Some friends suggested I write an entry to the Global Challenges Foundation’s “Global Challenges Prize 2017 – A New Shape”. as it asked for a rethinking of our system of global governance. It didn’t win the $5 million prize as it abolished the UN instead of reforming it. Here it is.
A Problem Solving Society
by Paul Bristow
Abstract
The model presented here is based on redesigning society totally around Problem Solving. Such a society is distributed, open source, good at solving problems, resilient, locally self sufficient, and globally connected. We make extensive use of the internet to disseminate information, create and collate solutions at local, regional and global levels.
This model is designed to facilitate the exponential innovation needed to solve the huge problems that we have facing us. It essentially reorganises society around problem solving using co-creation methodologies, and applies evidence based feedback to rapidly discover what solutions work in the real world, and spread them as appropriate. It uses open source methodologies to ensure that practical solutions to problems are shared widely, and come with the explicit permission to improve them and share those improvements.
We have a set of common resources shared between everyone in the world on an open source basis. i.e. You are free to use the knowledge, on the condition that you share your modifications or improvements with the world.
Global Problem database
The problem database is a collection of problems or challenges, proposed by citizens or organisations. A problem can be global in scope or hyper-local. It in general, is something that solving would make human society better. The Sustainable Development Goals are a good example set of global problems requiring local solutions. but a simpler local one might be e.g. not having enough car parking spaces on market day.
Global Solution database
The Solution database includes all solutions that have worked for a given problem anywhere in the world. It includes the evidence for the solution working. For a new idea, there will not be much evidence and marketing skills will be in huge demand for selling new ideas. The formats needed for the solution database will vary depending on the problem being solved. Engineering problems are likely to have very different solutions to social ones, for example. Consider the solution database as analogous to GitHub – which is itself an ever-evolving set of engineering solutions to problems.
Solutions will vary around the world – the best solution for a cold windy country is very likely to be different from a warm, sunny one.
Funding
The funding model for this takes the power of monetary creation away from banks and hands it to society in general. When the problems are defined by society and the rewards are attributed by society in a transparent, open manner, the perverse incentives for destructive behaviour go away.
We could even use different currencies for different reasons. As the transaction costs of switching currencies tend towards zero, and we remove the economic profit side of the equation, there is no reason not to try different systems.
Evidence based open solutions.
A society based on solution sharing will only work if there is trust in the solutions. Problems from the global problem database shall be linked to shared, open source, solutions to those problems, along with the evidence that shows how they worked in their specific environment. There is no assumption that there is one, and only one solution to a given problem. Indeed, competing solutions to global problems should be encouraged.
A responsive, resilient society
Monocultures are just as dangerous in society as in agriculture. There is no attempt to define the optimum way to solve problems, or discuss them at a local level. This is a problem, just like any other. We’re aiming at multiple societal models – ever evolving and shared for imitation or improvement.
The aim of this model is to encourage a virtuous spiral of friendly co-opetition, between different groups. The “that’s a great idea, and I could improve it by adding…” thought process writ large.
As people exercise their problem solving “muscles”, they will become better at it. The “somebody should” statement will disappear, to be replaced by “what if we tried…?”.
Regulations
Regulations build on what exists, but in general the regulations should be for circular design and continuous improvement.
Decision making paths
Decision making makes checks and balances explicit, and prevents actions from being taken for which there is no evidence. The decision making process itself becomes part of the problem/solution space.
A unique aspect of this problem solving model is that it does not claim to have the “one true way” nor that it is the final word in decision making. Indeed, the model specifically encourages experimentation between different decision making methodologies along with evaluation of the results and global sharing. Instead of the market-based competition between ideas that exists today, a friendly co-opetition forms between different sets of best practises that are shared.
Control mechanisms
There are two key control mechanisms:
The first is a form of liquid democracy used to delegate authority from individuals to people they trust. I propose a multilevel approach, which delegates decision authority dynamically on a topic basis, with individuals having the absolute right to change their mind, withdrawing or reassigning their decision authority at will. This provides a real-time control over who is authorised to decide on solutions. For collaboration between regions, governance is managed at the lowest geographical level that makes sense for the topic. Decision authority for collaborations can also be allocated dynamically.
