Rule by Futarchy / Prediction Markets [tonight's research]
Is Steemit the world's first successful launch of a high-speed, low-barrier network, one that enables futarchy-type governance? Because voting is at the core of every piece of information available on Steemit.
Humans are rational creatures and will operate to maximize (individual and collective) welfare if distribution of information is antifragile enough (whatever that means). And prediction markets are there to dampen any dangers, or shocks to the system.
We may live in a world of scarce resources, but what if we build an environment of abundance? Social currency is programmable now.
Prediction markets may be a market approach that fixes the language of politics. Here's an excerpt from http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html:-
Futarchy seems promising if we accept the following three assumptions:
- Democracies fail largely by not aggregating available information.
- It is not that hard to tell rich happy nations from poor miserable ones.
- Betting markets are our best known institution for aggregating information.
Anyway, rule here is a bit of a misnomer. There's a quote that says "The best way to predict the future is to build it". We predict as we build.
I'm writing a longpost titled "Redefining Money as Token of Abundance / Bootstrapping The Abundance Economy" and as usual, I don't have a conclusion in mind. Or may not even know what I'm writing about lol. But writing through the fog of war is something that I find enjoyable doing :)
Highly recommend the book "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez on this subject. It's a fiction book that shows the implications of attempted "radical decentralization," and, because it's fiction, what the possible results might be, if one is as intelligent as the book's protagonist. The book's protagonist dies at the beginning of the book, leaving only video-game-level AI programs in his place (ie: "futarchy systems" that correctly estimate human nature, predict human actions, and use those responses to trigger new events using newsfeeds).
You wrote: "if distribution of information is antifragile enough (whatever that means)." -Antifragile is not destroyed by resistance, it grows stronger as a cybernetic system, under resistance. An example is bone strength: if you do not stress your bones, they will grow weak. This is why fat people often have very strong bones: the bones respond to the stress of carrying the weight, by growing stronger. That cybernetic("goal-seeking through feedback and correction") system was selected by evolution(itself a cybernetic system), because systems that didn't make bone-growth responsive to additional weight were unfit for significant reproduction; selected against.
In the past, in evolution, no weakness was universally exploited (not all viruses were airborne, even the airborne ones couldn't travel to every meter of the Earth and infect all possible organisms that were exploitable by their machinery). With the advent of computation, this is no longer inherently true. Human+ (group human and group computer) systems CAN parasitize all who are vulnerable. ...But they need not do so "all at once."
This means that pro-freedom systems need to be smarter than parasitic, predatory(tyrant) human cybernetic systems.
Futarchy is not the most intelligent system. It's an attempt to refuse to perform the harder work of reinstating liberal democracy(which most libertarians lack a plan for accomplishing anyway). Most smart nerds want to find a way to "program freedom" with no political component. This seems like the non-messy, less-risky way of accomplishing their goals.
But there is probably no non-risky, "clean" way of reinstating liberal(libertarian) democracy.
Seems like an interesting book, one that @ned mentioned before as well (i think), gonna check that out. I believe that human behaviour is part of nature, and wouldn't say humans are predatory.
Definitely worth a read
3 vouches - definitely a go. great if there's an audiobook :)
One of my favourite science fiction books. Get on it Kevin! Certainly an audio book out there
Awesome piece. Thanks for sharing. Upvoted and following.
I recently made a post that supplements your blog and thought your followers may like to see it.
Steem really does have Jaw Dropping Scalability..!!
https://steemit.com/steem/@stephenkendal/steem-really-does-have-jaw-dropping-scalability
Thanks again for sharing your blog.
Stephen
Nice to see people having fun experiencing the platform :)
Just getting used to the platform. Dan picked up on it and I have appoligised. I have been working tirelessly the last few weeks bringing followers over from twitter and linkedin and just wanted to share the presentation as much as I could. Didn't realise it would be classed as spam. I appologise if I affended anyone. Stephen
Awesome I'm researching something similar. Looking forward to your posts
Likewise :) - what are you into atm?
Wings.ai DAO and futuarchy