But yes, I know the open source community does a lot, but you have to ask: Is the open source community interested or see as a priority what we want?
It really depends on which project. If you’re talking about DAVS then we need to hire programmers. DAVS isn’t the sort of project which could be done right if done completely as a volunteer effort but at best perhaps a rough prototype can be produced.
There are several people currently involved with the DAVS project. Each of those people should be paid something so that they can dedicate more time to the project. $1 million dollars for DAVS would be enough to create something amazing but would it match the vision we have for DAVS?
I can help design DAVS as a DApp but I also know the task of programming it is going to take quite a lot of man hours. Once DAVS is set up appropriately then it would not be me who you would ask what the money would be spent on but instead there would be a process of consensus where the team would acquire feedback from ZS to determine what the priorities are. I don’t want to determine or set priorities for the project but instead prefer if the partcipants direct the flow of resources. I believe instead of top down dictatorial style leadership we should have emergent bottom up “processes” which direct participation.
An example of a project which is directed by the community consensus process right now would be Bitshares. In the Bitshares community there is a project called Moonstone which is currently asking for funding. Bitsapphire is a group that formed to run the main forum just as you are doing but they now want to build an app (Moonstone) for the benefit of the Bitshares community. They made a proposal on the forum: Moonstone - New Bitsapphire Wallet: Fundraiser proposal
The way they want to go about it is by issuiing a “user issued asset” on the Bitshares platform. They’ll gift that asset to the community at a rate of 1.15 UIA tokens per $1 to all who donate. From here they’ll build the app and release the code under the MIT license and when the app makes it’s profit then they will buy back the 1.15 "user issued assets"tokens per dollar. This means every donor has an opportunity to get their money back plus 15% if the project is a success.
If we receive resources for DAVS then the ZS community would in essence be making a donation to benefit future growth and development of the ZS community. If the ZS community thinks DAVS is a good idea and would like to see it exist then we can make it but I don’t think DAVS can be funded through the commercial route of asking a bank because it’s clearly a ZS community specific project.
As for the history of ZS I’m definitely aware of it. I’ve seen some stuff go down myself and while I don’t know the details of what happened there was a dramatic change in ZS over the past few years. I saw as you saw that a lot could go wrong and there is a lot of disorder/discord but I also think we can improve the situation with DApps. I think DApps can dramatically improve participation.
My reasoning being that if people have both hope and a plan they’ll have something to work toward. You mentioned that we need a very active, very dedicated, and very sane community and I agree on those points. I think if we had better tools we could definitely have a more active and dedicated community. Whether or not the community would be considered “sane” I cannot really answer but if I had to give input on that I would say that reputation and the ability to process information/events as a community may also be augmented by software. If certain bits of information are false, untrue, propaganda, etc, to a certain extent we don’t really control the signal to noise ratio in our community.
But we can create tools which can help us to filter out the noise and something such as Canonizer is an example. We can have tools which allow us to separate fact from fiction in most cases. We need consensus building tools and we need good filtering.
People mention the open source community to claim that an all volunteer army can accomplish a lot. GNU Hurd is the all volunteer effort and who do you know who uses that kernel? https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
Linux and “Open Source” were the for profit cousins of the GNU project. Linux was developed by people working for various different companies such as SUSE, Redhat, IBM, and more. These companies made money selling services around Linux because Linux was so difficult to use that companies had to pay other companies to deal with it.
That model in my opinion is not and was not sustainable in the long term. We can say now that Google, IBM, and a bunch of other big companies have co-opted Linux that it was a success but to be honest we should not repeat the mistakes made by the Linux community by using a model which isn’t self-sustaining.
The Bitshares/Bitcoin/Blockchain model is the open source model with the advantage of being self sustaining as long as a community of people remain interested in it. A DApp should be similar in that it should be self sustaining and self funding as long as a community of people are interested in it. Technically this can be built, and it’s just a matter of whether or not Zerostate would like to have a go at building itself into a decentralized autonomous community with DApps.
We can make polls (see http://forum.sfmeta.net/t/how-to-create-polls/98), but at this stage they would probably not be very valuable, because our community is still quite small. I’d say we should prioritize increasing the size of the community first, so that we can both have meaningful poll results and enough people to facilitate some actual project work.