The second is the funding mechanism. Funding is also directly allocated by individuals, based on how they believe in the solutions proposed. The funding mechanism provides direct transparent and democratic control over exactly which solutions are invested in on behalf of the society.
A Problem Solving Society
The model presented here is based on redesigning society totally around Problem Solving. Such a society is distributed, open source, good at solving all kinds of problems, resilient, locally self sufficient, and, of course, globally connected. We make extensive use of the internet to disseminate information, create and collate solutions at local, regional and global levels.
The fundamental difference is that instead of electing people that are good at getting themselves elected to then try to find solutions to problems, we find out who is good at solving different types of problems and get them to solve those, at bigger and bigger scales, as their expertise, experience and inclination dictates.
The key point is that proposed solutions to problems need to gather evidence that they work. This is done at a small scale at first, then the results shared. When others try the solution it may also work for them or they may improve it, in which case they share that solution.
A key assumption
I do not make the assumption that any of society’s institutions or organisational methods are definitively “the way to solve problems”. The climate change problem may be best solved with an organisation of cites talking between each other directly. The nation state, may, or may not, be the best way to structure society.
Representative democracy, as it has historically been deployed is a 19th century solution to governance and may, or may not be, the best way. By adopting a rigorous, transparent, evidence based approach to solving problems and encouraging open experimentation around the world we may find better solutions to these problems. It may well be that the idea of overall “leaders” is an irrelevance in a problem solving world, where those that have proven themselves at solving given problems get asked to help solve bigger ones.
What types of problems?
Today this approach is used mostly in scientific endeavours, and in the open source community. Any type of problem, whether technical, scientific, organisational, social, or even planetary can be tackled using this approach.
Who can propose a problem?
In principle, anyone at all. A new problem will not be known by anyone, and may not attract many people to help solve it. Given that new problems generally attract experimental solutions that you probably don’t want at scale, this is actually a strength of the system. Solutions should start small and scale, if, and only if, they actually work.
What methodologies should be used for problem solving?
The methodology chosen will vary depending on the problem being tackled and the cultural background of the people tackling it.
Methodologies are documented in the solution database. Examples include design thinking, scientific committee, open space workshops, hackathons, incubators. There is no one right approach for problem solving – what is important is that the solution actually works. Given that groups wanting to work on problems need to attract resources to do so directly from the public, it is important to show progress towards a solution, in the form of evidence.
It is important to note that the methodologies themselves are a solution to the problem “How to develop a solution to a problem?”, and as such have a related set of open source solutions, documented with improvements and alternatives made available for testing or use by anyone. This is exactly how organisations today develop and share recipes for meetings, workshops and how-to guides online.
The Startup Issue
Of course, some solutions take time to develop, or have high startup costs. For these, story-telling will be incredibly important, and the ability to reach millions of potential audience. Fortunately, we now have these tools available in the form of the internet, and social media. Imagine a world where TEDs “Ideas that Spread” would instead be “Ideas that attract direct democratic investment from the public”.
Evidence Based
“When the facts changes I change my mind, what do you do?” – John Maynard Keynes (OK, probably not)
A problem solving society has to work on the basis of evidence. The problem is of course, that evidence can be hard to come by, certainly at the start of trials of the first prototype solutions, and people will dispute it. The model described here accepts that we are always in an experimental mode, and builds in self correction. In this way it is much more like the scientific method, in that what actually works is key. As far as possible, we build transparency into the system so that decisions can always be examined, that resources are transparently allocated.
Evidence-based story telling will be critical, as the public are ultimately responsible for choosing which projects get funded and which don’t. This is a marked improvement on today, whereby either private banks decide what projects get funded without even discussing the use or otherwise to society, or politicians resort to tribal evidence-free policy ideas to allocate resources to projects for which there is no evidence that they will ever work. In some cases, they even deny reality itself, saying that the project, if funded will create a new reality.
Open Source Collaboration Methodologies for Everything
This model is designed to facilitate the exponential innovation needed to solve the huge problems that we have facing us. It essentially reorganises society around problem solving using co-creation methodologies, and applies evidence based feedback to rapidly discover what solutions work in the real world, and spread them as appropriate. It uses open source methodologies to ensure that practical solutions to problems are shared widely, and come with the explicit permission to improve them and share those improvements.
