A BitShares Constitution?

[Thom]

You make some excellent points, but for various reasons you're encountering resistance in this community to using canonizer.com. For me personally I dislike the trans-humanist involvement and the unknowns about the organizer's agenda. And apparently I'm not alone in my reservations. I'll admit, it's rather lame (herd mentality), but until I see a significant number of others willing to make a go of it by creating logins, stating positions and forming camps I won't be persuaded to put effort into canonizer.com.

I kindof feel for ya Brent, you're in the position of convincing this community you have what we need to distill all of the chaos of ideas expressed here on this forum into an organized, coherent body of positions people could support or reject on a rational, objective basis, but we're not convinced it's the solution you seem to think it is.

It's a sales issue, at least for me. But you need to convince enough of us it's worth trying and I don't see that happening.

Perhaps another aspect of the resistance is for it to work people would need to spend more time on canonizer.com than they do here, and perhaps "here" is a comfortable place people know and are familiar with unlike the unknowns of the canonizer.com environment.

I don't know what to tell you that might help you get traction, but I wish you the best of luck in your efforts.

I am beginning to feel like the community is spinning it's wheels and not making progress towards building consensus or valuable features. As to the later only a very very small set of devs do the work so the community must wait for their efforts to be completed before the face of BTS is anything other than talk. We all await the substance of things soon to come, and once it arrives I think we'll see huge enthusiasm and optimism return to the broader community.

I myself am anxious for that, and my enthusiasm has not wained. But I do look forward to more stability.

[Brent.Allsop]

People, People, People…

Constitution technology is more than 200 years old.  All you would get from that is a polarized, deadlocked, bickering 2 party congress that can’t do anything.  How much time would it take to build a constitution which would have enough consensus?  Who is going to write it?  How much consensus is enough?  How could we rigorously measure how much more consensus we had achieved by any proposed changes?  If we only lose 25%, is that enough?  Many have expressed doubts about us being able to even write such a contract, and I am in that camp (unless maybe we used Canonizer.com).  Even then it would take years.  I love it when The bytemaster talks about no contracts!!  Another of his brilliant ideas.  But a constitution is just a contract that will start polarizing everyone, which will hobble us, and make us very vulnerable to an intelligent community without such unintelligent bureaucratic red tape.

Enshrining a maximum dilution rate into the code is really doing nothing more than placing a spending limit on government.   This spending limit is fundamentally tied to the markets ability to absorb the new shares. 

Exactly, any dumb hard coded red tape we enshrine makes us very vulnerable.  Modern internet and consensus building technology makes it so we do not need to make these kinds of binding red tape rules and bureaucratic polarizing contracts in order to get anything done.

All "Democracies" suffer from the potential of shareholder abuse of power and desire to have unlimited spending ability.   Do we trust the shareholders to make good judgements?  Do we know enough know to bind them for ever?  By what process can we change the rule?

Obviously, if you can efficiently achieve 100% consensus, you can change absolutely anything.  If you have the ability to use a modern consensus building tool, which can creatively and dynamically give and take to both sides, to achieve consensus, it isn’t that hard.  The bytemaster talks about doing things like giving extra shares to camps objecting to making a certain change, in order to build a larger consensus.  Yet another of his brilliant ideas.  But, you need a system that can facilitate this kind of stuff efficiently.  That I know of no other system in existence could do anything like this, especially without polarizing people into parties, making things worse.

For anyone doubting that building unanimous expert consensus is hard, or not possible with modern consensus building tools, check out what we have done at Canonizer.com among world leading experts in the philosophy of mind field.  At least within the Bitshares community, we have a community that thinks much more alike than all experts, hobbyists, and religious nutbags, in the philosophy of mind field.  All the extreme crazies that can’t get published to any particular school of thought “peer reviewed” rag being published by the Ivory tower, flocks to Canonizer.com because nobody is censored there.

Before Canonizer.com, no 2 experts even in the same school of thought could even agree on the definition of consciousness, let alone achieve any kind of measurable scientific consensus amongst everyone, with zero censoring of anyone.  But with now more than 50 experts participating in greater or lesser degrees, including diverse experts and lay people from many schools of thought like Daniell Dennett, Steven Lehar, David Chalmers, John Smythies, and a growing number of others, including non-censored crazies, we have proven that it is possible to build a definitive near unanimous expert quantitatively measurable scientific consensus.  For example, go to this survey topic to see these definitive shocking, (When we started, I never would have believed this much consensus was possible), consensus results:

http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88

With the default Canonizer algorithm selected, you will see that the popular consensus achieved to date, which includes all the religious nutbags, for the “Representational Qualia Theory” camp is about 75%.  Then switch to the expert consensus canonizer algorithm on the side bar, (filters out the crazies) and you will see an effective unanimous scientific expert consensus for that camp!

