First of all, I want to thank Roslyn Fueller
for the organization of this event, and to
greet the guests at the Democracy Convention
in Ireland.
I am very pleased to join you with this short
presentation that I have called “An economic
approach to Blockchain Democracy.
An experience from Southamerica”
My name is Renny Rueda.
I am the founder of E-Codemocracy.
At E-Codemocracy, in Colombia, we attempted,
in 2014 congressional elections, to articulate
the congress with citizens, by using a platform
for direct electronic democracy.
Last year, in 2017, we attempted to provide
the same solution by presenting a list of
11 citizens to transfer the vote of the people
directly in to congress.
We have not being able reach those goals.
We have learned however a lot about the system,
and we are eager to continue growing as a
political party in the future.
For this presentation I understand that I
have a lapse of 10 to 15 minutes, and for
that I want to divide my presentation into
3 topics.
First of all, I would like to refer to the
concept of democracy from a political perspective,
and how, in this perspective, the concept
of democracy falls customarily on demagogy,
or lies.
Speaking from South America, I think this
is a fundamental issue.
Especially nowadays, where thousands of Latin-Americans
are leaving their home, escaping from totalitarianism,
to start again in a foreign country.
Second, I want to refer to the concept of
democracy from a systemic perspective, and
how this definition has to fit into a new
discussion about democracy itself, and how
it forces us to think that technology and
the future, not only give shape to the external
part, the shell of democracy, represented
in institutions and rules of the game, but
also have to shape our minds and brains, to
understand and setup new conceptions of democracy
itself.
Third, I want to link this new conception
of democracy with the economic system, and
particularly with the advances that technology
in general, and particularly blockchain technology,
is contributing to contemporary societies,
and can offer to the institution of central
banking.
An institution fundamental for the modern
nation state, and to modern democracies.
To start I want to refer first to the concept
of democracy, and how this concept naturally
tends to be used to inspire citizens, generally
appealing to their passions, but usually,
especially in Latin America, derives in great
humanitarian tragedies.
While the conference for Democracy in Ireland
is taking place, In Latin America, thousands
of men, women, and children, young and older
people are leaving Venezuela.
There is no fuel.
They have to walk hundreds of kilometers,
to get to Colombia, from where I am speaking
to you.
They are basically escaping from famine.
Famine left by people who originally spoke
about democracy in Venezuela, the richest
country of the region.
Today, by far, the poorest.
In this sense, I think it is imperative to
remember the human, humanitarian, moral, economic
and political crisis that has plunged Venezuela
in almost two decades, Cuba in more than 50
years, and Nicaragua in recent weeks, where
more than 300 young people have died fighting
for freedom.
This is the great question of democracy.
At least from the perspective of the nation
state.
And this is a question that, I believe, the
Convention on Democracy in Ireland should
address, as part of a reflection on the political
concept of democracy.
This reflection, I think, is fundamental to
understand what is the approach that the citizens
of this century should give to the concept
of democracy.
And especially, considering the great penetration
that technology, science and economics in
all its manifestations, have in contemporary
societies.
This, I believe, is also a reflection to understand,
that in the 21st century, no definition of
democracy can be absent from the systemic
implications that technology and knowledge
have left.
That one should not return to a concept of
democracy based on a minimalist conceptions
of contemporary societies.
That the contemporary society is complex,
not only socially, but especially, systemically,
informationally and technologically.
And that reducing democracy to simple approaches
does not introduce more democracy, but less
democracy, chaos and injustice.
Second, I want to refer to an economic approach
to democracy, and particularly to what I call
blockchain democracy.
For this, it is important to consider democracy
as a social construction able to be sophisticated.
This means that in each stage of history,
its application differs, keeping always, two
immutable variables.
• 1st.
That humans are able to reach higher stages
of political organization dialogically.
That means, via communication, language, science
and advanced stages or comprehension of the
outside world and coordination of the evolution
of societies.
• 2nd.
That each human holds a single portion of
political power of the society as a whole.
