Shorttalks Metagov 20221102
Speaker 1: Alyson, Eric. Awesome. So I'll take it away. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a scholar in residence in the finance division at CU Boulder. One of the verticals in my research stream surrounds digital governance. Given that I only have five minutes, I'll only talk about the digital governance research of mine that's relevant to what I'm gonna talk about, which is to say...
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- purpose 0.013
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- governance 0.009
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- activity coordination 0.006
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- organization designers 0.005
- eric 0.004
- furtherance 0.004
Transcript
Alyson, Eric. Awesome. So I'll take it away. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a scholar in residence in the finance division at CU Boulder. One of the verticals in my research stream surrounds digital governance. Given that I only have five minutes, I'll only talk about the digital governance research of mine that's relevant to what I'm gonna talk about, which is to say MediGov actually sponsored a piece of mine entitled governance as conflict, constituting shared values or a shared purpose as defining the future margins of disagreement. In that piece, I spell out the many ways in which the act of constituting an organization in furtherance of an agreed upon purpose creates conflict, and organization designers need to confront that head on in order for their organization to be resilient. There's also more general kind of rational interest critiques of the concept of a shared purpose as animating any particular organization, which is to say people are there for diverse reasons, and their motives vary considerably in terms of the reasons that they're at the table. So you take those two critiques pretty seriously, and it's like this is an artifice. There is no animating purpose for an organization other than the weird union of things or reasons that people come to the table. To me, I now wanna take the flip side, which is to say, actually, there's very good reasons for organization designers to spend a lot of time thinking about shared purpose. And so notwithstanding the critiques that I've made elsewhere in print, as well as the more general public choice critique of organizations writ large as never being animated by a singular purpose, To me, all the way back at the organization design stage, an animating purpose is really important. And there's two ways in which an animating purpose can be reified into an organization's constitution or first collective choice rules if it's a private organization. So I'm not just talking about public sector governments that have a big c constitution that's formally named as such. I'm also talking about charters. I'm also talking about the initial protocol chosen by a DAO. That is a constitutive set of choices in furtherance of a particular purpose. In many instances, notwithstanding an ultimate goal of a highly decentralized autonomous organization, the organization starts out with a relatively small group of designers. To me, that isn't at odds with purpose. The desire to progressively decentralize is trading off between highly specialized knowledge, in highly concentrated intrinsic motivations, and extrinsic motivations, which is to say the people starting a DAO expect to benefit potentially from the scaling and the increases in membership of that DAO. And they might believe fundamentally in the need for a different path. And so one of the first and most important things to do is to articulate a shared vision animating the organization in the first instance. The second question immediately becomes how do you create or animate that purpose through your constitutive design choices and protocol? To the extent that you can, you should do so. To me, that's integral. If you want to protect human rights, the first action that you should engage in is probably articulating the set of human rights that you consider to be most important for your governance system to protect. But what about the rest of the purpose? Protocol is inevitably incomplete, just as all other institutions are in the face of the complexity of human behavior and the non ergodicity of the world. So do you just leave that up for grabs? My contention is no, which is to say there's a set of things that are operationalizable in protocol. They're implementable and definable in constitutional language as something that an executive and a judiciary can implement and subsequently enforce and interpret.
One minute, 20.
One minute? Awesome. The other component is principles, a statement of a preamble. We were motivated to come here today to do this thing, and this is what's animating us. These are the problems we see in the world that are leading us to define this new organization. Is that just flowery language? I don't think so. Which is to say that in future periods, how many politicians say, oh, these principles animating our nation are not well chosen. We need to get rid of one of them. Even if it's a principle that is not operationalizable in law, you never see that happen. Instead, politicians choose the principles most consistent with their objectives and their vision for a better state as they understand it within the system. So even the nonoperationalizable principles proved to have a shelling point coordination effect in terms of downstream actors. They tend to square their objectives within those articulated principles. However, unoperationalizable those are in first instances, But that means organization designers, including those starting DAOs, should take the time to spell out their motives. This is what brought us together. This is the gap we see us as solving. These are the principles that we all agree upon even though we can't encode those into rigid delimitation of the action space of individuals on this network. This is something I've been thinking about in practice considerably lately because I'm helping Zargam and others constitute a data trust. And a big question is, which fiduciary duties does the data trust articulate as being binding under law as applying to itself versus the more general design choice of saying, this is what we're intending to do, and these are the interests of data contributors that we're trying to represent faithfully according to these principles. I leave us with that example because that might potentially provide fruitful kind of concrete a concrete example for us to discuss in the ensuing discussion. Sorry for going over time.
