Governance and Democracy within Safe Society

Community
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In the same way as requiring more resources to farm a Safecoin would be excluding of some. How does waiting until you’ve farmed 3 Safecoin instead of 1 or 2 affect Democracy in any case? It only means a user will be waiting a bit before gaining rights. It would not affect any normal user - just those wishing to game the system.

Yes, that is true, and applies in just the same way to Maidsafe’s proposed farming algorithm.

Yes we disagree here.

My argument is not based on analysis as nothing yet to analyse - is the farming algorithm based on analysis btw?

The rich person does not necessarily have to do this. Said rich people could register say 10 “unique human” identities, get voting rights for all in perpetuity and not contribute any resources - how is this beneficial to the SafeNet?
Anybody even trying to game the system I proposed would be providing more and more resources in order to do this. This could be effected by raising the basic requirement to be every 3rd or 4th Safecoin farmed - meaning any bad actor would be paying any multiple you want for each vote - without impacting Democracy too much. It favours good actors and hinders the bad - just like the farming mechanism. :smile:

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I think this is the most important statement in the whole thread. In essence what you are trying to do is superimpose a structure of decisionmaking taken from a society of humans onto a realm in which completely different laws apply. Democracy and voting have a place in our world of autonomous decisionmaking humans. We are the ‘building blocks’ of our network so to speak, our brains and voices, feelings and needs make up the matter of this network. SAFEnet is a different universe or may as well be, governed by a different set of laws. While there is a connection to humans and their decisions, the ‘matter’ of this universe acts completely different. It’s like ‘memes’ in human knowledge that ‘travel’ or genes that ‘express themselves’ through the genome. It is a mismatch of ideas. Trying to connect the two this way will keep bringing up the same conundrum. This digital space will evolve by it’s own rules, voting and democracy are ill-suited for decisionmaking in a realm without discrete actors.

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The free market is not the answer to everything, nor is it even applicable in the situation where a decision has to be made that affects the group as a whole. You are talking about an individual’s situation - not a groups.

The best way is for everyone in the group to do their own thing without concern for how their decisions affect/impact others? No…obviously not, groups make decisions for the group as a whole and individuals can only decide on things that affect themselves, not others - this is pretty basic reasoning I think.

By coordinate do you mean manipulate? Not everyone is primarily driven by money, there is the sense of community, building a better future etc.
This is clearly not something for anyone who doesn’t respect Democratic principles tbh. The idea is to pitch to the mainstream audience in order to attract more users - the vast majority of which do respect Democratic principles I think - probably about 90% I’d say. We can’t end up adopting a system that only a minority of the population agree with or even comprehend.
This is not one for the Anarcho Capitalists I would suggest.

Nice insult… I have my own brain thanks and have no wish to rule others - just plain wrong. :slight_smile: .

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Agreed, altough looking at the state of the world today, makes me wonder that most seem to lack a brain, most people that vote find thinking really hard…coughtrumpcough…

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Wow. First of all, this thread has so many openings for discussion.
I will line up some, later on go a bit more in depth, and maaybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll eventually get to the actual subject of the OP.

  1. Best platform for initial ideas?
    Something that has struck me, not only in this thread, is that creative thinking is very rapidly bogged down by hordes of … I don’t want to call them naysayers … but people that prefer the nitpicking part of the process, to be applied before the creativity has even got a foot hold… if you see what I mean.
    This leads me to think that for a many great deal of ideas, some initial free thinking in closer groups of people with the same rhythm in applying different strategies to the creative process, can cooperate in nurturing the ideas, and let nitpickers and other error-finding specialists have all the fun they want, when a few more steps has been taken in the process…

Maybe this already happens at large scale here, I don’t know. What I do know is that it seems a lot of thinking is thwarted early on, in what becomes long threads of discussions far from the initial ideas, loosing more and more participants (readers) the longer and more scattered they get (that is sort of an anti-democratizing power in effect, sort of).

Ok nuff said about that. This thread hasn’t gone all the way there, it’s just the tendencies are there.

