Pirate Wheel Principles

This is a summary of the principles of the Pirate Wheel — the hub, Empowerment, and its eight spokes. For more information, see the respective pages, or the overview.

The policy tree of The Pirate Wheel. Click for details.

The Pirate Wheel is constructed from a hub and eight principle spokes, from where conclusions can be drawn, and from where in turn policies result. These are the hub and the eight principles:

Empowerment. At the hub, the core of it all. The world has changed: everybody has received a voice. This is a very positive development that requires that society’s administration shifts its activity from ruling to governing, and that they assume good faith on behalf of the now-empowered people. Read more >>

Privacy. The right for every individual to have her life to herself. The privacy concept divides into seven areas: privacy of correspondence, location, territory, body, identity, economy, and data. These are sacred and may only be violated by dedicated authorities on concrete, prior, and individual suspicion of a specific, committed, and serious crime. Read more >>

Transparency. Every individual has the right to examine how authorities are handling the power vested in them by the people. The authorities must not ask for anything as a prerequisite, like identity or money. Every citizen has the right to hold elected politicians accountable and they may not prevent this. Read more >>

Ticks. Everybody shall be encouraged to create, remix and exchange Tools, Ideas, Culture, Knowledge, and Sentiments (TICKS), without needing any kind of permission. Nobody has the right to prevent another human from accessing, using, refining, or re-publishing Ticks. Read more >>

Humanism. Everybody has the same rights regardless of where or how they were born. Everybody may adopt whatever beliefs they like after birth, political or religious: all shall be treated equal. Everybody has the right to access, perform, and use culture and knowledge. Society and authorities assume good faith when dealing with people. Read more >>

Diversity. Polycultures in all parts of society are essential for several reasons. First, it prevents cultural and ideological inbreeding. Second, it adds a necessary layer of resilience against abuse of power. Third, diversity and polyculture is necessary not just in the population, but particularly in technical aspects in our infrastructure. Read more >>

Resilience. Society and its infrastructure must be built to withstand the nature of humans – where power of all kinds corrupts – as well as unexpected developments or disasters. It must be resilient against the expected and unexpected alike. Thus, there must be no single points of failure or choke points of liberties. Read more >>

Swarm Economy. People are no longer in one lifetime employment. Rather, they have several jobs at one time, some paid and some unpaid, and change jobs frequently. Problematically, the unpaid work is not valued as production at all. Society must adapt to this reality, and particularly find ways to enable valuable volunteer work. Read more >>

Quality Legislation. We take pride in the quality of our work. Every law must be necessary, effective, proportionate, and evidence-based. When it doesn’t meet these goals, it shall be removed. When another legislation visibly meets our goals better, we should use that instead of our current one. Political prestige is harmful. Laws are for governing, not for ruling. Read more >>

Updated 2011-Nov-13.