Topic: Cryptostates - Doing for politics what cryptocurrencies have done for economics (Read 6217 times)

If anybody is still interested in this topic, they should check out Bitlaw at https://www.reddit.com/r/bitlaw which seems to be doing something similar to this.

Glad I discovered this old topic. Certainly makes me think.

This is an important point. The economy as a whole, beyond even just currencies, is in a time of transition and traditional states with their hegemonic ties to the existing paradigm aren't going to help us through it. Alternative institutions are needed.

You're assuming that business is a centralized unified group consciousness that will logically flock to something it's not programmed to flock to. Businesses are machines which can be programmed to have basic income built into their DNA. Employees are humans/robots or software agents running on decentralized autonomous corporations.

If the business is a DAC and the employees are robots then the shareholders get dividends and that is basic income. There is no need for any central control and that means there is no need for a central government but there is a need for a decentralized governing process. Government becomes a process and the law becomes the source code/math.

You're telling me that the owners of the DAC would prefer not to receive the dividend? Businesses exist only to provide value to the community, society, and to bring profit to their shareholders. So all you have to do to provide a basic dividend is make every member of the community a shareholder. You don't need government or permission to have basic income you just need the production capacity and to write the necessary software.

" I imagine you would need to prove every individual's identity, which requires some kind of central database, to ensure nobody receives double+ income while others receive half-. "

You don't need a central database. That is like saying to exchange money you need a centralized exchange and government issuer. You can easily have an encrypted decentralized database DAC. Ethereum would easily allow for it in the form of a contract which would only be several lines of code in fact.

" You'd need to figure out who owns this database and how it can best be secured"

No one owns it. The database would be based on blockchain technology, and a decentralized encrypted Bittorrent style private cloud. Encrypt and store it in such a way that only the users themselves can determine who can access their identity or any other data they store in their private cloud.

None of it must be centralized. No one should own the database. The community itself would host the database via nodes just as the community hosts the Bitcoin blockchain. The community itself would own shares in itself. These would not be traditional businesses we are talking about here but DACs which seek to maximize both automation and profits for the community of shareholders.

"I think these costs further push business away, but that's just my prediction; maybe it is the best way to go at it."


You haven't shown an additional cost. Businesses already pay dividends to shareholders. Under my proposal businesses would operate even more efficiently because they would be DACs and these DACs would pay shareholders. The only difference would be that the shares would be distributed to the members of a community.

So if I started a business that is a DAC I could program the DAC to give 20% of it's shares back to my community. In a few lines of code my community would have basic income and if every member of a community who starts a DAC gives back 20% in order to remain a member or citizen of their community then basic income is achieved easily without any tax.

The only reason it wouldn't work is if people are so greedy that they don't want a community. Human nature has shown otherwise that human beings do care about their community even if they don't care about the government.
 
Because DAC shares are capital assets which pay dividends their value would appreciate over time as automation makes business more efficient. The end result of this process (if you believe in the technological singularity or similar theories) is that eventually a DAC will come along which is so efficient that it will remove poverty for the entire community.

"Only problem as I see it is, assuming this is a voluntary association, the society which does not have basic income is the society in which business flocks to (thereby making basic income unnecessary.)  As the people of crypto A, who do believe in a basic income, realize they're no longer generating enough revenue to pay for everyone to live, they're faced with two options: adopt the philosophy of the people of crypto B, or find a way to take their wealth in some fashion or another, the latter case being involuntary and back to step one of coercive states."

This is a somewhat valid argument but it will not hold weight long term as automaton becomes more advanced and technological unemployment kicks in. The only reason people cannot generate enough to live is because of artificial scarcity. That does not exist in deflationary economies where the cost of living decreases with time.

Automation and artificial intelligence will dramatically increase efficiency of production whether it be food, home construction, or more complicated things. A 3d printer today can print homes so what would stop a community from creating a home maker DAC based around 3d printing technology in the future?

The fact that it's a DAC automatically will make it far more efficient than the brick and mortar corporations which will not be able to compete. The cost of housing will dramatically decrease every year, the cost of everything could dramatically decrease at the rate of Moore's law. I speculate the reason it isn't decreasing is because of the inflationary monetary policies which prolong artificial scarcity by increasing the cost of living despite the fact that technology is decreasing the cost of labor. Policies like the minimum wage may actually exacerbate dead weight loss and also contribute to the prolonging of artificial scarcity so the sooner we remove the minimum wage and replace it with basic income the better.

If you have the technology to eliminate poverty, build more homes which are cheaper and more energy efficient, 3d print nearly any physical object, why not do that and pass the dividend to the community of like minded people?

Only problem as I see it is, assuming this is a voluntary association, the society which does not have basic income is the society in which business flocks to (thereby making basic income unnecessary.)  As the people of crypto A, who do believe in a basic income, realize they're no longer generating enough revenue to pay for everyone to live, they're faced with two options: adopt the philosophy of the people of crypto B, or find a way to take their wealth in some fashion or another, the latter case being involuntary and back to step one of coercive states.