  1. There is an idea of the perfect society. Cryptography is to some extent something “perfect”. Beautiful perfect math.
    A lot of discussions on these forums (on internet, among techies… and so on) about society, governance and in essence the relations between people, become rather fatigued by the misconception that the perfect beauty of our tools (cryptography for example) is something our societies can even come close. Societies, and democracy, is messy, because humans and human relations are messy, and that is the foundation of it. Not cryptography.

  2. Identity and SAFE network is a huge subject. I am thinking about it myself, how to combine these things, since SAFE net is so much about anonymity, and our societies are so much about identity. How do we build as much as possible of our society on the SAFE net (as so many in this community dearly wish). I cannot disagree more with Ron, who says that SAFE net is a different universe. That will make SAFE net obsolete, or at least will make it far less important to humanity than anyone here hopes. Any network with the ambitions of playing an important role in society, must be able to cater for the needs of the society. Unless we find away to abort ourselves from the need of identity, it seems that it needs to be implemented, somehow, in the network, within the processes of governance and democracy that are supposed to work on the network. This is true as far as the decision making is supposed to have any real importance to peoples lives. If the decision is not about something having real importance to peoples lives, real impact on their actual life, then yes identity is probably not needed.

But we’re talking about the big SAFE, the one that becomes a world wide network used by the whole world, not a tech hobby for a few, right?

Now… with the responses coming in here while writing this, I feel it’s necessary to look at my bullet #1 again.
Al Kafir, getting creative for real about governance and democracy, when half the thread is filled with comments from anarchists and total disbelievers in democracy, is not going to be a very easy imo.

Edit: I didn’t get to the OP stuff yet. I’ll be back.

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I know only too well what you mean and agree with the rest of your post… I was just thinking how frustrating this kind of thing is tbh :slight_smile:

This is the important bit, I also think that by creating an equitable online Society, the real world can learn and it could raise awareness and eventually systems that work could be mirrored in real life.
We need to largely cater for the mainstream not pander to every whacko idea out there, although providing a space for people to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t negatively impact others.
Thanks for your considered input and nailing the common recurring issue. It’s like wading through treacle sometimes… :smile:

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Yes actually, well… better than any other invented system I’ve come across - not perfect in many of its implementations though, which is why I have tried to address the common complaints, such as regarding the tax system etc.
As I say, I think the vast majority of people would agree with democratic principles, this includes actual thinking people with brains. This is not something that is indoctrinated in elementary school like a religion or something… … :smile:
Anyway as we’ve established you don’t agree with democracy or governance and its not something you’re interested in…perhaps we can move on and discuss the actual proposal?

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You expressed that objection because the object of your system is to incentivise people to spend resources back into the community. Ex. tying votes to vaults as, as you put it, those who contribute resources get to vote. Ergo those who DON’T contribute resources don’t get to vote. So the emphasis is on contributing resources not having wealth.

Also if there is no stated purpose as to what the money is for then there is no “Society”. It’s basically a pot to do with whatever the community decides to do with it? Why would anyone donate money to that? Purpose is what binds communities together. You are first presuming people would want to have a government at all. You are second assuming they’d want to organize democratically.

No I’m saying creating a voting system is obsolete just like every other form of government is obsolete. We’ve created a perfect system and now you want to bugger it up with government. The SAFE network will work fine without your politics! Yes the wealthy people contribute too, as I demonstrated by pointing out that if you hold coin on the network the network adjusts.

Let me put this bluntly. I don’t want to have elections on SAFE. I don’t want a “SAFE Society” I especially don’t want to tie vaults to votes and do anything at the network level. First off it’s a security risk. I don’t want to know how many real human beings use SAFE. The less we know about vault owners the better. Second if there is a “SAFE Society” then that means we’re creating just another authority to manipulate control people. FORK THE NETWORK! If there is government on SAFE I say fork the network. One of the advantages to SAFE is there IS NO GOVERNMENT! If you want a government or something like it build it at the app level.

