Who is the "network" in this example? You anthropomorphize the network into an entity that makes value-based judgements, but there is no accommodation for how this is controlled and operated.
Your 'network economy' reads exactly like the current government systems of developed countries. It just sounds like you disagree with the value-judgements being made by the government in terms of who gets fined and taxed and who benefits from it.
Who decides what is good, bad, extractive, or contributory? Who decides the value of contributions that don't have clear quantifiable results? Who disputes these judgements and how is that dispute processed by the network?
It's not the value judgements themselves I disagree with per se, it's the notion that (1) governments can make value judgements with broad legitimacy from their constituents, that (2) they can make these value judgements with agility and at scale, and (3) that they can coordinate these decisions effectively with other governments in ways that benefit the common interests of their respective constituents.
My contention is that governments today cannot do any of this effectively because of how they're structured, and that Network Economies would be more effective in all three areas.
Why can't governments have broad legitimacy from their constituents? That comes down to 2 main issues: the political process itself, and media/social media.
The political process of what it takes for politicians to get elected (and stay in power) is misaligned with the ability of politicians to either make decisions for the common interest, or to demonstrate that there is no corrupt intent behind their decisions.
This problem is made exponentially worse as media and social media are incentivized to create drama and conflict. So even when government makes a perfectly reasonable value judgement, a sizeable section of the population is still likely to ascribe corrupt motives to it. This will only get worse as it becomes easier to create fake videos, and manipulate public opinion through armies of fake AI accounts.
The problem is that government is in a perpetual state of zugzwang when it comes to media. If they do nothing, parts of the media will continue to undermine government's credibility. But if government moves to restrict media in any way, that would be used as "proof" that indeed government is acting corruptly and tries to hide it.
As the race to the bottom in media/social media continues government will continue to lose legitimacy, which means that it will have trouble countering even the most basic cases of externalities.
Regarding agility and operating at scale - when you have elections every 2 or 4 years, and half the time is spent on campaigning, you can imagine that politicians don't spend every waking moment figuring out what their constituents really need. So they can only focus on a few issues to address once every few years. So they cannot structurally meet the needs of constituents, and don't have an effective process to collect such data.
The same is true for effective coordination with other governments; because of their limited legitimacy, and because of political calculations, it's much harder for governments to coordinate for the common benefit. This is more so because each government has an incentive to defect and benefit their own constituents at the expense of others (not saying that there is zero collaboration, but it's hardly the norm).
So yes, in many ways Network Economies operate as decentralized governments. They make value judgements through a Value Consensus Mechanism. I propose one such value consensus mechanism in the Abundance Protocol whitepaper ( https://whitepaper.abundance.id), where I describe the mechanism, how decisions are made, challenged, and so on. Certainly there could be other mechanisms, as long as networks abide by them.
The Value Consensus Mechanism is designed to allow a network to reach consensus on value judgements (ie. the minimal amount of funding (or fine) for a public good that participants in the network can agree on, based on the rules of that network). They do so by making the process transparent, aligning participants' economic interests within the network, and incorporating mechanisms that make collusion against the network (or other actions by bad actors) costly and counterproductive.
The goal is to solve all three problems that governments currently have: (1) you make the process transparent and exceedingly difficult to corrupt, so it has broad legitimacy within the network. (2) Decisions can be made relatively quickly, and at a high bandwidth. And (3) networks make value judgement additive, so collaboration between networks for the common interest is much more likely.
Consider for example the issue of social media. As long as platforms extract value from attention, they create perverse incentives for users to create rage-bait, polarizing content, and so on.
Government cannot do much in this sphere. It cannot censor content without undermining its legitimacy, and it cannot fund a government-owned social media, because even with the best and most transparent algos the legitimacy of such social media would immediately be in question.
But Network Economies can fund such a platform! That's because everyone in the network can see that the process is fair and transparent, and that there is no one "behind the curtain" with corrupt intent.
