Hey, these days the military is using consumer grad iPads, because they are cheaper and good enough.
There are more things in heaven and earth than just the military and SV.
One big example that's often brought up of military tech leading the way is programmable computers. And, yes, in our history that's what happened. But International Business Machines was hot on their heels purely for commercial computing. (If the militaries of the world hadn't blown up so many resources, business would have likely come up with programmable computers a few years earlier, thus completely eliminating the gap.)
Typo? Or are we finally acknowledging the contributions of the porn industry? :)
The Germans.
A large part of why have democracy and separation of powers is to protect from bad actors.
But yeah, not having to deal with bad actors can enable massive achievements. The pyramids were built when Egypt was more or less safe from any external invasion and ruled by god-kings who could coordinate massive building projects.
With all its faults democracy has these edge cases handled and makes the elected group of rukers much more acountable with mens to get ridd of they if they turn out to be too unfit to rule.
Or by example: You still want someone to organise weekly garbage collection efficiently and equitably. The government does that.
Of course, details depend for example on what our 'no bad actor' assumption actually means, and perhaps on what ideas you have about human nature and history.
> Even in a no-bad-actors world you still have many different competing interests to balance due to different people's needs and preferences, so you probably want some kind of polling/citizens forum/whatever to gather input for making decisions, and an organisation that looks at all the details and makes the decisions on behalf of the collective.
Yes, you'll want some kind of organisation. My comment was just that the organisation would probably not look like a monarchy, benevolent or otherwise.
There's no such thing as bad actors. Just people who's interests are not aligned to yours (you are their "bad actor")
Have a look at eg https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tJQsxD34maYw2g5E4/thomas-c-s... or https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2SeN2MjmMzZB25hBo/insights-f... for some ideas about alternative definitions.
You could also go by something like 'You are not a bad actor, if (outside of emergencies) you don't lie, cheat, murder or steal.' Or you can go with something closer to game theory, and emphasis cooperation in something like a prisoner dilemma.
[cue John Lenon at the piano]
But a less flippant way to put it is that a world without "bad" actors isn't a stable equilibrium. It cannot and will not ever happen. If you need convincing, look to nature. An equilibrium is only formed through a multitude of mixed strategies.
Artificial selection might result in what you desire, but that would be.. unpopular, to say the least.
I know safety isn't all about about malicious attacks, but I like to imagine living in a world without the need for locks, passwords, keys, safes, signatures, contracts, lawyers, ... we would probably all be fed and populating the solar system by now.