RE: Freedom and the export of democracy - IFC - S1 : R32 entry
This is really deep and thought provoking as I've come to expect from you. I think what I want to comment most about is what you said about direct democracy and crypto playing a part.
This is something that's been on my mind a bit, the implications are amazing. However.. I can still see how it could be abused. YET.. It's a step in the right direction in my opinion absolutely.. No more just flipping the vote so to speak, or altering the numbers through computer manipulation, it would have to be done in other ways in regards to account creation and passwords and such.. I think it would drastically cut down on corruption!
I might even vote if we had a system that was like that where you could have more of a sense of it's actually working to an extent. Cause right now, I just have zero faith. The computer voting is absolutely compromised and easily hackable, the only other solution is in the other direction back towards paper ballots which also have issues as well..
I wonder if there could be a way to do both paper ballots and use block chain technology.. If so.. That might be the ultimate solution, or at least as close as is possible to a solution. Then you could have an uncorruptable digital source and a physical hard copy to back it up and verify it with.. Hm.. Something to think about! Thanks for another excellent entry and info to think about! :D
I intend to elaborate on some of the ideas in this post in a future post, about potential "upgrades" to democracy. However, my fear is that in the disappointment in our current system, that we discover too late that better is not necessarily the natural direction of evolution from our current state. As always, the path to disaster is paved with good intentions.
Cryptography can aid in making elections transparent and can also aid in the finer graining (in time and in intent) of our voting abilities. However, there are dangers there as well. Coming from a country where voting is compulsory (a civic duty), I still see problems there, in that it assumes an informed and educated voting public (educated in how the civic system works, and what the party platforms are actually offering rather than information by advertisement).
Blockchains by design, at least when backed by enough computing power or stake, are technically incorruptible, or at the corruption can be detectable.
I enjoyed writing this entry, although I fear I missed the point of the quest! Anyway, I hope to complete another post that better addresses the points that I hinted at....