Santiago Siri is the man who wants to democratise the entire planet, through blockchain technology.
Siri has recently spoken to Wired, in an interview which explains his new project, Democracy.Earth, a project designed to change the way politics works across the planet. Inspired by a childhood in Argentina, plighted by political tension through corruption, Siri believes that the world could be a far better place, if the blockchain was used to maintain a one-size-fits-all style government, one voted for by people and one governed by the people.
According to Wired:
“In this perfect world, Siri argues, the supposedly unhackable and absolutely transparent blockchain will ensure that no centralized election authority is required to tabulate a vote, and no corrupt politician or gridlocked legislature can interfere with the popular mandate. But coming up with a superior form of voting technology is just the beginning; the larger, far more revolutionary goal is to devise a decentralized decision making process that eliminates the necessity for any kind of central government at all.”
Furthermore, Siri states:
“We are not in the business of selling e-voting machines or helping modernize governments with internet voting. We want to empower people down to the individual level without asking for the permission of governments.”
See more for yourself, here.
A decentralised voting system, as part of a decentralised decision making platform would indeed empower people, though it does seem as if Siri is taking on an impossible task here. As it stands, its hard enough getting governments to agree with each other on really obvious and essential policies, nevermind getting the world to agree on one government. The concept is beautifully utopian but in practice, would this not be a massive disaster?
Can we really use blockchain technology to democratise the world?
Siri sure things so, and believes that the first step in all of this is the launch of Democracy.Earth:
“According to Siri, early in 2018 Democracy.Earth raised $1.5 million in a vote-token “presale.” It has plans to mint “a maximum” of 500 million tokens, provisionally priced at 12 cents each, for a company valuation of $60 million. Democracy.Earth employees will be compensated for their labor with tokens. The bottom line: There will be a financial market for the mechanism that Democracy.Earth users employ to vote.”
A financial market used to allow citizens of the earth to vote, it’s a nice idea, but I’m a little skeptical. I think before world politics can reach this level of unification, a lot of things need to change first. A lot of things.