On the other hand who will trust a constitution after our recent moves?

Exactly, we need to have a way to rigorously measure, concisely and quantitatively, how many people are willing to support any particular action.  And we need to be able to dynamically change what we are proposing in an efficient and easy way, which will ensure everyone is still on board, until we get things at least near unanimous, so we don’t lose anyone.

We have already proven the ability to turn on a dime and issue new BTS as necessary.

No, The bytemaster has turned on a dime, but who knows how many of the herd are still running in the other direction??  The Bitshares price crash is proof the entire herd has not turned on a dime.  Is it even approaching 75%??  What we need to do is get the entire herd to turn on a dime, and we need to have the ability to know, quantitatively,  how many people will follow, if any particular decision is made, and we need to be able to use creative dynamic intelligent negotion tactics to make everyone happy, and easily achieve near unanimous consensus for all such decisions.

In the free market, there are no rules except survival of the fittest and most flexible.

Exactly, and the first crypto currency community that can amplify the wisdom of the entire herd, and get the entire herd to change directions on a dime, without significant losses of the sheep, no matter how dumb, will blow any contract or “constitution” based bureaucracy away, with a leader making decisions before knowing how many of his heard will follow him.

Having the ability to change the dilution rate with some established process that is deemed "hard but not impossible" is what is needed.

While it is true, that it takes quite a bit of effort to teach any community how to build consensus by communicating, concicely and quantitatively, on large scales, Canonizer.com has demonstrably proven we can do way better than this, in far more difficult to build consensus circumstances than exists in the Bitshares community.

[Empirical1.1]

Something simple to start -

BitShares

BitShares is a self-funding DAC born on November the 5th, Guy Fawkes Day, 2014.

BitShares' purpose is to protect individual liberty & prosperity through technology & transparency for the benefit of mankind.

BitShares' self-funds using dilution. Starting with a maximum rate of 6% p.a. declining at ?% p.a. This can only be changed by a 75% super-majority vote.

[starspirit]

I'm still struggling to understand the consistency between freedom of property rights, and treating others as you would expect yourself to be treated, with dilution forced upon people's property with a consensus vote. Freedom to opt out of a system is not the same as freedom with the system. If we are true to the concept of personal freedom, we should uphold the latter wherever possible, and I would prefer to see that expressed in the terms we apply to dilution, which is necessary in its current form. I like the flexibility of dilution for infusing capital into the system, but would not enshrine this particular method if more voluntary options can be conceived of down the track.
I'm not from China, sorry.

[bytemaster]

I want to understand the Chinese opinion.

I don't want this to be a binding contract, but rather an expression of opinion that most hold in common. 

[Stan]

If that is the case this needs to be emphasised!  Why did BM say 8% was the maximum today on mumble?  People are making valuations and selling based on what they think the inflation will be.

Because bitcoin is around 8% right now and he was emphasizing that it was lower than that maybe?

Also because math is hard.

8% max was chosen as a not-so-subtle way to remind people that is exactly what Bitcoin is doing - then, incredibly, burning it.

I predict it will be many moons before shareholders will find and agree to fund 101 full time employees.

So in practice, we should see a much, much, much, greater order of magnitude of less dilution than Bitcoin.

(Until everyone sees share price growing at 200% and says, "Ah, ok, ahead, warp factor 8%")

[Thom]

We haven't really changed directions:

1) I still believe in competing DACs and lowering the barrier to entry.
2) I still believe that 3rd party developers should recognize those who built the software they are using as a foundation.
3) I still believe in the company metaphor for economic development.
4) I still believe in NO CONTRACTS and NO OBLIGATIONS on any party (us or 3rd party developers)
5) I still believe that all DA(CCCCC) metaphors apply and are useful:  Currency, Company, Co-Op, Community, Country
6) I still support 3rd party DACs as being good, just so long as I don't have to spend more than an hour or so per week

I'm sure you had something in mind when you wrote this, but all this talk of a constitution is counter to your 4th point.

I once held the U.S. Constitution in high regard, but now not so much.

If our nation's evolution hasn't taught you that words have little meaning in the face of power.

I also just learned something extremely important, that reading is guessing. Almost every word these days has multiple definitions. Although the difference of each definition for a single word is often subtle, sometimes they're not and often depend on the context they're used. The longer the sentence the greater the possibility you're just guessing at the author's intent. The author may use the first definition for word 1, the second for word 2, the third for word 3 ... Which definitions of each word will the listener assume for each word? If they differ you have a failure to communicate.

