Discussion
Gradual decentralization
Obviously, the Humanode network will rely heavily on the activity of its Governors. Besides building the technological solutions stated in this paper, the Humanode core will promote full transparency of governing processes and transactions, design and deploy decentralized governing processes, participate heavily in the Humanode community, and make development proposals. The Proposal Pool System/Vortex–Formation governance stack was designed by the Humanode core to create a hybrid Proof-of-Time/Proof-of-Devotion/Proof-of-Human-Existence safeguarded network. This implementation allows us to lower the influence of the problems that affect any system that tries to integrate democratic procedures:
Voter apathy is a very widespread problem that entangles every single voting system. The biggest part of this problem is the inability to reach a quorum. The Humanode network demands governance participation in proposals and voting from Governors and proof of existence from all human nodes. Those Governors who do not fulfill monthly governing conditions (either they did not make proposals or did not vote on any proposal) are automatically converted to non-governing. Quorum is reached if 33% of Governors vote upon a proposal, so it means that only voices of those who actively participate in governance are calculated to reach a quorum.
Masses are often mistaken. It is common sense that a small, dedicated group of professionals with years of experience would be able to give a more precise and correct opinion on a particular voting matter than a mass of people with different backgrounds and education. To balance the democratic approach with professional education and experience, Humanode core came up with a hybrid Proof-of-Time/Proof-of-Dedication governance system named “Vortex”, in which Governors have different tiers. They can be promoted in tiers if certain requirements are met. This way the protocol gives more tools and proposal rights to those who have more experience and have proven their devotion through Formation. The necessity to have your proposal approved before becoming a Governor acts as a Proof-of-Devotion step that uplifts the quality of Governors and acts as an important layer of defense against Sybil attacks.
Inability to directly delegate your vote to any other voter in a system creates many different forms of how the voting procedures take place. The very systems of how electoral delegates are chosen have loopholes that allow political tricks such as gerrymandering and filibustering. Governing human nodes are designed to be equal in voting power; at the same time, the voting mechanisms allow you to delegate your vote to any other human node without boundaries. A Governor’s voting power equals 1+ the number of delegations he has.
The iron law of oligarchy
“Who says organization, says oligarchy.” “Historical evolution mocks all the prophylactic measures that have been adopted for the prevention of oligarchy.” - Robert Michels
This hypothesis was developed by the German sociologist Robert Michels in his 1911 book, ’Political Parties.’ It states that any organizational form inevitably leads to oligarchy as an ’iron law’. Michels researched the fact that large and complex organizations cannot function efficiently if they are governed through direct democracy. Because of this, power within such organizations is always delegated to a group of individuals.
In Michels’s understanding, any organization eventually is run by a class of leaders regardless of their morals or political stance. Monarchies and republics, democracies and autocracies, political parties, labor unions, and corporations, etc. have a nobility class, administrators, executives, spokespersons, or political strategists. Michels stated that only rarely do representatives of these classes truly act as servants of the people. In most cases, people become pawns in never-ending games of power balancing, networking, and survival. Regardless of the inception principles, the ruling class will always emerge and in time it will inevitably grow to dominate the organization’s power structures. The consolidation of power occurs for many different reasons, but one of the most common ways is through controlling access to information.
Michels argues that any decentralized attempts to verify the credibility of leadership are predetermined to fail, as power gives different tools to control and corrupt any process of verification. Many different mechanisms allow serious influence on the outcome of democratically made decisions like the media. Michels stated that the official goal of representative democracy of eliminating elite rule was impossible, that representative democracy is a facade legitimizing the rule of a particular elite, and that elite rule, which he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable.
This law is directly applied to modern elites. The financial network is always a complex multilayer construct that requires a great deal of administrative and organizational power. According to Michels, such a system would inevitably become oligarchic. While designing the basic principles of the Humanode network and Vortex, the Humanode core was faced with a challenge to find a delicate balance between organizational efficiency and the democratic involvement of the masses. We believe that a combination of voting power equality, unbiased intellectual barriers, direct delegation, Proof-Of-Time, Proof-of-Devotion, and proof-of-human existence would make a very balanced and just system, but it will not solve the problem of ‘Iron Oligarchy,’ as a leadership class will definitely emerge.
