Can Decentralisation Enforce Human Rights?
[Original article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/can-decentralisation-enforce-human-rights-luigi-assom/]
The question makes sense: a central authority may struggle to enforce human rights, despite formally agreeing; and a central authority may be skewed to represent an élite that do not want to hand over power. Slavery has legacy even when abolished centuries go. Also distribution inquequality between genders has long legacy in many modern societies (I use modern with an historical lens in hundreds of years: I refer to complex societies where more than ~100K individuals can cooperate: for an historical framework and complexity to assess human societies, I refer to works of Jared Diamond).
Declaration of Human Rights
Human Rights stand for having equal opportunities to express own Life and actualise own Choices, with no discrimination between People. There is a dynamic equilibrium between own choices and limiting the choices of the others.
Therefore, equal opportunities means that the value of people’s Life Time should be comparable among each other. And it is completely not.
Think about distribution, not about absolute terms. While People are different, differences should stand within a same order of magnitude to have the confidence to call anyone a “person” despite its aspect or social position. Like, if you take height as a property to describe “humanness”, you will never find a human being taller, or shorter, 100x than another one. And the same goes for abstract properties, like “Intelligence”; measured in IQ, EQ or even new consciousness metrics based on complexity of the brain signals: you will never find a person 100x more intelligent or stupider than you.
There is one single measure that is common to any person, whatever the physical or cultural property you choose: it is Time. The Time of your Life — or life expectancy.
No matter of your skin colour, of your cultural believe; of your gender; of your private wealth; of your nationality; of your historical roots; of your societal organisation; of the technological progress available in your society — your life expectancy is of the same order of magnitude of any other human beings, few years more, few years less. (Currently, that holds true also for trans-humanists chasing for Life extension).
The Value of Your Life
The value of Life has no Price.
But still, slaves can be traded and still slavery exists. So, we really need to use numbers to observe under which circumstances, one start to face serious challenges in being a protagonist of own life, just because the system still carries on with cultural walls impossible to climb.
Cultural walls, in fact, are possible to be climbed up in generations, and generations, and generations, and generations, and generations, and generations, and generations, and generations, and generations, and generations, and generations, and generations (that is roughly the number of generations of slaves who lived through slavery, only in USA : 12).
The range of opportunities in your Life, does depend form your choices, but under there is a huge, huge Volano that determines how wide this range of opportunities is. The starting block are very different. The legacy of inequality persists in centuries. We even can read it through the history of human rights: the ones we recall for their fights on emancipation, mostly were coming from privileged starting blocks — from wealthy families, or wealthy élite; or were able to bond with wealthier people and obtain a status from where their words and actions outreached.
A process that took decades and centuries.
We wanna make a change faster, don’t we?
We will take a measure of the value of our Life Time, to measure inequality for expressing equal opportunities.
Some People are 10⁸ more equal than others. Orwell proved right.
The distribution of Wealth, as a measure of the value of your Life — the return of Capital (combined of your salary and return from properties and assets belonging to you or your family). What you earn from passive or active working initiatives — to allow you and your family make a living. Take the things you have, take the time invested to obtain access of them: houses, liquidity, money that you earn from the Time you invest in your work, or that you inherited, or time invested to curate relationships to allow you have access to.
The time you invest in your work may just yield a constant return, like your salary; or may even yield no return at the moment, like volunteering, pro-bono, or pro-bounty; tasks you carry out because you are in the beginning of your career, or because you have faith in a next ICO, in the hope to get rewarded by the main token-holder. The time you invest in your work may just be the one spent in sexy parties, where you can mingle with capital-enablers; you are here making politics and decision-making over access to capital; access to a team; access to an industry by negotiating the value of your time.
Certainly you are and will be more and more affected by negotiating the value of your Time: negotiation and emotional skills will be fundamental towards commoditisation of labour; mass unemployment; leadership — names linked to exponential technologies, ownership and governance of exponential innovation; exponential return of capital — all concepts that colours the transformative scene in which our Lives unfold. And within a society, negotiating the value of Time means emancipation, empowerment, equal opportunities.
