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I have been completely blown away listening to @audreyt and @leemeichun this weekend at the @radxchange conference. Taiwan has so much to teach the United States when it comes to governing for the future, and I only hope our exceptionalism won't blind us.
Imagine learning about Covid-19 in DECEMBER 2019 from the equivalent of a Reddit post and taking it seriously enough (after investigating) to start testing travelers days later? Or having a culture where citizens "fork" the government by creating their own versions of
government websites, and then having the government periodically "merge" those changes (essentially looking at, accepting, and implementing those changes)? (The G0V zero movement) Or watching a citizen build an app that tracked where masks were still in stock, and
before it crashed under traffic, showing it to the president so you could create a government supported version? Or instead of censoring "fake news," having the govt create memes, that people can choose to share, to go viral and correct misconceptions while making people laugh?
It is a country that gives me hope and inspiration. Obviously, even emulating all of Taiwan's systems would not fix every problem in the US, nor would all be applicable --one of the main themes of the conference is that policies must be local, flexible, sensitive to their context
And right now, as another conference speaker @dsallentess said, the US needs a reconstitution of our social, economic, and political values. #RxC If you're curious, the conference is ongoing and free: http://radicalxchange.org
