Bitnation - Governance 2.0 on the Blockchain

Marketing
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BITNATION IS A FULLY INCLUSIVE GOVERNANCE SYSTEM

BITNATION offers a full range of services traditionally done by governments. We provide a cryptographically secure ID system, blockchain based dispute resolution, marriage and divorce, land registry, education, insurance, security, diplomacy, and more through a fully distributed platform.

BORDERLESS

BITNATION does not care where in the world you are from, where you live, or what passport you hold. Everyone has the right to enjoy high-end, competitive governance services.

DECENTRALIZED

BITNATION operates on the Blockchain - a cryptographically secured public ledger distributed amongst all of its millions of users around the world, to ensure peer-to-peer autonomy.

VOLUNTARY

BITNATION is dedicated to the open source philosophy, and provides a platform for users to develop their own governance functions, or fork the code and create a brand new governance system.

ACCOUNTABLE

STOCK DILUTION: There will be no new emissions of stock, hence current stock can never be diluted. See the shareholder contract terms and conditions for details.

FUND USAGE: All funds raised during the crowdsale of the initial 10% stock will go solely to start-up costs (see appendix for detailed start-up budget).

DISPUTE RESOLUTION: All contracts will be publicly administrated through the blockchain, and all conflicts will be arbitrated publicly.

“Only a free and dynamic market of governance services can produce the highest quality at the lowest cost, as well as constant innovation for its customers.”

RESPONSIBLE

OPEN SOURCE DATA: All code used will be open source code, shared on GitHub for the community to use, improve, and fork.

TRANSPARENCY: All financial documentation will be shared with the equity holders and the community of interest. All budgets are public.

ACCESS: We provide access to all the equity holders - as well as the public in general - to core team members and the community of interest.

INVEST IN THE GOVERNANCE 2.0 EVOLUTION

(All crowdsale related information is subject to change. Final crowdsale design will be confirmed by end of September.)
When and how will the pre-sale occur? XBN equity will be issued at a rate of 1000 per BTC raised during a 3 month crowdsale period, that price (1 mBTC per XBN) will ratchet up based on completion of stated development milestones.

Total XBN supply will be 5 times the amount issued during the initial crowdsale.

15% of the equity will be sold in a Series A offering within 8-12 months after the initial crowdsale, at least 5% being placed with private investors
15% will be sold in a Series B 20-30 months after the initial crowdsale, with 10% placed privately
30% retained for Founders/Employees
20% retained for Ambassadors and Advisers
How is the XBN price defined? Based on dividend yield and a multiple of aggregate cashflows. Play with our assumptions model to see XBN prices in different growth outcomes.

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This sort of application might be useful in decentralized clan affiliations (or “Burb Claves” as in the book Snowcrash or other decentralized “national” affiliations, as in The Diamond Age both books by Neal Stevenson–I’ve been thinking of these a lot lately).

Friendly societies used to be able to provide health care, etc., very effectively and cheaply amongst the poor, but such arrangements were basically made illegal due to medical lobbying of the guys with the guns.

I like the idea of just taking those functions back, gun-toteing government like it or no.

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I think this episode of “LetsTalkBitcoin” also adds some “Punch” to this tea party.

I love Stephanie Murphy’s view so much on this, this is worth listening.

:stuck_out_tongue:

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So Stephanie doesn’t want to take the chip…bad machine :slight_smile:

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Count me out to :slight_smile: global governance on any system like this is extremely dangerous, look at human rank debates we have, the edge cases allowing global control are very scary I think. Talk of buying protection and armies of vigilantes etc. are just crying out danger to me. This btination seems to offer everything including what’s wrong today, to everyone, I would hate to spread that to the third world as we grow.

I see big finance adopting bitcoin via regulation, imagine this happened on a blockchain that was regulated by the finance sector. I am oot o there man :wink:

Interesting idea, would be a great debate etc. but no I would be wary of jumping on such a thing, try seastead instead, try different things not put us all on the same system of governance.