Fiat credit-cycle systems have large financial entities, PoW networks are faced with miner cartels, PoS systems have validator oligopolies, and Humanode has Citizens and research groups. Governors have different proposal rights based on different tiers. Citizens have absolute freedom in proposal creation as they can put forth an idea of any type and some even wield a right to veto any decision that is approved by Vortex twice. Legate and Citizen freedom of authority is balanced out by the voting mechanism that requires a quorum and an absolute majority of those voting for a proposal to be approved. As the absolute majority of Governors is required for a decision to be approved, it negates the ability of Legates and Consuls to approve something against the will of the majority of voters.
In a perfect world where all participants of the network actively govern, this balancing effort should be just enough to minimize the influence of any type of oligopoly that might emerge in the Humanode network, but we do not live in a perfect world. The apathy of voters is a scourge to most of the voting systems that exist and creates the necessity of vote delegation, which has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Vote delegation
Problems of vote delegation have always accompanied any large democratic system. The core problem of democracies in their purest form is that they are very vulnerable to the Byzantine Generals Problem (BGP). Any system has a critical point of failure. Large systems tend to have several or dozens. Because of this, any democratic system requires institutions built on top to protect those critical points. These institutions limit the direct voting of the masses on crucial matters. There are four main reasons why these limitations are a necessity.
Strategic resources, critical points, and stability. Any system has a sensitive part. For example, some countries wield nuclear arsenals and have democratic political systems. The vote on the deployment of nuclear weaponry is commonly restricted to a very small group of individuals. It makes sense that such an important spectrum would be heavily guarded against any angle of attack, especially the BGP. That is why this part of the system requires consolidation of power and an autocratic approach in decision making. Besides weapons of mass destruction, there are financial, energetic, military, trading, diplomatic, intelligence, etc. chokepoints that unless safeguarded can be used by the enemies of that system to cause catastrophic events and lead to destabilization. Natural autocracy rises in the chokepoints of strategic value.
Apathy of voters and effectiveness. Lack of caring among voters in voting procedures can lead to a halt in governance, as most voting requires some kind of a quorum. If apathy is strong enough to stop a quorum from being raised then the governance process stops until a quorum is reached. Some operations and decisions require the constant active involvement of voters, which is where delegation comes in hand. Ordinary people do not want or have time to participate in governance, which is why in representative democracies citizens can cast their vote to elect representatives that are actively involved in decision making. The fewer people participate in voting, the easier it is to coordinate.
Technological limitations. Before the digital era, there was no effective way to conduct voting procedures, as communications were not as developed as they are now. Without proper confirmation of identity and support of modern tech, it was hard to imagine a way to conduct large direct voting without putting strain on administrative resources. Delegating to a politically active person negates the necessity of using sophisticated technologies to conduct legislative procedures.
Misrepresentation. In most democracies your vote is restricted by the region you are geographically located in, meaning that you can cast a vote for a nominee tied to your constituency, but he might not get elected, meaning that your vote was practically burned and a person that you did not vote for might be representing you. Most governing systems lack the freedom of vote delegation, as you cannot directly delegate your voice to a particular person.
While devising the voting procedures for Vortex, the Humanode core has kept in mind the principles mentioned above. The Governor tier system safeguards critical points by limiting the abilities of the electorate to create proposals but at the same time, the autocratic chokepoint is balanced out by requiring a quorum of Governors to approve created proposals. The influence of apathy of voters is limited by demanding voting activity from human nodes to be counted as Governors. This way only active participants of the network are counted in reaching a quorum. The technological progress in DAO deployment and biometric processing in the last decade has brought forward a way to overcome the obstacles of the past connected to direct voting procedures and the uniqueness of voters. Delegation of voting power is permissionless, meaning that any human node can delegate its vote to any Governor in the Humanode network. We acknowledge that even with modern approaches to voting and technological breakthroughs, a delegation mechanism in the Humanode network is a natural necessity.
