Quinn DuPont on Digital Polycentric Governance

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(Episode 4 of the series: Overthrowing the Network State, which is an elaborate response to Balaji Srivanasan's book on the Network State)

Discussion

Summary:

"In this episode, the hosts interview Quinn DuPont, a technology historian who recently talked about his criticisms of TNS at the Commons Stack Unconference. DuPont also published an article titled "A Progressive Web3: From Social Coproduction to Digital Polycentric Governance". The discussion focused on Balaji's misunderstandings of history, which are problematic.

Balaji’s historical misunderstandings

At the start of the podcast, the speakers question Balaji's preoccupation with the nation-state and its legitimacy and suggest exploring alternative options like DAOs. They criticize Balaji's idea of projecting a particular future and his belief in a single trajectory of history, which they find outdated. Quinn points out that Balaji's vision of the history of politics is based on mid-20th-century scholarship, which is a narrow and limited perspective. They also bring up the historical inaccuracies in Balaji's book, making it hard to take seriously. The speakers advise fact-checking the information to avoid falling under an ideology. They find it amusing that Balaji accuses the New York Times of this while his book is filled with inaccuracies.

Balaji has a poor understanding of human societies and organizations' creation. Balaji argues that every organization starts with a strong leader gathering people around him, contradicting anthropological studies. Dupont points out that nations and other collective activities don't start that way, and he disagrees with Balaji's claim that people need a strong leader to speak for them. Quinn argues this type of thinking only leads to totalitarianism.

Then they shift to the concept of "human pattern" and acknowledge that some sociology studies support the idea that humans follow specific patterns. However, there are no academic references or citations to those studies in Balaji's book. Without proper scholarly support, taking Balaji's ideas seriously is difficult.

Governance of Commons

During the podcast, Kelsie prompts Quinn to discuss his paper and explore why the idea of community networks resonates within the web3 community. First, Quinn introduces the concept of "Polycentric Governance," which was theorized by Elinor Ostrom. While he acknowledges that it is not an efficient model, he notes that it provides an alternative framework for governance. However, Quinn later comes back to this subject, saying that in polycentricity governance, monitoring every center of governance can be highly costly, making it generally inefficient. However, the blockchain offers a solution to this problem by making monitoring free by design. This is why we can observe examples of polycentric governance on the blockchain, such as DAOs. Next, they compare this governance model to the Network State and note that according to Balaji's book, the Network State has only one way of organizing (which is not really clear according to The Blockchain Socialist). In contrast, polycentric governance can be adapted to each case, making it more flexible and enforceable.

Another aspect of polycentric governance is that, in many ways, it appears to be an excellent way to govern commons. So later in the podcast, the topic of "digital commons" arises, referring to online resources such as Wikipedia or those on the blockchain. Quinn Dupont notes that digital commons face different challenges compared to real-life commons. For example, physical commons are often subject to congestion or overuse, which is less likely to occur on the digital front, or at least not to the same extent. However, digital commons are more susceptible to scaling issues and security breaches, which are more prevalent online. Fortunately, blockchain technology solves these problems, offering greater security and scalability for digital commons. Kelsie revisits the paper mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, "A Progressive Web3: From Social Coproduction to Digital Polycentric Governance," and asks Quinn to delve into it further. Quinn begins by touching upon the two critical aspects of technology and culture, highlighting how the Web3 landscape has transformed drastically in recent years. He points out that the people involved, their interests, and their interactions vastly differ from when he first began exploring Bitcoin in 2012.

Finishing with blockchain governance, Quinn notes that there are several attempts at governance and dispute resolution mechanisms, although they may not always be sophisticated. However, he cautions against centralization with governance tokens, as many individuals tend to delegate their governance power to delegates, thereby giving more influence to entities like Easy 16, a VC firm from Silicon Valley, which is increasingly gaining prominence in the Web3 space."

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