That’s all very interesting what you say there. What’s the current status of the DAVS project? What is it supposed to be able to do when it’s finished?
How would it be able to sustain itself financially when it’s ready? How disruptive would it be? Would there be synergy with other stuff?
I ask because I would personally prefer to put money into the Quantified Prestige project when I have money and once my health allows for sustained active participation in the development of the reputation economy system. QP would be provided as self-hosted software, as software as a service, and as DApp. Financing could come from operating a community platform on which organisations can pay for advertisement space. And by selling expertise/consulting in how to establish local Quantified Prestige networks successfully. Also, later on by getting reputation for developing the system. Quantified Prestige would be pretty disruptive, because it would enable new business models that weren’t viable before, because we simply had no real reputation economy before.
In any case, I agree that we should use good tools for various different purposes. I’ve started a wiki-thread on team collaboration software some time ago: http://forum.sfmeta.net/t/team-collaboration-tool-review-thread-wiki/95
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OK, please correct me in a short phrase if I’m wrong, but your aim seems to be a software for a self-sustaining economy. Include that it somehow rewards its developers, and yes, it can be done, and it’s attractive.
Going further, I would agree if it complies some points, among which are:
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Considers real work and personal efforts.
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Avoids to benefit the status quo and pre-established capital. Dirty businesses included.
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Is not just another way to gamble through investing.
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Has safeguards against manipulation, intrigue and deceit. I’ve seen too much defamation in favor of dirty businesses.
I can help solving the conceptual problems if the project worths, but I don’t see the world prepared for this. Nevertheless, if this has enough immediate economical benefits to spend time on it, I might spend time on it. Is the only way I would be involved in a project like this, right now when I have so much to do, and to be honest, it might be the reason other people would join too.
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Yes, but why is there a problem with money?
Every startup entrepreneur faces this dilemma.
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While these are noble goals and constraints, it is possible to be too idealistic about them, which would hamper actual progress. Try to see it like this:
- A dirty business that is used to fund noble projects is better than a business that does not.
- A semi-dirty business is better than a dirty business.
- A good business that supports dirty businesses is better than no business at all.
- A good business that supports semi-dirty businesses is better than the above.
Copied from ZS Facebook Group -
Dana Edwards:
" Mark Larkento We can use any model we want but it seems obvious that to get anything more than a prototype we will need to hire talented programmers."
“I think we are really smart people. I think we are talented. I think we can complete the task of designing DAVS and creating a successful prototype if we work together. I doubt we can do more than a prototype with these resources.”
"A prototype would not implement all the features. It might only consist of a mockup interface with maybe one or two example features. The code would not be good enough that it can be used for anything serious except to show people “Look at what ZS DAVS could be if you fund development”.
“I think most of our effort would have to go toward the pitch video and explanation videos explaining how DAVS revolutionizes how humans organize, communicate, reach consensus, and how it can help ZS as a whole. That video might be something we could do fairly cheap but it has to be well done and professional looking.”
“DAVS will also need a website of some sort. Right now we only have Facebook, no website, no forum, no codebase to look at. So I do agree with you that we probably need to have at least a launch page with some videos on it similar to Basicincome.co or Moonstone.io.”
“After we do launch then one of us will have to present the prototype to the wider community if we successfully make it. Maybe Amon or someone who is well respected and known can take on the ambassador role while the remaining of us are supporting cast.”
“I don’t want to do it because I don’t want the project to be held back by my perceived “lack of credibility”. I know with these things you want to put the most credible person and respected in the role of presenting it. Of course if not Amon we can probably vote to see who would do that or maybe by that time I could have enough credibility myself.”
“For now let’s not bother Amon with it because he has a lot to focus on with the Transhumanist Party. Once we have a launch page, some prototype code, and some explainer videos, that is when we can bring it to Amon’s attention in my opinion.”
Mark Larkento:
Agree ^^^
You should note that the purpose of the Social Future Metanet is to support fledgling projects such as this in their early stages, so DAVS could first find a home here. There’s this forum, a wiki, and a blog you can use as you desire. And I would suggest creating a Slack team for collaborating on the DAVS project. Slack turned out to work rather well for the team that created the latest Transpolitica book “Anticipating tomorrow’s politics”.