No. No. Going over the allocated time was by design, since we are a bit more flexible today with, the time condition, but that's very thought provoking. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot to Eric. The flow is now open for contributions and, discussions on his presentation. So feel free to, send comments in the chat or unmute yourself and comment on that chat.
If I may, Shavin.
Go ahead. Hello? Yes. Yes. We can hear you. Please go ahead.
Okay. Yeah. So your presentation was great, but it had a lot of, terminology, and it was quite dense. The gist of what I understood was something similar to a TED talk. Focus on the why. So, make sure that you're not only focused on the how and the what, but you just focus on the the principles and the vision to have a shared vision before that. But in order to understand better your your talk, would you be able to give us an example on, on what you would recommend DAO to do in order to to be more successful?
Take very seriously the fuzzy act of defining a shared mission, animating purpose, a vision, you name whatever that soft thing is. I think protocol design is like the kind of apex of institutional design, which is to say, by definition, you're trying to achieve something with a particular network. So you're delimiting the action space of people on that network in furtherance of an animating purpose. Therefore, the very act of protocol design lends itself to a focus on the operationalizable principles in furtherance of an animating purpose. But my my argument is DAO designers should not leave to the side the more fuzzy act of this is what animates us. This is our vision. These are our shared values as we understand them in this moment. To the extent there's agreement about that, you shouldn't flog shared values out of nowhere that don't actually represent the vast majority of people at the start up stage. But to the extent there's relatively uniform agreement, there is value in both the operationalizable components of purpose being designed very carefully in furtherance of that animating purpose. But the less obvious thing for me at least that I see is there is discrete value in producing documentation that can never be encoded in protocol, which is to say this is what animates us. This is the problem we're trying to solve, and these are the values that we see as suffusing this animating purpose for our organization. Think about the importance of many of Vitalik Buterin's thoughts on decentralization, on vision for the network in future stages. At least when he's writing them, the vast majority of those thoughts are not operationalizable into protocol, but they they shape downstream debates within the community in really important ways, probably in ways that Nathan Schneider can speak about at much greater detail than I can. But there's this dual component of the purpose, which is the stuff that's easily implementable that should go in the constitution, that should be defined in protocol if you're taking my analogy. But what about the preamble saying, this is why we're here. This is what unites us. These are our values. To me, there's a downside to that, and I've written elsewhere about why that's an oddly reifying notion. This is taking the flip perspective and saying, why then do we tend to see the proliferation of things like preambles, the things the extensive discussion of vision and mission for start ups? It's that it's playing a shelling point coordinated role for people in downstream periods. So you try to constrain the messy action space in a non ergodic world of all the complexity of human behavior. One way you do that is through protocol. It is through constitutionalizing specific institutional prescriptions and prescriptions. But if you're just doing that, you're missing this other component of purpose, which nonetheless constrains actors in future periods in ways that are consistent, ideally, with the intent of organization designers in the first instance. I don't know if that answered your question.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Awesome. Awesome. I think there's a question in the in the chat. Seth Seth asked a question. You could read that. Should have been encoded in protocol, how can technology solve the development of statement of shared values, beliefs, and purpose? Seth, do you want to elaborate that?
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, here we are building tools. And what what tools do you imagine if we're if we're off chain? Is it just plain text and and good old Robert's rules, you know, or or small working groups? Or is there a role for technology in these other important dimensions of of Culture building or organization building.
