Direct Decentralised Democracy

“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”
(Pericles)

Introduction

It is circa 2,500 years since Athenians trialled a radical form of civic administration, legislature, judiciary and government. Democracy was born in the age of dictatorial tyrants. Whilst it was not available to all people – only a limited class of male ‘citizens’ – it was nonetheless a radical attempt at combinatorial problem solving. It is now long past time for us to experiment again with direct democracy.

The limits of our increasingly symbolic democracies are becoming painfully obvious. We see capture of the legislative bodies, state agencies and media platforms that tell citizens what to think, what to do and why they should vote for representatives (that all too often will be funded and influenced by wealthy influential people and organisations telling them how to actually exercise their power).

Capture of state institutions and representatives continues through the judiciary, regulators, enforcement authorities, central banks and other state agencies. In addition, unelected civil servants will all too often skew the decisions of elected representatives by providing partial, biased or even misinformation.1

We are now at a point of delicate dangerous equilibrium, the weak individual citizen is faced with overwhelming odds in their effort to make sense of the world and how real power is exercised behind the scenes. Politically speaking, their voices and choices have become largely symbolic.

All too often we are encouraged by our representatives to vote against our own best interests or, even worse, to vent frustration for inequitable distribution of wealth and power at even more disenfranchised people and communities (the unemployed, immigrants, asylum seekers). As if the people with the fewest resources and rights are the cause of our own loss of relative economic and political power.

The propaganda is unrelenting, and in the information age it is an act of time-consuming activism to find alternative information and analyses and then consider how to try to take meaningful action. True democracy is as radical a concept now as it ever was.

Like a tree, democracy takes more effort to grow than to plant. It requires a continual struggle by the people to thwart actors that seek to game the system to promote inequitable outcomes. This means funding real investigative journalism, independent politicians and non-mainstream parties. It means extreme scepticism towards the representative democratic system and mainstream media, whilst remaining ever faithful to belief in each other. Belief in our power to make transformative change if we coordinate together in good faith. We must not let not necessary healthy scepticism descend into cynicism.

“We need quantum change – meaning we must have change in the rules of the system, meaning that we must have change in the state of the system – because once you fall into the stable equilibrium of our Black Days, it is impossible for incremental change or adjustment to get you out. Not just difficult. Impossible. That’s what an equilibrium means. We cannot just open a door that has been welded shut. We must blow the door open. We must Burn. It. The. Fuck. Down.”2
(Ben Hunt)

Diversity and Compossibility

When theory conflicts with reality, theory inevitably suffers.

It is believed that Einstein wished that his great theory of special relativity was known as ‘invariance theory’ and not ‘relativity theory’, since the independent speed of light was the universal ‘objective’ fact 3 that bound together relative (perspective derived) events in spacetime.

We have yet to reach a conclusion on the universal ethical law that holds together ethical perspectivism. To my mind, a sound ethical framework must be based on the universal imperative to foster conditions which are most likely to ensure the continuation of life itself (above the perpetuation of any particular species).4

From this guiding principle, we derive a universal principle of diversity of compossible actions and perspectives. Diversity is the crucial algorithmic driver of evolutionary success, given an entropically directed universe. Entropy dictates that the most beneficial features and abilities that will prove successful in the future can not be known in advance. Uncertain futures require humility and diversity.

“The existence of one individual may negate the possibility of the existence of another. A possible world is made up of individuals that are compossible—that is, individuals that can exist together.”5

Compossibility 6 is crucial, since some opinions and actions - such as fascism -will not allow for greater degrees of ethical freedom i.e. freedom of thought, speech and action for other participants. Ultimately, any ethical position (called an absolutist perspective) that prohibits a wide range of alternatives is not compossible and so can not be coded within the constitution of such a democratic framework.7

From these general universal concepts, we must build a practical ethical framework for dealing with conflicts. It is only in respect to conflict that ethics are required. In a universe with just one living entity there can be no ethical issues. Ethics is the practical framework to best manage the conflicts that arise when different people and groups are confident that their perspective and proposed actions are the preferred, good or right ones. Ethics covers all behaviour that impacts our individual rights and obligations, our communities and all other life forms.

The Problems of Relativism

As the reader will be aware, any position of absolute ethical relativism (known as perspectivism) is fraught with danger since it becomes impossible to distinguish ‘might from right’, or the furious noise of the passionately self-righteous from the quieter more moderate members of a community (interestingly – and thankfully often – they are in the majority).

Even with utilitarian theories, the lack of any universal underpinning, may mean that the majority of a community can lead a community over a cliff-edge towards the unethical destruction of minority opinions (and people). The 20th century taught us many things about the ultimate risks of racism, nationalism and absolutist/authoritarian social frameworks - in a new world with near unlimited technological capacity to inflict death and suffering. Sadly, we have reached a point in the 21st century where we need a reminder.

