Direct Democracy is The Answer. Let's Start A New Digital Country (Network State) and Prove It.

Don't Worry: The Tyranny of The Masses is a Solvable Problem. PODCAST + ARTICLE

NEW SOCIAL DISORDER PODCAST with Drew Weatherhead and Society of Problem Solvers’ Ghostwriter Josh Ketry, on building a new digital country - A Network State - as a place to test and prove Direct Democracy:

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Two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner is not the answer. Nor is it what we are advocating for, so hear us out. The type of direct democracy we are referring to is something new — a different way for groups to problem solve together called Human Swarm Intelligence.

Imagine if we had a way to present a problem to a billion people, ask them a question, and get one creative and wise answer from the group like we wrote about HERE. This is what we are referring to. It isn’t voting. In fact, it isn’t anything you have likely ever heard of before unless you have been studying modern collective intelligence systems.

Instead of two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner, a swarm is more like three anonymous people from the same community problem solving for hunger together. A wolf wouldn’t vote to eat a sheep if it didn’t know that it was solving a problem with a sheep. In fact, the wolf has to be wary that the other people solving with it might want to eat it. In a well designed system the wolf wouldn’t know if it was problem solving with a sheep or a polar bear.

Try to imagine a better system. Not just a voting and binary choice system, but something dynamic and proven to enhance problem solving skills, resolve conflicts, create knowledge — and more — in large groups. A bottom-up, decentralized, transparent and trustworthy system that is also 100% in control of the people using it.

Human Swarm Intelligence systems can do all of this and more, like we wrote about HERE.

The classic example of two wolves and a sheep is a bad one anyway, because unlike animals, humans have empathy, explanatory knowledge, and emotions. Plus in countries like America, we have a constitution to protect the individuals. Not to mention, three is not the best number for any group or swarm to work in. Swarms actually do much better the larger the number of people there are. So two hundred wolves and a hundred sheep would be much better. And then, if the wolves and sheep used a Swarming System to solve their problem of hunger — instead of voting — we would likely end up with a creative solution more like this: they buy a bunch of chickens and make eggs together for the wolves to eat, and leave the sheep alone to eat grass.

If you strongly oppose the idea of a direct democracy, we hope to encourage you to rethink the idea in a new framework. Simple decentralization - a leaderless society.

Our current biggest problem in all of society is the corruption. Our systems have been corrupted, and the obvious symptom we can all see is that no one trusts any of our systems anymore. Also, none of our systems are getting the results we want. Those two symptoms — lack of trust and lack of results — combine for a high probability of corruption happening somewhere in the system.

The corruption point in our government systems is the politician. They are the weak link. If you corrupt the politician then you control the whole system that they control. People like Epstein and Maxwell knew this. It also explains why hundreds of politicians can outperform the top stock traders on Wall Street with their portfolios, or why the family members of powerful politicians sometimes get $10 million contracts at corporations and never have to show up for a single day of work, or get $5 million speaking fees for companies that literally wrote bills that they passed. Corruption and collusion is the best explanation for our current lack of trust and results in our systems.

In other words, politicians are easily corruptible. But the answer is easy: we don’t need them anymore. And we want to prove it.

Yes, there can be problems in groups. But have you taken the time to unpack and understand these problems? We have. And we believe that the problems that can sometimes arise in groups - echo chambers, groupthink, and tyranny of the masses - are all solvable problems. In fact they are much easier to solve for than the current problem of the corruption in our systems.

A fully transparent non-profit digital direct democracy run using human swarm intelligence and Bitcoin as the official currency is how we can run a direct democracy safely.

Simply put: Humans solve problems better in groups. We have written about this many times such as HERE, or HERE, or HERE. Nearly all of the amazing things done on this planet were done as a result of human collaboration. So how can we get rid of the corruption, and harness humans’ problem solving ability in groups without sliding into tyranny?

It starts with epistemology. First in our new systems we need to scrap voting altogether. Of course we will still use it in the old corrupted systems, for now. But it is not the best way for the people to have a say in self governance. There are much better ways than voting to problem solve in groups and once you see how much better they are you will see that although voting was good for the time, it is too easy to corrupt to keep counting on it. We can make new systems, prove they work in a digital space, and then people will want to use them elsewhere to govern with. Governing should be problem solving, and if we approach it by starting with the problem, the chances of solving it greatly increase.

We also need to scrap labels in groups. Labeling yourself left or right, or anything - sets up for a potential echo chamber later on. In order to prevent echo chambers and thus tyranny, we need a problem solving space that just isolates problems and solves for them. We need a new place that lets ideas stand alone on their own merit.