So I think that there is an upper limit to which technology can surface purpose itself absent a a sufficiently shared level of purpose among human individuals. But at a minimum, I think transparency, especially in the formative stages for organizations that announce an intent to be democratic, an argument Nathan and I have been having off off in a side channel is the extent to which democracy is a good word. I prefer representative governance. But in systems that are like, we want representative governance, either for normative reasons or for functional reasons, we think this organization will do better with more representative governance. At a minimum, what's awesome about technology is it facilitates a credible commitment to transparency. And so transparency in the early phases to a sufficient level is really important, not total transparency. There are good reasons that, say, Zargam and I should be having good faith discussions about the extent to which fiduciary duties the data trust voluntarily assumes. We can speak freely in a context that we know we're not being recorded. We can make statements that later are revealed to be not compliant with governing law. And so we need a private space to discuss, but past a certain point of definition, my contention is organization designers should commit to a certain level of ex ante transparency. And so a variety of digital tools are really cool for ensuring transparency of discussions once they've reached a certain level of development. More more specifically, there are contexts, and I see this as kind of like, how do we surface purpose from many different Discord channels and many different Reddit forums? There, I've been I've been doing work in very different context with computational text analysis techniques. I could potentially see something interesting where it's like, we don't even have a community. It's just all these Reddit channels, and it's like, yeah, no one person could really synthesize that effectively in the time where it would be valuable to do so. Throw a topic model at it and see what see what words surface with regularity. And if it's across platforms, but they're all dedicated to the same DAO, that could potentially be revelatory of, hey. These are things that clearly are cared about among many atomistic members of this community at a nontrivial level. But at like, to me, the general lesson is transparency in this process from the get go is facilitated by technology in really interesting ways. And I use I use the MedigovDAO grant example just to emphasize the weird margins by which transparency proliferates in these types of communities, which is the stewards of the Medigov DAO may remember I blew through my self imposed deadline like the academic that I am. Yet I didn't move my grant payment out of my wallet. And had I been had I had perverse incentives, how would it have looked if the day the money landed, I threw that payment into a mixer and tumbler, and no one knew where it went after that. And then I blew through my deadline without announcing it to the community. And how inclined am I to behave in that bad way given how transparent the the payment mechanisms for the system are, as well as the fact that my identity is also known to the community because of the transparency of the proposal process, which is don't think it would have been a good look or dynamically consistent with my incentives in the broader digital governance community to just take the money and run from Medigov. Be like, they had no they had no incentive. They they had no punishment embedded. I'm just teaching them a costly lesson. Indeed, I'm doing the community a favor. I think everyone would be like, that dude sucks and should not get more digital governance funding in any project we're involved with. And so to me, that's just an example of how the ways in which transparency is embedded into these systems can actually align incentives in important ways. And I think transparency at the design stage in terms of articulating and animating purpose. And I see some of Nathan's work with the shared document for this community that I was in good faith trying to say, we should be careful in terms of understanding how and when a document becomes representative of community values. And it's in part my lessons from studying animating purpose that is is is saying that's not encoded in protocol anywhere, but that thing will eventually get legs in various ways. But providing a a sort of notice and comment period is part of the process of transparency that we can embed even if it isn't enshrined in protocol, so to speak.
We have about one and a half minutes, to conclude the discussion, session. So sorry sorry for interrupting.
Well, maybe one more comment or one more question to to Eric. Eric, listening to to your concepts, don't don't you think it might make sense that before putting the DAO rules, the governance on chain, to just start with the values, the principles, then go to the more detailed governance rules, and then put it on chain. So to do everything off chain, go from the the principles and the values to the more detailed rules, and only later on put it on chain?
Completely agree with your order of operations. And I think we might actually surface certain animating purposes that given the with the order you've noted, it will become clear that it's not very operationalizable or that the form of governance that predominates on DAOs may not be that tractable to the animating purpose in the first instance. And in particular, that's something we're struggling with with our data trust, which is it's meant to be serving a collective bargaining role, which is the very problem with the current status quo of data the uses of consumer data online is none no one of us can bargain with Facebook. No one of us can bargain with Twitter. And so actually, an animating purpose for a data fiduciary is one that requires some measure of centralized governance because of the inefficiencies of every single person bargaining for the relatively atomistic value of their own data. And so for us, purpose comes first, and then optimal governance structure, How to operate or how to operationalize that animating purpose immediately follows from a chosen purpose. The way I put this to my students is there's upper what any organization can do in furtherance of its own purpose. It's a much harder organization to achieve when you're saying we're selling hamburgers, and we're making every customer more enlightened at the same time. That's a very different business model than we're selling the cheapest hamburgers of a sufficient quality in this geographic area. One, we know how to do really well. The other one is a very, very hard purpose. Not to say you shouldn't take it on, but I'm probably over time. Obviously, Scent asked me this morning, do you want a long talk? And I was like, on short notice, I can give you a long talk, and it will be one of the most discursive rambling stream of consciousness spews you've ever seen. End rant.
Maybe we should just wait and come back around to this in a few months and do a full talk describing the specific details of the the challenges that we faced and what we've learned from them.
Awesome. Awesome. Just before I let you go, there was a comment earlier by Josiah. Josiah, do you want to comment on that? I think you had directed us to some more reading material elsewhere. I'm trying to find you on the chat. Is Josiah still on the call? It looks like he dropped off. Okay. It's alright. But there was a comment from Nathan on commenting on the vacuity of a governance layer for the Internet, which I probably won't let you respond to. No. No. Proceed. Proceed. But I will invite you to comment probably at the end of the chat. So that just so that we can be fair to Elise. Yes. You could respond on the chat as well. Fantastic. Yes. So thanks for that. Thanks for very stimulating discussion. So we move on to Elise who will be presenting on second. Yes. So the four flows for the DAO live. So, Elise, whenever you're ready, the floor is yours.
