Human political, cultural and economic life are at a crossroads. The so called elite, through knowledge and power asymmetries, dominate all three spheres of human endeavour. Our governance institutions, by design, select for a kakistocracy that will soon consume all human and natural resources if their power is left unchecked.
Furthermore, recent technical advances in robotics and artificial intelligence are accelerating this process. The underlying materialistic worldview that permits these developments, trading moral and artistic impulses for self interest and profit impoverishes the very human experience that it claims to serve. Soon governance itself will be replaced by automation.
These risks may be broadly characterised by the notion of centralisation. While we readily acknowledge that the centralised practices of the industrial revolution underpinned the technological advancements of the modern era, we also believe that as the human story continues to unfold there is no reason to believe that new and surprising developments will not follow.
The arrival of the internet facilitated the democratisation of communication and information to a point hardly conceivable at the advent of the printing press. The characterising principle of the internet is decentralisation. Today a nascent decentralisation movement has emerged that values resilience and agility over determinism and control. From the decentralization of power generation to the decentralization of manufacture through 3d printing, decentralization is seen as a potential solution to many of the environmental problems we face.
Yet perhaps more interestingly atop this decentralized information platform a new open source movement has emerged. The open source movement sees online communities, composed largely of volunteers, delivering collaborative innovation on a scale never before witnessed in human history.
These very open source cooperatives have lead to the remarkable innovation of the blockchain. The blockchain's unique value proposition is that for the first time we are able to model trust relationships between free standing individuals. Blockchain is not an incremental technology. Rather it is a new and completely novel technology with incredible potential. One might say that what the wheel did for our machines, mathematics, or more precisely cryptography, will do for our social relations.
In concert then these three phenomena, the internet, the open source movement and the blockchain promise to allow a fundamental restructuring of society.
We believe that such a restructuring represents the natural maturation of the social entity. To use an analogy, an earlier parental model of governance through centralised institutions can now give way to a decentralized system composed of responsible and free standing individuals.
We envisage that such a system will take the form of interdependent open source cooperatives interacting responsibly and with goodwill. We value the proliferation and diversification of such communities and see diversity as an objective measure of the health of the system. Further still such a system represents a higher unity of the political projects of both the left and right. Open source cooperatives transform workers into members thereby empowering them while also unleashing the creativity and freedom inherent in all human beings - the fundamental concern of the right.
We celebrate the diversity of the human race. Knowledge hierarchies remain fundamental to a healthy and innovative cultural life. Competition as well as collaboration is a force for innovation and we expect successful communities to self organise in recognition of the varying aptitudes and contributions of their members.
In the economic life we anticipate a vast web of overlapping and interdependent communities such that the health of one community is bound to the health of the others that it is constellated around. We believe that all human needs can be met in a cooperative market place in which symbiosis and brotherhood is emphasised over competition such that each is rewarded for their contributions in a way that sustains them sufficiently to meet their needs.
Like the laws of the natural world, there are certain moral laws that can be discerned by an open minded and careful reading of the history of humankind. In the political sphere we value the equality of all human beings and see human dignity as a human right. The hallmark of a healthy society is how it takes care of the weak and disabled. Theft and other injustices may occur above and beyond any reasonable precautions that we may take to prevent them. Whilst at this time the road to vouchsafing political rights remains unclear we nonetheless believe that we should collectively set aside some resources to restore the most egregious violations and to protect our communities as a whole.
We believe that first and foremost justice must respond to that the most fundamental human need for the aggrieved to feel that they have been heard. Accordingly the forum before which any dispute is resolved must be the one chosen voluntarily by all parties to the dispute. We trust individuals to associate with others in understanding and acknowledgement of their shared values.
We anticipate that the new currency in this emergent social system will be our reputations. Present concerns, borrowed from the centralized system of enclosure, about loss of property and wealth, will lose significance over time. Nonetheless during this period of transition some assurances will be needed for people to gain confidence in the new paradigm. To that end voluntary bonds with well defined staking periods will suffice to moderate any perceived risks.