A universalist framework to mitigate the dangers and illogic of pure relativism is therefore necessary. Such an approach is justified, by analogy, with other laws that balance relative perspectives with universal objective truths. For Einstein, it was the speed of light that holds relativity theory together. In ethics, it is the value of life itself that must be the guiding light for encouraging relative ethical positions within a stable communal framework.

The imperative for maximising diversity of action gives rise to the need for structurally stable maximal diversity of thought, speech and action. These requirements must be coded into the foundational constitutions of any such democratic systems and DAOs.

Consensus +

Participants in a decentralised organisation are usually driven by a desire for decentralised and distributed systems of interaction on the basis that this best achieves the following objectives:

Anti-censorship
Anti-dictatorship/monopoly/oligopoly
Anti-fragility
Trust and enforcement based on common agreed code (not on the trustworthiness of counterparties) - aka code is law

Participation can be permissionless, based on proof of stake or zero knowledge proofs of identity, the latter of which could be particularly useful for developing decentralised democratic structures.8

However, sometimes consensus is needed on changes and developments that are considered to be either:

existential; or
fundamentally important to the continued success of the code base and community that support it.

The need for consensus can be solved using on-chain mechanics and secure messaging networks. The nature of the consensus needed and the level of consensus needed requires very careful consideration for issues that have a strong ethical consequence. It is therefore essential that communities can determine their own required and differing thresholds for approval of existential, fundamental, important and ethically trivial decisions.9

Democracy requires more than just voting

Many people have written about the possibility of distributed and decentralised democratic systems. Indeed, as mentioned, it is an issue that is very close to the heart of Vitalik Buterin, the most famous pioneer of crypto (after the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto).

The main issues that need to be dealt with in creating and maintaining a system of truly distributed democracy can be summarised at the highest level as:

Voting mechanics and integrity.
Information quality and integrity.
Subsidiarity.
Delegation of authority for administrative purposes.

Much has been written about the first and most obvious issue, since secure distributed decentralised voting structures have been pioneered in the crypto communities including with the evolution of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) whereby crypto token holders can propose and vote on allocation of resources, technology enhancements and other matters collectively.10

Subsidiarity is required so that issues are dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution. This envisages the need for local, regional, national and supra-national democratic DAOs.11

Much less work has been done directly on the first and the third issues which are crucial for us to evolve towards decentralised direct democracies. Given my self-chosen constraints in time, I will therefore spend the limited remaining space considering points 2. and 4. briefly.

Information is Power

Developers use the useful motto ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’ and the same can be said for democracy. There is little point in improving the mechanisms for real democracy, if the decisions being made are based on poor information (and often based on preexisting asymmetries of resources of participants providing such information).

A cursory glance at which persons and groups own the vast majority of ‘Western’ media organisations shows that by far the majority are owned by wealthy right-wing groups. In respect of State media, even in the ‘free’ West there are extraordinary levels of capture of the journalistic output and framing of news and human interest stories by governments or government appointed agencies (as highlighted by the Covid crisis and the Israeli war on Gaza).12

A useful and valid ethical framework (and a DAO using it) must therefore optimally manage the inherent conflicts and trade-offs required to ensure the system tends towards the highest degrees of information integrity and democratic integrity. In addition, the perfect cannot become the enemy of the good, inevitably we need to consider practical examples where action or omission is required in special circumstances (and where general consensus may not be desirable or possible).

There are many methods that could be experimented with to foster greater information integrity. I would expect it features the following elements:

Member awarded general points (‘kudos’) for posting useful information:
- Kudos points to increase over time for information that is posted and considered to be of high quality and integrity – a time multiplier is needed to partially deal with the time value of good information (i.e. it proves its worth by its resistance to successful challenge over time )
- The points system would have some weighting depending on the kudos value of the points awarder
Member awarded specialism tokens:
- Awarded to members in specific categories by other members with such tokens
- For example, a person providing a legal analysis of a situation, case or proposed law provided to the community would be able to gain law tokens from other legal specialists. Same for science, etc.
Community Value transfers:
- Gifting redeemable points by other community members for persons that provide significant value in science, journalism, literature etc.
- This is particularly useful to encourage decentralised information creation
Penalties:
- Loss of kudos for posting propaganda/information deemed overly biased or subsequently determined by X% of the community to be of significantly poor quality
- Loss of specialism points when a member is challenged and does not deal with valid concerns raised (see e.g. X Community Notes) 13
Members would be able to lose significant points and even potentially incur negative redeemable points (a value deficit) if they are determined 14 to have engaged in wilful or reckless misinformation or propaganda including on behalf of other actors.