The digital revolution has paved the way for technologies that allow us to create systems with liquid representative democracies. Compared to traditional representative democracies, a voter can re-cast his vote any time he wants, without the necessity to wait for years to do it again. Vote delegation can be changed anytime. Delegated PoS (DPoS) protocols implemented liquid democracy for delegating transaction validation operations to professional entities. As the validators are safeguarding the protocol and receive a commission for their operation, the voter’s choice is usually driven by economic incentives: how the commission size, uptime, and security of the delegate’s server might reflect on the voter’s earnings. Is that enough to choose an opinion representative in a decentralized network? Most DPoS networks have a strict unbounding period that can last up to two weeks or even months. This measure is a necessity to safeguard the system from manipulated panic-based market crashes where Delegators undelegate their tokens and sell them in fear of losing value. In the Humanode network, voting power is not entangled with a token, which is why there is no need for unbounding periods. Any time a human node wishes to re-cast or simply retrace its delegation it can be done instantly.
Populist tide and professional backslide
It is commonly acknowledged that any voting system faces the problem of too much populism. Hypothetically there are two major approaches to how populism is perceived:
Populism poses a threat to democratic stability. According to recent studies, conducted by Jordan Kyle and Yascha Mounk of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, one of the key findings they have had is that populists are far more likely to damage democracy. Overall, 23 percent of populists cause significant democratic backsliding, compared with 6 percent of nonpopulist democratically elected leaders (J. Kyle & Y. Mounk, 2018). In other words, populist governments are about four times more likely than non-populist ones to harm democratic institutions.
Populism is a necessary corrective mechanism that addresses popular problems and limits the power of elites.
Regardless of which view is more accurate, populism is acknowledged to be a very powerful tool to gather the support of the masses in democratic systems. The main danger perceived by the Humanode core is the rise of populists. Individuals that know how to be popular do not necessarily have the intelligence, professional qualities, experience, or profound knowledge on the subjects they have to make decisions upon on a regular basis.
In the Humanode network, every human node has a voting power of 1. Voting delegation in Humanode allows for any human node to delegate their voting power to any Governor in the network. Governor power equals 1+ the number of delegations from other human nodes. Such a system allows limitless crowdsourcing possibilities as delegation is liquid and not regionally bound. As in any other democratic system, individuals that possess oratory, diplomatic skills and are backed by influential media sources have an advantage in the Humanode network. An introvert with sociopathic tendencies possessing a very professional skill set for decision-making operations will most likely receive less support than a good negotiator, orator, and crowd controller that possesses a mediocre skill set. This is slightly balanced out by the fact that human nodes must have an accepted proposal before they become Governors. Thus Governors should be less affected by populist media, as they have a confirmed intellectual skill set that allowed them to create a useful proposal accepted by the Governors of Humanode.
In Vortex voting procedures, Governors have disproportionate voting power and those Governors that have more delegations have more power. The professional backslide in our understanding poses a threat to the effectiveness, progressiveness, and constant optimization of governance. We fear that without Proof-of-Devotion, which is in a way a proof of having some kind of professional skill set, any democratic system faces becoming a plutocracy, where the wealthiest members control influential and credible media sources to direct the opinion of masses and drive support to candidates of their choosing.
Proof-of-Devotion might bring a small balance to populism upheaval, as it demands participation in Formation to receive proposal rights on critical matters. Nevertheless, Consuls wielding huge delegations will inevitably emerge and their stance in decision-making mechanisms will be very strong. The only way to limit their influence is the direct and active participation of human nodes in governing processes. The more Governors that do not delegate their vote and actively participate in governance the less authority can be accumulated in the hands of those that seek it.