New direct democracy systems - properly called “leaderless systems” using Human Swarm Intelligence solve for this.

As for the perils sometimes found in groups, the tyranny of the masses problem is caused in this sequence usually

1. Lack of diversity of opinion and high rung thinking

2. Labels that divide people

3. Echo Chambers

4. Group Think

5. Tyranny of the Masses
   

We solve for these by stopping them at step #1 and step #2, like this:

1) Better systems - 100% transparent, results-based systems that use metrics for all policies. Also Human Swarm Intelligence systems that don’t use archaic voting and instead use creative problem solving techniques. Make a place where ideas stand alone - not attached to labels, political parties, or even people. The system should also have in place fail safes to prevent tyranny of the masses should they ever arise.

2) Education - each member of any leaderless system must understand what causes tyranny of the masses. Members must be independent in thought and courageous, swearing off labels for solutions. We know tyranny of the masses is caused mostly by echo chambers (as Tim Urban describes in his book What’s Our Problem?). Echo chambers are caused by labels, lack of awareness, and bad epistemology. All of these are fixable with education.

3) A constitution - a code or agreement that protects the individual. This must be enforced by trustworthy systems. The people directly must control their own constitution.

Of course, changing the existing corrupted systems is basically impossible. So we need to make new systems that make the old ones obsolete. We are starting a new digital country called a Network State. If you are unfamiliar with this terminology read THIS. Balaji Srinivasan defines a Network State in one sentence: “A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.”

While we love this idea we want to edit the last part. Why can’t a Network State simply plug into existing states and then morph them into one entity?

That will be the idea at LeaderlessSociety.org

We will create basically a flight simulator for Direct Democracy. If you are for it or against it, good. Bring your enthusiasm to the party and let’s run it as a modern experiment. What does a modern direct democracy look like when it is run with the following criteria:

• Run as a 501c3 where the board of directors is the entire citizenship of Leaderless. The people decide what we spend our money and donations on. So if you donate, and become a citizen, you get a say in how we spend the money using swarming.

• Run as a 100% Transparent system - we need to repair trust, and transparency is trust in systems.

• All decisions are results-based, and have metrics tied to policy

• To become a citizen you must graduate from Swarm Academy and learn how to problem solve in groups, be aware of the problems in groups, and how to optimize results for the entire community.

• To become a citizen you must adhere to our constitution and code, which protects individuals.

• We use Bitcoin as our official currency so there is a transparent wallet and ledger that everyone can see at all times

• Members put skin in the game - like a small fee like $20 per month - and we all decide what to do with that money together. People could donate more money id they wanted to, but everyone has the same exact say in the digital society. Skin in the game builds trust, and also adds to better answers for the group.

• Labels are not allowed in our systems, and fail safes in our system to prevent echo chambers, labels, groupthink and tyranny from arising.

• We don’t use voting. We use human swarm intelligence. We start our sessions with problems, and then try to solve the problems together with creative explanatory knowledge.
  

Humans have conquered so many dangerous things. Electricity, cars, flying, nuclear power - yet we fear working in groups, and constantly echo the idea that because it is dangerous that it should not be explored. This fear is what is preventing us from reaching the next level of humanity possible.

Why do you think the powerful people work so hard to divide us? Because they know that if we unify it is the most powerful force on Earth. We have something to unify over, it is the corruption in our systems.

The fear of direct democracy isn’t wrong. It’s just solvable. Imagine if when the first plane crashed we stopped flying. Let’s look at this problem again. We can run simulations as a Network State, work out the kinks, and optimize it. Every problem you see in direct democracy is solvable. The benefit and power of a direct democracy system is that it is very very hard to corrupt when done right, and we need that the most in our society right now. America was decentralized as much as possible for the time, and worked great for a long time, but now has been corrupted and needs a boost. Help us build a place like that.

Thanks for Reading or Listening!

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Check out the progress on: SwarmAcademy.ai LeaderlessSociety.org

As always the entire purpose of The Society of Problem Solvers is to connect with other solutions-minded results-driven people like yourself!

Thank you to all of the ghostwriters that make this possible. We are always accepting guest writers, so if you have an idea for a solution, please reach out. Let’s solve it all, together.

For over 3 billion years on this planet there were only single-celled organisms. Then one day they somehow learned to work together and make complex multi-celled creatures . Right now we are like those single-celled organisms. Our next evolution is finding how to work together, better… (like we wrote about here).

#SwarmAcademy #ResultsMatterMost #DecentralizeEverything #DemandTransparency #Uncorruptors #DirectDemocracy

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