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Well I don’t think we’d all be on the same system since the system is voluntary and can be forked. I do think there are a lot of sheeple out there that just love the idea of governance in some shape or other, they crave it. Even here on the maidsafe forums there’s tons of democracy this and taxation that. Some people just can’t escape the coercion conditioning mindset. So I think bitnation would be good for those that would like to elect to be ruled. Personally I don’t see a point to it really. I’d have to agree with Stephanie on this one: Global ID? Why? Education? Got that. Marriage? None of your business. Passport? Borders need to go anyway. I think bitnation might be good in that it could federate services for people that want them but what happens when a fork occurs and a new bitnation crops up. What’s the purpose of having two passports from two different cryptonations that have no geographic location? A cryptonation or cybernation redefines borders because it has no physical location. A cryptonation is defined by ideas and values not by geographic location. Therefore the principles that defined traditional governments and government structures really don’t work when it comes to a cryptonation ecosystem. I think maidsafe is forming in a way it’s own cryptonations because there is much discussion here about creating a reputation system and using it as a form of democracy. I find that a bit disconcerting but if that were to occur we’d in effect be creating a nation or set of nations based on various values would we not? Would it then not follow that various groups would want to identify and distinguish themselves with various values and fork the safe network into their own private internets respectively? If you are or could be opressed in the “common” internet then you’d want to form your own group to distinguish yourself. We think of the safe network as this global network that would always be on and perhaps that’s true but there’s a good chance it wouldn’t be alone and there would be other sibling networks along side it connecting and disconnecting intermittantly, sometimes for shorter sometimes for longer periods.

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TBH all I saw was the series and the series stuff from the original post and wanted to cry;

:no_good:

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I am not sure we have the capability for making this fair, it’s like voting and minority protection I think. The edge cases are huge, i.e. why weddings, deaths, hire maitia etc. Seems each issue needs well thought out and tested. I think my fear is the splurge of everything even bad for society things.
For sure I think a lot of this is good ideas, but I am very wary as the side effects to me are immense if done wrong, or in a way somebody can control somehow. The problem is way more than recording on a ledger, who records, who manages etc. are all unsolved issues that I would like to see planned in a lot of detail. I 100% support investigating though for sure.

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Ok fair enough. There are various ‘self-governance’ platforms being developed. I view each one as an experiment, such as democracyOS and liquidfeedback developed by the German pirate party. I think these experiments need to run for a good few years or so while the Internet is ‘upgraded’ security wise (Maidsafe + other methods). I’d imagine it may take a couple of decades of experiments and testing for a system to evolve that is advanced enough to use on a large scale.

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I think we all face fear of the changing paradigm. History and our education has taught us to think in heirarchies, and that’s a hard thing to shake, even when we start focusing on individual freedom.

The main thing I’m looking at is that individuals will cook these issues down for themselves, or will go along with someone else’s solution. Many will undoubtedly come up with different solutions, some of them contrary.

What is “wrong” with “government” is not the solutions it puts in place to deal with the needs of people. What’s wrong is the initiation of force, or the threat thereof, as the starting point. When you start with theft (taxation=compulsory contribution) and extortion (do what we say or we’ll put you in a cage or kill you), you can’t judge the result as moral, however efficient the laws affected thereafter.

“Government” has taken over many functions which are necessary to society order. But we can’t assume that initiating coersion is necessary to accomplish those functions.

I think “Bitnation” is a poor name for what these guys are trying to do, because the “nation” part harks back to the initiation of force which is inherent in government as we know it. I think they are merely looking for ways to accomplish, through voluntary means, some of what governments have been doing through initiated coersion. They DO state that participation would be voluntary.

We need to find better terms then “government’ or 'governance” for the organization of social order that don’t imply coersion. Then it will be easier to think about the end result of social organization without having to assume that it implies the initiation of agression.

