Evolution of Freedom
Part IV : Collective intelligence - Chapter 42
Separation of powers
For us to be able to harness the full potential of the latent intelligence humanity collectively possesses, we need to dramatically improve the way we make our collective decisions. For us to overcome our existential challenges, we need to seek out optimum decision-making practices that lead to the best possible outcomes. When we do this, we need to scrutinize our democratic practices and rewire how information flows within our institutions.
When representative democracies were first created during the French and American revolutions, the main concern was how to pry the absolute power away from a single individual, the monarch. According to Montesquieu, this could be achieved by dividing the monarch’s various powers into three separate branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. Each branch would then act as a check to balance the powers the other branches possessed. No one individual could be in charge of all three branches at the same time.
The executive branch, headed by a prime minister or a president, is the branch that runs the government day to day. It creates policies and implements them in practice. To do so, it is in charge of the public purse. Since none of the branches of government have the authority to create money, the legislative branch has endowed it with the right to collect taxes. Tax collection is thus the true source of the executive branch’s power, without which nothing would get done.
Seen from this angle, money appears to be executive power in its most fundamental form. With the power bestowed in money, natural resources and human labor can be dedicated to executing all the tasks that the government is responsible for.
The legislative branch is in charge of crafting new laws and its power is based on majority control of the parliament. In parliamentary democracies the executive branch is created out of such majorities. All new laws proposed by the executive branch need to be approved by the legislature for them to take effect. The judicial branch in turn is made up of an independent judiciary that interprets and enforces the laws crafted by the parliament.
As we observe the various dysfunctions eroding our democratic institutions and the public’s trust in them, it is time to ask whether there could be a more sophisticated way to separate these powers that would maximize collective intelligence at the same time. I believe there is.
This brings us to the twenty-second hypothesis:
When representative democracies were first created during the French and American revolutions, the main concern was how to pry the absolute power away from a single individual, the monarch. According to Montesquieu, this could be achieved by dividing the monarch’s various powers into three separate branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. Each branch would then act as a check to balance the powers the other branches possessed. No one individual could be in charge of all three branches at the same time.
The executive branch, headed by a prime minister or a president, is the branch that runs the government day to day. It creates policies and implements them in practice. To do so, it is in charge of the public purse. Since none of the branches of government have the authority to create money, the legislative branch has endowed it with the right to collect taxes. Tax collection is thus the true source of the executive branch’s power, without which nothing would get done.
Seen from this angle, money appears to be executive power in its most fundamental form. With the power bestowed in money, natural resources and human labor can be dedicated to executing all the tasks that the government is responsible for.
The legislative branch is in charge of crafting new laws and its power is based on majority control of the parliament. In parliamentary democracies the executive branch is created out of such majorities. All new laws proposed by the executive branch need to be approved by the legislature for them to take effect. The judicial branch in turn is made up of an independent judiciary that interprets and enforces the laws crafted by the parliament.
As we observe the various dysfunctions eroding our democratic institutions and the public’s trust in them, it is time to ask whether there could be a more sophisticated way to separate these powers that would maximize collective intelligence at the same time. I believe there is.
This brings us to the twenty-second hypothesis:
22. Instead of dividing the powers originally possessed by the monarch between three branches of government, we should divide them equally among all citizens. This means that every citizen would receive an equal share of legislative, executive and judicial power.
By distributing money as a basic income, we have already endowed all citizens with executive power. Since everyone receives 100 units for public sector expenses, we have essentially distributed the government’s purchasing power among the whole population. This gives everybody the ability to move goods and services to execute policies they deem important for the community. Since larger tasks cannot be accomplished by a single individual’s contribution, effective public policy requires crowdfunding and coalition building. This is exactly as it should be.
To endow our money, Virta, with all three powers, we have to add new features to it. This wouldn’t have been possible in the analog era of just bills, coins and ledgers. Electronic money, on the other hand, is flexible and allows us to design exactly the kind of money we want and need.
The twenty-third hypothesis is that:
To endow our money, Virta, with all three powers, we have to add new features to it. This wouldn’t have been possible in the analog era of just bills, coins and ledgers. Electronic money, on the other hand, is flexible and allows us to design exactly the kind of money we want and need.
