The new dawn of democracy
The west has been sleeping. Our senses dulled by technologies and comfort. Too busy or too lost to notice the slow erosion of the systems that we’ve built our lives upon. To paraphrase scripture “Never build your house on a weak foundation” and never has this rung more true.
But our house is our democracy, and how can we avoid the shifting grounds it so inconviniently built upon? Do we have to demolish it and move the stones one by one. Or perhaps some of the stones are crooked themselves, so do we leave them?
The answer is both yes and no. Certainly there are elements of the systems that is long overdue an update, others, an eraser. However we can’t take for granted the structure of order that has caused so many of our western societies to thrive. Many will point to exploitative capitalism and claim that as the sole cause of their flourishing, however there is much more important and far more valuable element at the foundation of these cultures. That element is “trust”.
Trust is the single most valuable currency in the world, allowing for easy and light systems to govern the majority of the processes of everyday life. Be it trade, contracts, services, requests, civil rights or something else. These high trust societies have proven to far exceed all other countries in terms of relative happiness and social mobility. However we exist in a time where this trust has been so thoroughly eroded that it seems unlikely that we shall return to carefree days of yore any time soon. Or can we…?
The task at hand now is not to decimate our culture and reorganize into small homogeneous cells but rather go to the garage and the whiteboards and design systems that have this trust factor built into them. An elderly friend of mine recently showed outrage and a comment i made regarding the integrity of a local election. She had grown up in the belief that this institution was the sacred cow that could not be touched. My generation and those that came after however, are the living examples that this is no longer so.
Rather than moving away from democracy through apathy or anarchy, we should embrace it as an iterative process, letting the new technologies pave the way for how we might build the world of tomorrow. Recently we have had incredible breakthroughs in the cryptospace, showing how a decentralised voting mechanism can be 100% verifiable, anonymous, time stamped and immutable. Take a moment to read those four words again because they will be the four pillars upon which we can create a democatic system where the power is thoroughly in the hands of the people. Verifiable, Anonymous, Time Stamped and Immutable.
Follow along in the next blog post.