- Jun 2016
-
fractastical.github.io fractastical.github.io
-
because the mechanisms underlying the DAO are transparent and open to inspection.
Sadly these don't corrolate. It's possible to be totally transparent and totally corrupt at the same time.
-
capable of self-improvement which has unlimited growth potentia
I think you are vastly limiting the growth potential by including "unmodifiable" elements, particularly ones that have non-trivial implementation details (e.g. how you reliably poll the world's populace on their happiness). A smaller set with nomic rules that can be dynamically modified might actually have "unlimited growth potential."
-
how might it be achieved
Crowdfund it?
-
the DAO Democracy be able to reasonably determine a number between 0 and 1.
non-trivial.
-
a committee of qualified experts consider the matter
I think many of the problems raised by your treatment may be solved by having multiple branches of governance, in which certain activities are handled by experts nad some are handled by markets and they need to come into consensus but each have veto power in their own right (or something along these lines).
-
Would a DAO Democracy, particularly one which included all humans, dominate other DAO’s? While this outcome seems likely, it does not seem a priori inevitable
The financing of the DAO is totally unquestioned and yet one of the key elements. Traditional governments take money via taxes. How does the DAO democracy get funds that it puts towards the ostnesible public welfare?
-
There are two reasons a person might choose some other DAO.
There are a lot of reasons. Among other things there's no disincentive to being a citizen of multiple DAO democracies at the same time.
-
it would be likely to back it up with overwhelming force to minimize the need for actual use of that force
One general issue does regard long term policy vs. short-term policy. How easily can the DAO democracy reverse its opinions?
-
collective welfare metric that placed a high value on human life
Whoa!!! Your collective welfare metric didn't have anything about life in it. It was only living people voting at the end of the year....
-
Each group uses the democracy to weaken the other, kill its members, and in some cases to wipe them out. The primary flaw here is that democracies give “power to the people”, which the people promptly use to kill each other
Democracies can also wage genocidal wars against each other.
-
large payments flow to those who can accurately forecast how the bulk of the citizens will evaluate the President five years in the future
This is creating a large incentive for secondary / derivative prediction markets that resolve themselves sooner.
-
process of continuous self-improvement
yes!
-
Congress, and the variable quality of the laws that it passes, are the most problematic component of our existing governmental structures. Whether or not this ultimately proves to be true, it seems that, at the moment, a relatively rapidly acting Executive able to engage in complex actions based on assessing a wide range of facts and opinions from multiple sources will be more difficult to replace than a slower acting institution which is aggregating facts and opinions from multiple sources in order to review and evaluate proposals placed before it for adoption or rejection in a less time-urgent fashion. Adopting a Bill In a DAO Democracy, how do we propose a bill, and how does it get adopted? Initially, anyone can propose a bill. It can be submitted at any time. If the prediction market says it has a positive impact on the collective welfare, it is adopted. If not, it is not. If the bill is adopted, it’s put into effect on the date proposed in the bill, which is typically the adoption date plus some period of time to allow implementation. At any time, anyone can propose a new method of adopting a bill. It is evaluated and put into effect using the existing methods
I really like this turn in a pure nomic direction.
-
You could even create a government
I'm not sure if this section was written originally and moved here but it could be a good general introduction. Feels a bit out of place after the intricacies of the prediction market dynamics.
-
Like Bitcoin, it will live on the internet. Like Bitcoin, it will survive as long as it does something that people will pay for. Like Bitcoin, there will be no way of killing it. Like Bitcoin, it will be radically transparent. Like Bitcoin, it can’t be stopped. Like Bitcoin, it will be able to pay people to do anything people are willing to do in exchange for its cryptocurrency.
This actually suggests that the proper title is not simply "cryptofuel" (as with Ethereum) but something closer to the caloric input that life forms consume.
-
Realistically, the only way to kill it is to make the service it offers so useless and obsolete that no one wants to use it
Or destroy the economic incentives. Or find an exploit. Or find something that is better and more evolutionarily successful.
-
Briefly, and non-technically, Bitcoin is the first example of a new form of life. It lives and breathes on the internet
I agree with this and find the philosophical and other conclusions fascinating.
