Election Time Gaps
"They don't care about you."
It's been proven a thousand times over that politicians do not have their voter's interest at heart. The number one priority of a politician is to maintain their current position of power and attempt to consolidate more if possible. Within that context, they love to pretend they are doing whatever they can to make their constituents happy, but that's all it is: a game of pretend. We see this game ramp into high gear during every election season.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule.
There are some politicians out there that try their best, hold themselves to a higher standard, and try to stay honorable while doing the right thing. Turns out this is a bad strategy for being a career politician, as many will not make it very far. It's not what you know it's who you know, and if you don't play ball then you'll get no help from the political sphere. Shouting at a tidal wave won't stop it from crushing you.
Those who defy all odds and end up going viral anyway tend to mysteriously end up dead. Weird how that works out, eh? Politicians are not allowed to challenge the status quo. Anyone that rocks the boat to hard gets chucked out of it one way or another (usually in a totally non-violent and even legal way).
But are the times changing?
You know who I hate? Tucker Carlson! He's such a dumbass. You know who has been really impressing me lately? Tucker Carlson! What the actual fuck is this timeline? Guy goes from talking head of the established right to speaking truth to power and pointing out every bit of corruption he's encountered within his career. Just wait until he starts his own show and then inevitably teams up with Joe Rogan. What has this already happened? I don't know things. Don't care don't care. Not the topic of this post.
The real problem here is that every 2-4 year cycle politicians engage in their same old song and dance of broken promises, and then once they get elected they basically sit on ass and do nothing. Then election season comes back around and they act like they tried as hard as they could and just need another cycle to really get stuff done. And people continue believing this hogwash over and over and over again. It's been perfected down to a science. The science of gaslighting an entire nation every election season.
But what if there was no "election season"?
Crypto (and specifically DPOS consensus) flips this entire paradigm on its ear. A top 20 witness fucks around they're gonna find out pretty damn quick; maybe within the hour if the offence is blatant enough. We can vote our politicians in with the click of a button anywhere in the world knowing full well the system in place can't be hacked. And if it did get hacked it would be visible on a transparent blockchain for all to see. That's powerful.
Of course witnesses are devs and node-runners.
These are the kinds of people that often don't make for very good politicians. All in good time I suppose. Eventually I envision every top 20 witness being a company of people with a full spectrum of talent. The idea that one person could possibly be a Hive witnesses and do all the things by themselves will be foreign to most. Of course you never know there might be the one guy that again defies all odds and rises to the top. Should be an interesting timeline to be sure.
It's much harder to say one thing and then do another when we can vote people in and out of the system within 3 seconds time. Compare that to 4 years. FOUR YEARS! Three seconds vs four years. When I think about it too much it spins me in a loop. And again, combined with the unhackable nature of the voting system (yeah there are no mail in ballots don't worry about it) and the distributed nature of the network and things really start coming into focus. We can finally hold people accountable for their actions rather than just allowing them to continue consolidating power for themselves for an entire election cycle.
This model is extendable.
It doesn't have to apply just to the top 20 witnesses. It would be pretty trivial to extend this concept to any elected position conceivable. This might not be that big of a deal now, but just wait until communities and perhaps even entire towns find themselves in a localized position wondering how they're going to run the town. That's the perfect application of DPOS.
Money talks and bullshit walks
Of course it's not all sunshine and rainbows. We are voting with our money. Obviously people are going to see that and call bullshit, without even realizing how hypocritical it is. Crypto simply cuts out the middle man and acts as a disintermediary. The current system of governance we have right now is rich people in charge. At least with a DPOS system the rich people in charge have to lock their money into the system that they're controlling. The ability to control our own money and lock money into it is something the legacy economy couldn't even fathom.
Conclusion
Crypto is going to revolutionize governance and self-sovereignty. You know who's not going to like that? Imperialists. This is a topic that the powers that be are willing to kill over without a second thought. The real trick is setting up systems which can't be usurped by physical warfare. Of course we have to expect that there will be many trials and tribulations before such a system actually evolves into what it needs to be. The road ahead is treacherous; it's dangerous to go alone: take this.
Alright, while that may be true it still suffers from a major problem in both systems, apathetic voters.
Remember when we had inactive top witnesses for a while?
Maybe there should be a decay of some sort on establishing votes for these officials.
I'd have to agree with this, some form of cooldown on votes where they expire after a set term to ensure people are constantly aware of who they're voting for and ensuring these witnesses are holding their end of the bargain not just 'getting by'.
There are many 'new' witnesses that come and leave because they can't actually make enough to even cover costs. Whilst it should never be about 'making a profit' there needs to be some system to ensure the witnesses and voters are 'active' enough to contribute to the network.
Good to hear there are some voices of reason out there. I gave you a follow my friend.
Thanks! Much appreciated!
Shameless shill incoming!
(Feel free to vote for my witness too (Slothbuzz))
Apathetic voters can use proxy. After all hardly anyone has time and will to constantly keep track of what is going on.
On top of that in Hive we have vote expiration - if you don't do any governance related voting (witnesses, proxy or proposal voting), then your old votes are canceled. It happens after a year of inactivity in that field. Here is an example of such thing happening on my account: https://hiveblocks.com/b/74815666#0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Last two virtual operations in that block are
expired_account_notification(notifies when governance vote expired) andproxy_cleared(my choice of proxy account was removed, so my voting power was no longer passed through proxy to witnesses and proposals). Of course I've set proxy again as soon as I noticed, but if I was not paying attention, my voting power would remain idle.By the way, in EOS votes decay every week. Technically it works by making new votes slightly stronger, so refreshing vote every week makes fresh vote worth more than someone else's old vote, even if stakes are the same. However they have coded it so every change in voting power refreshes the vote, so even someone else can refresh it simply by staking minuscule amount of EOS on idle account - a bug in my opinion.
Good to know. I've been mostly inactive since the Steem days, so I guess I have some reading up to do.
If I remember correctly the feature of governance vote expiration was added in Hardfork 25.
Whoa, thanks so much @edicted you keep making me happy with your factual post. Reading from the top will look like...... But seeing
The are things people don't understand, and fully adopting crypto will change alot and all this bad system.
Thanks again buddy
The main problem with politics is that there is very less percentage of good people who fight the election. The lack of good and truthful people, we have to select among the liars and corrupted ones.
Pure cope for plutocracy.
Nonetheless, I actually agree.
Thanks!
It will be interesting to see how something runs when the biggest stakeholders are actually in charge.
For example Elon Musk and Zuckerturd don't really control anything by way of politics.
Obviously there are bigger players like Soros.
I think DPOS will even the playing field.
We see they run Hive to maximize their security. They, as you have noted, desire to ensure the market that brought their abilities and diligence to the fore, but they prefer edges they have that secure their power for the ones that they took advantage of to gain that power at the cost of them they replaced.
For example, a lot of folks advanced with real property despite sketchy credit scores. Today they have the favor of banks, so they advance the favor of banks that give them an edge, while folks that didn't, that couldn't get in, or didn't beat the odds and make it anyway with bad credit, or that got swindled like me (there's a lot more of us than you'd susptect if they didn't swindle you), tend to despise banks. The moreso if one got scammed and robbed, or if one couldn't manage to fulfill obligations. People tend to blame others for their failures. Imagine that.
Ahh but that's why they'll never do it. They'd have to show their hand and that would mean they'd be forced to stop gerrymandering districts and pandering to a rich oligarchy while they step on our throats.