What would you be making decisions on? Say you made your democratic society. What would you be making decisions on? If we’re talking a legal system why are we talking something new. There’s already a bitlaw project covering polycentric law. Why is this even needed?

You’re missing the point. Not contributing resources is paying to vote. You didn’t help build the garden so you don’t get a say on what gets planted. You are paying with labor for your vote. So to continue the metaphor either you are saying those who don’t run vaults are not part of the SAFE community (even tho they may buy safecoin and use the network) and therefore do not get a say in what to “plant”. Or you are saying that one’s vote costs x amount of labor and only those with that amount of wealth can participate.

My solution? Don’t base voting on the contribution of resources. I don’t support the core idea. Human beings are not nodes.

I do not support having a SAFE Society as a whole. Communities yes, projects yes, coming together to DO something yes, building specific apps yes, coming together around a specific value or set of values yes, but simply because we all use the internet? No absolutely not. And I do not support the idea of having vaults tied to votes or anything at the network level. Perhaps an API to allow one to link one’s vault data to an MD data of some sort so one could create a vote coin based on whether one was a unique node or not but not something network wide.

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In Europe, many countries have digital ids that can be used for legally binding digital signatures. One way to get a proof of unique human in those places would be to make an app where they could use an ID like that to sign a hash of their personal number or something like that. Then you would have the ability to connect a real ID to an account in SAFE, but you could still have the ability to use that ID for things like voting, but anonymously. Though, to make it completely anonymous you would have to have some way to do things without anyone else being able to link your actions to the personal number. I’m sure there is a way though.

Estonia allows non Estonians to get such an ID by sending a scan of passport and fill some forms, that could be a way for people living in countries without digital ids.

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  1. This only incentivizes the use of government IDs.
  2. This doesn’t prove one is human, it only proves one has an ID in one’s possession.
  3. One can create multiple SAFE accounts.
  4. This would require the governments in question to be cooperative with the app developer to validate the legitimacy of IDs. Otherwise one could simply create a forged ID to game the system. This would mean the government would know specifically how many of it’s citizens were using the SAFE network, and who they were, at least if they were using this app. Therefore it compromises anonymity and becomes a security risk.
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  1. Yes, but only a single time. You would have to use a government id and you would need some company to run the app that connects to the government servers etc, but it would be a one time thing, once it’s signed your SAFE account would be as valid as the government id.

  2. You’d use the personal number to prove you are a unique human basically. If someone has multiple citizenships, then maybe they could create multiple ids, but one ID should be enough to prove a citizenship at least.

  3. That doesn’t matter, you’d make it so one account can only be connected to one id/personal number.

  4. It wouldn’t necessarily require the governments to be cooperative. Many of these ID systems are made by private companies, and they’re generally open for companies to get an account with the system anyway. As I mentioned in point 1. it would require a trusted third party company to execute the step where you verify your account. Getting access to these systems costs money and you can’t just connect directly, you need an account set up by a company. That company would know who registered to the SAFE network, but I think it could be set up in a way so that’s the only thing that they would know. I imagine it should be possible somehow to set it up so that they wouldn’t need to now the SAFE Network account id of the user in question either, only if someone with that personal number has already registered an account. You’d do something like send a hash of your personal number. The company would have a private key that they use to sign that they have verified one personal number, so it could be checked if someone with that personal number has already registered an account. I don’t see how it can be a security risk if it’s known that someone has a SAFE account, any less than it’s a security risk knowing someone has a bank account, but not knowing the bank account number or any other details.

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Because in some countries the government may make the SAFE network illegal similar to how they have outlawed the use of cryptocurrency in some countries. Thus if there was a handy register of people who were on the SAFE network all they’d need to do is go around and arrest everybody. Hence it would be a security risk. If you are engaging in activity that may at some point be outlawed you do not tell the government. Yes I’m sure the government could find out without such a database but it just makes it easier to round people up. It’s like a gun registration.

This identifies one within the system but doesn’t prove one is human. The system assumes one is human already. This is why having your ID stolen is such a problem and needs to be reported right away. There is nothing to stop one from simply stealing an id and entering in someone ELSE’S ID number.