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Government/governance has also propelled many functions which are not necessary, overtime changing people’s perceptions to think that they are. As Stephanie states in that LTB episode, marriage registry in America began so the state could prevent interracial relationship.
And land registries? How would this even be enforced if the whole thing is voluntary in the first place?

How about we first stop and think about the real situations where contracts bring benefit.

Plus, I hear Charles Hoskinson is part of this project now. When previously a member of the Ethereum team, he once infamously said Ethereum is “re-engineering society”. That’s just creepy and I fear what his influence may be on a project like Bitnation.

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Agreed.

True that the state started licensing marriage. That doesn’t mean that marriage is an invalid arrangement or that even making a voluntary record of it (public and/or private) isn’t desirable, for a lot of reasons.

I think you’ll find that land (and perhaps other property) registries or other public record keeping will always be vital in a stateless world. Just as forms of legal arbitration will be vital. How will all this be done? I can only guess and make proposals. But I think that a voluntary society will likely be even more regulated in many ways than one run by governments. But by “regulation” I don’t mean coersive or oppressive.

I recommend Stefan Molyneux’s treatises on anarchism. Check out www.freedomainradio.com . Tons of ideas with the underlying philosopy to make it more than just wild imaginings.

I don’t know anything about him, and very little about the bitnation project (or Etherium, for that matter), other than what I’ve picked up on the LTBC network. I’m guessing, though, that he’s looking for ways to achieve voluntary organization rather than force-based ones. If that’s the case, more power to him. Don’t let “re-engineering,” as a term, creep you out. @dirvine and the rest of the team (all of us included) are re-engineering the society by working to give individuals privacy and the ability to interact more freely and thoroughly, whether anonomously or with crypto proof of identity (and much more, as you know).

There’ll be LOTS of re-engineering going as things evolve. But hopefully it’ll be done ANT style :wink:, from the individual outward rather than from the top down.

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I would advise to stay well clear of Stefan Molyneux

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Well, none can say they haven’t been warned. :wink:

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I only heard about Bitnation today when I watched Max and Stacey and saw the interview with Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof. I thought it sounded very inspiring - not because I need or want governance, but because I have a vague idea of launching a trading community of like-minded people and I wonder whether a system of automated contracts could help maintain and uphold the community goals.

But when I looked at the website I was quite disappointed to see that it had a CEO and directors. Far from being a decentralised system, it looks like a bit of a hierarchy. The website design looks a bit like Ethereum minus the complex mathematical and philosophical thought processes. I think it’s a flash in the pan from a serial entrepreneur.

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haha a diplomatic reply sir :slight_smile:

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I was inspired by the bitnation project for approximately the same reason. I suppose the services provided are relevant in places where government is absent or malign… In Denmark this is not the case. Same sex marriage is already possible. Everything governance-wise works smoothly… Our problems lie elsewhere. Our economy is based on air, and too many people are feeling useless. All human interaction is ‘outsourced’ to specialiss. My interest in bitnation is that I’m e working on ideas about changing the economic paradigm towards t sharing and gift and service exchange based economy. A timebank might work well on top of the blockchain…

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Who knows what they’re trying to sell through their token ? I really can’t find any explanation about it?

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@fnogr You may want to check out http://abis.io
I took a step back from it due to lack of time, but it is still an active project.

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But registries only work if all parties agree that said registry is valid. If you sign a blockchain entry over ownership of a piece of land I’m homesteading, how does that work? What if the surrounding community recognizes that I’ve been living there and a welcomed member of the community therefore ignoring your blockchain registry title as well? I disagree that a voluntary society would be more regulated but would instead be more fluid and dynamic helping us realize that contracts don’t solve many of the societal problems we thought they would.

That dude has some serious issues. It’s pretty difficult to find reasoning between his estrogen based parasite and pro-Darren Wilson rants.

We’re re-engineering the Internet which is a tool that can evolve society but re-engineering society sounds much more direct and dangerous.