As such, democracy is a perfectible social
and cultural construction on governance, inspired
by two factual features of humans:
1.
The capacity of the individual to be a natural
owner of a single fraction of the general
political power.
2.
The capacity of individuals to participate,
decide, engage, interact and coordinate decisions
dialogically with other individuals as members
of society.
In this perspective, the above mentioned assumptions
constitute the principles from which new conceptions
and applications of democracy evolve.
The institutional, systemic, procedural, formal
or historical representation of those assumptions
vary over time, and therefore, democracy deals
on how to better understand the different
institutional and technological structures
of modern societies that allow increasing
levels of autonomous social coordination.
Meaning, higher levels of democracy as self-governance
and social complexity.
It is in this approach where modern societies
are highly indebted to the economic system
and to the formal educational systems.
On the one hand, without the contemporary
economic system, and particularly, without
the market economy, we wouldn’t have modernity,
and as such, we would not be able to get increasingly,
in permanent global complex interactions.
However, the contemporary market economy,
is based in technics, regulations and technologies
that go back to the early nation state.
From these techniques and technologies we
often conceive the institutions that form
our democracies and economies.
As such, we take for granted, solutions that
have certainly contributed to higher stages
of social complexity, but, solutions, institutions,
techniques and technologies that need to be
upgraded.
The second variable has been the appropriation
of technical and technological education into
social systems.
Hence, complex subsystems of education enhanced
the transition of traditional structures of
organization, to scientific based and rational
complex structures.
Today, the world is a totally different systemic
organism, defined by new ways in which humans
interact and reach higher stages of social,
technical and political sophistication.
It is in this historical moment, where blockchain
technology, and blockchain solutions, offer
the capacity to conceive an institutional
upgrade to democratic conventions.
The blockchain technology is commonly known
as the technology behind bitcoin, the most
accepted cryptocurrency of the world.
It mixes up previous contributions on cryptology
and software automatization protocols to create
solutions that eliminates intermediation,
ensuring trust between individual using the
system.
The functional quality of blockchain technology
lays in its capacity to automate complex transactions
between peers of a network, avoiding intermediaries,
asymmetric power between agents of the system,
and ensuring different levels of security
and privacy in a decentralized ledger, stored
by users.
Finally, It is in this quality of the technology,
where I would like to address the possibility
to replace a fundamental institution of the
modern nation state, that is, central banking.
Let me explain myself.
The figure of the central bank is necessarily
connected to the figure of the nation state.
Specifically, it was precisely the ability
to issue currency, which led some families
to embrace bourgeois private law, which subsequently
was incorporated into the first nation states.
Specifically, creating currency is a right
that each state of the planet has.
This right comes hand in hand with the right
to profit for the seigniorage right, that
is, to earn money by issuing currency.
The income of each country by right of seigniorage,
is derived from the difference between the
value of money and the cost to produce and
distribute it.
The United States, for instance, benefit from
the fact, that they produce currency that
has to be used for the rest of the planet,
that is, currency that is official for international
transactions globally.
Generally speaking, each country, creates
its own currency, and generally, the currency
is created by central banks.
As such, central banks represent a fundamental
column of the modern nation state, and therefore,
central banks represent a taken for granted
assumption of modern democracies.
Intrinsically, the contemporary political
systems of the nation state, called democracies,
are inevitably articulated with the contemporary
economic system, and each domestic economic
system is bounded to the institution of central
banks.
Finally, as the name Central Bank implies,
Central Banks are centralized.
That is, there is just a few actors behind,
those who have the right to issue currency,
and, as such, to profit from this service.
At this point the question is, if we speak
about blockchain democracy, should we only
speak about politics?
Or, is it possible to bring the notion of
democracy and decentralization to the modern
economic system in order to develop protocols
that decentralize banking, and specially,
public central banking?
That is a question to be addressed on the
future.
I am confident, this is a question, we shall
also discuss in the upcoming years, at the
democratic convention, to make blockchain
democracy a systemic reality.
Thank you.