The open source world can be remorselessly practical. Although some people might complain about the elegance of your code, the only thing that actually matters is “does it work better than what we already have?”. This turns out to be a fantastic way to improve technical solutions.
However, the world is not just technical. Far from it. Knowledge has been democratised in the Wikipedia project, and it turns out that applying the open source approach to knowledge has resulted in the most powerful set of information about what has happened to humanity ever created. In addition, it comes in a multilingual, translatable, machine accessible format. This is so much more useful than its dead tree antecedents that it has replaced them all.
Recipe books work in the same way. Humans like sharing knowledge, and they like changing – improving – it.
Now imagine the same processes applied to all the problems of humanity. Where the only thing that matters is not whether the president of the United States, or the United Nations Committee on XYZ thinks a solution is a good idea, but whether it works better than what we already have.
With open source collaboration we build a set of common resources shared between everyone in the world on an open source basis. i.e. You are free to use the knowledge, on the condition that you share your modifications or improvements with the world.
This is most often seen in open source software today, but there is a growing set of open source hardware practitioners, designing and sharing physical objects that can be replicated all over the world. There is even a group – Open Source Ecology – that is creating an open source civilisation starter kit.
Co-creation methodologies, such as design thinking, give us a much more inclusive way of creating solutions.
By bringing together people from different parts of society, especially the ones who actually experience the problems, with experts that think they could solve them, we avoid the “what were they thinking” moment. Such meetings of the minds serve two key purposes. They facilitate better quality solutions, usually by digging into the reasons behind the problem, and they give the people experiencing the problem a sense of ownership with the solution.
Humans are much more likely to support a solution they have helped to co-create than one that is imposed upon them. Many people will resist change forced from above on principle. Using co-creation methodologies is a good way to allow these people input into the creation of the solution, rather than just asking them to accept it.
Co-creation usually involved a level of solution prototyping, and at least first level testing. To facilitate this, it will be necessary to provide creativity spaces, with prototyping support. FabLabs and Makerspaces are a potential starting point for this.
Co-creation works better if people have the opportunity to see who will work on what, when, and see if they would like to join in. For this, transparency will help.
Global Problem database
The problem database is a collection of problems or challenges, starting with the global goals. At its most simple, it is a Wikipedia-link list of problems, covering everything from “the climate is changing”, to “cars drive too fast near the local school”.
Global Goals
The UN Sustainable Development Goals were created by a self-appointed, albeit well-informed and benign elite. They are, however, not a bad starting point as a set of guidelines for our global civilisation. This model uses them as a starting point, on the reasonable grounds that they have already been agreed at the United Nations.
At a top level, the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, are a good start for global problems, while, there exist many local problem databases around the world.
Evolution of the Global Goals
In this model, global challenges are defined through crowd-sourcing from the global population. Once a defined threshold of global supporters is reached, the global problem is added to the updated global goals problem database, which is ranked by global social media support. In a truly connected world, this threshold could be 70% of the global voters + 70% of the self-defined regional areas.
The Global Problem database needs to have a wikipedia like interface, with geodata added, along with categorisation so we can list similar problems in different areas, or just similar problems in your area, to see if merging would be a good idea. AI-based semantic analysis can also see used to see if there are unseen trends across regions or topics and bring it to people’s attention.
There are many existing sets of problems & solutions, for example the many open source projects around, which are all solutions to problems.
The key point is that no-one can ask for resources to be allocated to solving a problem which is not documented in the global problem database.
As solutions are worked on, or found for these problems, they will be documented in the Global Solutions Tree.
The Tree of Global Solutions
Humanity likes to build new solutions over old ones. We combine know-how and techniques to create new solutions.
The Solution database includes all solutions that have worked for a given problem anywhere in the world. It includes the evidence for the solution working, the location(s) where it worked, who was involved (both individuals and organisations), and, most importantly, the recipe for replicating the solution. These are linked back to the problems for which they are a solution.
For a new idea, there will not yet be much evidence and marketing skills will be in huge demand for selling new ideas. I imagine TED-style talks touting for solutions to problems or showing proposed solutions.
The formats needed for the solution database will vary depending on the problem being solved. Engineering problems are likely to have very different solutions to social ones, for example. Consider the solution database as analogous to GitHub – which is itself an ever-evolving set of engineering solutions to problems.