So far, I’m not finding the value in using Slack.
Also, there is real resistance by many key participants to discussion outside Facebook.
My stance is that when key participants have resistance to discussion outside of Facebook, then they are no key participants. It’s hard to get things done on Facebook. And that’s a slight understatement, actually.
The key value in using Slack is to actually make conservations searchable. Trying to do the same with Facebook or instant messaging apps is rather hopeless. Also, Slack can create better coherence for specific work teams.
I hear you, so perhaps I should phrase it as “individuals whom I consider key participants”.
I’m not too much into being Napoleonic. 
Just throw in our experience. We have a plan called stepping stones to build up something bit by bit (see the Design http://www.eoslife.eu/files/Design.pdf).
We have started with building a Bio-dome here in Umeå. First part of that is now completed. We did that in cooperation with another organisation and we got grants form the local government. The next phase will see the insides done and then we have something that can generate income.
Form my experience, what I see is that things tend to go very slowly. We have very little to show after 10 years but then that should be expected. Slow to start but gaining momentum as we go. However, people tend to want instant action and give up if something doesn’t have in the next 5 minutes! (bit of an over exaggeration but you get the idea). Getting something done is about keeping people focused and motivated for a long time.
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Very nice.
Dirty business stab you in the back. I fear this kind of lottery mindset will give us problem, for example many suspect some governments actually use TOR to make sockpuppets. I know that this is hurtful to talk about and it may lead to a flammable discussion, so I wish that any project would at least give me the choice over how to use the technology, so I can at least decide with who to get involved with.
On the part of the DAVS project, I presume is the best move is to make its basic form useful for multiple purposes, first making a root for other kind of projects. Is what I get after thinking a bit on who may get involved, and knowing we all want different projects.
I guess you could start making a blockchain technology on which to build over other things.
Sure, it’s very hard to help people stay engaged over long periods of time. I am currently not the ideal person for that, as I struggle keeping myself engaged even with my own projects, which is a problem that mainly stems from a lack of healthful energy. What I’m saying here is that I would prefer to share the responsibility for the Social Future Forum and related projects with others who would be wiling to do so. Volunteers are very welcome 
@Maximo_Ramallo Sure, there are risks involved when engaging with “dirty” organisations, but there’s also the problem that if we want to definitely reject cooperation with other organisations that we would need to have very clear rules about what counts as “dirty” and what not. That may be controversial and therefore difficult. I suggest we shouldn’t exclude a huge class of potential collaborating organisations a priori out of ideological reasons. Sooner or later, we will have to make hard decisions, but I think it would be most appropriate to discuss each case separately when the need to do so arises. This is a most natural approach, I think.
About DAVS: At the moment I do not have the technical knowledge to judge how suitable DAVS would be as a basis for any kind of other project. Sure, some projects might build on DAVS, but then there’s also the question whether they should. After all, there are other potential bases out there, for example Ethereum.
DAVS will primarily be built on top of Ethereum. Ethereum is a platform while DAVS is to be a decentralized autonomous organization or decentralized autonomous virtual state.
DAVS should allow for consensus making in the form of voting, secure communication on a decentralized social network or forum like this, decentralized identity so we can verify who everyone is, decentralized reputation so everyone can have status (similar to what you’re thinking about with quantified prestige), and so on.
But DAVS is probably wont be able to connect to all other projects. Ideally it would be nice you could take your identity / citizenship from DAVS and use that anywhere else on any other protocol. So DAVS has to be protocol agnostic even if it runs on Ethereum.
DAVS is probably more like BitNation but specific for Zerostate. It ideally should provide for some services like friend to friend insurance, basic income, etc.
It has the potential to be very disruptive but in a good way. It can bring decentralized order which is something many people believe is not possible to do but is really just an emergent property we see in nature. DAVS will allow Zerostate to provide a self governance layer for cyberpsace/virtual space which is an area which right now acts as the wild west because certain technologies haven’t been invented.
