BitGov

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URL = http://signup.bitgovote.com/

Description

The Bitcoin of governance could be coming soon:

"After late-night discussions with my classmates acknowledging this reality, six of us started a project called Bitgov which ‪enables citizens to vote on proposed legislation anywhere and anytime, regardless of nationality. It aims to make it easy for people to understand legislation, but also to express their opinions and join in the decision-making process.

Here’s how the technology works: Public opinion is gauged using algorithms to find the most significant social media posts and the opinion leaders. ‪We also provide policy makers with clear insights into the sentiments of voters. The endgame is to create a platform for global governance without borders." (Pho: mailinglist: http://qz.com/116136)


Discussion

1. Dan Krimm:

"Bitgov seemingly will not address most of the important aspects of governance -- far too narrow in scope.

Really, this sounds to me more like a fancy name for Internet voting, which is still fundamentally problematic. Remember that nobody has determined whether it's even theoretically possible to combine (1) secret ballot-counting, (2) robust voter authentication, and (3) unhackable voter-verified audit trail, in a single technological system. (The "Australian ballot" with paper ballots does this, but only by leveraging aspects of the physical world itself, in the context of controlled-access polling places.)

Above and beyond that there are myriad issues with potentials to manipulate the voting process, from turnout/participation/mobilization, to barriers to entry in getting proposals on the ballot, to manipulating the tools to understand the proposals and their real (as opposed to merely claimed) ramifications, to vote coercion and vote bribing, etc., etc. Anyone who claims to have slam-dunk solutions to these issues is totally BS-ing. Approach all such claims with a baseline of skepticism, and use the Missouri motto: "Show me!" Burden of proof on the claimer, default stance is that the claim is false.” (pho mailing list, september 2013)


2. Thomas Olsen:

"That idea worries me! It's exactly the undesirable and potentially dangerous scenario that I warned against:

"Compare digital tools for democratic participation to electronic stock-trading, and/or to ‘high-frequency-trading’, as one type of this phenomenon is called. Claims vary, but around half of the world’s stock-trading is based on algorithms (over 70% in the US), causing manipulated rises and falls, triggered by speculative thresholds for equated data, and/or automatic orders placed to trigger turnover. This not only speeds up the bust and boom cycle artificially, it also makes speculation in both rise and fall a hugely lucrative business where speculators can earn huge returns on the fact that others are made to lose value. Just as an example; back in 2009 did this kind of rigged trading earn US firm Goldman Sachs 100 m USD - per day - during 116 trading days out of a 194-day span 4). Traders do not earn these amounts from engaging in the trade of stocks and derivatives with ‘a potential’, but because they bet that a stock will rise or fall, so doing adding to the cycle itself. Considering the world’s economy is driven by stock values, it is unfortunate that ‘betting’ should constitute such a very important influence. Democracy cannot be allowed this sorry fate.

To place democracy under the same peril would be disastrous. If democracy became a purely digitalised affair, manipulation would be the outcome, no matter whether we can already now foresee ‘how’, or not. Today’s technology will, no matter how aroused we are about it today, be antique already a handful of years from now. To base a new democratic order on today’s technology would therefore be a certain recipe for imminent disaster. Technology will evolve faster and faster, and democracy must play the role to stabilise society, not speed up the race."

More Information

  • BitPools :voting with your coins to get big things done.
  1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?&topic=207759.0
  2. http://www.bitpools.com/