How do we self organize?

WARNING: The following video requires an attention span. For those suffering from tiktok brain, please just watch the video from 1:20 to 6:20 (5 minutes).

The below are the presentation notes reproduced (after a "M-x ispell") for your convenience. The below isn't intended to make sense without the audio/video above. I cut off the video at the point that my presentation became a group discussion, though I don't think I did a good job of addressing the question at the end. Josh makes the point that barter systems eventually devolve into money, which may be true. However, the point of the type of system I describe isn't just about what money can do: it's about building algorithms to inform how to optimally distribute the resources you control to build infrastructure (and community) you value. While the "credit" in a "bottom-up social credit" may devolve into a normal currencies, the main goal is the "bottom-up" and "social" aspects. Plus, if we end up with a "money" that doesn't require blockchain or governments, that is still a step up.

1. Why care about "Software"?

  • compute becomes a larger portion of humanity over time
  • we have always extended ourselves with technology
  • compute is a part of us
    • hardware is the rest of our body
    • software is the rest of our mind
  • we are primates
    • screens are brain computer interfaces
  • We don't control the software that controls our screens
    • our digital and biological minds are controlled
  • software (our mind) is the mechanism by which we think, plan, and organize
  • definitions have consequences; some are better (evolutionarily) than others
  • brain slugs

2. Decentralized Web

  • Internet is the physical interconnected global computer network
    • The Web is the information (culture) on the Internet
  • how to self organize without centralized middlemen
    • How do we allocate our resources, most importantly: time.
    • What do we choose to support or resist, and to what degree?
  • build free culture where participant's are equal and free
    • culture includes: software, hardware, media
  • bottom-up social credit
    • our values "bubble up" to impact species-level changes

3. Related works

3.1. Money

  • simple barter is terrible
  • other economies emerged (e.g. gift economies)
  • reality is difficult
    • Need constant accounting
    • trust doesn't scale (Dunbar number)
    • value subjective
  • systems break down as number of participants grows
  • money catches on as "trustless" alternative

3.2. Capitalism

  • supply chains for scarce resources
  • more of society runs on non-scarce resources
    • software, algorithms, hardware designs, etc.
  • non-scarce resources require scares resources (namely, labor) to generate
  • make non-scarce resources artificially scarce with IP law
    • can't make money on something without consent from all parties
    • participation means a piece of the pie, and they ain't sharing
  • each person (company) has to repeat most the work
  • freedom prevents scarcity: giving to one gives to all.
    • hard to monetize: crowd-fund or donation only

3.3. Blockchain

  • trustless global consensus
  • I don't want global consensus
    • Shouldn't disregard all minority narratives
  • I trust people
    • Human connection SHOULD be the basis of our society
  • Proof of x doesn't scale long-term
    • Eventually someone will dominate work, stake, etc.
  • recreates fiction of money but decentralized
    • Should deal with reality (subjective value + trust network)
  • may have some value today (free infrastructure) but not tomorrow
    • takes up all the attention

3.4. Group Income

  • opt-in communities (groups)
  • group sets basic income level
  • members set an amount they are willing to contribute
  • members can contribute other resources
    • money isn't the only thing worth contributing
    • labor, products
    • finally, some non-money…

3.5. Grassroots Economics

  • communities pool together resource designations in a pool
  • members can pull from the pool but must eventually give back
  • reinvention of credit without banks
  • groups still only about a Dunbar
  • more non-money resource algorithms!
    • but uses blockchain to track resources

3.6. Web of Opinions (WoO)

  • people vote on content along arbitrary dimensions
    • funny, accurate, interesting
  • can set trust for others
    • aggregate votes across your social network weighted by trust
  • useful for everything from feeds to deciding what you treat as truth
  • we will use this enable larger-than-Dunbar pools

3.7. Open Collective and Drips

  • should mention since it's relevant to Monetizing Free Culture
  • Identifies the correct problem
    • How do I allocate resources to support supply chains?
    • especially for software, which is the correct priority.
  • Funds projects, not individuals
  • Is centralized
    • A long-term solution must be decentralized
    • I am interested in the decentralized solution