-
Any strategy for better protecting the core servers, or for better detecting an attack, will be immediately adopted (thanks to a prediction market specifically aimed at improving security which is constantly evaluating new and better strategies)
This seems highly optimistic.
-
Anyone who spots any irregularity in any core server will immediately make money in the prediction market
Problem here historically is mass collusion at a specific point in time, not small observable departures from the norm.
-
The most reliable servers (the “core severs”) would be identified by the prediction market. Thus, the BFT algorithms would know who they could most trust, and would use that information as they updated their state information. The prediction markets themselves would, of course, be maintained in a distributed fashion on the core servers, and so would be incorruptible – unless, of course, the BFT algorithms were corrupted. To corrupt the BFT algorithms would require that a majority (or possibly more) of the core servers become corrupted (depending on the details of the BFT algorithm)
This is extremely interesting but also quite speculative. See Kwon (Tendermint)'s comments here: http://tendermint.com/blog/critique-merkle-dao-democracy/
-
citizenship
I think the whole idea of citizenship needs to be drawn into intense questioning. Why, for example, is it binary? What if one increasingly became a citizen the more contributions someone made to a political union?
-
While it seems obvious
There are a lot of things that "seem obvious" within the context of the presuppositions that drive this paper that I do not personally take for granted and, thus, am at a loss to respond.
-
and if the prediction market favors a policy that allows such a state of affairs to come into being, and if the citizen in question wants to do it, can one reasonably block its adoption
The meta-question here would be (in a purely nomic system) could there be a case where the citizens could change the entire operating rules of their political union? If so, would it be feasible for them to grant themselves progressively less power? It is arguable that this has already happened in the ostensibly democratic system in the United States.
-
Ralph C. Merkle
"one of the inventors of public key cryptography, the inventor of cryptographic hashing, and more recently a researcher and speaker and cryonics." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Merkle
-
The concept for a DAO is derived from Bitcoin
I think technically this comes from DAC which comes from Daniel Larimer and DAO is Vitalik's innovation. Regardless, it is sort of correct to refer to Bitcoin as a DAO.
-
Democracy and Governance
One of the most interesting and tricky problems here in general is why we focus on "democracy" in particular as a solution to our governance related problems. It seem that much of the following discourse assumes either a dictatorship or a democracy. The reality is that there are many diverse historically successful forms of government that take neither form.
-
if we are to have a democracy
I think this would be more compelling if you outlined the various choices beyond each citizen equal weight to see why they are inadequate. For example, the idea of a "citizen" is already a sort of binary that has a cut off of 18 years old or more
-
I think this would be more compelling if you outlined the various choices beyond each citizen equal weight to see why they are inadequate. For example, the idea of a "citizen" is already a sort of binary that has a cut off of 18 years old or more.
-
hardly seems like a democracy
So what?
-
reasonable initial definition of national welfare could augment current measures of national consumption or product (i.e., GDP) with simple measures of health, leisure, happiness, and the environment
I dispute Hanson's stipulation that any of these are simply measured (although not that they are valuable).
-
bills to be passed
Phrasing is slightly problematic. How are the proposals "selected" that become bills that could be passed?
-
known to be effective: prediction markets
Known by whom? In what circumstances? These are key points.
-
The goals and interests of the government should be the summation of the goals and interests of the governed
Again, this is something that should have a background argument and support. At the moment it's an assertion. Also, it assumes that "the governed" can be clearly aggregated, which presumes something like national borders (or, perhaps more perniciously, ethnicity).
-
most often is that democracies should reflect “the will of the people”
Begs the question on whether or not "most often" heard elements are the best expression of the core idea.
-
which can be very sophisticated
Worth noting that they are becoming even more sophisticated greatly surpassing non-sophisticated voters.
-
Economically rational voters should not vote
Which means that democracy has to take a quasi-religious character...
-
voters have little incentive to vote at al
Key problem that includes "the DAO"
-
For these countries, even the most basic ability to govern would be an improvement.
Would be a great Decentralized Autonomous Society project to identify these countries and related opportunities
-