Double democracy

[macterra]

@joestartupsocieties suggests:

I suggest creating two rules new rules to govern finances for the Ulex Open Source Community. Rule 4: 10% of all bounties must go to the Ulex Open Source Community Fund for management expenses. Rule 5: The budgeting of the Ulex Open Source Community Fund will be governed similar to Tom W Bell's double democracy. The Ulex Advisory Board proposes a budget and discloses meeting meeting minutes to the community. Users have the ability to veto the proposed budget with a 3/4 majority.

[macterra]

Excellent idea. Would you agree these rules should be added to the existing Bounties rules?

How should we represent the Ulex Advisory Board within Lexinomicon? e.g. One role for a representative of the board? I'm thinking if we have more than one player that is also a member of the UAB then we'll need additional rules to determine their (possibly conflicting) directives. As always, the devil is in the details!

[Flaxscrip]

@joestartupsocieties - To begin implementing the idea of double democracy, it seems we need to define & document the process for two groups:

1- Ulex Advisory Board - Is this a public board? Do we publish voting records? etc. 2- Ulex Open Community - This could be anyone who registers to play in the Lexinomicon.

[joestartupsocieties]

1) Ulex Advisory Board are public in the sense that their voting decisions and meeting minutes are public. However, membership is not open to the public since they are people who have made a financial or equivalent in-kind contribution. 2) Ulex Ope Source Community - Yes, that makes sense to me.

[joestartupsocieties]

The Advisor board will consists of multiple members, but all of their decisions will be made as a single entity. Even if individuals within the board disagree, if there is a simple majority, the AUB will move towards that direction.

[Flaxscrip]

Tom's paper describing double-democracy is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2622627

[Flaxscrip]

The current "generic" bounty process inherited from the Cryptonomicon is described here: https://github.com/ulex-opensource/Lexinomicon/tree/master/Projects/Bounties

[Flaxscrip]

The current bounty process has 5 steps:

1. Triage
2. Proposed
3. In Progress
4. In Review
5. Complete

A simple initial implementation of the double-democracy model could:

1. Triage Gate: one-person/one-vote. Anyone is allowed to join the community to propose and participate in the prioritization of bounties in the Lexinomicon Wiki. Only requirement is to be a valid player in the Lexinomicon and follow the bounty process rules.
2. Proposed Gate: one share/one-vote. Approval of community proposed bounties needs to go through the board. Depending on the frequency of board meetings, there would likely be multiple proposed bounties to be reviewed in any one board meeting. Board decision will instruct the Treasurer to perform the Bounty process tasks as described in the Lexinomicon.
3. In Progress Gate: one person/one vote. The community will manage the bounty development and progress according to the rules defined here in the Lexinomicon. The Keymaster in charge of delivering the bounty functionality will provide progress reports to the community according to the rules of the bounty process.
4. In Review Gate: one share/one vote. The Keymaster responsible for delivering on the bounty can trigger a review of deliverables for bounty payment. We would add a step to the current process requiring the Gatekeeper to notify the Board that a bounty has been delivered. The Board would issue its decision to the Treasurer to release payment to the Keymaster.
5. Complete. The Keymaster who delivered the bounty closes the issue indicating to the community that payment has been received and accepted. The Bounty is closed. The Lexinomicon contains the entire bounty history for future review or audit.

This allows us to actively implement and exercise a basic form of double-democracy in managing the Ulex bounties.

[macterra]

What is the rationale for assigning 1p/1v to stages 1 and 3 while assigning 1s/1v to 2 and 4?

[joestartupsocieties]

I like the process as it as written. I am fine with it moving forward.

[joestartupsocieties]

As a github noob, i'm not sure I should have closed this issue yet.

[macterra]

We'll close the issue once the work is done, reviewed, and merged to master.

[Flaxscrip]

Let's keep in mind that I'm going for a simple implementation of the double-democracy concept. We could design a much more thorough set of rules where both voting models need to be engaged at each step in the Bounty process.

But for an initial launch, a rationale for the current assignment:

1. Triage: We want to be open to as many ideas from the community as possible. This will be an area of high engagement with the world. Favoring "one-person/one-vote" here seemed to show "due regard for each individual’s equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In particular, democratic processes typically aim to uphold the principles of anonymity, ensuring that voters can exercise their electoral rights without fear of reprisal, and of neutrality, ensuring that each vote gets (roughly) the same weight." (Bell - http://ssrn.com/abstract=2622627)

2. Proposed: This is where money gets involved. Favoring the "one-share/one-vote" here now seems to make sense since this is the stage where the project begins to get involved with other organizations to raise funds, etc.

3. Progress: The project will be built over time by a collection of people and organizations. This progress phase will probably be the first one requiring better balance between the two voting system. I started with one-person/one-vote since the user community will ultimately determine whether any project is built to specifications and acceptable. The share-holders will also certainly want more influence here as well.

4. Review: This is where bounty payment is released. Likely an area where one-share/one-vote is appropriate.

Plenty of room for debate and no doubt these will be the first rules to be improved once the Lexinomicon becomes known to the Ulex community and greater public.

[Flaxscrip]

Question @joestartupsocieties - Do we have other examples of groups/communities having implemented or tested the double-democracy concept?

[joestartupsocieties]

Not that i'm aware of. If there were, I believe Tom wold have listed them in his article.

[Flaxscrip]

Exciting opportunity for the Lexinomicon!

[joestartupsocieties]

Hey everyone. Based on our zoom conversation from Friday, we concluded that double democracy wouldn't fit into our model since the community would be conducting constructive, rather than corrective democracy. We'll be sticking closer to the default system you outline in your original nomicon rules. With the ICG board as the treasurer, I as the gatekeeper, and indvidiual community members as the keymasters.

[Flaxscrip]

I believe we should explore the concepts behind Double Democracy further and see how we can incorporate them in the Lexinomicon process. I'll be exploring and proposing a few other options for consideration and discussion in the near future.