
Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy - santisiri
http://sovereign.software
======
jdormit
Is there a reason that almost every blog post/platform/organization I've seen
that involves some sort of block chain tech invariably starts spouting
hyperbolic, overblown rhetoric about overthrowing the social order? Block
chains are a really promising technology, but these types of manifestos really
hurt the community's credibility.

~~~
EthanHeilman
Many people get excited and interested in blockchains because they want to
radically alter the existing social order and they see blockchains as the most
effective path to bring this about.

Thus, when these people make progress they cast it in those terms (radical
social change). This becomes a feedback loop which attracts more radicals to
the blockchain space and also amplifies the current radicals belief that they
really can make a difference. This has both negative and positive effects:

* the negative effects are hype, the desire for ideological purity, expectations which can't be met, and irrational optimism,

* the positive effects are large numbers of smart motivated people who are willing to think big and irrational optimism.

I think spaceX and the startup world in general operates under a similar
feedback loop (see "making the world a better place").

~~~
inimino
Irrational optimism is a positive effect?

~~~
dlss
From the perspective of those who aren't irrationally optimistic, I think
sometimes.

Self-defeating example: betting on red in roulette is a bad idea. Having your
friend bet on red is a better but still bad idea. Having a stranger bet on
red, and buy you a drink if he wins... It's free money.

Applied example: starting an electric car company (at least looked like) a bad
idea.... trying 1,000 different approaches to a light bulb, especially after
500 failures (at least looked like) a bad idea... etc.

~~~
inimino
People chasing long shots under a delusion can sometimes be profitable for
someone else, but if a movement is built on irrational exuberance surely
there's a cost to be paid sooner or later.

~~~
EthanHeilman
>if a movement is built on irrational exuberance surely there's a cost to be
paid sooner or later.

I worry about a Blockchain winter, then again AI has made fantastic progress
despite the AI winters[0].

Would fusion as a power generating technology be further along or further
behind if it had followed the AI model (progress -> hype -> winter ->
progress)?

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter)

------
vinceguidry
The main problem to solve here is _legitimacy_. It does no good to have a
government if nobody thinks it's legitimate. This is why democracy is so hard
to implement and protect. At the heart of it, democracy should be simple. You
get people to vote on rules, and then whatever gets the most votes, everybody
agrees to follow the group decision.

But that all gets turned on its head once somebody doesn't want to play ball.
In a weak regime, they simply ignore the decision and do whatever they want.
Example here might be a group of friends playing tag. A slightly stronger
regime might be a role-playing game. Here if someone doesn't like an outcome,
there's a bunch of rules you can fall back on, but if they still don't like
that, then they can make enough noise and kill the game altogether.

Skipping up a few levels, a still stronger regime would be something like an
HOA, where legitimacy is granted by contract law and precedence and the
broader housing market. If someone doesn't like it, there are escalation
procedures in place, and if all else fails, they can try litigation.

On and on all the way up until you get to heads of state wielding hard and
soft power backed by nothing more than the threat of extreme violence or trade
sanctions and such.

Technology can't solve the legitimacy problem. You can't force people to play
by rules just because people voted on those rules. Without something to give
those decisions teeth, a would-be democracy platform is really nothing more
than an overblown webforum.

Unless you are the head of state of your regime, willing to give up power to
let your peons make decisions on their own, the pathetic rubes, then nothing
like this will be seen as legitimate. Maybe an HOA can use something like this
as a platform for owners to make their preferences known. But everyone's going
to know where the real power is, and it won't be with the app.

It's not government if it doesn't have the power to compel.

~~~
rabbyte
I agree with everything except that first point because legitimacy isn't the
problem worth solving. Striking the right balance in governing tools and
keeping interdependent systems interoperable as they mature are problems worth
solving which this works toward. Arguing on grounds of legitimacy would have
failed to see Wikipedia as a citable source or Facebook as an election debate
host 15 years ago. So the time from no credibility to global legitimacy is at
least faster than a generation can reach the age to vote.

edit- Also, keep in mind there are billions of new humans coming behind you
that have no deep feelings about any of the things you think about. Good or
bad. They hold none of the complexity of this world in their minds that you
use to navigate now with minimal effort ("How does a bill become a law?").
Some revolutions are born from the generations that see leap frogging as an
easier and better way forward than repairing the old model built for a world
that doesn't exist anymore.

~~~
vinceguidry
Wikipedia has its legitimacy problems like any other political entity. It's
legitimate as an informational resource mostly for lack of real alternatives.
It fills a need that no other resource does.

And political evolution is not political _revolution_. Sure, the 100th
generation after ours won't care how a bill becomes a law, but that doesn't
mean the underlying political truths are going to become obsolete.

Revolutions don't really change anything, they just shuffle things around on
the surface. Things might evolve after the revolution, but it's by no means
sure.

