"private goods require impetus to promote individual rights over common
good."

There are no individual rights without protection of the common good.
The only thing that keeps a bad actor from smashing in your head is
that the collective is incentivized to protect you from them. All systems
of government - The USA, street gangs, etc.. exist because of this.
If this is rejected in the model you have of social dynamics, then every
conclusion subsequently drawn is invalid.

The individual is not king. No (wo)man is an island. You may be free to
pick which social contracts you do and do not live by, but you cannot
scream "unfair!" when you do not reap the benefits of protection when
you reject the good of the collective.



"when a public good is collectivised, governance is extremely susceptible
to political manipulation and becomes a magnet for corruption. "

This is only a problem when the regulatory mechanisms between the collective
and their representative break down. The representative is supposed to
REPRESENT the people. With smart contracts and DApps it will be possible
to contractually bind representatives to a specific set of agreed upon
points,
when broken the individuals who chose that representative can immediately
move their money and political support to an opposition candidate who will
agree. If you can retract political and economic support and levy punishment
at will, the dynamic completely shifts.

In addition, this is thought experiment is existing within far too large a
governing
body. We instead should aim to create human-scale communities which, as
communities, combine to form a larger-scale society / states bound by smart
contracts.


"a (possibly the most common) failure mode of democracy is
that the *most* clever/powerful are incentivized to promote ignorance and
pestilence among the rest of the population to keep enough of them malleable
and dependent that they will vote for the elite."

This is the core problem. If you can manipulate the masses it doesn't matter
what technologies or systems are there to free them.

There is only one freedom - freedom of the mind. All others are illusions.

The new technological landscape requires a whole new way of thinking. We
must
develop new models to understand the social dynamics, and admit that we
don't
really have any idea what the solutions are. Human beings are animals that
evolved
in a very specific set of circumstances, and we developed this amazing
ability to
create and utilize tools. Every new tool has the potential to completely
shift what it
means to be human, how we can and will organize, and what pressures we face
/
have conquered.

No one knows the answers. No one really knows the questions. We do not need
ideological solutions defended with a religious ferocity. We need
mechanisms for
identifying the questions, the problems, coming up with multiple answers,
testing
and implementing them, acquiring data, and optimizing them for whatever
variables
we choose.


I've been writing about these things for the last couple months:
http://distributed-autonomous-society.quora.com/




On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Caleb James DeLisle <cjd@???> wrote:

> Good observations.
>
> If I might add, a (possibly the most common) failure mode of democracy is
> that the *most* clever/powerful are incentivized to promote ignorance and
> pestilence among the rest of the population to keep enough of them
> malleable
> and dependent that they will vote for the elite. Democracy is often
> characterized as two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, IMO
> it's more like three children and their mother voting on whether to buy
> candy.
> In a pure democracy, the candy-man is king.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Caleb
>
>
> On 04/15/2014 05:23 PM, Amir Taaki wrote:
> > i am just writing some notes here.
> >
> > you put the tax money into a central repo where it is voted by a
> > collective on its allocation. the downside is that majority vote doesn't
> > maximise utility of that resource, however it can allow allocation that
> > better serves the participates (disregarding corruption). this can
> > disenfranchise creative & energetic ppl by imposing limitations on what
> > they can accomplish.
> >
> > an alt model is where you can invest your tax where you choose. this is
> > nice because it creates relationship between good being funded and
> > person funding the good, and puts the responsibility on the funder to
> > ensure the money is well spent. it's susceptible to corruption where
> > those with money have more market power. this can lead to development
> > which disenfranchises those with less money.
> >
> > the third model is no common good, which isn't desirable as the means of
> > wealth production become privately owned, and people are rented. this
> > isn't really a free market as individuals are forced to sell their
> > labour at low prices to those who own the means of production, further
> > entrenching their position over the market. this doesn't hold true for
> > all industries, but where land or some resource is involved, it can lead
> > to corporate governance & private military.
> >
> > when a public good is collectivised, governance is extremely susceptible
> > to political manipulation and becomes a magnet for corruption. to ensure
> > the process stays fair and just, requires a never ending loop of
> > bureaucracy and overseers. the political system itself becomes another
> > form of hierarchy.
> >
> > private goods require impetus to promote individual rights over common
> > good. we can often lose utility here or expectation of a resource when
> > relations become adversial due to competitve incentives. this is a
> > social issue and doesn't always hold true. but in some cases it can
> > create extreme effects and lost potential value.
> > together with an environment where consumption is separated from
> > production, individuals lose responsibility due to lack of observation
> > about the hidden cost of actions, passing the buck (or brunt/blame) of
> > that cost onwards down the chain.
> >
> > anyway these are my notes from observations in community and stuff.
> > i pefer we try to promote individual freedom wherever possible, but
> > sometimes, esp around common interest we require a consensus among those
> > participating parties. also i believe we can reach massive gains in self
> > organised governance using digital tools for transparency and
> > information. by promoting tools of governance, transparency and
> > informational resources, we can empower people with a strong form of
> > self governance that can scale massively.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
> > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
> >
> _______________________________________________
> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>



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Anthony D'Onofrio
iamtexture@???
501.681.3225
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Chaos Collider - Dream. Design. Develop. Deploy.
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Peace.Love.Human.
http://www.peacelovehuman.org

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come
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