Solutions will vary around the world – the best solution for a cold windy area is very likely to be different from a warm, sunny one.
This will be a continually evolving system, like wikipedia or github today.
How much credibility to give to new solutions will be a continual problem, so we address this in two ways. Credibility is based on the reputation of individuals for having solved similar or related problems in the past, and the next section details a way to measure that directly, and allocate authority based on it.
Multilevel Liquid Democracy
A problem with direct democracy is quite simply that not everyone is interested enough in everything enough to possibly learn about all of the issues around any given issue. Going to referenda for complex issues results in nonsense like the Brexit vote, where the only thing anyone was clear about was what the majority was against. The problem is that most people do not care enough about issues (until they do) to become informed enough to make a sensible decision.
Liquid Democracy, provides the ability for individuals to delegate their decision power to someone they trust, on a given topic, and revoke that power at any time. So if I have a friend who knows everything there is no know about renewable energy, I may well delegate my decision power to her for that topic, and that topic only. It’s like having continuous representative democracy as opposed to the discrete, multiyear, all topics representation that most of us currently have.
Multilevel Liquid Democracy, takes this delegated power, and allows it to be held at a local level, while being simultaneously represented at larger scale decision gatherings. So my friend may have multiple delegations which she exercises at a local level, and chooses to delegate them at a regional level to someone she trusts.
Again, a blockchain-style transparent ledger is needed for this to work. However, the technical infrastructure needed for this at a global scale is massive, but achievable, and getting less expensive every year.
This system says nothing about the actual way in which decisions are taken. The decisions, along with the methods used and identities of those who took them form part of the initial evidence for a given solution.
Delegated decision power does not include the right to allocate resources directly, individual citizens delegate resource allocation in a similar manner, of which more in the next section.
Single Purpose Currencies
Todays societies generally use a single currency for all purposes within a country. This leads to many perverse effects. For a start, we are trying to use the same system for facilitating transactions and storing value, when the optimal rules for these two needs are completely opposed. A transactional currency should circulate with as little friction as possible, and should not be hoarded. A value store currency should not lose it’s value and may well have increased transaction costs.
Given that today, money = power, virtually all activity in our current model is based around the acquisition of money in order either to have power, to exercise power, or to avoid others having power over one. This causes a lot of useless economic activity, that neither solves the problems of today, nor makes the people involved happy.
The funding model for the Problem Solving societal model takes the power of monetary creation away from banks and hands it to society in general. I propose that instead of creating debt-based money, which requires interest to be generated through economic growth, enforcing a continual inflationary growth of the money supply, and only as a side-effect hopefully generate some useful things for society, that we skip the middle man, and use society itself to directly reward societal problem-solving.
When the problems are defined by society and the rewards are attributed by society in a transparent, open manner, the perverse incentives for destructive behaviour go away.
Monetary creation can be issued directly by regional financial governance as multiple, single purpose currencies. As the transaction costs of switching currencies tend towards zero, and we remove the economic profit side of the equation, there is no reason not to try different systems, in parallel.
Universal Basic Income
A universal basic income can be paid in a local transactional currency. This should be set at such a level as to cover the basic needs of every human being.
Local Infrastructure Investment
A second local currency should be issued to each citizen each year for local infrastructure investment. This currency should not be useable for anything else and not changeable into any other currency. This currency must be invested in local projects.
Each citizen has the power to allocate their Infrastructure money to the projects they support at any time during the year. Any money they have left – not allocated – at the end of the year is automatically allocated on a pro-rata basis to all funded projects. They can also use liquid democracy to assign responsibility for allocating a part of their resources to a trusted representative.
The definition of local is simply “not global”. This means any non-global project is free to ask for resources. This provides the resources needed to facilitate the day to day development of civilisation, while leaving the definition of the appropriate scale to the people in an area.
Global Infrastructure Investment
I also propose a global infrastructure investment currency, to be directly issued to each and every citizen in the world. They can use this to invest in global scale solutions, such as a peace-keeping force, or planetary scale engineering, or global level institutions. These are subject to the yearly funding loop, and hence the need to persuade the public of the value of the activities makes it very difficult for harmful or ineffectual activities to persist.