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These countries probably doesn’t have these kind of digital ids anyway.

It is a pretty good proof. If you want to steal someones id, you have to steal a physical device for them and you need to know the pin code. This would be unlikely to happen unless someone was robbed at gunpoint and forced to give up their pin code, but then they could just call and say their id was stolen and have it disabled within a short time.

If you enter the pin code wrong 3 times, the physical device is disabled and you can generally not get a new one in any other way than having it shipped to your government registered address.

The Estonian e-citizenship is probably what would be the easiest to fake, so it could be a challenge to get this system to work with countries that doesn’t have such ID systems implement and be guaranteed that it’s not a fake id.

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This is done through a concept of free association. I can choose to voluntarily associate with groups whose actions and values I agree with and disassociate from those that I don’t. Since this concept allows people to vote with their feet, democracy or any other form of governance is unnecessary. The problem arises when we are forced to remain in a group that is not aligned with our interests.

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This happens time & again in many places, this forum included.

There’s a relevant post I read recently about saying ‘yes, and’ instead of ‘no, but’:

https://read.theheretic.org/yes-and-vs-no-but-b87f603da665

There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging different opinions, but always try to construct and find solutions rather than tearing down before concepts get a chance to develop.

Hope the discussion is positive and productive towards some kind of framework, even if it’s 3 different competing visions based on various ideologies / assumptions.

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“The price of criticism is offering a sound alternative” - no idea where I picked that up but there’s some sense to it imo.

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Mmh, I see why you think what you think, it’s not quite what I had in mind but more on that later.

Guilty, that’s me, point taken…
So, let’s try a more constructive approach.

First, what constitutes an online identity? A lot of things are straightforward, peoples names, pictures, movies and personal stories. These things directly relate to real people that can be identified simply because they choose not to hide their identity. SAFE net will be full of this because it is human nature. Other parts also relate to real people in more indirect ways, say medical records or other guarded data.
Because security and anonimity are part of SAFE nets raison d’être there will be a lot going on that cannot be tied to a specific person.

And that is exactly the point of the whole endeavour, the freedom that provides, the security, no one can come after your physical body.

So how do we mediate in a realm in which all we have are user ID’s and no way of knowing what lies behind such an ID (could be a person, a chimpansee, an AI, alien or a group of people for that matter, this is what I meant by a different universe) ?

Voting with coins or resourses raises equitability problems and trying to tie user ID’s to people is impractical and kinda negates the whole point of it.

In real life we value certain people because of positive traits that contribute to society, wisdom, knowledge, good humour, selflessnes, caring, craftsmanship. Same goes for the digital realm, if a user ID contributes to the SAFE net society in a positive way, maybe the other user ID’s can award that ID with influence.

This would amount to a reputation system in which other users ID’s can award points of some sort for certain actions. This way all user ID’s carry some hypothetical ‘stamp of approval’ which is weighted by other user ID’s.

This can be specific or general, for example a user ID which posts expertly on coding and delivers excellent advise will be rewarded with points in the ’ coding’ category which weighs his coding stamp of approval and increase his influence in matters of coding. Mind you it doesn’t matter if this user ID is being run by a teenager, an AI, or a team of software engineers, all that matters is the online ‘persona’.

Maybe such a system can be shaped in a way that resists reputation farming and other tendencies to subvert. One of the main advantages can be that it encourages people to engage with the SAFE society in positive ways, because it simply pays off. Differentiate enough and someone (some user ID) who makes great jokes is seen and rewarded for his positive contribution, irrespective of what lies behind that ID.

Of course, I can see all the myriad ways in why this won’t work because of this or that, but in the spirit of trying to come up with something instead of nitpicking, here’ my two cents…

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Safenet, when it is built, will be open source. Then anyone can create any kind of governance they want and create any number of solutions. Then people can join the network or networks they want to join. The unpopular ones will die out, the system will become stronger. We don’t all have to agree. No majority will be oppressing a minority.

