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Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

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Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#51

Post by anoplus »

erispoe wrote: post #12

Governments take thousands of decisions. Can we really expect people to dedicate their time to vote all the time on these decisions? We risk ending up with a "democracy" where the power is really in the end of people having enough time and / or skin in the game to actually vote. Voter fatigue is already a known effect where places that vote the most are also the ones with the lowest turnout. California and Switzerlan…

I agree; in practice, people can't deal with gov all day. But there are hybrid gov models to address it, such as delegate democracy, which I foresee as next stage in the evolution.

Also, I think it's kind of viscous cycle situation. Bad gov reflects in personal-live problems causing the individual to have even less time to deal with the gov.

One day robots will work for us. We will receive UBI. We will have plenty of free time, so we can all be full-time governors.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#52

Post by SkyMarshal »

erispoe wrote: post #12

Governments take thousands of decisions. Can we really expect people to dedicate their time to vote all the time on these decisions? We risk ending up with a "democracy" where the power is really in the end of people having enough time and / or skin in the game to actually vote. Voter fatigue is already a known effect where places that vote the most are also the ones with the lowest turnout. California and Switzerlan…

To prevent voter fatigue, you have to make it difficult to get referendums/propositions on the ballot, and you have to make voting on the ones that do get on infrequent (like yearly).

But if the alternative is legislative bodies inundated with lobbyists and corporate money making big decisions for us, I'd be willing to experiment with any solution, even direct democracy like this.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#53

Post by olalonde »

> A new Distributed Proof of Work (DPoW) backed blockchain that is immune to centralization because of a unified client/miner with only one miner allowed per person, linked anonymously to a HUID.

The whole blockchain thing is built on the assumption that we don't have this HUID thing which solves Sybil attacks. Now that Sybil attacks are no longer a concern, surely there must be a more efficient algorithm than PoW to secure the chain.

> This ID is not centrally controlled, which will virtually eliminate all Sybil attacks, along with the vast majority of problems in peer to peer networks.

It's trivial to stop Sybil attacks in a centralized system... Making the ID decentralized certainly does not help in that department.

> A HUID generated through the intersection of revocable biometrics and cryptography.

Aren't biometrics (and by extension, identities) trivial to generate?

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#54

Post by JumpCrisscross »

AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #29
skummetmaelk wrote: post #5

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

1. It's harder to bribe all Joes. Much easier to bribe 500 people in a 300 million people. Actually, you may just have to bribe 100 or so, enough to tilt partisan things in your favor. 2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to. You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addicti…

> Much easier to bribe 500 people in a 300 million people

It's also much easier to force individual accountability on 500 people than 300 million. That sense of accountability is what drives compromise. Consider how often the electoral base drives compromise versus it occurring as a top-down necessity.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#55

Post by joshuaheard »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49
tom_mellior wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why systems like Liquid Democracy have delegation features. You don't elect representatives, but you can delegate ("lend", if you will) your vote on certain issues to them. And revoke the delegation at any time. Maybe Cicada could be equipped with something like this, but sentences like "The concept is so new that the word representativeless does not even exist. We had to invent it." don't look like the author…

Delegation doesn't mitigate large groups' tendencies to, in moments of emotional fervor, make incredibly stupid decisions that they wouldn't if forced to the a few weeks to think about it. This is the difference between e.g. the Californian and Swiss referendum systems [1]. California directly enacts popular thought into law. That makes lawmaking a game of finding moments when you can make the majority disinterested…

That's true, but you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#56

Post by dbcurtis »

AmIFirstToThink wrote: post #29
skummetmaelk wrote: post #5

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

1. It's harder to bribe all Joes. Much easier to bribe 500 people in a 300 million people. Actually, you may just have to bribe 100 or so, enough to tilt partisan things in your favor. 2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to. You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addicti…

> You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addiction as mental issue. You can have higher taxes but lower regulations. You can have higher military spending but no wasteful spending. You can have higher marginal tax rate while having simple tax code.

Well, you can. But will that really happen? Especially in the area of civil rights, it is difficult to defend a right of interest to a minority group from ill-informed or simply emtionaly-driven majority opinion.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#57

Post by JumpCrisscross »

joshuaheard wrote: post #55
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delegation doesn't mitigate large groups' tendencies to, in moments of emotional fervor, make incredibly stupid decisions that they wouldn't if forced to the a few weeks to think about it. This is the difference between e.g. the Californian and Swiss referendum systems [1]. California directly enacts popular thought into law. That makes lawmaking a game of finding moments when you can make the majority disinterested…

That's true, but you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy.

> you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy

Presumably based on the laws this direct democracy enacts? Observe California and imagine if every single law had to be passed through referendum. The system fails because people don't compromise across large, unaccountable groups.

Direct democracy is better used as a check on a small group of leaders, e.g. a right to popularly veto legislation (or Constitutional amendments) and a right to select the leaders.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#58

Post by joshuaheard »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #5

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

The same reason crowdsourcing works on sites like Yelp, Amazon, and TripAdvisor.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#59

Post by ciocan42 »

erispoe wrote: post #12

Governments take thousands of decisions. Can we really expect people to dedicate their time to vote all the time on these decisions? We risk ending up with a "democracy" where the power is really in the end of people having enough time and / or skin in the game to actually vote. Voter fatigue is already a known effect where places that vote the most are also the ones with the lowest turnout. California and Switzerlan…

In this real time everything, voting for matters every few years does not make any sense. The issues are hanging for decades and the progress is slow.

50%+1 voting process it is not optimal. A statistically significant number could be way down than half of population.

If voting process is convenient (meaning a tap away), secure, cheap and real time all the issues could be resolved much faster. Instead of decades could be months.

We are still in the stone age when it comes to policy and democracy.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#60

Post by JumpCrisscross »

thriftwy wrote: post #50
skummetmaelk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give out voting credits, influencers will call for votes on many small, but hot, topics to expend all votes and then ram through what they want. It's too easy to hack. In most western democracies, not necessarily America. Representatives can be held accountable and any corruption is usually exposed with dire consequences for their party.

It's also easy to counter. I can think how and so can you. What's the point of "ramming through" if it gets repealed in terror at the start of next cycle? Very potent point is that laws should be tried and then most of them should be repealed. Only a minority of laws should survive to permanence. Right now we pretend that we're capable of writing good laws from the first attempt.

> What's the point of "ramming through" if it gets repealed in terror at the start of next cycle?

You just characterized the see-saw retributionary populist democracies that trashed Latin America's economies over the 20th century. Policy instability is anathema for lower-level civic and economic self-organization.

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