We have to look at how to change shape of wealth inequality so to engender “more balanced” negotiations between People, and whole groups of people.
Orwell proved right.
So the return of Capital of your Life Time — a thing that embrace whatever phenotype, whatever cultural or personal trait.
But unlike heights and intelligence, the value associated to the Time of individuals is orders of magnitude different — there are People whose Life is worth 10x (or 10^-1) than yours in your daily encounters (like with your colleagues and your boss); but there are Life worthy 1000x yours, up to 10⁸x more than yours (or less than yours).
It is like, some People are 10⁸ more equal than others. Orwell proofed right.
To give you an idea, it is like a few people was tall like the Empire State Building, and hundred of millions of other individuals would be like bacterias. Do you think they enjoy same rights for expressing own Life?
What kind of negotiation could you establish between the two, since the value of own Time is so different? Likely, they will be Personal experiences — that’s why in a society becoming more and more élitarian, you will have flourishing of artisan services and personal catering, calling own Time offers as “experiences”, and likely marketing them as premium, luxury, unique ones.
Article #1 of human Rights declaration claims that “all human beings […] should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”. What kind of brotherhood could you express between entities that had orders of magnitude of different power in expressing their right to “Life, liberty and security” — Article #3?
How could you prevent “abuse” of one’s liberty on the other — Article #5 ?
Which is the “standard living” that everybody should have access to for “well-being”, “housing”, and “security in the event of unemployment” as per Article #25: the one of the median value representative the majority of the Population? the one of the average ? or the one of a top class? Well-being respect to whom? How does the right of housing cope with rise of housing prices (with return of 6%-18% on properties) ? How does the right of security cope with mass unemployment?
In the declaration of Human Rights of 1947 there is mention of the value of Life Time (expressed in return of Capital — as the return from Time invested in Labour, or as the return ofd Time invested in other means of production).
It should be included, so to have a scientific measure on the differences that allows discriminations to perpetuate.
Chicken or eggs: which came first: culture or distribution of inequality?
I will argue in another article that cultural systems of believes fail to create societal models inclusive for all. Simply put, I argue that communities fighting for empowerment and enforcement of human rights based on their own cultural myths, they will fight for the rights of ones that belong to their community (for the ones adopting the same cultural myths) — not for the ones that, in spite not represented within that community, undergo same inequality and discrimination.
A bit like, pink will fight for pinks, blue for blues, none of them will fight for just being colours. “Colours” is an abstract concept and in tangible practical life you will come to practical terms and, maybe, say — well I start to think about the rights of “pink”, someone else will think about “brown”. That is because you use a cultural believe system, to find a cultural qualifier matching your need for an “identity”.
Here I want to mark how much is important the distribution of inequality in affecting human rights — and your identity, and your community.
Here’s stand the catch: the difference of value of own Life Time determines how much fragmented is a society. Who enjoy the higher return of Capital of own Life time, lobby for keeping own privileges. Particularly, in a society of Empire State Buildings and Bacterias, conceding a benefit from the first will typically be of negligible effort respect to the effort of making a living for the other.
The difference of value attributed to our Life Time determines your degree of self-expression — and the degree of power that you have on others. Who is able to value own Time the most, will win.
In a mutual recognition of the value of our Life Time, there’s the seed of Love.
Let me also say — I believe that here, in a mutual recognition of the value of our Time, there’s the seed of Love as well: for Love is based on Respect, and Respect is when you value the Time of the other, as much as yours — indeed, the Love that last, is when you want to spend Time together.
And Trust, too — it stems from a delta in value of our Time. If value of Life Time is comparable, than there is belief in the other; if that value is not easy to estimate and compare, we become suspicious on the other.
