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First of all... no professional philosophers on this side... Just stepping inside this Philosophy platform... That said...

For some years already some friends and I have been dealing with a utopia of a smart, just, active, inclusive and still Democratic system for societies based on a few basic rules that could procure a natural balance.

Some argue against Democracy that "masses are never smart" (as most individuals don't KNOW about what are they deciding ON and FOR) and that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (as representatives become powerful and forget). This leads directly to a need of constant, active and proven MERITS based on real areas of expertise where everyone should be involved (including handling representation and power).

Discussions with some people around have led to imagining and writing down some big analysis on how a social system based on merits (and still being democratic) could work. For practical purposes the concept has been mentioned as Meritocracy but the objective is completely opposite to dividing the society, moreover into parts (what Particracy is about, in which some argue we are really living in the Occident, but disguised as Democracy).

The point here is that -the way- some actual concepts deal with huge virtual teams (like OpenSource and precisely StackExchange) are in some ways similar to what we've been imagining: no clear divisions of society, everyone's opinion counts, the experts count more because of their ACTIVE solutions given not because of their brand or reputation (which anyways is transparent, systematically registered as a tool but not idolized). Obviously all this is approaching (through internet) only intangible concepts (knowledge openly exchanged, with space for thoughts and points of view) taking a LOT of care on the RESPECT between individuals (which is valued as core for civilized communications leading to solid teams without barriers). This way, some Internet wonders may have become into a sandbox for the basic rules of how societies could better evolve.

The question is... Are we stepping over on some existing concept of social interaction system that my friends and I are somehow missing (if yes, please answer with a term)? or is this somehow a mix of existing social systems finding some kind of balance between them?

-Something wonderful to complement the answer would be a book, mental map or a site that would graphically present some studied statistics of how a societies deals with the help of this kind of mixed systems.-

Personally I believe technology (specially Internet) is giving the ambiance for such kinds of interactions to be possible, so this way it should be something just lately possible.

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    I'm having a decent amount of difficult deciphering what you're asking exactly. When I skimmed it the first time, my first thought was "meritocracy" but you remark "but the objective is completely opposite to dividing the society" which confuses me because that seems to imply that the purpose of meritocracy is to "divide society." Later though, you seem to see SE as a different thing, but SE is a society where status is almost everything in terms of what you can and cannot do. Maybe "meritocratic socialism"? – virmaior Sep 12 '15 at 8:06
  • But this question is a definition one and not clearly one that's about philosophy as defined in the help-center for the purposes of this SE. (As such, my inclination would be to vote to close but as a moderator, if I vote to close, it automatically and instantly closes) – virmaior Sep 12 '15 at 8:06
  • @virmaior, thanks for the first comment, good point and thanks for the concept named... I'll research in that way. If you close the question is ok for me, I've got what I was searching for. – DavidTaubmann Sep 24 '15 at 18:49
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This doesn't answer your headline question; but is just some comments on the body of the question.

Some argue against democracy that 'masses are never smart'

This is true even if everyone in the 'mass' individually is very smart; for smart people can disagree in many different and various ways; the specific problem here is that to get agreement only the most simplest propositions can be agreed on: for example, 'this cup is a cup' or 'this spade is a spade'; this is one sense in which sense the masses aren't smart; and from this quite a lot can follow ... for example, being susceptible to rumour.

SE is in someways what we've been imagining; no clear divisions, everyone counts, the experts count more

This seems to ignore the fact that reputation stratifies everyone participating; and in quite a simple way that isn't properly reflective.

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  • Upon your last point, what would you recommend as a better scheme of Meritocracy rather than -reputation-, so that it the Merits system can be more "reflective"? I would argue that reputation is becoming more and more important nowadays, as well as there appear new services precisely called RPM (Reputation Management) and I see this as a fast-growing tendency that will reach almost any person (mortal or corporation) that uses Internet. – DavidTaubmann May 20 '16 at 23:25

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