But it's certainly an improvement, I think, assuming no violence is involved.  What bitcoin is now is probably the perfect crypto for me, but I would be interested in seeing people making the basic-income crypto work.  I imagine you would need to prove every individual's identity, which requires some kind of central database, to ensure nobody receives double+ income while others receive half-.  You'd need to figure out who owns this database and how it can best be secured; who pays for the people who secure it.  Or find some other means to prove an individual is real.  Perhaps the cost can be directly removed from every transfer to a central wallet, i.e. what Freicoin does, as a fee for making the crypto function (I almost made the mistake of calling it a tax but realized usage is voluntary.)  I think these costs further push business away, but that's just my prediction; maybe it is the best way to go at it.

Democracy can function but that hardly makes it the best system. Dictatorships can function too. Wikipedia is explicitly not a democracy, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT. It is most accurately a meritocracy.

The flaws of traditional democracies are immediately obvious. Democracy treats every opinion as being equal, but we know that this doesn't reflect reality. Some opinions are objectively more informed or intelligent than others in that they objectively lead to better results (a higher GDP or longer life expectancy for example) when heeded. Futarchy corrects this imbalance of knowledge by making people financially accountable for whether or not their opinions actually turn out to be correct or not. Futarchy is to democracy as capitalism is to communism. Democracy is a communism of knowledge that promotes the equality of every piece of information in spite of the blatant falseness of this premise.

Keep in mind that this system doesn't entirely disregard opinion. It retains a traditional system of voting for determining what people want. It simply implements a superior form of decision making to find out what we should actually do to then get those things.

Think of it this way. The choice of whether to play hockey, basketball, or baseball is a subjective decision. You cannot objectively say that one game is better than the other, and voting is a fair way to determine the issue. But once you've chosen which game to play, winning becomes a matter of fact and not opinion. One strategy will be objectively superior at winning the game. Similarly, what issues (health, wealth, happiness, a mix of the three, or something else entirely) society chooses to prioritize is a matter of opinion, but what plan will actually get the best results in those areas is a matter of fact. Futarchy does what traditional democracy fails to in separating these functions.

In that sense it's actually more democratic than traditional democracy. People vote for what they want in an abstract sense (like less unemployment) and then the best plan for getting that is formulated automatically for them, eliminating the inevitable fact that in a traditional democracy people rarely get what they want because the details of how to actually implement things are too complex for people to reasonably understand. Can the average citizen really be expected to be an expert on politics, economics, the environment, and everything else they vote on? Futarchy eliminates that requirement while still allowing for everyone's preferences to be considered.

I suggest you read the original paper linked in the original post. It will explain more thoroughly.

There may be plenty of disagreements, but that doesn't mean it can't work.  Wikipedia is effectively e-democracy in action and that functions well enough, although it still needs moderators to ensure that, so it's not 100% perfect.  But I'm sure one day that's the kind of direction we'll be heading in.

I completely disagree. Anything less than the word "cryptostate" fails to convey the potential importance of the idea. A "crypto-club" sounds like something for nerdy boy scouts. The powers that be won't like anything that challenges their authority and you won't get around that by using a thesaurus.


Democracy is a flawed system. Consider futarchy. If you look at the average level of discourse on the Internet you'll realize the inherent failure of any sort of e-democracy.

The following might be of interest to some individuals in this thread:

Project Bypass: Decentralised Direct Democracy

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/project-bypass-decentralised-direct-democracy-423585

Hit a bit of a snag with DNS issues, hope to have it sorted soon.

//EDIT:  Done!  Please get involved if you're interested:   https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/we-are-decentralised-420451

Nice! Can't wait to see it when you release this.

It's just a website in effect, plain old XHTML.  Nothing fancy.  It expands upon the concept of how decentalisation will be a cornerstone of future governance because our current top-down, centralised system is so prone to failures, abuses and scandals.

What language is it written in?

It's nearly ready.  About 95% done.  Just needs some final tweaks and cross-browser testing before it's ready for launch.  I don't want to overhype it, though, as there's no actual cryptography involved.  It's more about spreading the message than the practical implementation at the moment.  Although that could potentially change with the right people involved.

Could you post a link to the project? This sounds awesome.

I've been working on a little project around the same concept.  Will hopefully be posting more on that as it develops.  I've seen the topic come up here a few times before, but it's never really gained traction.  Hopefully people will become more open to the concept of decentralisation in governance as more and more corruption seeps in to our current centralised one.

I agree. Also crypto-assembly sounds cooler.

The term "cryptostate" is needlessly provocative and likely to push all the wrong buttons with those who see themselves as defenders of traditional nation-states or societies. It were better if a more neutral term such as "crypto-club" or "crypto-assembly" could be used--it would have no practical implications as far as the internal functioning of the construct is concerned.

In the Franko Collective we use our resource for voting. For instance, when we decided to pay people for folding@home. Someone proposed the idea, said it would take X amount of FRK and that would sustain the pool for Y amount of time. Everyone in the collective voted with their wallets. So the system is already in place for voting.