That explains why a woman walking alone in darkness, in a void urban space, may feel comfortable if a complete stranger that may appear will resemble belonging to a similar or higher “cultural community” as her, but in discomfort if the complete stranger is just of a poorer “cultural community”. If you find Mr. Grey you’ll be happy, but if you find a low-status immigrant with the attitude of Mr. Grey you will kinda report to Police.
But we also positively exploit a better wealth distribution among all participants of a company to stem intrapreneurship and engagement (some forms of cooperative systems are, and to an extent a similar concept may be captured in crypto-space). You could reward the Time invested by employees in a degree that Trust is perceived in sharing ideas for a positive transformation — instead so far, a worker in Amazon Logistic will strike for being worn out by overwork (which value does return from the Time for working activities?) and likely there will be sufficient trust towards an Executive in Amazon Luxemburg division — they are not in the same page, despite working in the same Country (here, Country is a mega-corporation).
Inequality of Wealth also explains the legacy of slavery: trust is difficult to be granted to the “so-much-lower” People: White American’s Life was order of magnitude more valuable than Black enslaved People, or native Indian Americans. And Nazi’s German Lives were orders of magnitude more valuable than inmates in concentration camps; still some antisemitic movement are based on ideas of unfair asymmetries in access to capital and ideas about lobbies of power.
The distribution of wealth — or distribution of inequality — allows an objective measure to forecast if there will be discriminations within a group or within a Society.
Much of discrimination will find a cultural narration, posed on a cultural system of believes, like the importance of “gender” or of “race”. Some fights-for-your-rights narratives proved to be agent of change in history, but none of them went to the core situation that lead to the origin of discrimination (or a sufficient spread of discrimination, to the point that become systemic).
I believe that between a cultural interpretation of inequality and an objective, measurable exponential inequality of wealth — that represent how much your Life is Worthy compared to others — the latter come first.
In other article, I will write about some historical incredible missed-points by movement advocating for human rights: advocating for human-rights based on cultural believes, lead to fight for the ones adhering to same cultural believes — but tend to forget the People who, in spite of not being represented by those cultural believes, nevertheless undergo discrimination.
Is Your Life Time valuable as much as mine?
Let’s conclude a first point: I argue distribution of inequality is central and causal to determine an inclusive society, able to negotiate enforcement of human rights no matter of a cultural belief system — that means, no matter if one is a Jew or Muslim; if one is Woman, Man, Female or Male; no matter of social status inherited by family, or willing to participate or not within a social system.
Here’s stand another catch: the distributor earns exponentially more respect to the producer.
While we want to keep growth, in the sense that complexity of a society augment (more structure = more hierarchy), we want to reduce inequality. How to?
We want to keep a capital mechanisms to spur engine of growth in structures, but we want to measure and control the return of capital that get centralised in favour of an élite.
Once there was antitrust legislations to prevent monopolies, but there is no interests for a government to break a monopoly (or oligopoly) if it controls Worlds economy — hello, Internet.
And now let’s look at the new tech opportunity : Decentralisation.
Can we Decentralise Access to Capital?
Do we want to Decentralise Access to capital, so that the return of Capital is distributed among all users (aka, people using a service) within same order of magnitude ? (Here, same order of magnitude is a loose concept, but approximately I would say within 10x between top and lowest millile).
Briefly my answer and interest are: yes, we can; yes, we shall.
How can we?
I was glad my vision for Decentralising Access to Capital was judged among finalist at both Global Solution Program and Global Impact Challenge at Singularity University in 2017.
Visiting a Token Sale distribution in December that led to 36M USD raise, shown me new interesting perspectives and insights over system design (with personal considerations on how Dialectic VS Science is spent in marketing to build trust and fuelling #FOMO).
A central aspect of my reasoning, is to bind value to structure (value as a function of complexity of economics networks), so to well decouple value from price. Value stands for structure, price stands for the utility you are willing to pay for.