Reputation, not Profit
This model takes the traditional form of money out of the equation – now people work for reputation, not profit. Having a reputation for solving problems, convinces more people to delegate decision power and assign resources to the problems you want to solve. Your reward is being able to work on the things you want to, at the scale you want to. To a limited extent we see this already in the scientific, open source and social media landscapes. This, it needs to be stressed, is not a tech-utopia. Many, many problems are to do with processes, with human relationships, with ensuring a society is happy, and these are not technical problems at all. A problem solving society can work on these problems with an evidence-based approach, and share what works, then try to improve on that.
Imagine someone like Kim Kardashian using her intelligence and social media star power to attract people to work with her on solutions to the worlds problems instead of just generating more cash than she can ever spend.
Enforced Transparency
For evidence-based feedback to work, we must trust the evidence. It is not objectively possible to say that a given statement is true or false, but we can, using technologies such as blockchain, make a transparent, verifiable record of what was said when, by who.
Organisations such as MySociety in the UK, provide a valuable service by making voting records of members of parliament easily accessible, searchable, and analysable. So this model proposes extending that to as many decisions as possible. We should use cryptographic tools to ensure that past records are not changeable without it being obvious.
The Problem Solving society doesn’t impose a specific democratic operational method. The method is defined ad-hoc, culture by culture, as one of the problems – “how shall we govern ourselves?”. For that to work, transparency of what is being worked on and when is vital.
This is enforced by four things:
1. The Global Problem database is open source, distributed and open to examination by anyone. Problems with solutions are linked to…
2. The Global Solution Tree. The open source solution tree links to the problems, and also the evidence showing how well each solution did, or did not, work
3. Dynamic Decision Authority Delegation using a blockchain type record set, shows us dynamically in real time who has authority over what problems. Being dynamic, one who loses the confidence of their delegators, can lose all of their authority almost instantaneously.
4. Direct Funding Allocation, in a similar manner to above, is allocated to the solutions proposed by the people working on problems.
These four, taken together, and applied across the world, facilitate the ability for the global governance system to respond very rapidly – orders of magnitude faster than today.
Exponential Innovation
People innovate continuously but most solutions are not shared today. People are under such time pressure they solve the problem for themselves and move on. The Problem Solving society reduces the pressure to earn a living and provides reputation-based rewards for sharing solutions with the world.
When solutions are shared, a form of magic happens. Others can take the solutions and use them to solve their problems. Some of them will solve problems in a different field. Some will combine this solution with another technique and create a new solution for another problem. Others will build on this solution, improving it. Others might say “I can do better than that”, take a different approach, and build a second solution.
We have no shortage of problems – humans are fantastic at creating them – the law of unintended consequences sees to that – so a societal model based on encouraging innovation to solve them, directly, will result in a much more efficient society than the one we have today.
Today we have a lot of innovation, all aimed at solving one problem – “how to make money?”. But this is the wrong problem! We are not solving the problem of how to give humans better lives, how to govern ourselves equitably, or even how to stop polluting the planet we rely on for our very existence. We seem to be 100% focussed on “how to make money”, and only those solutions which make money and, as a byproduct, solve a useful human problem survive.
To enable truly exponential innovation, of the kind that is needed to tackle the existential threats that humanity faces, we need to facilitate rapid take-up of both solutions and the resources necessary.
In today’s world, the patent system was intended to have this effect, but it was created back in the 19th century, and nowadays often has the result of stifling innovation instead of encouraging it. It was designed to work in the old economic paradigm and is entirely unsuited to a global problem solving society.
The open source sharing of solutions is key. When the instructions for how to solve a problem are shared freely, anyone else with that problem or a similar one can take it, implement it, and improve it. A solution to a global problem that is shared with the entire world, convincingly, can attract the resources to implement it everywhere overnight. That exponential potential will allow us to meet the challenges of tomorrow much more effectively than our current system, which has too much invested in the status quo.
Managing current risks
Risks are managed by not allowing grand experiments that have not been tested at smaller scale. The economic model prevents private entities from collecting enough resources to make dangerous experiments alone. Collaborating entities will have transparent authority and investment funding so it will be possible too hold them to account.
Here we look at some of the current risks and see how the model reacts.
