The old man & the mountain
There has been a lot of drama over the past few days related to a proposal put up on Agora @ https://classic-agora.terra.money/t/fund-devs-with-4m-of-off-chain-community-assets/47690 authored by Alex & Ed which seems to be taking us down yet another path of discourse largely based on subjective interpretation & FUD born out of animosity for the people involved with the proposal itself, rather then logic and reason regarding what it represents.
To explain my point we first need to reminisce for a bit and go back to a meeting TR had over the summer with a group called the “TGG” where we talked with a number of community members/organizers about the idea of establishing a working group that could collaborate on building a representative governance framework for the community to enable it to efficiently govern its interactions with external contractors and support the legislative process. Not unlike a senate, which is an institution that we sorely need in order to be able to channel our energy as a “digital nation” and avoid the factional-in-fighting that is bound to be present in any large enough group of diverse, free-spirited and open-minded individuals.
Now, while it might be true that I am stubborn enough to champion a proposal myself on this subject, my personal stance is to try to stay apolitical whenever possible and adopt the role as the “old man on the mountain” while leaving the “politicking” to the frontline activist like Alex & Ed, until such a time where my actions are required.
Due to this stance I was initially very reluctantly to accept a role as “key-holder” but after giving it much thought it became clear to me that it was best to sign on to ensure that funds are managed in the best interest of the community and while it does pay 5K USD a month its safe to assume that all of the “key-holders” earn a higher hourly rate from their day jobs so from a P&L perspective its not really a positive investment of their time, considering the risk/reward model. My suspicion is that most of us agreed based on the simple notion that if we did not take on the role then someone else who might be less biased towards the “greater good” would and that is not an outcome that is favorable for anyone.
Fast-forward to the present and Alex has clawed back roughly 4.2 million USD worth of assets from DK based on months of investigative work and dialog. Money he is now offering to put forth as a way to fund the creation of something akin to a interim governance structure, or senate, until we can setup a proper system based on “elected officials” voted in via LUNC holders using GUI || CLI. By all rights this should be celebratory event with us focusing on how these funds can be appropriated towards strengthening our governance layer, staffing it with people who where voted in by the community and appropriate the funding towards essential maintenance (LCD), new features (v24 + v25) and funding start-ups with strong business cases to utilize our network.
However due to the fact that we are still some way from this “nirvana-state” we seem more intent to focus on the fact that we don’t like Alex and his controversial ideas and reject his “interim senate”. Because we believe ideas must inherently be “bad or evil” simply because they where a figment of Alex’s imagination and subsequent hard work to secure the funds for us?
This to me seems highly illogical, as Alex’s work is a prime example of combining action & intent in order to strengthen the community and while my sympathies go out to the people who feel “left out” I think that once they do some soul-searching on the subject and consider the facts logically they will come to the same conclusion as me, which is that this is a “net-gain” for all of us seeing how the money is essentially an “outside investment” and the “interim senators” proposed are probably diverse enough to prevent Alex from turning into a modern day Palpatine and become more of a master Windu.
However given that none of us are real Jedi's and the community needs to be able to trust the “interim senators” (and later “elected officials”) put in place to manage the budget we need to have an “anti-corruption-tax” paid to the representative as they will be morally liable for all investments they approve, they will be personally attacked every time someone doesn’t like a particular piece of legislation regardless of their involvement in creating it (trust me, I know) and they will be expected to perform their duties while trying to withstand the temptation of “favoritism for funding” and being held accountable to the “highest possible standards”. An obligation that no human being can be expected to meet without being incentivized to do so, which means the 5K USD is not only fair, I suspect its not adequate long term.
So to conclude this Saturday sojourn into Terra Classic governance I fully endorse Alex & Ed’s proposal and if a suitable “key-holder” can be found to replace me, then that would be great.