As an impact, I envision the possibility to coherently decouple value and price associated to human Life — and so, liberate slavery and asymmetries. The value of Life of a Carpenter in USA should be comparable of an Indian one; same for a baker in China and a baker in Italy; and also the value of Life of the President of United States should be (more) comparable to people represented by the group USA; and the value of Life Time of a woman, will be comparable to the value of Life Time of a man — independently if they believe in Western cultural system, or if they believe or not in the Human Rights declaration ( which was spurred from a global conflict that mounted from an historical Time of profound inequality distribution — with a toll of 54 Million people).
Is decentralised technology sufficient to yield decentralised governance ?
Is decentralised technology sufficient to yield decentralised governance ?
As such, the liberatarian movements stand for — endorsing Freedom of self-expression VS a central authority?
I believe not, it is not sufficient.
I believe it is not sufficient because there are quite many historical examples showing that who owns the platform (or marketplace), own exponentially more Power respect to stakeholders trading over it (or engaging in human activity through it).
The Internet — the first global decentralised technology, now an oligarchy
The Internet was the technology that decentralised where information was stored. But in two decades, access to information became centralised into an oligarchy.
70% of traffic is owned by Google and Facebook. Mega-corporations are starting to have Political power — and soon able to print own Money — through crypto. A similar scenario occurred with East Indian Companies — they lasted 200 years with a massive, massive impact onto colonisation, and massive impact on internal politics.
Democracy — a decentralised technology to delegate power, getting an oligarchy?
Power of democratic systems is leading to centralised power of the top percentile (or millile), with effects similar to oligarchies.
The Democratic system was a technology that decentralised voting system for delegating Power. But in the latest USA elections, both candidates representing a population of 300 millions people, had each from 1000x to 10.000x personal wealth of the average citizen in Silicon Valley (not even the median in USA!). As a plus, if Clinton was elected, Chelsea would have embodied the quite odd probability to have both parents representatives of a most powerful Country of the World — a probability that occur only in Monarchies.
I chose USA as an example, because it is the (or a) most powerful Country in the Planet.
Now, among more and more economic entities that will exploit decentralisation to enable a new kind of economy — Vitalik Buterin forecast cyrpto economy will hold the majority of shares of total currencies circulating in the world.
But still, the mechanics of return of Capital looks to me intact: Pre-sales of Token Sale Events and ICOs are run to meet wealthy People, whose liquidity available is at least ~25K; 0.3 % of total wallets of Bitcoins control 97% of total Bitcoin wealth.
It is expected that decentralisation will produce (a fair good) competition among a plethora of new companies (mostly foundations, with bases in Singapore and Switzerland so far); it is imaginable even to think to a new World made of feudal systems in which each Mega-Company will be a Signoria, issuing own token.
Each Signoria will have massive impact onto the Live of People who are consumers, to People who become users, and then Pro-Sumers (that is, people who can both produce, trade and consume over decentralised platforms). But if the top millile of a community will own the majority of wealth, as in Global Economy, we may expect a variety of interpretations of human rights adapted to the cultural believes of top percentiles.
Imagine a Libertarian community of wealthy Neo-Nazi, equally represented by Women and Men enjoying the same status, who believe that their culture is for the good the liberty and freedom of the educated trans-humanist who proved smart as them; after all, there is so much space in the world that the ones who do not belong to their community, could simply forge their own elsewhere. Kick them out. Brrrrrrrr.
Or, even simpler — imagine a community of wealthy people living in the center of London or San Francisco, that simply do not want to see those beggars on the streets, because otherwise they cannot enjoy their meal open air. I bet those beggars will not have e-wallets. Happening, already. Artificial intelligence could even enforce private property to the point of shooting or tasing a thief — blast! automatically. Think about stealing food to survive at Automatic Shops of Amazon? Not a good idea.