Economic Growth
In this model, giving banks the power to decide which projects get investment goes away. The creation of money takes place at an individual level, empowering individuals to spend their money on things that benefit them and their community. This is a form of local small-scale capitalism.
I would go further, having other currencies that is allocated to each individual, to spend on societal investments. This money needs to be spent every year, and failing to spend it means it is allocated according to the percentages of everyone else’s allocations.
This removes the power to decide the future (by choosing what projects are invested in) from unelected financiers, and directly democratises it. It means instead of the future being decided in secret, ideas will need to be battled out in public, convincingly, if they are to secure the necessary investment. A kind of Kickstarter for the future of humanity.
We separate out the twin functions of current currencies, of acting both as a medium of exchange and as a store of value. This has the major benefit of making unwise economic policies at a local level immediately visible in the exchange rate to the store of value currency.
“Management” of the economy becomes self regulating based on the exchange rates of local currencies relative to global exchange currencies. If this creates a problem, as soon as enough people notice, that will get added to the global problem database to be solved.
Climate Change
At a global level, the goal simply needs to be to make the entire world carbon neutral. At a city level, many city governments today understand this. But asking individuals and individual cities to address the whole world is just too big. In a problem solving society, the problem of becoming carbon neutral is just another one to be solved.
A fair solution would be that everyone has to get to carbon neutral – zero net emissions as soon as possible. Using our local investment currency to invest directly in appropriate local solutions, rather than trying to tinker around the edges of an economic system that only has generating profit as it’s goal will make this problem become manageable.
Soil Depletion
Soil depletion is one of those issues that is not addressable in the timeframe needed under the current economic paradigm. Under the Problem Solving Society, this would be a problem for which funding would be available to solve it. The likelihood is that with the problem manifesting itself around the world, a number of solutions would be presented, some of which would work better in certain regions. As the people saw the evidence that the problem could be solved they would fund the rollout of the solutions across the world.
Tragedy of the Commons
The tragedy of the commons – the idea that a common resource will be used to exhaustion by competing economic entities – is avoided by making competition “obsolete”. If a local resource starts to come under pressure, that becomes one of the problems to” solve. As we collate solutions to this type of problem, these will be prevented from forming in the first place.
Managing Future Risks
Again are managed by not allowing grand experiments that have not been tested at smaller scale. The economic model prevents private entities from collecting enough resources to make dangerous experiments alone. Collaborating entities will have transparent authority and investment funding so it will be possible too hold them to account.
Here we look at some of the future risks and see how the model reacts.
Robots
One of the current problems is that of robots being introduced against the wishes of the population. Removing the economic impact of robots taking jobs by introducing a universal basic income helps, but does not address the issue of what type of society people want to live in. Given that the local society itself defines what it wants to invest in, those areas that like the idea of robots can have them, whilst those that prefer a non-robotic future could choose, democratically to have fewer.
AI
Artificial Intelligence is one of the potential world-ending issues. Particularly worrying is the idea of smart weapons. Under the Problem Solving society, given resource contention (the cause of most wars) is one of the problems to be solved, there should be less need for weapons. The transparency involved in delegating authority and allocating resources should make it impossible to secretly work on dangerous versions of this technology.
Human Genome Germ Line Modification
This technology is already here. Under the Problem Solving society, the use of this technology would be a problem to solve. It is likely that the ability to remove anyone that abuses their power from their position will be effective in preventing abuses, especially under the extreme resource transparency that this model has.
Genetically Modified Organisms
GMO’s are one of the issues that would be hard to prevent, although the removal of the profit motive makes it much less likely that organisations would bother to create GMOs that are not useful.
“Grey Goo”
This is probably the hardest to prevent. As robots get cheaper and cheaper, nanotech that could accidentally turn everyone into “grey goo” could escape. The best solution will be ethical controls – in much the same way that the vast majority of makerspaces and fables today just wouldn’t allow anyone to 3D print a gun. This problem is one that is identical for all dangerous technologies that are plummeting in price. Possibly the best way to tackle it is to create a backup planet for humanity elsewhere in the solar system. Which is true of a number of other challenges too. Just add human colonisation to the list of global problems.
Core Values
Decisions within the governance model must be guided by the good of all humankind and by respect for the equal value of all human beings.
