Modern democracies are a sham. This is how most of them work,
- Politicians look for money to run their campaigns
- Lobbyists i.e. big corporations give them the money they need
- Politicians use said money to win elections and then proceed to use taxpayer money to help the corporations that backed them
- Rinse and repeat
It goes without saying that this system of governance is not ideal (euphemistically speaking). Politicians are forced to help big business or risk not being re-elected for lack of funds in the next cycle. Where do common citizens, for whom democracy was invented, fit into this system? Yes, they get to vote, but that rarely matters since it's hard to find any campaigner not backed by big business. The system gives too much power to corporations that are motivated only by greed!
They don't give away free money
You could possibly ban corporate political contributions but that would mean only the super rich (who can afford to self fund a campaign) can now be politicians. There is a better solution.
For the first time since the inception of democracy 2000 years ago, we have a technology that could put an end to this (drum roll please) it's called the blockchain. I'll divide this section into 2 parts
- How the blockchain can be used to solve this problem
- Why only the blockchain (and not traditional servers) will work for this solution
Lets start with the how. (I've actually made a working proof of concept using Solidity that follows the below steps, so the solution is not entirely theoretical - it can be done)
- Citizens pay their taxes to the government using a cryptocurrency
- Taxes are stored in a safe space on the blockchain, the space is controlled using a smart contract. Politicians don't have access to the money nor does anyone in the government
- The smart contract states that to extract money from the safe space, politicians must first create a request for transfer - a request is a description (what the money is for), address (where the money is going) and amount (amount of money)
- Citizens must vote positively or negatively on the request. When 50% of the votes committed to the request by netizens are positive the smart contract executes, transferring the money to the address provided
In this system, ordinary citizens have control of tax money, and money as we all know is power. Everyday people hold power not big corporations. For convenience sake, let's call this the Parthocracy (since the Parthenon was where democracy was invented). In essence, a Parthocracy is the spirit of democracy, a true democracy if you will. Where citizens vote not just for people but also have granular control over government decisions (if they wish to participate in the decision making).
Ladies and Gentlemen: The birthplace of democracy
Citizens can decide whether or not they want to spend a trillion dollars on fighter jets without having to protest on the streets. Because of the immutable and decentralised nature of the blockchain, no president, no matter how malicious and corrupt can under any circumstances persecute his or her citizens (since they have power). Take for example Assad in Syria, if Syria was a Parthocracy, Assad would not have any money to fund his wars without his citizens' permission (which he would likely have not gotten). Thousands of lives could have been spared.
Situations like Assad (albeit not that extreme), where politicians use taxpayer money to fund personal agendas, are not uncommon in many parts of Africa, South America and India. A shame really, since in these countries tax money is needed most urgently to meet the basic needs of citizens.
In a Parthocracy, corrupt presidents can under no circumstances use taxpayer money without the permission of citizens
Now let's discuss why this can only be done with the blockchain.
It's quite simple really, traditional servers can be hacked or accessed using a key. You can easily imagine a malicious and corrupt government (take Assad again) accessing the tax money on the server illegally and using it to line his own pockets.
With a blockchain this is simply not possible, even if a government declares martial law, they will need the citizens' permission to access funds and therefore cannot prosecute them. Ensuring safety for all and eliminating rogue democracies like Syria, Iran or Peru.
Please feel free to criticise this idea, blockchain is new to us all, we're all learning and I thought this idea was worth sharing. I would love to hear what everyone thinks. Thanks for reading!