Bitcoin Forum

The YouTube channel, Truthloader, will be hosting a live debate today at 7PM GMT / 2PM EST / 11AM PST.

The topic - "Can we govern ourselves with digital technology?"

Gavin Andresen, Birgitta Jonsdottir (Wikileaks activist and Icelandic MP), Naomi Colvin (Occupy Movement) & Mark Johnson (The Economist) will be speaking at the debate on the channel - www.youtube.com/truthloader.

I will post a direct live link in this thread once I have it.

Leave your questions here and I will try and get them to our guests, or tweet them at us #digigov.

Here's the link to watch us live at the time stated above!- http://youtu.be/riI51xO3BsM

What's the position of each individual?

They all think you should watch.

Starting now!

tuned in late but havent heard 1 word from Gavin :(

Thanks, Gavin, you rocked it!

Thanks for making this happen!

I thought most opinions were pretty conservative. I think there's much more room for disruptive innovation in the way we organize as a society due to modern communication technologies. The Internet has been around for only 15 to 20 years. Bitcoin has been around for only 4 years. These are very short timespans if you put it into perspective.

For anyone that missed it, here's the full video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riI51xO3BsM

That talk was pretty interesting.

Also, *amazing* job Gavin !

Nice! I had never actually heard Gavin speak and I was a bit afraid we'd end with an Amir Taaki situation... but good job!

Thanks good watch

It was an interesting discussion. The Icelandic situation illustrates the dysfunction of the financial system. I agree with Gavin that direct democracy won't scale, but like everything else, there will be a technological solution. We just haven't developed him yet.

Gavin kind of struggled when he had to respond to the "bitcoin is not democratic" argument.

I think the very concept of money is actually not democratic, or it should not be.

What I mean by that is that money should be like any thing that can be exchanged in a market.  So like any consumer product, it is not democratic because its use does not depend on some decision made after a vote.

Money is democratic only in a system where only one form of money is allowed.  The decision of which kind of money and how it should work MUST then be taken and the democratic way of making this decision is the vote.

But in the liberal way of dealing with the concept of money, there is not limit in the number of competing currencies in circulation.   In such a system, a currency is no more democratic than any stuff that can be exchanged on the market.   Is the iPhone for instance a democratic product?  Well, in a way it is, since it is used by a lot of people.   But in the pure sense of the expression, that is in the political sense, it is not democratic at all.

Same with bitcoin.


More generally, digital technologies offer more choice to people, and this increased number of choices decreases the need for a normalization of the way of doing stuff.   Democracy was a way to fairly organize this normalization.  With more choices, the need for democracy decreases because less normalization is needed.    So in a way digital technologies make democratic concepts more obsolete.  That's a point that was missed in the debate imho.

Great job, Gavin.

Quick aside. When Truthloader first came upon the scene a couple short months ago, I sincerely felt, and still do, that somehow Google is behind it. They only had a small handful of videos up at the time, each having very few view counts, but Google gave it tremendous juice on its news site. After kept seeing it over and over again at the time, and doing some research (basically finding nothing to support my theory), it still seemed like Google was/is behind it. I'm not saying that that's a good or bad thing. Just saying.

Boy, wouldn't that be something if we later learn that Google was behind Bitcoin from the get-go?

My apologies for the long aside.

~Bruno K~

I saw what you saw to very interesting..

Yeah-- "democratic" is such a loaded word. Everybody loves democracy, so I didn't want to bash it.

But democracy can be terrible if you're in the minority and the majority decides to trample on your rights.

I probably should have just said "Bitcoin is a lot more democratic than the system we currently have, where a handful of unelected central bankers control our money."

One of my hobby is to bash democracy and get karma points for it.

the technological solution is called liquid democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy) and liquid feedback (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Feedback).


Back then in anarchistic Spain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain) (good doku (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH43YHaUGyQ)), there were general assemblies, and the results of discussions were seen as merely recommendations. I.e., democracy without an executive branch.

The reasons democracy (liquid or not) will not scale:
1. group think (arbitrary priorities)
2. greed
3. apathy
4. ignorance of issues
5. guns and money (with malevolent intentions)
6. mob rule (similar to Gavin's argument)

This liquid democracy sounds like a movement similar to voluntaryism. All of these libertarian ideas sound neat, but are only theoretical, just as the US form of republican democracy was. I'm not against the seed of the idea, but the technology does not exist yet to make it viable. We need technology to overcome those six (and probably more) types of problems.