4. Proposed Course of Action

  • generally what we should do
  • each person issues promises of non-scarce resources
    • person (in the Citizens United sense)
    • example promises: cup of coffee, seconds of labor
  • trust for the promise is tied to trust of issuer WoO style
    • facilitate trading of promises
    • promises have different value to different people
  • build algorithms to optimize resource allocation, dispersal, and acquisition
  • enable one to disperse value to maximize generation of free culture
    • build software to help you build software that empowers you
      • concretely, do this ^

4.1. Existing infrastructure

4.2. Problems to overcome

  • value assignment problem
    • How do I discover and weight contributions of millions of laborers
    • Labor to assign values often costs more than the gift amount
  • Identity verification
    • How do I know my support goes to the intended recipient?
  • micro-transaction problem
    • How can I support to a million laborers without losing it to fees?
  • milestone proof of concept
    • need working, understandable, example for people to believe it is worth perusing

4.2.1. Example value assignment solution

  • While building system/environments on Guix, extract git history.
    • git history includes contributions and email
  • one commit = 1 weight per package
  • explicitly installed packages weighted equally
  • half of packages' value allocated to direct dependencies (recursively)

4.2.2. Example identity verification

  • utilize the Decentralized Identifier (DId) email
    • whoever controls the email gets those contributions
  • email throughput is limited
    • Use WoO to share trust that a public key controls an email

4.2.3. Example micro-transaction solution

  • grant promises (goblin pebbles) for USD to controllers of identified emails
  • many others also grant similar promises
  • laborers trade promises amongst themselves to consolidate
    • more of one promise type means lower transaction fees
  • Support backends with anything that includes an API,
    • Papal, blockchain-based backends, ACH
  • groups sending promises can similarly consolidate amongst themselves
    • then each laborer need not participate in the system to benefit

4.2.4. What this gets us

  • reality gets us labor -> free software
  • this gets us free software -> labor and resource -> labor
  • allows (resource + free software) -> improved free software
  • example algorithm to help generate social credit
  • <end of tractable project description>

4.3. On-boarding

4.3.1. On-boarding funders

  • maintain software/hardware/media in a way that facilitates contribution inspection
    • give surplus resources to laborers building free culture you use

4.3.2. On-boarding free culture

  • laborers, in the best case, receive mysterious deposits in their Paypal account
  • laborers can participate in the network and possibly reap more diverse promises
  • laborers forced to create non-free culture for survival have a gradual off-ramp
    • can contribute free culture until income is livable

4.3.3. On-boarding non-free culture

  • make promise dedications toward non-free culture
    • promises disperse on release of non-free under free terms
    • gives companies an on-ramp
  • dispersal to free culture increases trust in dedications to non-free culture

4.4. Features

4.4.1. Potential future of the system

  • partially order your set of known promises
    • trade if the promises you gain are both of greater value and trust.
    • Not just about giving, also about getting (replace money)
  • Can value incremental promises differently
    • First 5 coffee might be worth more than the next 5000
  • partial order eg:
    • the first 5 Alex coffee promises are worth less than the first 4 Sam coffee promises
    • I accept a trade of 3 Alex coffee for 3 Sam coffee
  • When promises prove to be bogus, you report that in your WoO
    • donations for non-scarce resources create a replenishing source of trust

4.4.2. Cheating

  • You can lie and steal, but you steal from those that trust you
    • eventually, people won't trust your WoO/promises
  • cheating commits
    • maintainers won't accept diluting commits
    • contributors will fork a repo that dilutes contributions
  • lying about ownership of free culture is illegal in the current law
    • especially now that there is monetary loss

4.4.3. Other benefits

  • We are using algorithms to increase our Dunbar number
  • bottom up social credit
    • value partial orderings + trust constitute a social credit
    • just tweak partial orderings to support your desired cause
  • doesn't avoid taxes
    • money taxed as income, goods incur sales tax
    • government less likely to stamp it out
  • super general
    • can represent any scarce resource
  • more accurately describes how we compare resources
    • value is relative, and depends on trust.

5. legal

🄯 Copyheart Zacchaeus 2024-2025 CC-BY-SA 4.0

Author: Zacchaeus Scheffer

Created: 2025-04-17 Thu 20:06

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