My brother Nathan Sobo, co-founder of Hyperarchy (a Ycomb finalist) is trying to solve some of these real world problems. He sent me this earlier tonight... probably the beginning of a blog post about Hyperarchy. I do indeed think this is just what we need to solve problems of closed government, apathetic/removed participants, and government of the elite for the elite. Here it is, hope he doesn't mind me posting it here, as i think its really applicable.

______
If Thomas Jefferson and James Madison lived in the 21st century instead of the 18th, what sort of government would they have designed? It took over a week for news to travel from Monticello to Philadelphia by horse; now it flashes around the world in seconds via Twitter. Yet our government still runs on essentially the same horse-drawn design. If we look with fresh eyes and discard analog assumptions, what kind of participatory democracy can we build for the digital era?

Hyperarchy is our attempt to answer that question. Hyper•archy literally means non-sequentially linked government. In a hierarchy, power flows upward through a rigid, slowly-changing structure. It's the Washington elite, debating the fate of millions on the Senate floor. In a hyperarchy, by contrast, power flows through a complex network of personal relationships, continually pooling and dispersing in an ever-shifting landscape of trust and influence. Like an operating system for democracy, Hyperarchy strips away the formality and procedure we normally associate with government, relying instead on software to give structure and meaning to organic human conversation.You start by raising a question, like "How should we balance the federal budget?" Then you or anyone else suggests answers to that question. When you see an answer you like, you can drag it to rank it above or below other answers. As you and others vote by dragging answers, Hyperarchy uses a sophisticated algorithm to compute a collective ranking of all answers that fairly reflects everyone's opinions. Everything updates in real time, so you can quickly see where the group stands, or drill into other people's rankings to see what they think individually. It's up and running now at https://hyperarchy.com/organizations/1
We believe it can indeed solve "real world" problems.

Even as simple as Hyperarchy makes voting, no one has time to contribute to every question. So Hyperarchy recasts representative democracy as networked democracy. Instead of electing a Senator you've never met to represent you on everything, you elect individuals you trust personally to represent you on specific issues. I can give my girlfriend power to vote on my behalf for questions about health and nutrition, while delegating to my coworker for questions concerning programming languages or digital privacy. So when my girlfriend votes about health or my coworker votes on technology, they vote for me as well.

But the real power is when influence flows through multiple connections in the social network. My girlfriend might delegate nutrition to her friend David, who in turn delegates to Michael Pollan. So Michael Pollan might become an emergent super-representative, voting on behalf on hundreds or thousands of followers, all because of individual trust relationships. And you can change your delegation at any time, meaning that people hold power only so long as they deserve it.
________

I find the idea inspiring, and have found it inspiring since he first told me about it 5 or so years ago. Anyway, it's online now, we could use any feedback people want to give.