~~~
rabbyte
I'm not sure if you're responding to me or just adding your perspective but
each of those points can be summarized as "not necessarily" and ya, this is
complex stuff, lots of possibility.

------
phs
I am struck by how little attention is paid to the voting system: is it first
past the post? Single transferrable vote?

The voting system determines the class of proposals that can be decided
without voters needing to model each other's behavior to get what they want.
Voters are forced to choose between what they want and what they think they
can get; "I prefer candidate/policy A, but I think B is OK and stronger; I
definitely don't want C. So I guess I'm voting B."

FPTP is only good for deciding boolean proposals. For selecting from a larger
set of alternatives, STV allows voters to be more fearless ("First pick is A,
second is B"), and so more honest.

Block chain-style distributed verification is good, but that shouldn't be the
killer feature of this app.

------
dj-wonk
At many levels, we would benefit from better decision-making tools. This
includes voting tools with various ballot options and good accountability.

Better tooling and awareness around collective decision making is valuable for
groups at many levels. Such tooling and awareness does not _have_ to be linked
with large changes to country- or world-level governance. It can start with
replacing an unstructured Slack discussion with a lightly structured
collective deliberation tool, for example.

Political change is hard. I support people who want to better their situation
through political means. At the same time, I advocate for better collective
user experience design, so I want to see small victories around social and
deliberative technology.

~~~
dj-wonk
Do you have favorite tools and algorithms for collaborative decision making
and/or voting? Please share.

Also, I would appreciate responses and feedback on an old post of mine titled
"Better Online Voting": [http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/42305919307/better-
online-voti...](http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/42305919307/better-online-
voting)

Some areas I've followed include... papers about blockchain technology applied
to voting... cryptographic consensus algorithms... I'd like to see what else
people recommend. Thanks.

~~~
qznc
My problem is not to find a good tool/algorithm. I rather experience the
problem to get people from unstructured (no tool/algo) to structured decision
making (any tool/algo).

For example, finding a date for a meeting can easily keep a few people busy
chatting in a WhatsApp group. A link to
[http://doodle.com/](http://doodle.com/) is ignored. It might help, if
WhatsApp integrates a simple pool mechanism into group chat.

Annotation: Please, use a good UI. Not a chat bot, which leads to even more
messages.

------
neves
Ok, it looks nice, but... can someone explain what it does for me in a couple
of lines?

IMHO they need a marketing guy.

~~~
Bedon292
Yeah I was trying to figure out the same thing. Their main page
[http://democracy.earth/](http://democracy.earth/) is a bit better.

------
santisiri
hi hackernews, i'm the founder of
[http://democracy.earth](http://democracy.earth) and lead coder of
[http://sovereign.software](http://sovereign.software). happy to answer any
questions and doubts regarding this project (and past ones we started like the
partido de la red and democracyos).

------
unicornporn
Regarding the flag used [http://democracy.earth/](http://democracy.earth/),
why not use the
[http://www.flagofplanetearth.com/](http://www.flagofplanetearth.com/)?

------
guard-of-terra
I'm so glad somebody works in this direction.

------
dandare
I don't want to be negative but once again I have no idea what the software
does. The homepage is full of hyperbolas but does not explain what is it that
I am looking at. So many companies/products do this mistake.

------
sandworm101
Off deep end:

>> I declare the planetary social space we are building to be naturally
independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right
to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason
to fear.

>> Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and
context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no
matter here.

Funny, right after disclaiming the concept of property they remember to
protect their project with an MIT license ... a concept baked in western IP
traditions.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where
> bodies live.

Unfortunately, our/their bodies _are_ made of matter, and are subject to laws
and government enforcement. That kind of ruins much of the logic of the
manifesto.

> We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her
> beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence
> or conformity.

That seems somewhat overstated compared to the reality, in light of recent
events (great firewalls, DDOS attacks, and online attacks based on viewpoint).

> We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we
> continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves
> across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

Yeah... that "rule over our bodies" turns out to actually affect cyberspace.

To be fair, the manifesto was written in 1996.