The twenty-third hypothesis is that:
23. We can add both legislative and judicial power to our money by adding a vote and an evaluation to every unit of our money. This means that in addition to receiving a total of 200 units of money, we also receive 200 votes and 200 evaluations we can use to part take in decision-making and pass judgment on the projects we subscribe to.
Our basic income is thus not just a basic income any more. From now on we can participate in all the decisions (legislative power) of the cells we have helped fund and provide them with a public reputation (judicial power) based on our own evaluation. Instead of talking about UBI, in this expanded version of our money we should really be talking about universal basic power. Since one of the meanings of the Finnish word Virta is power, the name we have chosen for our currency remains on point.
This expansion of powers applies also to the workshares we earn with our labor, meaning that every workshare also comes with a vote in the internal decision-making and the ability to evaluate the cell internally. Citizens can only make decisions and evaluate projects they have helped fund or they themselves work for.
Since our votes and our ratings cannot be separated from the money, this puts additional pressure on how and where to spend our money. If we want to be part of a particular decision or evaluate something publicly, we have to fund the project or work for it.
The only exception to this is that people should be granted 100 additional evaluations to study the purpose and impact of projects that they have not funded. This is to ensure that even projects whose purpose and impact are deemed negative, and which therefore would not receive funding, will be evaluated. This means that all projects are evaluated from three perspectives: by producers, consumers and outside observers.
The purpose of evaluations is to articulate to other citizens how our own value system corresponds to reality. This evaluation creates a public reputation, which is a form of feedback loop that enables others to act more intelligently. All the evaluations we make are then collected under our own public profiles. This acts as another feedback loop, which discourages spurious and purposefully malicious evaluations.
Exactly how the machine-readable reputation system should be constructed needs to be worked out in more detail later. The financial incentive to manipulate reputations is great, which means that this will entail a prolonged cat and mouse game to plug the various holes that might make the system vulnerable to manipulation.
By adding legislative and judicial power to our currency, our money ceases to be mere currency, but becomes power in its pure form. Universal basic power becomes a central tool that enables collective intelligence to emerge. It generates valuable data for all sectors of society that collectively steer us towards better decisions and actions. What’s more, our separate economic and political systems are fused into a single holistic system of governance. From now on, we have a formal way of allocating power equally among all citizens. When we talk about equality as a virtue, we are specifically talking about equality of executive, legislative and judicial power.
Now, this would suggest that the model we propose here would be a form of direct democracy. But could there be an even better way to make decisions? I believe so. Delegative democracy offers great benefits that should be incorporated into our improved decision-making process.
This expansion of powers applies also to the workshares we earn with our labor, meaning that every workshare also comes with a vote in the internal decision-making and the ability to evaluate the cell internally. Citizens can only make decisions and evaluate projects they have helped fund or they themselves work for.
Since our votes and our ratings cannot be separated from the money, this puts additional pressure on how and where to spend our money. If we want to be part of a particular decision or evaluate something publicly, we have to fund the project or work for it.
The only exception to this is that people should be granted 100 additional evaluations to study the purpose and impact of projects that they have not funded. This is to ensure that even projects whose purpose and impact are deemed negative, and which therefore would not receive funding, will be evaluated. This means that all projects are evaluated from three perspectives: by producers, consumers and outside observers.
The purpose of evaluations is to articulate to other citizens how our own value system corresponds to reality. This evaluation creates a public reputation, which is a form of feedback loop that enables others to act more intelligently. All the evaluations we make are then collected under our own public profiles. This acts as another feedback loop, which discourages spurious and purposefully malicious evaluations.
Exactly how the machine-readable reputation system should be constructed needs to be worked out in more detail later. The financial incentive to manipulate reputations is great, which means that this will entail a prolonged cat and mouse game to plug the various holes that might make the system vulnerable to manipulation.
By adding legislative and judicial power to our currency, our money ceases to be mere currency, but becomes power in its pure form. Universal basic power becomes a central tool that enables collective intelligence to emerge. It generates valuable data for all sectors of society that collectively steer us towards better decisions and actions. What’s more, our separate economic and political systems are fused into a single holistic system of governance. From now on, we have a formal way of allocating power equally among all citizens. When we talk about equality as a virtue, we are specifically talking about equality of executive, legislative and judicial power.
Now, this would suggest that the model we propose here would be a form of direct democracy. But could there be an even better way to make decisions? I believe so. Delegative democracy offers great benefits that should be incorporated into our improved decision-making process.