Having said this, the technologies we do have are useful to keep working towards something better. If we apply these tools scientifically and use the data wisely, we may discover patterns that even more powerful systems can use to make it work better. Human society is too complex for humans to handle alone. Our technology will eventually be able to help us identify these six problems before they become harmful.

who said democracy has to "scale" anyway? Local issues, local solutions. Indeed, the Greek word demos also means village, already hinting that it would not scale and things should stay decentralized. Today's nation states are too large and arbitrary lines through the landscape, they should be overcome.

Democracy can (and should) also happen at the workplace, or wherever you're invested in with your resources. You surely do want to have a say about the new road or bridge to be built if you help finance it, no matter if by taxes or voluntarily. Public vs Private is (should be) a false dichotomy.

That way, I can't conceive anything better than the concept of liquid democracy. All it merely says is everyone has a voice, and if you're apathetic about an issue, fine, give it to someone else. And if things go out of hand and you suddenly find yourself not so apathetic anymore, you can have your voice back.

Above all, democracy should happen where it is needed, and there is no need for democracy in free software.  The code is free: if you're not happy with it, fork it or don't use it.

No wait, this is also a democracy.
Anybody can make a fork and convince people to download & use his fork (vote) instead of the other candidate's fork.

Maybe I have too a restricted idea of what democracy is (no sarcasm here), but to me democracy is a system where divergences of opinions are resolved via vote, not secession.

Depends on the point of view. From my point of view, in the world of open source, the mainline client/fork is the elected official, and users are the voters.
Every user or group of users can become/create an elected official by creating a fork of his/their own, and other people can vote for the official by using forked version of software.

Additionally, in open source every fork/elected official can have all/none/some of the features of all other forks/ellected officials, so IMHO open source democracy is even better than normal democracy.

Gavin was the only rock star in attendance, and I say this not as a bitcoin partisan but because he brought the only truly revolutionary ideas to the program.  I was particularly unimpressed by Birgitta Jónsdóttir and her grassroots attempt to write a new constitution.  Given the chance, people are going to insert all manner of desires into a constitution and try to give them the legal standing of "rights."  Just because I want a unicorn that farts rainbows doesn't mean that I have a right to it and the rest of society should be enslaved in order to provide it to me.  It is my opinion that democracy has failed miserably all around the world, and we need to move away from the concept entirely rather than try to improve upon it with technology.  I think the sagacious comments quoted below reflect the correct way to think about the "rebooting" of society.

 :D  Great quote.

Saying that using or not using is equivalent to a vote is far fetched.   It is not a vote.

Yep, watched it. Gavin is a body washer in an NHS hospital (relatives, do hope he did not fingered your loved ones) .  Pathetic, all of them.  Gavin, please drink more/less/take a plug out of your bum/relax. Well, i guess you’ll need quite a few years on Bitcoin Foundation’s payroll before you can take it easy, man.  No pun intended.  I had sponsored you, hope it’ll do some good to represent Bitcoin. But thanks for trying, i guess.

Interesting, but we need a decentralized liquidfeedback because right now the server admin can cheat if they can figure out who doesn't double check their votes later.

When I first saw their channel I thought it was a grassroots kind of thing produced in a bedroom. Turns out it's being backed by the corporate news company ITN. I don't think google is involved per say but they might have some influence since they're driving so much traffic to their channel.

http://corporate.itn.co.uk/press.php?parent_id=13&content_id=1365 (http://corporate.itn.co.uk/press.php?parent_id=13&content_id=1365)

you don't even know what democracy is. We are led to believe we are in a democracy by having a choice to vote for two main parties. Who then through the media outlets tell us what to think or believe. How can it be a democracy if peoples minds aren't independent and free.

Can you give an example out of history.

You're not supposed to judge whether or not someone has an independent mind.   You're not in people's mind so don't you deny their capability of making choices and having opinions.

What a silly person you are, so when a majority are led to believe or believe their government without questioning it, read daily newspapers and recite articles and look to them what to think and believe what their government tells them to think and believe I'm not supposed to think or say peoples minds are not independent? Who said any thing about judging?
It's a fact..

It's just that your argument "real democracy can't exist if people are not independent and free" pretty much sound like what a communist would say to justify totalitarism.   Like you know better what's good for people.

  Yeh well  you see the funny thing is you're not countering that argument, you're just saying this sounds like this sounds like this = that without even really looking what i'm really saying. Like i said.
You're just, well. Really silly.

I was trying to make you realize how unacceptable your argument sounds like.

I was saying initially that you are not in people's mind, so you should not question people's choice and vote.  If A vote for X, you can't say his vote is worthless because A had not a "independent mind" and is not truly "free".