And, as a last example, homeless in Brazil who do not have IDs, are also the ones most disregarded by Health system — what is the value of tossing money towards ones who cannot vote? The value of their Life is disposable, to the point that funds for helping the poor are disguised (authority will, only eventually, check — there are other priorities). I’ve seen that in 2005.
And please, do not call Artificial Intelligence to optimise for a better society: algorithms will outperform based on the training sets they learn from. Shall we train AI against racist words? upon patterns in manners and behaviours? upon patterns in sexism? upon patterns in derogatory language? (Who choose what? What a mess!) Or we train AI to outperform in an electoral campaign based on the words we like to hear — like equality, liberty — but who owns the governance? Maybe BigBrother will pass power to his Sibling, under legit Democratic rule, and the least represented will be just consumers at the voting event.
Or shall we train AI upon a wealth distribution ? What will they learn from the current one?
Will (decentralisation) technologies, and in general deep sci-tech, lead to a more equal society?
While science and technology allows to augment structure and complexity of a society, with the effect to set hierarchies and roles,the current return of capital technology centralise the governance over such hierarchies, so far to crystallise Power for eons. And as such, the cultural system will be more skewed towards the appetites of who hold Power (in some cases the one vesting such a role will be regarded as Absolute Truth from the masses, as in the case of Popes, Kings and Queens, or Entrepreneurs with a personal wealth several orders of magnitude larger than laypeople).
So, while science and tech augment complexity, how will they reduce inequality?
I don’t have an answer; I observe in Renaissance you had an élite that let a fabulous legacy in terms of Historical Art-Works. But also let a legacy in terms of distribution inequality — wealth to noble families who passed through ownership on properties and political influences for hundred of years.
Women and Men where kinda equal among their own status — yes, there are historians that proposes that Women from landholding élite had considerable rights and exercise power. In modern time, you may advocate for gender equality in Silicon Valley — but it is like to advocate that Queens may not yet have same power of Kings, instead of advocating of equality of the largest majority of population which undergoes contractual discrimination.
Until the technology of Return of Capital remains the same as hundreds of years, the same consequences can be expected on the governance over innovation and technology.
The most “equal” period in human history (only concerning the West, here), it was loosely around ’70s : an historical time where the wealth inequality kept decreasing and vast communities and “identities” were able to hold sufficient Power to have own rights (better) represented (the movements for rights of Black People; Native American Civil rights the feminism and right to abortion, divorce, to name a few).
A brief conclusion
Distribution of wealth informs how opportunities of expressing own Life are distributed among a population (independently from a cultural system of believes of its members).
Inequality poses the bases for discrimination to spread and persist within a system; along with persistence of inequality, cultural narratives interpret a certain cultural system as the cause of inequality, but fail to advocate for communities having diverse cultural interpretations and background.
The top-percentile of population who controls majority of wealth distribution lobbies for political power and own cultural system; as such, a central authority may struggle to enforce human rights.
Decentralisation offers an opportunity to have novel distribution of power, indeed through novel distribution of wealth.
However, the return of Capital mechanism is still the same over decentralised economies: networks effects put controls in the hands of a few with, exponentially — with an exponential inequality of benefiting of comparable dignity, equal rights and adequate well-being among the population.
If we want to capture at best the opportunity of crypto-economy to leverage also a better enforcement of human rights, we already need to start think how to lobby for measuring and controlling the distribution of wealth.
While decentralising access to capital can moonshot innovation and societal evolution, a governance mechanism over the return of capital is proposed to measure wealth inequality.
A distribution of wealth within the range of “same order of magnitude” may be proposed as an experimental test for a new kind of governance of innovation and economics model, aiming to keep a constant equilibrium in negotiating power between community members and a balance in the rights to express Life VS the risks to abuse the Liberty of the other.
The Value of our Life Time must be comparable on the same order of “humanness”, if really we believe in inherent, equal, inaliable rights as the foundation of freedom, justiceand peace in the world.