Perfect. Can everyone hear me okay?
Speak speak up again?
Can you hear me okay?
This is a bit of muffling, but I think we we can we can make do with that.
Okay. Great. So I asked me to talk today about a paper that I recently wrote called the foreclose for Dow Loud for DowLife. I am a researcher at the Root Foundation. It is a small nonprofit startup studio, and we want to make the Internet a better place. So some of that is through web three steps, some of that is through making better Twitter interfaces, so we do, we dabble. This particular piece is centered on helping DAOs become and be able to understand themselves as organizations. So using this model, I use the four flows model in order to help us delineate what is and is not an actual organization. So I come from a, social science background, specifically communication. And CCO, the communicative constitution of organization perspective is oh, there's a typo. Such as life. Is an aspect of organizational communication, and it it the four flows particular particularly is from McPhee and Zog, and I linked the paper in there. But there are four basic ideas that in order to be an organization, every organization has each of these. So first off, an organization is self structuring. That means that there is some kind of something that brings the organization in view. So it might be you have specific goals around that. You have, resources. You have a constitution, as we were talking about earlier. You have things that make you feel and believe that you are an organization versus just a mom. Secondly, you have some kind of membership negotiation. So in the DAO world, this might be connecting your you know, it might be joining a discord. It might be connecting your wallet to a treasury. It may be coming to meetings or coming to a certain number of meetings in a particular amount of time. But either way, there is a clear process in place for who is a member and who is not a member of the organization as well as how people can be off courted at the end. Next, an organization understands its institutional positioning. This means that you understand yourself as an organization as it relates and as you relate to all of the different groups, regulatory entities, etcetera, within your broader ecosystem. And finally, activity coordination. So an organization has some kind of thing that they are working towards. So at Root, we are working towards various goals and different projects. At meta gov, it might be working towards specific tooling or building more community. There are various ways that this can be accomplished, but in order to be if you don't have one of these pieces, you're just not an organization. And so that leads me to the question of are DAOs organizations? It's literally in the title, so you would think this would be a very easy question. And, well, it kind of depends. I would say that some are and some aren't. The next piece that I'm working on is going to be looking at, specific DAOs through, this lens. But there are some things that a DAO can do to make sure that they're actually, really being and doing organizational things versus just being a decentralized, group of people. So number one on the self structuring you know, think about how a DAO is governed, how is that information distributed to both stakeholders as well as the general public. Next, for membership negotiation, make sure people understand how to be a member. What constitutes a member? What are there levels of membership? So for example, in one organization I'm in, you're considered a member if you go to two real life events and but there's an additional level where if you go to six real life events, you can you're eligible to be on the board. So there's that membership negotiation that, inherently is structured and existed in there. Next, what is, oh, I mixed these up. My so, institutional positioning, who else is in this space? What are the, regulatory, governmental, other entities, other DAOs that you interact with? Who else is important? Who else do you talk to and collaborate? And finally, activity coordination. Why do you exist? What's the point? What is your goal? How are you pursuing that goal? What happens when you hit that goal? And after you hit that goal, what's your next goal?
Am I the only one who's lost, Alex?
Beg your pardon? I can still hear you. Can you still hear me?
Oh, okay. So it that's I've been a problem. You can go on.
Okay. Perfect. So I'm for me, the next steps, you know, if you are interested in the paper, feel free to the first link. I'm now I guess Mastodon is where all the cool kids are hanging out in a post musk world. So I am over there as well. The biggest thing for me is I'm in the process of applying for funding so that I can put out a series of articles like this. One of the big things that we've noticed when we've been talking with gal leaders is I would say lack of, both a need for tooling as well as like a intellectual understanding, and so I'm hoping, you know, I am not a developer, so I can't help with the tooling side, and I feel like there are lots of good smart people doing that, but I am hoping to be able to create more structured ways for people to think as they're building their organizations. So thank you very much for your time. I appreciate the opportunity, and I will open to questions.
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Thank thank you for that perfect, self governance. So I open up the floor for responses and discussions. I think the couple of questions on the chat. Yeah. I think the first one is by Eric.