We propose three independent governance bodies. A political body, of initially modest remit, that finds it's consensus through a vote of each individual and seeks to protect out community and secure fundamental human rights for all. Secondly we see an economic body that oversees the incentives within the market place in view of our shared interdependence and the value of the commons. Consensus in the economic sphere is balanced by the relative stake of the participating communities. Finally we find a cultural body that preserves free speech and free association and fosters the creative life in all of its breadth. We expect each body to internally evolve into rich and varied structures suitable to its own domain. We are staunchly against faceless institutions. All activities and participation in these bodies will require the highest standards of transparency. These bodies will operate completely independently but where the concerns of one sphere overlaps with another those relations will be managed via a treaty between them.
This manifesto presupposes a robust blockchain foundation upon which it rests. Because the blockchain represents a paradigm shift we reject the notion of importing existing governance models built for the centralized age. While we do not reject the history of governance the solutions to the governance problems we will face are responding to entirely new needs.
Above all else at the dawn of this new era we reaffirm the value of freedom and free association. Voluntaryism. We envisage a post materialist age which returns human moral and social values to center stage. A world in which we once again emphasise what we share together over and above what we each individually own. Our maxim then is to provide open source collaborative solutions to secure equality, freedom and fraternity.
This is my take on a request by @thomasbcox and the Eos Alliance for the community to start to explore the values that might inform a new constitution for Eos. At the moment I support @dan and Block Ones's proposal, known as v2! But I thought I might have a crack at something. If you think you can stomach the general direction please share your thoughts! If you thought what a tosser, this is ridiculous, well a comment or two is also welcome :) Anyways, heavily influenced by my recent readings on social threefolding. If you know about that I've probably got a lot of it wrong so use a thick red pen!
17 rules like project xanadu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
Nice exploration, where did you find this request of @thomasbcox? I see he is not posting on Steem.
It was from a comment in the gov channel on telegram. He is designing a process to get the community to collaborate on a few different constitutions. First step three weeks to explore values. I don't know when he is planning on announcing it. Probably after Eos alliance formally launches. The is an Eos alliance channel on telegram too
Hi, great essay that you have put out here, you address very important topics of current socio economic challenges.
There are two things that I don't understand:
How is would the v2 constitution be inline with the governance you call for? In my view it's the complete opposite, promoting the law of the jungle and paving the way for powerful dapps, to enforce governance to their liking and sole benefit. @thecastle has done a great analysis of this problem recently.
Anyhow valuable contribution, happy to resteem!
https://dlive.io/video/thecastle/6963f591-9cc0-11e8-b91a-0242ac110003
This is a link to the video that @conceptskip is talking about. Basically we have a situation where dapps coins have to chose to be either hyper political or face never reaching mass adoption.
I think V2 and Dan's plans for dapp layer governance are really quite consistent with this manifesto. But I got a bit speculative - just exploring. Wrt the Eos foundation/alliance I admittedly am sceptical too but since Thomas was asking for perspectives I thought I might as well try to put some thoughts down. As a challenge. Thanks for the resteem @conceptskip! Btw I've been enjoying your posts. Your restaurant reviews are a great addition to your Eos articles!
we got it all done on https://telos.net
governance, worker proposals, arbitration portal (court) all sorts of cool stuff
Yeah, telos hive partnership too although I don't what its about exactly yet. Some of these old posts seem a bit ridiculous now haha
As for dapp layer governance I just don't see it, and i didn't find an explanation anywhere. I wouldn't say I am sceptical towards the foundation attempt, it's what this community direly needs, eventually any entity would need to be elected, wouldn't they. Thanks for your words, always try to remain a bit grounded too...
I did try to write it in the most idealistic way that I could, in true manifesto style! But yes, I'm not the most grounded of people, that's fair. Thanks for the reminder
Don't get me wrong, I really think your manifesto is brilliant! It perfectly describes our current situation and the right direction onwards. I could have never written this essay, so in that sense, glad you are not grounded ;)
hah instead of eos foundation we never got, we got the TELOS foundation! @hellotelos
It has a great plan
https://medium.com/@goodblock_info/understanding-the-telos-economic-development-plan-bd42d4666374
I appreciate the hard work. Great article
Thanks social! It did take more effort than I thought but was an enjoyable exercise. Made some progress in my understanding by trying to write such a thing...
Very well worded manifesto, @mjhomb. Will be shared and used :)
Thanks @lighteye! It's sort of fun to write a manifesto even though they seem so last century.
You are most welcome. It may seem so last century, but it is necessary exactly because the people born in the last century. It’s a form they used to get important info ;)
Hey @hildemaro I'd be completely honoured if you translated it into Spanish! For sure and thank you!
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