A couple of ideas. Depending of how this will turn out it might add:
- Transparency to the black box it is now, making it harder for vested interests to influence policies. Making it harder to keep things ‘off the books’ and to corrupt (never impossible, but harder). Mitigating some of the egregious abuses of the system that can currently remain under the radar. The abuse that is currently wrought by the banksters and politicians might come out in the open for all to see, and media might not have a choice to actually start paying attention…
- Inclusiveness to people who currently don’t have access to banking services, and thus make the economy more participatory. More people might become part of the global economy in a meaningful way (this may bring its own issues e.g. relating to the environment, but if we can combine this with a more sustainable development…).
- It might make democracy more worthy of its name (it’ll remain flawed for the reasons mentioned in Catastrophic Collapse: How to Visualize It?), but at least the system that collects and analyses results may be individually counted, representative and undoctorable (English is not my first language, so I’m allowed to invent words
). Heaven forbid we if we change the rules we might even create a direct democracy where laws and policy are directly voted for by individuals - We could have small initiatives that are easy to bring out through the internet and collect financial (and possibly other) support for, benefits could be shared easily. New ways of doing things, collaborating, sharing become possible. We might set up local support systems, local currencies that can only be used for purchasing local products and services
- We might cut out many of the ‘trusted middlemen’ that are now the hostage-takers guarding processes ‘selling’ their prized services for disproportionate rewards
- We could have systems that are less vulnerable to disruption as they are not centralised anymore
- Organisations may become cheaper and more simple to run, more innovative and agile as administrative processes become largely automated. Technicians, organisers and coordinators may have more time to do what they want/ need to do without having to jump through administrative hoops. Organisations may do things more effectively, faster, with less mistakes. Smaller enterprises might become profitable as less resources have to be spent on ‘process’
- Tracking systems (e.g. of certified products) will become more reliable and easy
- New professions (smart contract programmers, smart contract lawyers) will come up
- I hope that we’ll be able to keep a decent level of privacy in our transactions and make direct, rapid and cheap transfers without a third party blocking the process and taking its share
It’s getting late so time to switch off, but there are certainly more options out there. What do you think they would be?
As mentioned elsewhere, Cardano will not be the magic bullet, and needs to be combined with systems adapted to the new way of doing and ‘opening up’ things, but I think we could do much worse then this…