I was responding to the query that I was requested to respond to, but I do have a question for Elise. I would like to just hear you unpack a little bit more the interesting contention of a DAO that is not an organization. And I I I agree with you. This isn't me trying to, like, subtly find the flaw in your argument, but I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on that kind of conundrum at least at a nomenclatural level, which is they're calling themselves an organization. And as a network, they're coordinating human actors presumably voluntarily around the network rules, but there are DAOs that I'm like, that's not quite an organization. So I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on that on that kind of paradox.
Exactly. And that's one of the that was kind of the inspiration for writing this paper that there are certain pieces that all of DAOs seem to have. They all seem to do fairly well. So there's usually like thinking about membership negotiation, there's usually a a fairly like, there is a process. It's not always clearly communicated, but there is a a DAO member can identify what DAOs they are members of. I don't know that the institutional positioning is a little bit like, there's definitely a culture of being aware of where you are within the broader ecosystem, but that's definitely an area where I think that people can improve and do better. Activity coordination and self structuring are not I would say they're not always consistent, especially when it comes to, like, activity coordination. And some of that, I think, is just the problem of herding cats. You know, if you have 30 members and, you know, some drop off, it's the same, form that, activist groups have. You know, as your life energy ebbs and flows, you may not have the same level of ability to engage in an organized pursuit of a goal. So there are some other one of the other aspects I think that constant like, I think that ConstitutionDAO could be an interesting place as well because once they didn't win the the option. I was thinking election, and I was like, that's just wrong. But once they didn't win the option, then they like, there wasn't a next step. There wasn't, you know, there wasn't trying to get a different copy of the constitution. And so there wasn't a continuing activity coordination. Now I would also argue that not all organizations do exist forever, but one of the responsible things to do to that end is making sure that if you do only have one goal like that, that part of your activity coordination includes, like, an off ramping, like, a process for dismissing, distributing the treasury, etcetera etcetera. Did that did that did that answer your question, Eric?
I'd only add that I agree not all organizations need to have perpetual life, but unless you embed serious and binding sunset provisions from the time of animating purpose, the tendency of governors, anyone exercising concentrated governance authority on behalf of the organization, the tendency of governors to derive rent streams beyond their their sole compensation tends to make organizations self perpetuating even when the intent of original organization designers was to sunset them after a specific purpose had been achieved. And some of the just the weird challenges that the constitution DAO is facing in terms of reverting funds to contributors to me are like, once you it's much easier to create an organization than to kill once successfully constituted and self perpetuating for a sufficient period than it is to kill such an organization exposed. But there are interesting analogies from constitutional design, especially surrounding sunset provisions.
Yeah. I'm looking at the comments now. The I I'm gonna butcher your name. I am so sorry. Zargon, is that how I pronounce it?
Yes. Sorry. I'm Zargon. That works.
Excellent. That that's a good question. I don't know that I have an answer to that. I feel like I am just beginning to explore some of the nitty gritty of the DAO space, so I definitely think that I I definitely think that there is likely yes. I asked, it seems like many DAOs have difficulty differentiating operations and governance. How do you see this differentiation manifesting in the forklows model? My initial my initial gut feeling, and this is having thought about it for thirty seconds, so please don't hold me to it, is that the floor flows more, speaks to, like, a base level of organ organizing and whether or not something is or is not an organization. So I don't know that I don't know if it's as applicable for that kind of differentiation, but I'd have to think about it a bit more. So I think it's a good question, and I'm going to note it on my side.
I'll I'll throw some seeds in there for you. One is that it's not specific to DAOs. I've, encountered it with open source projects and other communities where I've been involved in both operations and and governance, facets. Mhmm. But with regards to DAOs and and Web three in particular, because there's so much, nascent activity in the, like, the policy making and the digitalization or entrenching of the policies around both governance and operational decision making. There tends to be a lot of emphasis on what I would consider governance, and then the operations is sort of just expected to kinda handle itself, and then it doesn't because real life is just messier than that. And so you find that, you know, over time, some organizations figure out how to differentiate between the processes of pursuing their purpose on a sort of day to day basis versus the structuring the field of action in which that takes place. And so, DAOs are particularly interesting because they start very entrenched, whereas in organizations like open source projects or small nonprofits, there's a lot more flexibility in the the the equipment that they use to both govern and operate. And so that that almost premature automation or, like, early entrenchment of the policy making makes DAOs, like, a really interesting research space for people who are firm like, in my case, concerned about the the interplay between operations and governance within the scope of within within an organization.