The core values of this model are essentially those of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. I see these as a set of guidelines for how a decent civilisation should be.
- No Poverty
- Zero Hunger
- Good Health and Well Being
- Quality Education
- Gender Equality
- Clean Water and Sanitation
- Affordable and Clean Energy
- Decent Work and Economic Growth
- Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- Reduced Inequalities
- Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Responsible Consumption and Production
- Climate Action
- Life Below Water
- Life On Land
- Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
- Partnerships For The Goals
The model provides for a way to these to be updated over time, democratically.
By removing the expansion-based economy, a great deal of the competitive pressures on these issues go away, and these become problems for the world to collaborate on and share solutions to achieve them. With everyone aiming towards solving these for the entire world, resource competition should reduce, and become just one more problem to be tackled collaboratively.
These seventeen are the first global problems for the global problems database.
Decision-making within the governance model must generally be possible without crippling delays that prevent the challenges from being adequately addressed (e.g. due to parties exercising powers of veto)
This model makes traditional government simultaneously less important and more flexible. There may well be no such thing as “the government” in a given region. Groups of individuals are delegated decision power in tackling certain problems – traditional governance may be one of these, but may also may not be.
The problem solving model deliberately allows anyone that can pull together the necessary investment to try out solutions to challenges at a small scale, then share the results of that trial with the world, to see if others can pick up the solution, or improve it. It enables exponential innovation to happen very quickly as an idea spreads around the world, but transparency and evidence based story-telling will ensure that people vote (with their infrastructure currency) on ideas that work.
Even in the event that a bad decision is made, the fact that the public gets to revoke their decision delegation at any time means the system is self-correcting in a much faster loop than current representative democracies. These typically have a multi-year mandate, so the self-correction loop can be in the order of decades. Decades we may not have to deal with climate change, for example.
Similarly, no-one has a veto. People that disagree with a proposed solution are perfectly welcome, even encouraged, to work on a different solution. Harnessing the competitive
element in humanity to solve the most pressing problems in a virtuous spiral can only be a good thing.
Each problem that needs to be addressed needs only sufficient interested people to address it. Intergroup decisions are made by selecting the people who have demonstrated ability to solve similar problems at a smaller scale.
The exception to this, is of course, actions that obviously go against the core values, as defined, agreed and updated at a global level.
The governance model must be capable of handling the global challenges and risks and include means to ensure implementation of decisions.
The combination of multilevel liquid democracy and investment currencies provide the ultimate democratisation of authority.
Decision authority on any given problem topic is allocated dynamically and transparently directly from the people, and can be withdrawn at any time. This means that governance in any given topic must be effective, or decision authority will be withdrawn.
Resource allocation is similarly allocated directly from the people. Groups make proposals for investment from the public. The public is issued with a specific currency each year for this purpose. They may not spend it on anything else, so it goes directly to the projects supported by the public.
It is possible, although unlikely, that the public may choose not to allocate resources to a group working on a given problem topic. This does not imply a problem with the model, but is an early indication that the proposed solution is not accepted.
Today for example, we have the ludicrous situation that >80% of the population in the UK believes that government action is needed to tackle climate change, but the elected government does not agree on this. In the problem solving model, an alternative group would work on solutions for this problem, and if their proposed solutions are accepted by the public, directly funded.
The governance model must have sufficient human and material resources at its disposal, and these resources must be financed in an equitable manner.
By removing the power of money creation from the banks and giving it directly to individuals, we remove the possibility of any group from hoarding available resources.
By separating transactional currencies from investment currencies, we remove the idea that citizens have their wealth removed (taxed), but give them directly an allocation of “money” that is their responsibility to allocate to infrastructure projects. There are two separate currencies for this investment, one local, one global.
People are delegated to work on problem solving based on their reputations. In this model, interesting work is a reward for being successful. The financial resources are directly allocated by the public, based on how well they are convinced by the solutions.
Using a blockchain based currency ensures that the underlying transactions are transparent and there can be no hidden funds being used for black ops, or secretly hoarding resources.
The trust enjoyed by a successful governance model and its institutions relies on transparency and considerable insight into power structures and decision-making.
All decisions made by any body at any level from local to global must be transparent. This means that if voting is used, voting records must be kept, and made available in electronic form for analysis by anyone in the world.