Attack vectors on Cognitocratic core
Plutocracy
Plutocracy is a state of a governing system where most of the decision-making capabilities are affected or concentrated in the hands of large capital owners. The bigger the plutocratic effect on the system the more power and effort are diverted from continuous optimization, innovation and professional development to supporting and lobbying the interest of capital holders with an intention of maximizing profits through legislative interference.
Plutocracy is not rooted in any established political philosophy because every single political system on the planet is scourged by it. It’s less of a political system rather than a constant pressure from the elites whose power is derived from the wealth they own. Without transparency and proper deterrence any political system can become a plutocracy by being corrupted from the inside. Traditionally, the most vulnerable spot is elections. Political actors provide lobbying in exchange for electoral support and donations to a warchest. Little by little plutocrats infiltrate all branches of the government, including the legislative. In the end, instead of having a professional system “of the people, by the people, for the people” composed of specialists promoted based on their merit, modern political systems end up with political actors that struggle for power by pleasing their plutocratic overlords
Cognitocracy is also vulnerable to plutocracy like any other system, but compared to other models it has some benefits that help to keep the plutocrats at bay and deter their influence.
There are no elections in a cognitocracy. No position that is elected through a popularity contest. All Cognitocracts have the same voting power so there is no point of direct exchange of electoral support for lobbying.
If plutocrats want to help out a cognitocrat for him to lobby their interest in the future they have to divert resources to foster an actual creative innovation so that it is accepted by specialists. So instead of just spending capital on marketing.
Media campaign doesn’t play such a crucial role in voting in a cognitocracy. As a proposer is addressing a professional minority, it is more crucial to prepare and deliver a good paper than to have a massive public image. This is achievable without any external help, thus lowering the influence of plutocrats.
Cognitocractic populism
Populism is a political approach that seeks to appeal to the interests and sentiments of the general population, often by presenting itself as a champion of the common people against a perceived elite or establishment. Notoriously, to gain power populists might support a popular resolution that satisfies the needs of the masses, but in reality is harmful and counterproductive.
The very essence of cognitocracy addresses the issue of populism as its effects are limited by making sure that only specialists get to vote. It becomes way harder for populists to amass power as instead of appealing to the masses they would have to appeal to cognitocrats. Although one could argue that potential populists would still find a way by appealing to the most popular problems faced by cognitocrats.
Promoting education and media literacy is the most long-term effective way of combating populist power grab. They both foster critical thinking, help potential voters distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information. Encourage fact-checking and critical evaluation of news and information.
There is a hypothetical assumption (as there is no data yet) that a cognitocrat who was able to come up with a specialized creative innovation or optimization and was accepted by other cognitocrats will be less susceptible to false media pretenses and much more empirical in critical thinking than a broader population voter. An intellectual barrier that potential cognitocrats have to pass through also acts as an anti-populism barrier as, hypothetically, cognitocrats must personally reach some level of critical thinking and evaluation to actually come up with an innovation.
Cognitocratic drain
Cognitocratic drain is a potential state in which a certain field has so much innovation and optimization implemented that it becomes very hard to come up with something creative to accept new cognitocrats. This state can lead to several critical changes that might affect the efficiency of a SC.
It can lead to:
Lowering the barrier for admittance. Proposals become not as innovative or professional as they were before thus lowering the quality of cognitocrats admitted.
Emergence of innovative but non-practical proposals and their admittance.
Cartelization of a chamber without admittance of new cognitocrats and an emergent hierarchy.
If such tendencies arise in a SC it might be viable to either dissolve this chamber or merge it with another. This problem represents the very root of how cognitocracy functions. As mentioned above cognitocracy aims to be a dynamic system that creates and dissolves chambers according to the prevalent needs and throughput of proposals of a certain specialization. If the size of a chamber becomes disproportionately larger than the actual decision-making needs and potential innovation that this chamber might bring then it will inevitably fall into the state of cognitocratic drain which will certainly lead to above-mentioned consequences and pose a threat to a cognitocratic system as a whole.
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