from doing that are the laws of civil society. It is incredibly serious.

Unfortunately, we have been unserious going on several decades. They have realized that the front door is unlocked and the gleaming glowing beating heart of civic power is sitting right there completely unprotected. There were warnings after 9/11, with the patriot act and the GWOT. People who raised these concerns were dismissed as cranks but in fact they were the only serious people in the room. The unseriousness has increasingly accelerated in the last 10 years.

Now we are seeing the consequences. There's a timely acronym for this I think. FAFO?

Last week I had boarded a flight at LHR and the crew were just starting their safety briefing when everyone's phones went off with that wildfires 'emergency' alert message.

I was unimpressed with the message, along with the (non-UK) crew.

Also here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329384

Submitted many hours earlier, fewer upvotes, one comment, sank without trace.

I agree that there's no difference in principle between the government of the land you live on ordering the cell phone company to send a text message to everyone about wildfire danger; and ordering the cell phone company to send a text message to honest and loyal men about confronting the traitors and criminals and protecting the people and honor of the country. This is simply what it means for a national government to exist at all - a local monopoly on the use of legitimate violence in order to enforce the law. Everything a government does, from laws regulating food ingredient labeling to collecting the social security tax from paychecks to organizing a formal military to fight a rebellion, is ultimately backed up by men with guns telling people what to do.

> How would you design a system that simultaneously achieved all these goals:

There is an obvious solution that achieves all of these, that, on 1000 year timescales, seems inevitable: deprecation of the nation-state.

The internet solves every problem the nation-state purports to. For example, the very real problem of coordination, eloquently and convincingly outlined in the federalist papers (tldr: we need a central republic structure because it's too difficult to coordinate disparate statehouses via horseback with every little intrastate decision) is solved by dint of instant communication and long-term data retention. So it is with every other claim in favor of these huge legacy state structures.

In this age, there is no longer any state needs to be larger than say, 1500 square km - about the size of a large county. This way, people can flee on foot to an adjacent state if needed, and no state can possibly control enough infrastructure to force Vodaphone to send such nauseating propaganda.

We need the elder statesmen in the room to read the writing on the wall and begin this process.