Success in Consensus Systems Is Inversely Proportional To Group Size
Advocates of direct democracy envision a system where each person's vote has an equal power. The narrative goes along the lines of "equal rights" and that each human being has an equal weight to society. This might sound logical but it is neither practical or realistic.
Humans do not value each other the same way. If we did, we would all date people with no respect to looks, income, social status or behaviour. We would pick jobs, books or movies with no respect to their quality. In a place where everyone is equal, no one truly matters. The complementary argument that "everyone should instead be treated equally" still does not apply because simply we don't even bother to engage with those that we do not consider to have value in our lives. In practical means, this is the same as rejection.
We cannot vote for things that do not offer value to us. We cannot appreciate value for things that are outside our scope of wellbeing. This is what most democratic and consensus systems get wrong. People are too unique and as we progress technologically we add more qualities and needs in our repertoire. We cannot possibly vote for things that fall off our radars nor can we agree on a large set of values. Not only is impractical but also pointless. We are too selfish and will remain as such because this what our nature dictates. We value ourselves, then our family, then our kin with our monkeysphere getting weaker as we increase the numbers.
Modern democratic systems assume that we all live in one planet and somehow we should all be coordinated. This is false and largely unscientific. Any sensible zoologist will tell you that each part of the planet has a different ecosystem with unique characteristics. African tigers cannot be compared to Tibetan tigers because they have different needs even if they look similar. Similarly, humans have developed such unique needs that in the future even medication will be composed to match our special physiology. We just don't do it because we are not there yet technologically.
Politically though, we are doing it to a small degree. Switzerland is a prime example of how immediate consensus can bring people together to decide on small things. Small blockchain communities and networks also seem to work well. The problems begins when the network expands and the votes start be skewed. The direct value and weight for each person gets nested under unrelated values that are skewed massively in context. This is what we witness on facebook or twitter. A negative review can go viral as much as a positive one. The virality though does not represent the true impact of the event but rather a random sensationalist flare that will die out soon enough and nobody will really remember. The value something has is dependent heavily on our given mood at the given point in time in relationship to common psychological tricks that other humans are also susceptible. Pretty much, monkeys jumping inside a cage at the sight of a moderately large banana.
I don't believe the current "upvote/downvote" system will survive due to this group size limitation. There are no boundaries in networks unless the communities set them. In a world where everyone belongs everywhere, network boundaries mean nothing. Surely, small groups work best with consensus. This is how small villages develop great relationships and assist each other while as we go bigger into cities the needs (and value) is spread across the entire fabric. Everyone ends up expecting something the need from everyone else that might not even care.
As long as we are humans with a need to belong and be accepted to more and more people we will never have extended successful consensus systems. We might think that it works because the numbers will present visible comparisons in the millions but in reality we will care as much for those numbers as much as we care about individual sand particles at the beach. This is also the reason why we get so emotional about a baby that has suffered and made the news but don't give a shit about the 16,000 kids that die everyday from hunger.
That is why large groups tend to split into smaller groups that have common interest, understanding and values in accordance to which they measure at their level of being an expert. If Steemit as social experiment survives, with the upcoming SMT's new professional communities will be created like Reddit subredits and they will continue to strive with upvote/downvote mechanism as they will have one commom interest lets say photography that has certain generally accepted standards in that society or ecosystem if you will. In which case steemit may get an empty and desolated space just because of the reason you have mentioned before.
Hence the underlying value is not steemit itself but steem blockhchain that will power up all those communities through different SMT's.
You might be up to something here. I too believe that steemit will soon become irrelevant and rather the chain will power up SMT's, communities and other close-circle projects.
monkeysphere phase boundry...things work differently inside than they do outside.
At the end of the day we are all individuals. As Margaret Thatcher said, "There is no such thing as society. There are only individuals and family." And she is wrong about family. A family is just a collection of individuals, just like a society is. Democracy is simply a system for coordinating the actions of a group of people. It is one of many governance systems.
I am amazed how you always manage to spell out the irreconcilable contradictions that run rampant in our societies.
I feel like there are quite some people who are very pushy about their ideals of an equal global society, with equal rights for everyone. Yet, when you are dealing with them on a personal basis, without being someone who needs to be equalized, they behave like assholes, as if their ideals are only valid when they deem the circumstances to suit them.
Thanks for the mind food.
As far as I'm concerned, the way I phrased equality was related to judgement.
I can totally accept we are not equal. We are worth as much as our acts and as much as others value them. It's a multi-dimensional parameter, of course, one that can not really be described with 90+% of confidence.
Anyways, for me, a healthy community, even large-scale has one very important "benchmark": equality under the law. Had I committed a crime, I get the same level of penalty as someone else who has done the same. No exceptions. Period.
Morally speaking, our differences should not influence what are we "allowed" to do with other people.
Of course, its problematic part is the nature of law. No matter how hard we try, laws are never fully objective, and even then can be exploited or modified to be exploitable. And of course, ther would never be complete consensus on law.
But then again, it's way too problematic to give people, "simple human being", no matter how smart they are, such an enormous privilege, especially when it comes to decide about life and death.
It's just the best we could do - yet.
Also, larger groups degenerate more easily into what the initial smaller group didn't congregate for; it is easier for a few individuals to concentrate money and power, because the process goes unnoticed or with the approval of sycophants and, once the accumulation has taken place, there is no recourse against it when the differences are large enough.
This would make any anarcho-capitalist group decidedly less anarcho, or any socialist group more Leninist, etc. Things would go from a like-minded group to a larger group with some power-hungry or greedy people in it to a group with an unwanted power structure.
When it is too late, rules don't work anymore because we all know who makes those when a firm power structure is in place. In the real world you could have a revolution, but physical violence doesn't provide power on-line. On-line only an enforcable group rule set could prevent such degeneration. If that can't be made to work, the only option would be to split off a smaller group and start afresh.
I'm afraid this would happen over and over again, and also create a miriad of tokens/currencies that have no wide appeal, not exactly something I am hoping for.
I think Steemit has a rule set designed in that actually enhances degradation into something most people don't want it to be, but which "works as intended" as far as Steemit, Inc. is concerned. This, together with the points you brought forward in your last postings, is why Steemit is in full decline "both socially and economically".
thank you for your post
nice post,i liked it and upvote
Your post deserves attention with my Upvoted
Great article! This is why I think holocracy is a much better solution than democracy because everyone chooses which laws they will follow. @bitnation is building a system that will use holocracy to compete with current governments. You should check them out!