So then we can have platforms that are entirely open sourced, open graph, algorithmically transparent, and (perhaps most importantly) financially sustainable. Then instead of social media (and media) acting to undermine the legitimacy of government, the incentive would simply be truth-seeking (since that creates the most value for networks).
The purpose of these networks then is to create a "trust layer" for the economy - something that neither the private sector nor governments today can do. Where the network can be trusted to fund public goods that the network can agree are vital to the common prosperity of its members, and likewise fine externalities that the network can agree are detrimental to it
Yes that all sounds good on theory, but in practice is amazingly difficult. The history of Blockchain is littered with scams and fraud that flew under the radar in these "transparent systems".
I agree with you that the underlying technology of a truly fair economy requires this open foundation so that corruption resistant systems can be built on top of it.
But the reality is the brunt of the labor is still people putting in time and effort to actually provide the value that is expected with this open and transparent system. You can openly and transparently rug anyone with Blockchain technology more easily than you can provide true value creation, so the hidden incentive is still to reward ppl beating the system rather than providing value.
I think it's reasonable to call into question the validity of the current government systems, but if you look at them idealistically just like you're looking at Blockchain technology, you can see the same ideals and goals with the initial system design. The Constitution essentially was a pre-Blockchain network economy agreement with amendable "dumb" contracts.
So yes, let's change the foundation to something truly capable of more capture resistance like Blockchains, but we still have to do the work to build the human processes that are necessary to operate a capture resistant economy on top of these Blockchains.
When I read your whitepaper I can mentally tally years, if not decades of work that needs to be done to build from scratch the human processes to support the mechanisms you describe. Just because a smart contracts exists doesn't mean information asymmetry doesn't still exist in society or that everyone will just instantly understand every nuance of this new, complicated system. It might be a great system, but it will cost money to test it.
The infrastructure is only part of a system. The operating instructions need repeated iterations to perfect, and that's why in order for a network economy to succeed it has to have revenue to support the cost of properly running these iterations so they provide cumulative progress instead of just circling the drain.
Who is the "network" in this example? You anthropomorphize the network into an entity that makes value-based judgements, but there is no accommodation for how this is controlled and operated.
Your 'network economy' reads exactly like the current government systems of developed countries. It just sounds like you disagree with the value-judgements being made by the government in terms of who gets fined and taxed and who benefits from it.
Who decides what is good, bad, extractive, or contributory? Who decides the value of contributions that don't have clear quantifiable results? Who disputes these judgements and how is that dispute processed by the network?
It's not the value judgements themselves I disagree with per se, it's the notion that (1) governments can make value judgements with broad legitimacy from their constituents, that (2) they can make these value judgements with agility and at scale, and (3) that they can coordinate these decisions effectively with other governments in ways that benefit the common interests of their respective constituents.
My contention is that governments today cannot do any of this effectively because of how they're structured, and that Network Economies would be more effective in all three areas.
Why can't governments have broad legitimacy from their constituents? That comes down to 2 main issues: the political process itself, and media/social media.
The political process of what it takes for politicians to get elected (and stay in power) is misaligned with the ability of politicians to either make decisions for the common interest, or to demonstrate that there is no corrupt intent behind their decisions.
This problem is made exponentially worse as media and social media are incentivized to create drama and conflict. So even when government makes a perfectly reasonable value judgement, a sizeable section of the population is still likely to ascribe corrupt motives to it. This will only get worse as it becomes easier to create fake videos, and manipulate public opinion through armies of fake AI accounts.
The problem is that government is in a perpetual state of zugzwang when it comes to media. If they do nothing, parts of the media will continue to undermine government's credibility. But if government moves to restrict media in any way, that would be used as "proof" that indeed government is acting corruptly and tries to hide it.
As the race to the bottom in media/social media continues government will continue to lose legitimacy, which means that it will have trouble countering even the most basic cases of externalities.