In American jurisprudence, entire dictionaries devoted to redefining common language, terms like person become corporations, works like understand are changed from comprehend to "I agree" or "I consent". The legal profession is in the business of twisting and manipulating language to coerce and deceive. Do we really want to rely on a written constitution knowing this, especially when the lawyers can twist our own word to make a case against us?

See https://adask.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/reading-is-guessing/ article for a complete, detailed discussion of this.

[starspirit]

We recognize that no man shall be compelled to join our endeavor and that each man shall have an opportunity to profit from our common venture proportional to their contributions to this venture and that all shall share equally in the costs funded by issuance of new BTS subject to the approval of existing BTS holders.

I suggest an alternative-

We recognise that no person shall be compelled to join our endeavour or to contribute to the venture, and that each person shall have an opportunity to profit from our common venture through contributions made voluntarily to this venture. We also recognise contributions that are made voluntarily and in good faith for the benefit of the community without expectation of profit.

While freedom is a right of all participants, while no voluntary solution exists, all shall share equally in community costs subject to the approval of existing BTS holders.

Why?
- Profit may not be proportional to contributions, depends on risk, success etc
- Emphasises voluntarism of all contributions made.
- Does not enshrine the idea of involuntary contributions, when there are voluntary alternatives available.
- Does not enshrine dilution.

[Empirical1.1]

Edit:  I've agreed with everything else you've done BM, but not this.  This will cause a riot in China.

I've asked for the dilution question + constitution to be put to the Chinese market.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10774.msg142590#msg142590

My impression was that they are the market that dislike undefined dilution the most.

I think agree with principles over rules for everything else though.

I think ideals & principles centred around freedom, fairness & privacy etc.  are a positive.

[julian1]

The UK doesn't have a formal fixed constitution - and yet it has some of the strongest protections for life, liberty and property of any nation state. This is because the core principles have been extracted and their application refined during the development of the common law precedents in an organic process over hundreds of years.
 
Also, create a constitution, and it would be much more difficult to rebut the presumption that there's no intention to create a legal relationship and corresponding rights and obligations between members of the Bitshares community. Relationships that can be interpreted and might be enforceable in a real-world court.

This goes against my understanding, that Bitshares was choosing at this time to avoid making itself subject to the jurisdiction of various securities and exchange laws.

[matt608]

I don't see why it's necessary.  Getting everyone to agree on it will take weeks, its a massive time drain, and those who don't agree will leave.  Why do delegates need a constitution to guide them?  Let the political system emerge as it grows, no need to but a binder on it. What if something far better than this can emerge from the delegate competition?  That's a revolutionary experiment in itself.  Keep it all open for political innovation.

No more big change.  This is just unnecessary, its extreme, and they're not core principles, I do agree with a lot of them, but they are your principles.  This undermines your handing over of power to the delegates, it's like, oh one last thing, here's a constitution written by me! 

If this is just something you are going to use for yourself as a delegate, that is fine in fact I support that.  Delegates using their ideals in the competition is great, but not as some 'final act' of palpatine.  It's against freedom to write the guiding principles yourself.

Edit:  I've agreed with everything else you've done BM, but not this.

[xeroc]

Yes, you do.  Greetings!

Cool .. welcome to the community, have fun ...

[oldman]

We hodl these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and Property....

Could we change the nouns?

Individuals or persons.

It would be a non binding expression of core principles and vision.   It would not be a set of rules... the rules are enforced by the code and the market.   

We hodl these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and Property.   That to secure these rights social consensuses are adopted that apply equally to all men and the highest convention is that no man shall do unto another man that which he would not want done unto himself. 

We recognize that property rights are essential to the security of life and liberty and that the primary purpose of social consensus systems is to establish property rights that are indisputable or quickly resolved without using the threat force or coercion.   

We recognize that no man shall be compelled to join our endeavor and that each man shall have an opportunity to profit from our common venture proportional to their contributions to this venture and that all shall share equally in the costs funded by issuance of new BTS subject to the approval of existing BTS holders.

We recognize that a common stake known as BTS shall be used to track each individuals contribution and that the holders of BTS shall not have the power to redefine property rights in other asset classes.  (this gets tricky... but probably needs to be addressed).

Great stuff!

This should be cleaned up, given a catchy title (Declaration of Freedom? BitShares Constitution?) and put up on the forum, wiki, main page etc.

[bytemaster]

We hodl these truths to be self evident...

Hehe.

Glad someone saw that

[Method-X]

We hodl these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and Property....

Could we change the nouns?

Are you the mythical crypto female???