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Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

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Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#91

Post by savagepanda »

I do think voting once every 4 years is a bit out dated. this worked in the past because coordination across the entire country was difficult, but now this is not the case with the internet.

I'd like to see a form of government where more issues are voted on.

maybe I can proxy the voting decision to a representative for a group of issues that Frankly I'm not that interested in. But I should be able to vote on each issue if i feel passionate enough about it.

Maybe block chaining is a way to implement that.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#92

Post by SkyMarshal »

bandrami wrote: post #27

Yeah, yeah, the neoliberal global order is falling apart and we all applaud. The fact that over the past 20 years it saw the largest reduction in global poverty and inequality in world history? Doesn't matter: it made middle class tech-savy people in industrialized countries feel slightly constrained, so we're cheering as it burns.

>The fact that over the past 20 years it saw the largest reduction in global poverty and rise in inequality in world history?

FTFY

https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2015-01-19/...

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#93

Post by openasocket »

bandrami wrote: post #59
clarkmoody wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the 20 years before that also saw the largest reduction in global poverty in history. And the 20 before that. Not sure what's burning though.

Not remotely true. Mid-70s to mid-90s saw a huge increase in global poverty. Mid-50s to mid-70s did too. The last really sustained decrease in poverty before that was the 1890s and 1900s.

Do you have a source for that? Quick Google search indicates the global poverty rate has been steadily decreasing.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#94

Post by lacker »

solatic wrote: post #52
aaron-lebo wrote: post #6

I feel like the extreme decentralization people just ignore human nature which history has revealed time and time again. The wild west no existing power structure idea is great until some entity inevitably comes along and controls it and its not so decentralized anymore. Decentralization exists when a small enough community can be self-policing and actors have noble goals. That all changes when you get a single bad a…

You need to remember that Bitcoin wasn't designed with modern mining clusters in mind. Once upon a time you could actually get Bitcoin mining with a laptop, of course that's ancient history now, but Bitcoin was originally designed with the intention that if you were a Bitcoin user, you were probably running a machine that was running a mining client. You are correct that history hasn't been very favorable to the noti…

Bitcoin was originally designed with the intention that if you were a Bitcoin user, you were probably running a machine that was running a mining client.

This is not true - from early on Satoshi was describing how you could have thinner clients that didn't run a full node.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#95

Post by [deleted] »

savagepanda wrote: post #91

I do think voting once every 4 years is a bit out dated. this worked in the past because coordination across the entire country was difficult, but now this is not the case with the internet. I'd like to see a form of government where more issues are voted on. maybe I can proxy the voting decision to a representative for a group of issues that Frankly I'm not that interested in. But I should be able to vote on each is…

[deleted]

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#96

Post by visarga »

bbctol wrote: post #17
Willamin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That all changes when you get a single bad actor who takes advantage off their weaknesses and well-meaning nature and controls the new system I think part of the goal of these new decentralization movements is to create a system that has no weaknesses, despite how impossible that may seem. For example, using paper money has the weakness that people can counterfeit it. A naïve solution to that problem is putting sec…

But the weakness that causes people to take control of the Wild West isn't counterfeiting, it's just the inevitable end result of the chaos. The issue isn't fraud, it's that even people accumulating money honestly turns harmful over time; you acquire money because you're good at business, you use that money to buy out competitors, you pass that money on to your children as is your right, your children use it to conso…

So redistribution of money is necessary to prevent the accumulation of power. Blockchain is trying to do the same thing essentially - not allowing a single actor to operate more than 50% of the computing power.

When power concentrates too much, the system breaks down.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#97

Post by acdha »

heliumcraft wrote: post #81
acdha wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that vision from the perspective of historical voter coercion attacks: how would that not provide the perfect way for an employer, church, union, controlling spouse, etc. to demand to see how you voted? This is the same problem with Bitcoin privacy advocacy: it's a brittle design and the failure mode is complete, undeniable loss of privacy.

The voting would using a cryptographic system to ensure confidentiality. The coercion attack is an interesting problem but something that is already illegal but cannot be fully prevented. IMO it outweights the disadvantages of a centralized voting database that can be easily changed by a sys admin.

How would that magic crypto work? Remember, it needs to stop both willful vote selling and coerced checking.

Your second paragraph ignores the fact that the current system of anonymous ballots prevents the problem quite well, as evidenced by fraud rates measured in single-digit-per-billion levels, and paper ballots allow recounts without any use of computers and have the nice effect of making tapering a physically-diverse hard problem requiring a conspiracy involving far more people.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#98

Post by MBCook »

heliumcraft wrote: post #79
MBCook wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you would notice your vote was reverted. How? That means there is a record of my vote tied to my identity . That's not an anonymous ballot. Now you've opened up all sorts of other problems of coercion, etc. You'd have to get your key from the government, so there is a chance to get it. You could track every time someone voted and in which elections which would let you narrow down where they live pretty easily.

Well in this case such a voting would be done using some variation of a ZK-Snark (or some other cryptographic algo) which would allow you to check your vote counted, yet remain anonymous.

It has to be tied to my key. That means if people can get my key they can figure out my vote. That's an insta-no for me. Someone has to hand out the keys (since only registered voters can vote) so they can keep a record or be compromised.

In our current system you can find out that I voted, but not how I voted. That should be how it's setup.

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#99

Post by [deleted] »

heliumcraft wrote: post #81
acdha wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that vision from the perspective of historical voter coercion attacks: how would that not provide the perfect way for an employer, church, union, controlling spouse, etc. to demand to see how you voted? This is the same problem with Bitcoin privacy advocacy: it's a brittle design and the failure mode is complete, undeniable loss of privacy.

The voting would using a cryptographic system to ensure confidentiality. The coercion attack is an interesting problem but something that is already illegal but cannot be fully prevented. IMO it outweights the disadvantages of a centralized voting database that can be easily changed by a sys admin.

[deleted]

Re: Is Blockchain Technology Going to Disrupt Our Political System: We Hope So

#100

Post by smokeyj »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #6

I feel like the extreme decentralization people just ignore human nature which history has revealed time and time again. The wild west no existing power structure idea is great until some entity inevitably comes along and controls it and its not so decentralized anymore. Decentralization exists when a small enough community can be self-policing and actors have noble goals. That all changes when you get a single bad a…

Your arguments are:

1) Decentralized proponents just don't understand human nature

2) Decentralized power structures can't work because the wild west

3) Blockchains are only about making money

If this is the best HN could upvote I'm pretty optimistic about this whole decentralization movement.

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