We have sufficient storage capacity to maintain audio and video records of any meeting for a reasonable period, if not indefinitely.
Similarly, using liquid democracy, means another form of blockchain record. The fact that decision authority is delegated from individuals to other individuals on a topic-by-topic basis, means we have a dynamic public mapping at all times of who has authority for what i.e. we can electronically map the power structures for any given topic continuously in real-time. This should make journalists lives a little easier. It would also allow individuals to, for example, find out who was in charge of a given issue on a specific date, as a matter of record.
Similarly using the funding allocation from the single purpose currencies, we have a real-time mapping of what our local and global priorities actually are, today. Not based on the ideologies of political parties but based on direct allocation of resources by the people, based on how urgent they perceive the problem to be, and how convincing they find the solutions.
In order to be able to fulfil its objectives effectively, a successful governance model must contain mechanisms that allow for revisions and improvements to be made to its structure and components.
Flexibility is the absolute strength of the Problem Solving society model.
In some ways, it could be perceived as too flexible. The conception of dynamic decision authority that can be withdrawn generates potential instability, but in reality I am sure that successful problem solvers will have their reputations grow, while we retain the ability to remove people instantly.
As everything is a “problem” with an open source, updatable solution, everything will be in flux continuously. This is the reality of human societies anyway.
Anyone can offer revisions and improvements to the way in which problems can be solved, but they have to come with evidence that they are better than what we currently have in order to be adopted.
Even the Core Values can be updated over time, assuming that enough people around the world agree. A safeguard of something like 70% of global voters + 70% of local regions should be reasonable.
A control system must be in place to take action if the organization should overstep its mandate, e.g. by unduly interfering with the internal affairs of nation-states or favouring the special interests of individuals, groups, organizations, states or groups of states.
Given that the entire Problem Solving society is based around the sharing of ideas, a location that wants to refuse other ideas has, by definition, excluded itself from the world. The only imposition on that location should be that it is not permitted to take actions against the global core values.
The global rules need enforcing if and only if, a group decides to take action that harms those around it. A UN-style peacekeeping force would most likely be needed at first, during the period when mindsets change from competitive to co-opetive. As society becomes more and more transparent, with societal investments being transparent and democratic, it will be harder and harder to hide harmful or secretive actions.
A globally funded peace-keeping force, similar to that of the current UN, can be funded using the citizens infrastructure currency. It however, is a problem “How to keep organisations from imposing violently on others”, and as such is subject to the same open solution improvement process as any other.
Organisations that choose to overstep their mandates, will have their delegated decision authority removed by people that disagree with them. The funding for their solution will also either be removed or never arrive.
Given the enforced transparency around both decision authority and funding, it is almost impossible to build up sufficient resources in secret to take any unwanted action. One of the results of this model is that power structures are directly visible in a machine analysable form, and, as such, it is much easier to take corrective action on any abuses of authority, using publicity, and the direct and immediate removal of authority.
Enforcement of Rules
It is a fundamental requirement of a successful governance model that it performs the tasks it has been charged with, and the governance model must include the power to hold the decision-makers accountable for their actions.
Absolute transparency makes it much less likely that abuses occur. Having a continual, cryptographic record of who had authority when, makes it easier to answer the question “who is/was in charge”.
Using Multilevel Liquid Democracy also means that anyone can have their delegated power removed at any time, even en masse and immediately.
Anyone who abuses their power will see their solutions not being effective, and lose reputational authority as a result. Fraud and embezzlement are made useless, by the investment currencies being 1) totally transparent and 2) not changeable for a transactional one.
Finally, in a Problem Solving society, the issue of what to do with people that violently abuse their power is a problem like any other. Potential solutions include jails, and courts, but these must be subject to the same remorseless “does it work better than what we have now” evidence based improvement system that we use across the Problem Solving society.
Conclusion
Our current governance system was designed for 19th century societies. Representative democracy has hit it’s limits as society, technology and the world becomes more complicated than single brains can handle. I see two ways forward. One is to hand over representative democracy to artificial intelligence, which can handle the complexity. The other, which I propose, is to use the collective intelligence of humanity to create a global society worth living in, with all the variation, experimentation and incredible creativity that happens when human beings collaborate.