As far as the potential of what it can be it depends on how much resources we have and how many features we could implement. I have some of the design worked out but other parts I’d probably learn from case studies on other projects.
Whether or not it would be sustainable is hard to say right now. You could make certain aspects of it self sustaining such as the social networking part because a social network becomes more valuable as more people join it. I cannot predict how many people would join it though nor could I know what people would do with the technology.
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Thanks for these explanations, Darklight. It seems like DAVS doesn’t have a business model in itself, because it would operate as a kind of government without the ability to claim taxes. This suggests a different revenue model: State run companies which use their profits to fund Zero State and the DAVS project.
This seems to suggest that we first need cash cows that make the creation and maintenance of DAVS economically viable. As it stands, DAVS is just a too ambitious project to be able to be created by a small group of volunteers. Quantified Prestige would probably be a bit easier to implement, and it could be used to generate profits, so I suggest we recruit a team of volunteers who create that first.
Now, we are basically back at the beginning of the topic: We need to raise funds for the creation of cash cow companies to generate the funds to create and run DAVS. It’s an interesting bootstrapping problem.
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We have ways to do taxes. Transaction taxes for example which Basicincome.co is using. http://www.resilience.me/a-brief-story-of-basicincomeco.html
The idea is that basic income can be provided by voluntary rather than coercive taxes. People will agree to pay the tax because they want to keep citizenship in DAVS and the same effect that keeps people using Facebook is what would keep people paying the transaction taxes. People have a desire to be a part of a community, but in order to be part of a community you must give back to the community. People tend to want to support their social network and a community of people who share their ideals.
There are a some other ideas of what can be built after we have decentralized identity and decentralized reputation. An example from my blog: http://darkai.org/?p=190
A gift economy could be built up from a decentralized reputation based reward network. Reputation could be gained by giving effectively. This would encourage effective altruism. The concept I invented to create the incentive mechanism to encourage effective altruism is the “reputation lottery” described in the blog.
I do not think “state” should run companies. DACs should be designed to be autonomous and run by themselves (with very minimal human intervention). Decentralized autonomous corporations would be run by AI and owned by private individuals but these DACs would give back to the community (DAVS is the community) by pre-allocating a fixed percentage of their shares to DAVS.
So for example if you and I both made separate DACs what we could do as developers is program into the DAC a sharedrop. The allocation of shares in the DAC is at the discretion of the developers but since the developers would be citizens of DAVS we could mandate that to be a good citizen of DAVS requires following the social contract which means you must give say 10% of your DAC to the citizens of DAVS. Meeting the threshold of at least 10% would win us reputation within DAVS and the more we give the better our reptuation.
This way DAVS citizens would acquire ownership in the means of production (automation) over time which is better than taxes. The idea is to follow a script similar to what was put forward by James Albus.
I agree with you that DAVS is very ambitious. In fact it was far more ambitious than I realized when I proposed the idea. But I do think it’s the direction Zerostate should go and it’s ahead of the curve with regards to the decentralization community which is what we should be striving for as radical futurists.
DAVS itself in it’s most basic form might not require bootstrapping but if it is to be sustainable it does require that all citizens of DAVS support each other. This means citizens who create DACs should always give a percentage ownership to the citizens of DAVS. There should probably be a formal process to this such as a social contract which everyone agrees to follow when they become citizens.
At the same time DAVS will have to police itself. If a DAC is extremely controversial maybe DAVS would have to handle it differently. Also there could be vesting periods so that if a DAC does allocate 10% or 20% of shares to DAVS citizens these shares don’t get distributed all at once so that there can be no dumping.
This strategy also has a secondary hidden purpose. It creates stakeholders. Citizens of DAVS would be stakeholders in the DACs created by citizens of DAVS which is how you can bring everyone in the community together by the incentives. Everyone would win together or lose together because everyone would have something to lose if the DACs lose.
The vesting peroids are useful because you could for instance state that programmatically the DAC will eventually give 20% of itself to DAVS citizens but over a period of 5 years at a specific rate so that each month or each week some portion of shares is released and distributed by the smart contract.
This would be a slow release of assets to DAVS which would encourage long term commitment and citizenship to DAVS. You could even set it up so people who give more receive certain kinds of assets sooner.
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