Delegation and sortition

“At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or, alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.”15
(Noam Chomsky)

Delegation of, and monitoring, the necessary administrative services that need to be provided to such a community are crucial aspects of such a democratic structure. This brings into question how people and groups are chosen to fulfil administrative support functions, judicial decision and legislative proposal processes. In some cases only members with a specific number of specialism tokens and provable qualifications would be allowed to be selected for certain functions (e.g. law, science, history).

In addition to the need for skilled and experienced practitioners in various fields (including law), there is also the need for certain intelligence functions to be conducted in private forums (intel committees) which then feed back necessarily redacted information to the wider community to consider and vote upon.

Delegation to a member or a committee or other organisation will always be revocable based on agreed thresholds. Delegation would also provide for an agreed level of autonomous (though verifiable) authority so that decisions can be made quickly and more safely than can be managed in a wider community vote.

Athenians wisely devised a process of sortition and the use of a lottery machine in choosing citizens for various key functions, this was done on the understanding that otherwise democracy swiftly descends into plutocracy and kleptocracy – as the most powerful, wealthy and venal use their resources to secure key positions as democratic gatekeepers from which positions they can then farm the democratic processes for their own benefits.16

Athenian’s practical concern about the delta between the promise of voted representatives and the actual influence of centralised wealth and power on decision making are eye-wateringly acute 25 centuries later.

Technical Constraints

“Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed people but underrated among informed people”17
Vitalik Buterin

There are very many technical issues that need to be resolved in building the various necessary decentralised direct democratic architectures including privacy and data protection, device security, publication and voting security, the risk of spyware as well as mass surveillance techniques by anti-democratic persons. Such a system needs to evolve in an antifragile manner relying on sound game theory principles – since gaming the system is the oldest game in town.

Such issues are beyond the scope of this initial paper and this author’s intellectual bailiwick. However, after reading many papers discussing the technical difficulties related to decentralised democracy and security issues, I can only concur with Vitalik Buterin.

Next Steps

We now need a coalition of the willing to come together and start to build the necessary foundations for our collective future. Cryptographic tools finally provide us with a means for direct participatory democracies to unleash the power of combinatorial problem solving and ethically grounded economic and political activity.

The evolution of AI provides some risks but also some focus to our efforts. For myself, I see it as a creative tool and an imaginative stimulus to the task ahead.

We should ask ourselves what type of participatory system for making decisions would generally intelligent AI entities build for themselves?

We need to become such beings ourselves and AI can join us in that honourable labour.

Law, Like Love

“Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
Tomorrow, yesterday, today.

Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,
Expounding to an unpriestly people,
Law is the words in my priestly book
Law is my pulpit and my steeple.
…
Yet law-abiding scholars write:
Law is neither wrong nor right,
Law is only crimes
Punished by places and by times,
Law is the clothes men wear
Anytime, anywhere,
Law is Good morning and Good night.
 
Others say, Law is our Fate;
Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.
 
And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.”
(W. H. Auden)

1 For example, there is good evidence that Pres. Truman was misled about Hiroshima being a military target and base and that he also was not advised of, and did not consent to, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. He subsequently ordered a halt to further use of nuclear weapons, saying, according to accounts of a cabinet meeting, he didn’t like the idea of killing “all those kids.” Eisenhower also thought it was not necessary.

2 Fell on Black Days - Epsilon Theory, 2020.

3 Independent of the velocity of the observer.

4 A newly revitalised democracy extends much further than human rights and obligations. It requires assessments of the impact of decisions on other life forms and the protection of other species.

5 Compossibility - Wikipedia.

6 It is from this wider concept that we also get the crypto concept of operational composability.

7 The principle of diversity is a broad enough ‘church’ to allow vastly differing perspectives, insofar as they are compossible. Freedom of thought and speech may also extend further than freedom of action: If “liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people things they do not want to hear’.” (George Orwell).

8 Vitalik Buterin is a leading advocate for unlocking the value of cryptographic innovation for social change. He regularly deprecates the obsession with crypto gambling, cosmetic memetic communities and even good money over the wider deeper need for good society. His website contains a several informative articles that are relevant to this issue: https://vitalik.eth.limo/

9 Constitutional changes requiring the highest threshold for approving changes.

10 Though I must note in practice, many DAOs are not yet sufficiently decentralised given the proportion of token holdings held by a few members within the community: Introduction to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) - Chainalysis

11 For a non-crypto specific overview of the benefits of a more decentralised democracy see: Faguet, Jean-Paul, Fox, Ashley M. and Pöschl, Caroline (2015) Decentralizing for a deeper, more supple democracy. Journal of Democracy, 26 (4). pp. 60-74. ISSN 1045-5736

12 The BBC is neither independent or impartial: interview with Tom Mills | openDemocracy: since this article in 2017 the BBC has become increasingly under the control of the UK Government.

13 What do I think about Community Notes? - Vitalik Buterin, 2023.

14 By a sufficient number of voters/votes.

15 Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media | Documentary, 1992.