More Equal Animals: The Subtle Art of True Democracy

by Daniel Larimer, Mike Maloney (Foreword)

More Equal Animals is an inquiry into the difference between the idealistic intent of democratic governance and the unfortunate reality of the prevailing governance structures. It builds up a foundation for a new democratic process that better captures the desire to empower the people to govern themselves without the institutions of government being corrupted.

249 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 21, 2021

Reviews

[Sebastian Salamanca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is really nice but sometimes you get lost.

It inspired me to star working on developing consensus systems / apps. It opened my mind to new ideas. I am currently not using EOS but Clarity.

consensus and blockchain the the next step.

If you are into crypto coding / blockchain exploring this book could be helpful.

[Dr Fadi Amroush · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most projects involving teamwork as well as most ideas of organizing local communities fail when attempts are made to build a successful governance model. In most cases, the matter turns directly to building alliances inside the group in one way or another and giving a particular lobby all the power regarding decision-making, which will then take the group in the direction it wants.
Even in the game of free democratic elections, influencers collect votes from those who are not interested in the election process. By doing so, they can achieve a simple majority of 51%, which allows them to be declared legitimate representatives of society.

In his book titled “ Swarmwise: The Tactical Manual to Changing the World,” Rick Falkvinge talks about the Heisenberg metrics phenomenon and its impact on various organizations. The idea is summarized by the fact that individuals intend to act dishonestly in order to support their win. A typical example of Heisenberg metrics in practice is what happened with the site mp3.com. This site was a pioneer in the music cloud business in 2011 when they offered what is called a pay-for-play service. This is a service in which an artist would get a piece of the site’s revenue, which was distributed amongst all of the artists on mp3.com in accordance with how much their songs were played on the site. The result was that everybody wanted to financially support their favorite artists. To do so, they set up all the computers they could access to play music from said artist on the site, but with the volume turned off as to not disturb anybody. Some people coded bots that would repeatedly stream an artist’s music to boost artificial numbers, which of course translated into money. Heisenberg metrics unfortunately also happen at the political level, and when people rig this, their candidate has to win.

Most of the time candidates focus on the process of winning elections for team or group governance, and the goal of winning is quite different from actually representing the real team. This is especially true with the current political games such as political advocacy campaigns, defamation of politicians, politics of focusing on identity and excluding others, the manipulation of votes and of the delimitation of electoral districts, and television debates. With all this in mind, one cannot be sure that this leads to fair representation for all in governance.

I was always impressed by the writings of Daniel Larimer, particularly because of his interest in building decentralized societies, and his extensive 15+ years of experience in this field caught my attention. I started following his work closely 4 years ago. At the time, I started every morning by reading the telegram bot that shared his messages to social media.
Larimer is a computer programmer, economist, game theorist, and entrepreneur who, over the past 15 years, has devoted his life to creating software solutions that benefit society while championing the right to a decent life, liberty, collective property, and justice for all. Most importantly, he is the EOS community leader!

Larimer deeply explains the road map into true democracy in the book “More Equal Animals: The Subtle Art of True Democracy.” He perfectly introduces the role of randomness, which I am a big believer of.

The word “randomness” may, unfortunately, have a harsh impact on the Arabic-speaking world as it is related to “mess.” To mitigate this effect, I searched for historical incidents in which randomness was employed in making decisions. I found different stories in Arabic/Islamic history, all of which used something called “drawing lots,” which was acceptable in history. This practice was called qur’a. Drawing lots played a modest role in Islamic law, except in matters of descent, where its use was controversial. These instances occurred in the exegeses of the Koran, which mentions drawing lots alongside other divinatory practices considered to be illicit. By contrast, in the sayings attributed to the Prophet (hadith), references to drawing lots are much more numerous, either in helping one make a decision or as a means of resolving a conflict. For cult matters, the process was used in order to decide between candidates for a single position.

[Jemshid Kake · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book proposes a political framework, primarily libertarian politics. It looks like, authors exposure to blockchain technologies and businesses which made him gain first-hand experience on community adoption and evolution of blockchain protocols has given the author a larger understanding of game theory, politics and possibilities. It's a good read and I have a few more experiments on my to-do list.

[MoUz6 · Rating 3 out of 5]

a) lack of understanding of the ideas behind anarchism;
b) another attempt to invent a system of 'checks and balances' that 'this time can't be exploited for bad' - US Constitution for the XXI century - it would end the same way;
c) lack of practical details - it isn't a plan of strategy, rather a theoretical considerations;