Paper feedback

[lrettig]

Massive effort! Great paper, I learned a ton 👍

• The paper as it stands presupposes that democracy is the best or default or only option for sovereign governance. Why not start the paper with a short treatment of why this is the case?

• I'm not a huge fan of the quotes that open each section, e.g., "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. Carl Schmitt, political theorist (1888-1985)." Personally I find these a bit distracting and I don't feel that they add a lot of value to the paper.

• The paper describes how a sovereign can be endowed with funds at its creation, but what about ongoing fundraising, i.e., taxation? There is no provision for this.

• 1.1: Cite references for statement “barriers are implemented with requirements such as the need to register to vote through an excessively bureaucratic process that ends up blocking…”

• 1.4: I’m not sure that invoking “humans versus robots” here is necessary or useful, it doesn’t directly advance the argument

• 2.5.2.1 Quadratic voting says: "This makes any delegation tax the delegator by reducing the opportunity cost of delegating to another member. This method prevents the rise of monopolies within the market dynamics of liquid democracies, always making the participation of all members relevant.” This is a bit unclear, I don't understand what these sentences are arguing.

• 2.5.4: “alternative facts” should be in quotes

• 3.2.4 says: "If 51% of the nodes in the network accept the verified block, it gets chained to the blockchain and the miner starts working on the next transaction block using the accepted block as the previous hash." In the case of bitcoin this is not strictly true, it's not this simple. As the network is entirely decentralized, each node decides independently whether to accept a block, and which chain to accept as canonical--i.e., the node doesn't know and doesn't care how many other nodes have decided the same. In this fashion a consensus emerges whereby all nodes converge on a single canonical chain over time--but the nodes may split for a period of one or more blocks before consensus is reestablished.

[domi41]

Hello @lrettig ! Thanks for the review !

The paper as it stands presupposes that democracy is the best or default or only option for sovereign governance. Why not start the paper with a short treatment of why this is the case?

Do you know of good papers to that effect, that could be cited ? The ultimate sovereign form of government is probably anarchy, democracy being only second best.

I'm not a huge fan of the quotes that open each section, e.g., "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. Carl Schmitt, political theorist (1888-1985)." Personally I find these a bit distracting and I don't feel that they add a lot of value to the paper.

I've got to second that. They make the paper less academical, less serious maybe. Just a feeling.

The paper describes how a sovereign can be endowed with funds at its creation, but what about ongoing fundraising, i.e., taxation? There is no provision for this.

What would we use the tax money for ? I can't figure out why we would need money at all. Maybe pay the DEF team to coordinate the development efforts ? Pay a server to run a a node ?

If that's the case, can't the Collective issue votes and sell them ? It's not a tax per se, but it's money over time.

[santisiri]

it would be interesting to gather other thoughts regarding quotes. if @domi41 @lrettig feeling is shared, i have no issue on removing quotations.

[santisiri]

The paper as it stands presupposes that democracy is the best or default or only option for sovereign governance. Why not start the paper with a short treatment of why this is the case?

I know you don't like quotes, but a Churchill one should suffice: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

It's not the goal of this organization (Democracy Earth Foundation) to question democracy.

I'm not a huge fan of the quotes that open each section, e.g., "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. Carl Schmitt, political theorist (1888-1985)." Personally I find these a bit distracting and I don't feel that they add a lot of value to the paper.

I'm fine with removing these. Curious about the thoughts of others.

The paper describes how a sovereign can be endowed with funds at its creation, but what about ongoing fundraising, i.e., taxation? There is no provision for this.

Funds are voluntarily to be contributed by investors, founders, donors of organizations. What do you mean by taxation specifically?

1.1: Cite references for statement “barriers are implemented with requirements such as the need to register to vote through an excessively bureaucratic process that ends up blocking…”

Could be useful to find articles referred to this. I remember the experiences shared by my friend @zachlatta when they had to build http://vote.org for the 2016 election. For example: in NY the vote registration site does not operate on non-office hours (!). The fact that each state has different rules also makes it very confusing for american voters. The largest piece of evidence, of course, is that 50% of legally able voters don't participate. In countries (like Argentina) where voting is mandatory, even thought turnout goes down, it is on a range of ~70 to 75% still.

1.4: I’m not sure that invoking “humans versus robots” here is necessary or useful, it doesn’t directly advance the argument

It's not 'human vs. robots' but rather understanding the political dimension of AI.

2.5.2.1 Quadratic voting says: "This makes any delegation tax the delegator by reducing the opportunity cost of delegating to another member. This method prevents the rise of monopolies within the market dynamics of liquid democracies, always making the participation of all members relevant.” This is a bit unclear, I don't understand what these sentences are arguing.

The more you delegate to someone, the less you can delegate to others (opportunity cost increases quadratically). The aim of doing so quadratically is to prevent monopolistic players in the system. If delegations are linear (without taxing any strong bonds) then monopolies emerge (for reference check any capitalist society).

2.5.4: “alternative facts” should be in quotes

Haha.. this is "probably right".

3.2.4 says: "If 51% of the nodes in the network accept the verified block, it gets chained to the blockchain and the miner starts working on the next transaction block using the accepted block as the previous hash." In the case of bitcoin this is not strictly true, it's not this simple. As the network is entirely decentralized, each node decides independently whether to accept a block, and which chain to accept as canonical--i.e., the node doesn't know and doesn't care how many other nodes have decided the same. In this fashion a consensus emerges whereby all nodes converge on a single canonical chain over time--but the nodes may split for a period of one or more blocks before consensus is reestablished.

It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss bitcoin. This was used merely as an example.

[domi41]

@santisiri I'd vote to at least keep a couple of them (header / footer), but not in front of every chapter. But this preference is based on the habit of reading boring, grindstone papers, so I don't feel strongly about it.

[santisiri]

@domi41 this morning i read a paper from legendary claude shannon on juggling and i remembered your thoughts since it starts with a massive quote :)

[marcoht]

Guys, Sorry if here is not the appropriate place to ask this. In section 2.5, before the 2.5.1, the figure explaining how smart contracts would work in Sovereign, Alice cast 3 of her votes to vote in an issue. Is that correct? The concept behind Sovereign means that I can cast any number of votes I have available to an issue? Thanks!

[domi41]

Welcome !

The best place for these questions would be the slack, methink. Unless you want to debate about it, in which case it needs its own issue :smile:

The concept behind Sovereign means that I can cast any number of votes I have available to an issue?

Yes !

[marcoht]

Thanks @domi41 for the answer... I'm really not specialist of this subject, and I might need to understand better the concept, but seems to me that joining these two features of Sovereign (monetary value for the tokens; possibility to someone cast any number of votes to an issue), would need a good clarification in the FAQ at least... Mainly because in most poor countries the commercialization of votes is really common...

[Tasty213]

The paper doesn't clarify the value of the Vote token very well. As in how does it ensure or have the abillity to ensure that its not just the wealthy who amass all the tokens (by hiring others to attention mine for them).