It's like saying someone is too stupid to have the right to vote.

The reasons why A voted for X are none of your concern.  He did vote for A and that's what matters.

[/b] Oh it is very much of my concern. THAT is like saying i shouldn't  be concerned with why A voted for drone strikes, or voted for invasion of the middle east,  or voted for killing millions of citizens, by consent or support of his government.  You're saying i shouldn't be concerned with that except that he did vote.
That is complete insanity.
And you on staff here.

God damn it.  "It's none of your concern" is an idiom.  Don't take it like that.

You were saying something like "how can there be democracy if people are not independent and free?".

I say democracy consists in letting people contribute to decisions via vote.  Why they vote for A and not for B is not the problem.   You can't know that anyway as you're not in their mind.  So it doesn't concern you if you worry about this process being democratic.  That's what I meant.

Of course if the candidate you didn't vote for is elected, you can feel sorry and thus concerned, but that's an other matter.  You can feel concerned about the poor decisions made by your government, but those decisions do not change the democratic status of this government.

The very point of letting people vote is to accept their opinion without discussing it.  Otherwise we wouldn't vote, we would have eternal debates on internet forums.

Ok more inane ramblings and silly ideas, we wouldn't vote, if people were not allowed to have an opinion, without discussing it. You're just completely silly. And you're on staff.

A and B are not necessarily a person or a government.  They can be a decision.  You were talking about drone strikes.  There is nothing in democracy, even in a direct democracy, preventing a drone strike to be voted by the majority.

You can regret the outcome of a vote, but if you say it results from people being not independent or free, you basically say that they are stupid, ignorant and that you know better.  Which you seem prone to do, btw.  And anyway it does not change anything to the fact that the vote was democratic.

It's not because a democratic process results in decisions you disapprove that it's not a democratic process anymore.


Again, you wrote:


Democracy has nothing to do with whether or not people minds are independent and free.   Democracy is about giving an equal power of decision via vote to everyone.  It is not incompatible with people being dependent and not free.

Democracy as a political system is just a way of making totalitarianism superficially appear less evil.

If it's evil for a single individual to point a gun at someone and order him around, it's also evil when two people do it, when three people do it, and so on. There's no tipping point where you add one extra person to the group and all of a sudden "a mob" magically transforms into "society".

If you still have trouble seeing why majority rule is not a valid ethical justification remember that gang rape is applied democracy.

The logic is very simple.  You wrote:

« How can it be a democracy if peoples minds aren't independent and free. »

The two points of my argument are straightforward:

1.  their vote is not the problem.  It's A problem if the vote induces poor decisions, but it is not THE problem of deciding whether the process was democratic, which was the problem suggested by your question ("How can it be a democracy").

2.  You don't know what's in peoples mind.   You talk about people minds being independent and free but that's an external judgement and you can't know for sure.  And no, if someone enters a supermarket, it's not necessarily because he's hungry.  He can have many other motives (like he works for someone and does his shopping).   Anyway fortunately, you don't have to analyse the motives of a vote to consider it valid.

Hoping for a society where people are smart, educated and have independent minds sure is a noble and fine social goal, but it has nothing to do with democracy.   You're just using this word to describe something that is not related.


See, that's why we disagree.  You now asks "What good is that if...", when I was arguing with your initial question "How can it be a democracy...".  I wasn't trying to discuss whether democracy is a good or a bad thing, I was talking about whether or not people not having independent minds changes anything to the nature of a democratic process.

If you are using it, then you are supporting it. You are trusting it. You are placing your trust and your life in the hands of the software you are using, the same as you do with elected officials.
And there are different choices: Litecoin is one of them. NFTF fork is also a choice (however differences between mainline fork and NFTF are practically negligible).

Sounds like a vote to me.

It is not a vote because the result of a vote is supposed to induce a decision that will concern all participants.   It might sound trivial to remind this, but when Obama was elected, people who voted for Mitt Romney did not gather in a part of the USA to make a separate state.

Also, a vote is basically a question that is asked to you, and your answer is taken into account with the answers of others.  When you download a software, or when you just use it, you don't have to tell anybody.   People might care about you using it, and your choice might in the end support the developers in some way, but there is no accurate accounting of the number of users and it does not directly affect the decisions of developers.   Really, it has very little to do with what a vote actually is.   It might look like it, but it's more of a metaphor than anything else.
 

Sure, there are some differences, but it still is good enough for me.
Despite that, it may work even better than standard democracy.