A lot of the cryptocurrency space is exploring different modes of “governance” today. In the sense of “I have this project which exists on Ethereum, the ecosyst

A lot of the cryptocurrency space is exploring different modes of “governance” today. In the sense of “I have this project which exists on Ethereum, the ecosystem is beginning to build up around it, and I know we’ll have to make changes to the project down the road as the environment changes: how do I discover what will be best for the project, how do I announce those decisions legitimately, and how do I fund the new resulting work?”. I’m wondering if the author was referring to this use of cryptocurrencies. It’s sad, but a lot of these cryptocurrency projects have implemented much more transparent and frictionless forms of voting than what we have in representative democracies today. You don’t have to search out and then show up to some hours-long meeting about a new construction project: there’s just a public vote, with attached forums for the discussion aspect. Pull up the front governance page and you can see every proposal currently up for vote, and every historical proposal. It’s all there, easily accessible. If a new city were born which achieved any similar degree of transparency/low friction in their direct governance, I would seriously consider moving to it. There are lots of “if”s there, but LOADS of our problems in cities amount to misaligned incentives, such that they would disappear if only we got the right incentives in place (e.g. NIMBY policies benefit existing high-networth homeowners at the cost of more vulnerable/younger renters. There are ways to balance things such that NIMBYism at least isn’t an economically profitable position to take). Experimentation is the way to discover better incentives, and strong governance is the way to enact/enforce those. Today every city in the country almost universally uses a paper-based representative government. There’s such little experimentation in the physical world at that level that you’d either have to believe that a) we’ve already found & enacted the most effective form of governance or b) there are undiscovered systems which could better meet the needs of modern-day citizens. My money’s on b. And though b doesn’t need cryptocurrency, today’s cryptocurrencies are capable/flexible enough that they could be slotted in for such a purpose far easier than anything else, so why not use them.