Comments on: Decentralized Autonomous Organization as Social Automatization: do we need techno-cratic governance ?

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 04 May 2016 19:27:02 +0000

Feder’s commentary is the most poignant I have yet seen on DAOs. For many people I have spoken to about, it is not only bizarre and enigmatic, but also lunacy. That said, I have thrown my hat in the ring and purchased some DAO tokens for various projects.
My worry is that despite the decentralized, distributed nature of its existence, large tokenholders can still direct the ‘company’ in ways that they see fit. In other words, if tokens can be purchased for digital currency (such as ETH or BTC), well then the wealthiest will still come to dominate the “democracy” in the system. As you said, 1 dollar = 1 vote.
It also can discriminate against those of us who are not early adopters or early understanders, those of us who cannot comprehend a DAO will not buy into one. If this becomes the new form of corporate ownership and production, well then the geek shall inherit the earth indeed.
I cannot understand the code of an ethereum smart contract, despite the fact that they are transparent and observable for free by all who care to look. While the promise of all this is super disruptive – and in many good and positive ways – it could also serve to empower a class of folks at the expense of the rest of us.

PS- are you still @ UW-Madison? If so please email me directly.

By: Bob Haugen

Bob Haugen — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 15:24:57 +0000

Vinay Gupta of Ethereum is live-interactive-improvising an essay on this theme right now:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lEsEJdSkjr06sm9KAAg7NAeYg7_hs7bXGKU7xy6HAVU/edit?usp=sharing

He explicitly calls for “Hyper efficient cooperative capitalism”. (I think that is a contradiction in terms, and I don’t think his plans will work, but it’s still an interesting hairball (at this point) of an essay.)

By: BrunoMC

BrunoMC — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 12:39:11 +0000

I completely agree with the analysis! And I might add, beyond technocratic thinking, this excerpt is a very good example of the modernist mindset that dates back to the 18th century, talking as if human history is progressing inevitably on a straight line, and that we can master nature and human relations through science and technology. By now I think there’s a lot of good examples out there to show how this mindset has worked out for us so far (the most recent one is the crisis of market fundamentalism and European technocracy turning into pure authoritarianism), and you can also tell that those who praise it are the ones in a privileged position.