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Companies of the future: No CEO, no boss, managed by blockchain

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Re: Companies of the future: No CEO, no boss, managed by blockchain

#4
I don't get the revolution to the n'th degree thing. Companies in the modern world are ripe for really deep chnage (weird oasis of top down dictatorships in a democratic society, centrally planned economies trying to espouse free market thinking)

Ronald Coase' theory of the firm tells us as organising anything gets easier firm sizes will shrink - and the Internet should make organising anything easier - the blockchain being a great low cost such technology.

But - why the total war approach. Why "no leader, no management, totally decentralised". I think we shall see "Programmable companies" arise but this extreme article just seems silly - we will get revolutionary improvements - be happy and be prepared don't moan it's not enough.

Re: Companies of the future: No CEO, no boss, managed by blockchain

#5
They talk about members voting on external contractors. This is not really a new concept and it's basically how governments work too. And we know stuff like this is still susceptible to curruption and bribery. The difference is that with a DAO there's nobody to take responsibility, so these problems will be amplified. I don't really think it will work in general. There may be some narrow, specific things that this will work for but it can't replace actual corporations.

Re: Companies of the future: No CEO, no boss, managed by blockchain

#7
The concept of a DAO is too simplistic when presented in all these examples. An organization has multiple levels and on each level there are many decisions being made constantly. Some escalate up, some don't. You cannot just expect that each decision within an organization will be decided via a DAO's shareholder voting mechanism because what will ultimately happen is, there are so many actions to vote on, shareholders will ignore most. If there were 100 shareholders, 2 voted yes, 1 voted no and 97 didn't vote. Do you proceed? This is why a board exists, to represent the interests of shareholders. How much work do you think would get done if you needed to prioritize things with a large body of shareholders on a regular basis?

Re: Companies of the future: No CEO, no boss, managed by blockchain

#8

I don't get the revolution to the n'th degree thing. Companies in the modern world are ripe for really deep chnage (weird oasis of top down dictatorships in a democratic society, centrally planned economies trying to espouse free market thinking) Ronald Coase' theory of the firm tells us as organising anything gets easier firm sizes will shrink - and the Internet should make organising anything easier - the blockchai…

It's an exercise in thought and hive management. Will it work? Who knows.

My concern is that while humans can be terrible managers, an automated system that has no checks (depending on how it's set up) could end up being worse if it does not take into account dealing with unforeseen challenges and repercussions if it's dissociated from people.

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