Part 1: Tokenizing ‘the vote’
A process to tokenize political power using the real-world democratic process.
[PART 2: Link here]
Alchemy is the mythical practice of turning lead into gold. Today the world is run by alchemists. These are the private transnational banking corporations who have the power to conjure money out of thin air (double-spend) and lend that money out with interest (rent-seek). Now charging interest on money one lends out is fine and protects the lender on repayment as well as providing them with an incentive to do so. But charging interest on money conjured into existence by one’s own hand is, to put it bluntly, corrupt to its core. This gives the conjurer unfathomable power and to grant that power to a private profit making entity is ludicrous.
It really shouldn’t take genius to work out that handing the power of money creation over to entities that have profit as its sole motivation might create a slight conflict of interest. We have enough evidence by now to know that the banking system has no interest whatsoever in the public good. The scandals exposed with the FINCEN files, the Libor rigging, the 2008 crash, and their role in Structural Adjustments are testament to this. But all of that is to be expected. The private banking system is predatory in nature. In fact, to expect for-profit entities to act in non-profit ways is illogical. It is not the banks that are the problem here. It is the laws and regulations (or rather, lack-of) that enables them to launder quadrillions of illicit funds without consequence. Unchecked, the tragedy of the commons becomes ever more tragic as these corporations invest and finance companies that plunder and pillage their way around the globe leaving in their wake environmental devastation & crippling poverty.
Who is supposed to provide these checks?
Our honourable representatives of course. Unfortunately however, governments the world over have proven their total contempt for the wishes of the populace to deal with the shadow banking sector, tax havens and other corrupt institutions. The sad reality is that governments are unable to and unwilling to tackle corruption in the financial system. However, that is also to be expected because — as the paradise papers have shown us — it is many of the legislators themselves who are the biggest beneficiaries to this system. It must be remembered that whenever a banking bailout occurs — regardless of whether you believe it was a good or bad policy decision — it is not just ‘the economy’ the representatives are saving, it is their own stock and property portfolios (as well as their sponsors). Under centralised forms of governments, this internalized indirect conflict of interest will always be there preventing socially positive policy and as things stand today, it will always be the people who have the least amount invested in the system that pay for any system failures whether that’s through austerity measures like the cutback of public services, tax rises, pay freezes, or inflationary pressures like rising house prices. In today’s system — just like occured with the slavery compensation act of 1845 7, profits will always be privatized and ‘losses’ will always be socialized. We are in a bind, a catch 22, and new legislators will never fix this issue.
Thankfully, with the release of the bitcoin protocol and with it the blockchain, the grip that the private banking sector has had over the world is coming to an end. However, the revolution is far from over.
The centralization of power in our economic & political systems has not gone away. Decentralized finance — although it may afford people the ability to protect private wealth — does nothing to prevent a government or central bank from directing the flow of money in society or debasing & double-spending public wealth (the national currency). As Satoshi Nakamoto said:
“the people have to trust that the central bank will not debase the currency. History is filled with breaches of that trust”.
Furthermore, one of the major problems that cryptocurrencies have is that they are inherently plutocratic. That is to say that they operate on a 1 token 1 vote rule. This is no way to run societies equitably as it punishes those most disadvantaged amongst us.
The revolution will be complete only once the people have the power to collectively, democratically and decentrally decide on where public money is directed (not private money). Free from the influence of corruption and bribery, public resources will freely flow to where they are desired. Without this control, and regardless of which political party, prime minister, or president is in power, public resources will continue to be misused and misappropriated on privately profitable wars. The revolution will be complete only once the central banks have been decentralised and the people have control over the money supply.
Giving citizens control over their public finances requires that they be allowed to directly govern these funds. This requires the removal of today’s pseudo-democratic, centralised representative governments and the decentralisation of the central banks. It requires the implementation of new decentralised systems of government in which no one individual or small group of individuals make decisions for everyone else. A decentralised system immune to the influence of money, lobbyists and corporate power. And a fair system that represents everyone on an equal basis.
With the decentralization of the political system, society will enjoy new freedoms the likes of which the world witnessed during the revolutions of 1848. During this time, the chains of serfdom were removed, the freedom of the press established & universal suffrage became a norm. The decentralization of the financial system [DEFI] will change society in a profound way, however, the decentralization of the political one [DEGOV] will revolutionize it.
Make no mistake about it, the task at hand — the overthrowing of the established systems of power, is a goliath one. Thankfully however, even with all of its flaws and even though democracy today is a whisper of what it could and should be, democracy today, is still democracy. This means that unlike revolutions of the past, we can achieve our aims peacefully. Disenfranchised populations coupled with the systemic flaws in our democratic systems provides us with a golden opportunity to bring forth change and through that, peace and prosperity to every single human being on this planet. Part 2 of this litepaper proposes how we can do that.
“Every battle is won before it is fought” Sun Tzu
