Neutral Voting Bloc

From P2P Foundation
Jump to navigation Jump to search

= australian project for new political movement/party based on the blockchain, founded by Max Kaye

URL = http://nvbloc.org/

Description

"Kaye describes the Neutral Voting Bloc (NVB) as a “political app.” Elected officials are told how to vote by participants on the blockchain, so voters always control parliamentary actions in an open, transparent way. We could well be on the way to true democracy." (http://cointelegraph.com/news/114404/true-democracy-worlds-first-political-app-blockchain-party-launches-in-australia)


Interview

"* CoinTelegraph: What is the overall goal of this campaign?

Max Kaye: The main purpose of the Neutral Voting Bloc (NVB) is to perform an over-the-air (OTA) upgrade to Australia's electoral system, and perhaps the world.

More specifically, it's to instantiate a democratic system that strongly embraces the right sort of epistemological philosophy to produce good policy consistently, or at least more often than our current systems. It also instantiates this philosophy in itself, allowing itself to be upgraded and altered when the time is right. Then end result is that even with a small number of seats the NVB can help produce better policy results.

For details as to why a tiny influence in parliament can produce large benefits see Accidental Politicians (Pluchino, 2011). Curiously, this paper provides an explanation as to why the Rudd/Gillard governments were able to be productive a few years ago while the current Abbott government is not.

The 'right sort' of philosophy is directly taken from modern epistemology. The NVB can improve policy by increasing conjecture put forward, and also by encouraging a culture of criticism to sort the good conjecture from bad. It's critical to maximize both of these for the best policy output. A great inspiration for the NVB was David Deutsch's 2011 book The Beginning of Infinity.

Some of the inspiration has also come from Testing Theories of American Politics (Gilens, 2014): Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

The Neutral Voting Bloc is designed to move the needle in favor of citizens, slowly, and consistently over a reasonable period of time. By embracing the culture of permission-less innovation we can get started right away.


CT: Where did you come up with the name for the party and what are its politics/policies? If in fact there are no policies, please explain the logic behind this and how you plan to get membership?

MK: I went through a few names first, like 'herd of cats' and 'ROSE' (because the idea is just as good by any other name). 'Neutral Coalition' was another but I thought it'd be a bit too ambiguous. The 'Neutral Voting Bloc' is a functional name that hasn't ever been used before and it accurately describes the party's prime directive of sorts: not to interfere in policy, but to provide the right environment.

I call the NVB a politico-economic structure because it is not designed to function like a typical party. In a typical party there is a strong hierarchy and unified policy platform. When we have large parties this often means that only a few policy platforms are put forward, limiting conjecture and causing abrupt changes in policy and environment.

The NVB, on the other hand, is designed to interact with other parties (at first). Australia uses an esoteric electoral system for our federal senate, which features Group Voting Tickets (GVTs). GVTs not only allow for, but force each party to compare all other parties in an economic fashion, so we present other parties with an economic choice: to rank us highly and be rewarded when we win a seat, or to not participate. In this way we hope to function as a neutral method for sharing the last seat elected in each state without biasing any sociocultural group.

Additionally, participation begets participation in more ways than one. All Australian citizens are eligible to participate as a singleton, so once we have seats in the senate there is an incentive for citizens to become involved as well. By participating in all levels of governance we hope to become broadly attractive and build participation from all levels. This will be especially noticeable when the NVB holds the final seat in a vote. At this point there will be a strong incentive to influence the vote and so a resource war of sorts begins, where the resource is the potential to participate in the NVB.

We're looking for members who are excited by the possibility of altering (for the better) the political environment of Australia, and so far we're finding this is the excitement driving membership. Over time there will be more and more incentive to work with or join the NVB as its influence grows, so that will eventually become the dominant force driving membership." (http://cointelegraph.com/news/114404/true-democracy-worlds-first-political-app-blockchain-party-launches-in-australia)

More Information

Interview Max Kaye via http://cointelegraph.com/news/114404/true-democracy-worlds-first-political-app-blockchain-party-launches-in-australia