The only reason why political and legal systems work is that a lot of hard thinking and work has gone on behind the scenes to insulate the decision-makers from extrinsic incentives, and punish them explicitly if they are discovered to be accepting incentives from the outside. The lack of extrinsic motivation allows the intrinsic motivation to shine through. Furthermore, the lack of transferability allows governance power to be given to specific actors whose intrinsic motivations we trust, avoiding governance power always flowing to “the highest bidder”.
You don’t want the verdict in a trial to go to the highest bidder. You don’t want regulatory policy determined by the highest bidder.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen. I do not claim to understand Buterin’s whole post.
“the lack of transferability allows governance power to be given to specific actors whose intrinsic motivations we trust”
This idea would be seen to be ludicrous on its face if it weren’t so common. Note, first, use of the passive voice: “power to be given to specific actors.” Given by whom? And don’t the givers of government power themselves need to be as trustworthy as the recipients of that power? This devolves into infinite regress. Democracy (as opposed to rule by noble technocrats) at least allows people themselves a voice in choosing which candidate they mistrust least. The CDC is a good example of bureaucrats having low-powered incentives. How’s that working out?
This was the first piece I’ve read from VB and I thank you for that.
I have updated my priors. My priors consisting of clickbait images fed to me by cryptoscam algorithms.
Regarding the bit you highlight, he gives the example that buying a gavel NFT that comes with all the rights of a judge might be fun for the purchaser, but you sure wouldn’t want to be a defendant under that system. So how can you stop that from happening?
Interesting piece and recommended read the whole etc etc.