Topic: Consensus-based society with provable trust-free voting - page 7. (Read 11187 times)

It has also been proven that there is no solution to Byzantine Generals problem, yet here we are with Bitcoin as living example of how it actually works.

The whole point is to have a convenient and reliable system where people themselves can vote for things that matter to them and not delegate their power to politicians. Think along the lines of dedicating 10 minutes of your time every evening at your computer to vote for something you care about.


I can start with simple example - there is a need to patch the road shared by 10 families in the neighborhood, nobody else uses that road (so they don't really care) and there is no central authority to call for. How would those families achieve consensus of who does what and who pays what.
It could be that one good guy just goes ahead and fixes it for everybody to benefit from it, but if that doesn't happen there needs to be a reliable mechanism to achieve consensus.


There is no forcing of anyone to do anything. People who agreed to participate in the system would have an option to either accept the result of the vote even if they disagree with it or leave that particular consensus-society or never even consider participating in any to begin with. The idea is that people need other people to survive, to grow food, to build houses and those who will learn how to achieve consensus while working together in a most constructive way will prosper and flourish and show an example to other people how things can be done, not that other people have to necessarily follow that example.


I simply meant that the system cannot be rigged/hijacked with fraudulent votes.
It is 'fair' only in that sense and no other meaning was intended.
I think the 4th paragraph in OP describes the mechanism with enough details.

There is nothing about forcing this system against any other system, that decision would simply be left for free market to demonstrate which system works best. I only wanted to point out that with Bitcoin we now have a technical solution to voting problem that never existed before.


The course of action that people will take in any situation will only reflect their level of development.
If they are aggressive and operate from the position of fear that there isn't enough for everyone we might observe what you just quoted. But it doesn't have to be that way if people want to build things and improve their way of life by using expertise and labor of other people in a consensus-based reality.


This is one of the general misconceptions that there is some 'government operation' and that 'they' know better than 'us' what is best for 'us'. If you delegate that decision making process of what is best for you to other people then you probably expect that those people know you better than you know yourself, which is frankly ridiculous. You are your government, you are your authority, you are unique point of view, you are particular perspective of the infinite - cherish your existence!

If they're so unskilled and uninformed as to make a good decision on policy, how are they to be expected to be well-informed and skilled enough to make a good decision on selecting a policy maker?

There is no perfect voting system.
This has been proven.
http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N8/8voting.8n.html

The regular people lacks the expertise and information to make an informed decision on majority of the government's operation, this is why we have to elect professional politicians to do it.

Gang warfare.  Brilliant.

Unless your group is going to be 6 people forcing 4 people to do and not do stuff you might as well just skip voting and go with actual consensus. Don't do stuff to people without their permission. You don't even need 10 people you can start by yourself. Don't hurt people and don't make excuses (uniform, election, tradition, etc) for people who do hurt others (including yourself).

Consensus is difficult enough to get working within the context of people who live together in cohousing/ intentional community. Within the scope of a society, its lunacy. Maybe you are searching for another term?

So long as politicians are able to make choices independent of the people who voted for them voting will never be fair.

Yes, the system is completely voluntary.
Two neighborhoods may vote within themselves to join forces, for example, and those who were opposed to this decision are free to leave and create their own neighborhood or stay alone.

Also, as the neighborhoods grow to the point where they can successfully defend their territory this may give rise to a notion of land ownership. Simply if you occupy the land and can defend it - it's yours.
Over time this system should stabilize and provide some consensus of who owns what and there finally be peace on Earth!

That's not what I meant, but the rest of your reply implies, though falls short of outright saying, that what I did mean - that those who voted would not attempt to foist the results of the vote upon those who want no part in their system - is true as well.

Yes, the votes can still be as anonymous as Bitcoin addresses, so it will be hard to pressure people.
Also it is better to start with small local communities/neighborhoods where people know each other and the total number of members is limited and known, so that system would be hard to hijack from outside.

It's actually perfectly inline with AnCap. I highly doubt that without the government society will consist of lonely strangers. There will still be families, there will still be neighborhoods and they would want to resolve conflicts in a civilized manner. The idea in OP could provide one of the possible solutions.

As long as those who do vote keep their decisions to themselves, I'm fine with it.

Sure!
You won't be able to vote, but if you don't want to/don't care it's totally ok.

EDIT:
This might give an answer to the questions like "who will build the roads?" and
"who will look after the old and sick?"
Also it doesn't need to get big or centralized, it can start as your local neighborhood of 10 families and stay that way.

Can I opt out?

Instead of randomly electing people and giving away our power to them,
how about we keep the power to ourselves and solve the problems in a consensus-based manner.

For that we need a total transparency for (a) money transfers and (b) provable trust-free voting.
Bitcoin solves the (a) part of the problem, so we only need to create a solution for (b)

I've already proposed this in Bitcoin Foundation thread a couple of times so I will repeat it here.
It is possible for an organization with membership paid in Bitcoin to create a system with provable trust-free voting.

In this system all membership fees are collected into a single public Bitcoin address and votes are the messages signed with the private keys of the addresses that sent a full membership fee to that address.
The whole repository of these messages along with their Bitcoin addresses is then made public.
This will allow every individual member to check that his/her vote is correct and also verify that other votes come from legit members (those who paid the fee) and they in turn can verify that their vote is correct.

The members of that organization/society can then vote for variety of different things: decide where money need to be spent and how, appoint people to lead different projects to achieve certain goals and so on.
All the money flow will be transparent because the fee collection address is public.
It probably needs to be protected with multisig so that no single person can run away with the funds, but that is one of the technical details that can be worked out along the way.