~~~
EthanHeilman
>To be fair, the manifesto was written in 1996.

Too soon to judge as we are in a moment of backlash against these trends, lets
see how 2196 views the manifesto.

~~~
inimino
> we are in a moment of backlash against these trends

What makes you think so? As far as I can tell, it's over and the idealists
lost.

~~~
EthanHeilman
>As far as I can tell, it's over and the idealists lost.

Could be true, could not be, I don't know. The present often seems like the
end of history because it is very difficult to see beyond it.

Some lost cause today will be a dominate ideology tomorrow, with the "nutty-
idealists" reframed as visionaries ahead of the curve.

Fun game: if history remembers RMS, what role will he be cast into, what
future trends will try to claim or denounce him?

~~~
inimino
When the Internet was new, there was a perception in some quarters that it was
New and old orders were about to be overturned. That's the sentiment reflected
in the manifesto.

Now we can see that it was just another medium that would in (short) time come
to be dominated by the same forces at play everywhere else. Those particular
dreams are dead and they aren't going to be revived now that we know how the
Internet is actually used. The Internet revolution has played out. It is now
part of the background, just like the printing press.

~~~
EthanHeilman
>When the Internet was new, there was a perception in some quarters that it
was New and old orders were about to be overturned.

And they still might be overturned, it is much too early to call it in either
direction.

>The Internet revolution has played out. It is now part of the background,
just like the printing press.

The Gutenberg printing press was invented in 1440, the protestant reformation
didn't start until 1517 (77 years later). The growing impact of the printing
press was still being felt 200 years later. Imagine someone writing in 1480
about the printing press being played out.

"People always overestimate the impact of a technology in the short term and
underestimate the impact of a technology in the long term."

~~~
inimino
Perhaps I am overly pessimistic.

Having seen the promise of the early Internet turn into a vehicle of control,
surveillance, consumerism, and whatever you want to call Facebook, there is
little room left for optimism.

Has it made life easier and more convenient? Yes. Will it empower the
oppressed and create a more equitable, a more enlightened world? It sure isn't
looking that way.

------
edblarney
"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I
come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you
of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no
sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you
with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I
declare the planetary social space we are building to be naturally "

This is comedy gold.

~~~
csuwldcat
I'll describe democracy, and you tell me how comical it sounds:

"A group of people, within a geographic region marked by invisible lines drawn
by human aggression, all gather once every 2nd rotation of the Earth around
the Sun to put papers in a magic box. The people believe once an arbitrarily
large number of papers are put into the box, it grants the owners of those
papers the right to force their will and ideas on others within the invisible
lines. The box does amazing things, for instance: the very minute before all
the papers are counted, it could be immoral theft to take something from
others without their explicit, individual permission, but just after counting
the papers, magically, if by some form of mobtastic incantation, it becomes
'legal' and totally accessible to take that thing from others via harm and
violence."

Holy shit folks, if you don't find that to be magical comedy gold, I don't
know what is. It's like a bad M. Night Shyamalan script, except humans
actually do it.

~~~
edblarney
Your definition of democracy is ridiculous and none of it is relevant.

Whoever wrote this manifesto is both naive and arrogant: he doesn't speak for
anyone but himself, ergo, it's just a 'youtube comment rant'.

It's funny unless you take it seriously, in which case it's maddening.

Most people in the world actually work for 'governments and semi-large to
large corporations' and are fine with it. In the real world those are
'communities and groups working together to 'make stuff and services' and to
create positive outcomes'.

The childish ranters can go off to an island and create their IP-free and 'big
company-free' utopia if they want. Good luck with it.

~~~
rabbyte
ahh, yes, hacker news. so full of curiosity and inviting critique. I'm with
you on giving yourselves an island but ya'll would never stay there, the
visibility invites the validation you crave.

