Time for a change - Governance trajectory concerns

[HeptaSean]

@Eli_R

I have been concerned about how governance is unfolding in our ecosystem for some time now,

Thank you for this!

I have been very critical of the design of Cardano governance for years:
https://forum.cardano.org/t/why-i-voted-no-on-the-cip-1694-polls/125539
In a way, this is a: “Told you so!”

@Eli_R

An ADA holder wants to delegate to a DRep. They open a tool, and the tool starts by asking them how they would have voted on a selection of votes that have already been voted on. Based on that user feedback, a list of DReps that have voted in the same way is shown to the user, and the user can browse the different choices and look at the rationales for the votes before choosing a DRep. Once they have chosen a DRep, they are asked if they would like to receive a notification when their DRep casts a vote. When they receive this notification, they are reminded that they can always redelegate if they are so inclined.

I like this design a lot! We can’t force every governance portal and every wallet app to implement it, but would be good if it would at least be available.

@Eli_R

An argument could be made that many of the popular DReps should be the ones getting the voting power and that it’s fine because they are the ones people like, but I always come back to the same question: How is this different from our current political systems? How can we expect this to yield better outcomes if we allow it to turn into the same games of personality over substance? We have ample evidence that our current political systems pick terrible candidates as leaders.

This could also be an indication that it’s not that easy, that the hubris of the crypto crowd towards traditional politics and any and all politicians has always been misplaced, that collective decision making is hard and frustrating.

Yes, I do think that we can make the voting/delegation system better. Your idea is good. I wouldn’t have introduced dReps at all in the first place. Just let ADA holders vote directly.

But, no, I don’t think societal problems can be solved by technology in general. Even if we would have a better delegation technology – according to your ideas or others – we would still have to a) convince users to actually care and take the time and b) the question would still be where they get their idea of what a good vote is. Even if they actually check if their dRep aligns with their opinion instead of just going by (social media) vibes, exactly that opinion can still be horribly biased … or at least appear as that from someone of the opposite opinion.

@Eli_R

Fairly straightforward really; create a culture that shuns politics and embraces making decisions based on information that is on chain.

You are doing politics with exactly this post.

A lot of the problems of current society are because of people shunning “politics” altogether as if it was something bad rather than something necessary.