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Doing the same technology for political ideas would be an interesting experiment of new form of people driven democracy. Lets see hackers invent decentralized

by acd 11y ago

Doing the same technology for political ideas would be an interesting experiment of new form of people driven democracy. Lets see hackers invent decentralized currency, hackers invent decentralized government democracy 2.0, people encrypt all their data and decentralize communications. reboot

throwaway7767 11y ago
So people's level of input into political decisions will be directly tied to the amount of money they're willing to spend? Sounds like it would pretty much legitimise the problems with the current system. Or maybe I'm missing some key part here?
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  There will never be a human power structure that avoids catering to the powerful, whether expressed with money or some other proxy. The most you can hope for is that the structures also make catering to the non-powerful worth doing.
  - throwaway7767 11y ago
    So do you think a system based on buying votes on the blockchain would make catering to the non-powerful worth doing? I don't.
valarauca1 11y ago
>hackers invent decentralized government democracy 2.0 I think you forget how Proof of Work works. Candidates can just buy more and more mining power to put their opponents out of the race.
- colordrops 11y ago
  There is always so much disinformation in threads about blockchain tech. Do you have any idea how it works yourself? Mining is a means to an end, which is an incorruptible ledger. Voting is a social convention, not a coin. You wouldn't mine for votes. The way a voting system would work is that each voter would be given a single coin that is marked for eligibility to vote. Then they can send the coin to whatever address correlates with what they want to vote for. Since the coins are marked, you can't just mine for more coins to submit for more votes. Yes, there are problems with this system as well, but mining for votes is not one of them.
  - acbabis 11y ago
    "there are problems with this system as well" It sounds like the problem you're trading for is the one that Bitcoin solved in the first place: No need for a central database of users. How do you decentralize authentication of one-person-one vote? I'm not sure it's even possible
    - drdeca 11y ago
      Certainly not easy! But, requiring periodic small group meetups, such that the groups have to have certain types of overlap, might kinda work? Sort of forming a web of trust, but with negative incentives against signing for anyone trying to double vote? Or maybe it is impossible. It seems there would be a problem if the web of trust was fragmented, because for anyone not in a particular region of the wot, they would be unable to tell if it was a real wot, or only a fake one. So any voting that occurred would have to only apply within a contiguous wot, and anyone in a different region would have to not have that vote count for them. So, in a limited form like that, it could maybe be possible, but I don't know what it would be worth, because I don't know what sorts of things would be worth voting on, if the result of the vote can only apply to the identities used in the vote, because anyone could make another identity not part of the wot if they did not like the vote outcome. And a number of other similar problems.
    - colordrops 11y ago
      The benefit of voting system I'm describing is to prevent fake or missing votes, and not to allow for anonymous voting. If you don't need 100% anonymous voting, then the blockchain works well. The voter registration used to distribute vote coins would ensure that coins go to the right people, but would not need to be made public, so there is still general privacy, but an individual could sign something with their private key to prove that the vote is theirs if they had to.
      - montecarl 11y ago
        You could also send your coin to a 3rd party and have them vote on your behalf. This would allow for representative democracy, where individuals can either choose to vote directly on an issue or place their vote in the hands in the representative of their choice. In this system, you could directly choose your representative if you like on particular issues instead of being stuck with whomever is representing your geographical area.

by acd 11y ago

throwaway7767 11y ago

So people's level of input into political decisions will be directly tied to the amount of money they're willing to spend? Sounds like it would pretty much legitimise the problems with the current system. Or maybe I'm missing some key part here?

oldmanjay 11y ago
There will never be a human power structure that avoids catering to the powerful, whether expressed with money or some other proxy. The most you can hope for is that the structures also make catering to the non-powerful worth doing.
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  So do you think a system based on buying votes on the blockchain would make catering to the non-powerful worth doing? I don't.

valarauca1 11y ago

>hackers invent decentralized government democracy 2.0 I think you forget how Proof of Work works. Candidates can just buy more and more mining power to put their opponents out of the race.

colordrops 11y ago
There is always so much disinformation in threads about blockchain tech. Do you have any idea how it works yourself? Mining is a means to an end, which is an incorruptible ledger. Voting is a social convention, not a coin. You wouldn't mine for votes. The way a voting system would work is that each voter would be given a single coin that is marked for eligibility to vote. Then they can send the coin to whatever address correlates with what they want to vote for. Since the coins are marked, you can't just mine for more coins to submit for more votes. Yes, there are problems with this system as well, but mining for votes is not one of them.
- acbabis 11y ago
  "there are problems with this system as well" It sounds like the problem you're trading for is the one that Bitcoin solved in the first place: No need for a central database of users. How do you decentralize authentication of one-person-one vote? I'm not sure it's even possible
  - drdeca 11y ago
    Certainly not easy! But, requiring periodic small group meetups, such that the groups have to have certain types of overlap, might kinda work? Sort of forming a web of trust, but with negative incentives against signing for anyone trying to double vote? Or maybe it is impossible. It seems there would be a problem if the web of trust was fragmented, because for anyone not in a particular region of the wot, they would be unable to tell if it was a real wot, or only a fake one. So any voting that occurred would have to only apply within a contiguous wot, and anyone in a different region would have to not have that vote count for them. So, in a limited form like that, it could maybe be possible, but I don't know what it would be worth, because I don't know what sorts of things would be worth voting on, if the result of the vote can only apply to the identities used in the vote, because anyone could make another identity not part of the wot if they did not like the vote outcome. And a number of other similar problems.
  - colordrops 11y ago
    The benefit of voting system I'm describing is to prevent fake or missing votes, and not to allow for anonymous voting. If you don't need 100% anonymous voting, then the blockchain works well. The voter registration used to distribute vote coins would ensure that coins go to the right people, but would not need to be made public, so there is still general privacy, but an individual could sign something with their private key to prove that the vote is theirs if they had to.
    - montecarl 11y ago
      You could also send your coin to a 3rd party and have them vote on your behalf. This would allow for representative democracy, where individuals can either choose to vote directly on an issue or place their vote in the hands in the representative of their choice. In this system, you could directly choose your representative if you like on particular issues instead of being stuck with whomever is representing your geographical area.