Liquid democracy

More general theories of governance have fewer arbitrary aspects. Liquid democracy enables a form of governance which only has one arbitrary aspect, that of individual self representation. All other aspects of governance which a society that uses liquid democracy is determined by the continuous collective decision of all individuals in that society.

Let’s say a person has an idea for a good law to be implemented. They then will submit the idea to the app and once a particular fraction of people vote for implementing the law, it will be implemented. Perhaps there was a law made in the past that a person thinks is less relevant today. They then can try and convince other people that the law should be removed and if it drops below a particular fraction of people who support it then it will no longer be enforced. But how big of a fraction should this be? Instead of picking an arbitrary number liquid democracy gets the people to vote on it. These votes are done continuously.

This can be used to make any collective decision for a floating platform. Where should the platform go next? People put in suggestions and the one with the most votes wins. What laws should be enforced? People put in the suggestions and the ones above a particular threshold become enforced. What should the severity be for breaking these laws? Again people suggest and vote. How do we elect and pay for judges who determine verdicts? Again people suggest and vote.

I believe that it is important that voting exclude anyone who wouldn’t be affected by these changes to governance. So only people currently living on the floating platform should be able to vote. However, that is an arbitrary preference and if people on the platform feel differently then they can suggest an alternative method and vote on it.

This also requires individuals to potentially vote for hundreds of different things quite frequently. If they don’t want to do research about each individual issue then they can give their vote for some of those things to someone else they trust. This way specialists will emerge who represent particular people groups and they can do the research on their behalf.

Technology would also make the transaction cost of counting these votes much lower. Liquid democracy will be a protocol which people can build various user interfaces over. The protocol will record people’s votes at any given time and anonymise them. It is crucial that the protocol be secure and transparent and so a block chain protocol might be suitable.

I intend this to be the initial way collective decision making is done on the floating platforms I build. However, I’m pretty sure once people see the advantages of the system they will start using it in a limited capacity for land based governments though I suspect there will be considerable resistance from politicians who won’t want to give up their power.