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I agree the engineer’s have put so much quality time, and it would not be fare to have Mark Cuban or some whale to come and blow it up to soon. It has taken me 5 years to cultivate a incredible diverse clients that go up to very high level confidentiality that I will need help to perform an app for this team that will be all over Europe. When the line is fully secure. It will just be maybe 10-20 % of the clients. I only have less than 200 social clients but each one has maybe 100’s of dedicated followers. Each contact I personally know and would be so appreciate of this service. So Iam from a medial science
background so Iam just following and trying to learn. But
it’s would be very high quality apps. So I have never even done an app on the regular clearnet so humbled
and appreciate just been on the team. Once it gets very
easy to use for my client’s I have to personally meet with them Iam from old school. Thank you ! Kalelemaslo
Polynesian for Trust with Gratitude. Have a nice weekend Cheers!

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So, not so much technical stuff, yet. But some thoughts:

Regarding @TylerAbeoJordan’s initiative, the SafeApp Foundation ICO.
I definitely agree that a DAO would be preferrable over an ICO.

In that topic, some seemed to be ambivalent or even against it.
I definitely see a need for it, but at minimum see its potential benefits.

Collaboration and focus of goals and resources has always been the way to achieve greater things. Whether that be a business venture or foundation or other collaboration.
What we desire is to kick start SAFE Network, or at minimum, just give it the best possible opportunities to thrive.

Here in the community we have visionaries, we have capitalists, we have inventors, people working hard, people with a lot of knowledge, and pretty much all in between.
It’s not very controversial to assume that given the right selection of this group, and the right goals, these resources can be put to achieve a lot.

Some think that the greatest thrust forward will come from the world of developers (teams etc) out there, as the awareness of SAFE and it’s potential spreads. And that I see as quite likely too.
But how will this awareness spread?

I’m a developer, and what gets me most excited are real examples. Not fancy marketing, but code, apps, implemented functionality, solved problems - which themselves open the doors to new problems to be solved. That’s what gets me going.

So, by that I mean to say, if there is a way to pump in good visions and resources into producing some of the top wanted apps on SAFE, then those apps will be the absolute best marketing for SAFE and they will be the best attractor for the large masses of developers/teams entering.

I think there’s a very good chance that when having the right people, focusing hard and with enough resources, you will be able to do the above.

Regarding the extended topic of the OP and the question of a Safe Society / Safe Democracy / Governance system:
Talking about a “Safe Society” will probably require some sort of time aspect. If Safe grows big, then there will be various stages.
We could always try envision what Safe could be to us, wether that be what it ideally should become, or what it seems likely to become in the short term.

DAOs can and will be constructed in different ways, and the different purposes will shape them.
As I mentioned in previous post, some things will not require real identity of people, while other things would.
So, how the ideal DAO would be shaped, would depend on the purpose of it.

Some DAOs could be using liquid democracy, which would mean that you would be able to delegate votes. Others would use direct democracy, where 1 person is 1 vote.
Yet others would involve reputation systems, stakes, and other sorts of proofs of contribution, effort or skin in the game - and combinations of these.
Voting power based on reputation is actually a sort of liquid democracy, but where you can not only delegate (you dilute yours and everyone else’s vote weight when you increase the weight of an individual, and by that you have delegated some of your vote) but also remove voting powers from others, and give it to all others, by downvoting.

For things not requiring proof of unique human, I would consider something like:
Putting in basic payment to get the ability to vote, and then getting upvotes for comments, which could be traded for more voting power (to be burned) or cashed out, or kept for status. This would enable multiple incentives.

Tying votes to farming would be just one of many ways, which you could do this.

About governance and SafeNet and having a starting point, if only to at least decide on what governance system that would be adopted. I think governance of SafeNet might not be exactly what we should start. But governance of a supporting entity to the Network, an incubating environment for it, that I think is just the perfect level.
I see no reason what so ever why not setting up a sorts of debating chamber with voting enabled for this purpose. I would even like to see some voting already, not sure about what, but the concept is very appealing, and to just start there would be really fascinating.

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