Okay. The next question that I see is from Seth. The CCO perspective on DAOs is provocative. Not only does it define orgs and inequalities that mechanism doesn't serve, but the quality quality mechanism does serve that it does serve aren't in the definition. Isn't that a little harsh? Shouldn't CCO include processes, and what makes them work? I would say that to a large extent, the processes tend to get included in the, you know, in the activity coordination piece. So, you know, at least, as I recall from the original paper, though, that is, you know, a part that is kind of where the process is and that sort of thing lives. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by processes in the first place.
I guess by process, I mean, the thing that those are good at, you know, mechanisms. Formalization of stuff that we normally do by hand through trust and politics.
Gotcha. I think that there's a little bit there's definitely a little bit in activity coordination. There's also a bit within, you know, I mean, as I said, one of the things that those are good at is membership negotiation. You know, even the initial even the initial government stuff, I think, is, like, there are considerations of a constitution versus thinking about the the bar down the street. They probably don't have any kind of written vision statement or constitution or governance because it's the bar down the street. But as Sargent was alluding to, there's the preloading of some of those measures that may not come from that may not exist in more traditional organizations simply because, as you all said, those are good at that piece.
Alright. I think there's there's a follow-up comment from Seth.
Oh, I'm I'm I'm just a lab I was just, yeah, commenting on on on Z's thing. But, at least, I'm a I'm a comm scholar, so I've been looking for ages to find to make governance a comm question. And I'm just learning about this framework. It's pretty awkward coming into communication, having never taken a communication class. And so I'm learning about my discipline from you and how I can make, people in my world understand, how what I do is relevant. So thank you so much for that lead. We're gonna talk offline a little bit.
Yeah. Absolutely. I I found it very strange that in the various, conferences and whatnot, like, people aren't talking about DAOs, and it's super like, I've even asked my mentor who you know, she's, you know, she's been in the org comm world for twenty years, and I've asked her, like, who else is in this space? Like, obviously, I know, Seth and Nathan, but, like, I don't see people at board comm conferences talking about DAOs, and it seems like a, you know, a surprising gap. I'm usually not a trendsetter.
It sounds like they're kind of doing the work to articulate how DAOs are relevant to Orgcomm, though. So, I mean, that that's sort of the natural frontier of the space. They they have to become aware and determine that it's relevant, and then you could see it coming online. So it sounds like you're doing that service.
Yeah. And that's where I'm working, towards. Josh, orgcomm is organizational communication. It is, the facet of communication research that focuses on workplaces, companies, that sort of, that piece. It emerges from business communication, but scholars need jobs, so organizations get widely construed. Were there any other questions, or should I hand should I hand it back to our esteemed moderator?
In fact, your time was just run up, but in the spirit of leniency, we still have a few, maybe three or four minutes to conclude this. Eric, will your latest comments answering your previous question or private firms anti democratic?
Well, I'm happy to rant on a topic I've actually given a Medigot seminar on in the past, but it definitely relates to to the discussion, which is I think that there are really cool things about different democratic or representative innovations that DAOs make possible for organizational governance. But democratic governance is not more efficient. It may be better at achieving a particular animating purpose, which is to say the dictator doesn't always know the right answer to all questions. And so there are benefits in many, many contexts to more representative governance. But a kind of, to me, a fundamental mistake is a belief that more representative governance is more efficient. To me, I'm like, that's it's more costly. Getting everyone to vote on every issue is mechanically more costly. Ensuring constitutional rights is mechanically more costly than a system that isn't encumbered by those rights. Think about China and the extent to which it can literally steamroll over people's rights when it chooses to. Autocracy is on certain margins clearly more efficient, but either it might violate things that we care about regardless of their efficiency, like human rights, like our shared values. So this isn't to belittle the importance of ensuring those things. It's just an argument that it it DAO governance, where it is more representative, where it is more democratic, is likely to be more costly than a tent tightly centralized group of individuals exercising those decisions. It might be better for a chosen animating purpose. Don't get me wrong. Think it's cool as hell. It's just unlikely to be more efficient because of the mechanical costs I'm describing.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. I think that's very provocative. Should I think I'm I'll I'll I'll ask I'll ask us all to unmute to thank our presenters for today, and then I'll hand over the remaining program to Scent. So do you want to all unmute and simultaneously give a hearty clap to our presenters? I'll count down three, two, one.
I see you.
I I see 90% have not unmuted. So three, two, one. Let's go. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Elise. I I hope I hope we found a way to archive the chats because the chats were probably just as if not more, provocative than the conversations. So let's make sure we keep the chats also. Right.