[p2p-research] Unwisdom of Crowds

[marc fawzi]

Hi Josef,

The concept of voting as a governance model is what I was referring to
by saying ancient Greeks had invented democracy.

I had written the article some 3 years ago and my thinking has
evolved, even though the thinking expressed in the article still holds
in some sense.

Right now I’m focused on the difference between the outcome of running
he Snowdrift Game model and the Prisoner’s Dilemma model in
hierarchies vs. meshes.

Recent studies show that unpaid cooperation (e.g. Snowdrift Game)
backfires for the cooperators in hierarchies but works really well in
case of meshes. The same studies also show that the Prisoner’s
Dilemma, which is more of a classical survival game, works best in
hierarchies. I will update the P2P Energy Economy once I have wrapped
my mind around these conclusions.

Marc

p.s. CCing lists for further discussion

Submitted by Josef on 2009/04/12 at 2:56pm

Hang on a minute. AFAIK, in Greek city states people didn’t elect
leaders. All men could vote themselves, no?

But I agree that a nice mix of direct and representative democracy,
i.e. “liquid” or “delegative” democracy could yield better results.
But I lean way more towards the direct side of things that you appear
to above.

I’d recommend at read of Democracy 2.1 and Delegative Democracy pdf
available here: http://open.coop/background+docs

For liquid democracy see
http://wiki.uniteddiversity.com/liquiddemocracy and
http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Liquid_Democracy

Also, have you seen http://smartocracy.net/ ? I think you may like it.