Regarding agility and operating at scale - when you have elections every 2 or 4 years, and half the time is spent on campaigning, you can imagine that politicians don't spend every waking moment figuring out what their constituents really need. So they can only focus on a few issues to address once every few years. So they cannot structurally meet the needs of constituents, and don't have an effective process to collect such data.
The same is true for effective coordination with other governments; because of their limited legitimacy, and because of political calculations, it's much harder for governments to coordinate for the common benefit. This is more so because each government has an incentive to defect and benefit their own constituents at the expense of others (not saying that there is zero collaboration, but it's hardly the norm).
So yes, in many ways Network Economies operate as decentralized governments. They make value judgements through a Value Consensus Mechanism. I propose one such value consensus mechanism in the Abundance Protocol whitepaper ( https://whitepaper.abundance.id), where I describe the mechanism, how decisions are made, challenged, and so on. Certainly there could be other mechanisms, as long as networks abide by them.
The Value Consensus Mechanism is designed to allow a network to reach consensus on value judgements (ie. the minimal amount of funding (or fine) for a public good that participants in the network can agree on, based on the rules of that network). They do so by making the process transparent, aligning participants' economic interests within the network, and incorporating mechanisms that make collusion against the network (or other actions by bad actors) costly and counterproductive.
The goal is to solve all three problems that governments currently have: (1) you make the process transparent and exceedingly difficult to corrupt, so it has broad legitimacy within the network. (2) Decisions can be made relatively quickly, and at a high bandwidth. And (3) networks make value judgement additive, so collaboration between networks for the common interest is much more likely.
Consider for example the issue of social media. As long as platforms extract value from attention, they create perverse incentives for users to create rage-bait, polarizing content, and so on.
Government cannot do much in this sphere. It cannot censor content without undermining its legitimacy, and it cannot fund a government-owned social media, because even with the best and most transparent algos the legitimacy of such social media would immediately be in question.
But Network Economies can fund such a platform! That's because everyone in the network can see that the process is fair and transparent, and that there is no one "behind the curtain" with corrupt intent.
So then we can have platforms that are entirely open sourced, open graph, algorithmically transparent, and (perhaps most importantly) financially sustainable. Then instead of social media (and media) acting to undermine the legitimacy of government, the incentive would simply be truth-seeking (since that creates the most value for networks).
The purpose of these networks then is to create a "trust layer" for the economy - something that neither the private sector nor governments today can do. Where the network can be trusted to fund public goods that the network can agree are vital to the common prosperity of its members, and likewise fine externalities that the network can agree are detrimental to it
Yes that all sounds good on theory, but in practice is amazingly difficult. The history of Blockchain is littered with scams and fraud that flew under the radar in these "transparent systems".
I agree with you that the underlying technology of a truly fair economy requires this open foundation so that corruption resistant systems can be built on top of it.
But the reality is the brunt of the labor is still people putting in time and effort to actually provide the value that is expected with this open and transparent system. You can openly and transparently rug anyone with Blockchain technology more easily than you can provide true value creation, so the hidden incentive is still to reward ppl beating the system rather than providing value.
I think it's reasonable to call into question the validity of the current government systems, but if you look at them idealistically just like you're looking at Blockchain technology, you can see the same ideals and goals with the initial system design. The Constitution essentially was a pre-Blockchain network economy agreement with amendable "dumb" contracts.
So yes, let's change the foundation to something truly capable of more capture resistance like Blockchains, but we still have to do the work to build the human processes that are necessary to operate a capture resistant economy on top of these Blockchains.
When I read your whitepaper I can mentally tally years, if not decades of work that needs to be done to build from scratch the human processes to support the mechanisms you describe. Just because a smart contracts exists doesn't mean information asymmetry doesn't still exist in society or that everyone will just instantly understand every nuance of this new, complicated system. It might be a great system, but it will cost money to test it.
The infrastructure is only part of a system. The operating instructions need repeated iterations to perfect, and that's why in order for a network economy to succeed it has to have revenue to support the cost of properly running these iterations so they provide cumulative progress instead of just circling the drain.