To Zeid: Even if youth are mobilised to vote and determine the change in results that are more representative, the barrier for entry into politics for youth and even to vote, in some places, is just too high. I went from giving Zeid the most points in the first voting round to almost none in the second round because he seems deluded by the barriers to entry that youth have a suffer from. Toni inadvertently revealed the inherent elitism in her own positions by assuming that most people in the audience would already be familiar with blockchain. As the anchor remarked, “it’s all still science fiction to me”- and to a majority of the planet. She probably lives in a pseudo activist bubble that’s an echo chamber for shallow liberal ideas that these people advocate in theory but not in practise. And what doesn’t make sense to me is how she proposes we “verify” the identity of each individual. She says, “all they have to do is contribute work, be recognised by their local communities and get verified”. What a crudely elitist and insidiously capitalist thing to propose! This contribution of “work” by each person that seems to be the basis of decentralised blockchain governance is smacked with capitalistic rhetoric which formulates a person’s value, worth and right to existence in terms of the economic value they contribute to society. Toni’s shallow position is also revealed in her apparent obliviousness to the fact that more than half the world is still technologically illiterate, and a great portion of the world still doesn’t even have internet access. I like Brett’s signature argument of enacting citizen’s assemblies, yet it lacks sophistication as he didn’t really get into the nuances of that system. Overall, this debate was the absolute worst I’ve seen in the Doha debates series because of the inability of the speakers to grasp the flaws in their own positions.
Toni was none of the things you characterized her as. She actively worked to spread technology, working with indigenous cultures in many places in the world. And she certainly wasn't a basic liberal. She was working on creating a system that would make the things she talked about possible, but that didn't happen for a few reasons I'm not going into here. Some of us are carrying on with her work.
This was a debate in high-school. Debtors just repeated themselves like parrot and didn't bring anything innovative to the table. Questions were also just there to not really counter and address real challenges of each of their ideas. I agreed and disagreed with all of these people on 20 logical and fact based points. Audience seemed to be naive, so were the debators. The host possess good skills but many a time off topic and unnecessarily fueling conflicts. But to be honest this felt very wishy washy. Over use of fear based agendas and only youth based issues. And I am not saying any of those are less important. But what about unemployment, global price rise on everything, working condition becoming exploitative, tax evasion, environmental impacts, economic system failures, increase in unchallenged crime, poverty, racism, mental health, corruption and so many other very alarming issues. All three debators wanted people to open up to trust. Wanting people to trust in a technology that teaches you to become completely sovereign. How ironic. So how do we achieve that trust? Humans are co- pendant in real society and yet we virtually set our own code of laws and creates even smaller groups? Citizens assembly was a good idea but it was so badly represented and felt disintegrated in a real society. Asking people to trust a bunch of people randomly. Are they then going to let the expert execute the job? The third option was also asking young people to be magically and intuitively know a political leader who has the interest of people at heart. I think that each of the debators asked people to trust, while the debate was about people's lack of trust. How do we do that? Go figure. A good and full proof way of increasing information, awareness and accountability will definitely help with trust. Emotional and fear based politics/non political system is not the solution. Revolutions are only successful when they meet our real needs. Like green revolution, industrial revolution, technological revolution, medical revolution. A shift in political system is possible only when it meets our needs and current government needs to adopt a new approach and do away with centralised power structure. This is the only way they can escape being the puppets in the hands of rich and wealthy. The governments across the globe can't serve people because any investment they have to rely on only a small percentage of elite to even start off a project. Hence why their policies are biased. The uneven accumulation of wealth has prevented the governments from working effectively. Lack of enough explanation/information and no involvement in decision making is driving people further. May be we can have a better debate for politically and socially rational adults.
To one of your last points, the sad part is that government has been shifting back to being even more of a tool for pursuing the interests of the few most wealthy, connected and powerful people. Regarding trust, after just watching the opening remarks of each debator, the first two are trying to advance technologies (one being blockchain and the other being a social technology of citizen's assemblies) while the third man seemed mostly "status quo" but with the proposal that they disenfranchise people over 65 (is he serious? That's insulting) and sounds like he wanted to let preteens or even younger vote, who nearly universally don't yet have the experience or knowledge to make reasonable judgements on what they're presented with... many of the totalitarian movements of the 20th century was brought to the worst extremes by indoctrinated youth who tend to be the most idealistic, impressionable, suggestable and searching for validation by the group and to be heroic and have adventure. It's part of what tends to sweep them into ideological extremes... giving children the vote will make them even more the targets of those who want to take advantage of their vulnerabilities to use them to own ends. Just my concern, I am very likely oversimplifying and wrong/inaccurate in important ways. Also, I think the way this debate has so far framed Citizen Assemblies gets it wrong and pretty badly misrepresents it... it's not meant to replace politicians as representative legislatures. No, it's a process to select a demographically representative body of citizens to spend time (typically many months, or a year and includes hundreds of selected people) to study an issue with readings and expert presentations and debates (with measures in place to do a fair job selecting the presenters), who can request experts and who talk and debate amongst themselves. They work on a proposal on the issue that I imagine has a recap on the evidence, the core arguments and contentions and that sets out proposed solutions... this and other material is then presented to the legislatures to inform a "concensus view" on the issue that informs the politicians what a representative body of informed citizens representing the population fairly well thinks on the issue (and so largely gets around special interests) amd has weight as for politicians not giving it fair consideration or damn good reasons to reject it are in effect almost like going against the public's will.
People is blind and afraid, Toni won all the way!! Governments have been doing a poor job for hundreds of years (of subjugation, tiranny, war, terror, poverty management, pollution, etc, etc, etc).Toni won all debates, and she's the only one completely right. The other ones work for the government in certain ways, they are partners/helpers, beside those men don't have enough balls to face the camera and say eradicate governments. That's the BIG difference, People must wake up!
I'm continuing her work, albeit in my own way. I'm founding a couple of tech companies. One that she and I were going to do together, and one with a couple of people that she worked with previously that is a practical starting point for this work. She had a grand vision but not a good entry point. That entry point is what we're creating.
Whom Can We Trust If No One Is Trustworthy? One of my favorite quips from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is when Tom is defined as “a glittering hero…the pet of the old, the envy of the young,” and there were “some that believed that he would be President, yet, if he escaped hanging.” With these few words, Twain captured the essence of leadership in our world. Those who get to the top are the fiercest, most determined, and most ruthless. Today, the latter quality has become so intense that we can no longer believe our leaders, and certainly not trust them to have our best interest in mind. I am not accusing any leader in particular, or even leaders as a whole. It is simply that in an egoistic world, where people vie to topple one another on their way to the top, the one at the top is clearly the one who trampled over and knocked down more people than anyone else. Concisely, to get to the top in an egoistic world you have to be the biggest egoist. So how do we know whom to trust? We don’t know and we cannot know. All we know is that we are in the dark. In a culture of unhinged selfishness, any conspiracy theory seems reasonable, while truth is nowhere to be found. When every person who says or writes something is trying to promote some hidden agenda, you have no way of knowing who is right, what really happened, or if anything happened at all. The only way to get some clarity in the news and goodwill from our leaders is to say “Enough!” to our current system and build something entirely independent. The guiding principle of such a system should be “information only,” no commentary. Commentary means that information has already been skewed. Information means saying only what happened, as much as possible, not why, and not who is to blame and who we should praise. Concurrently, we must begin a comprehensive process of self-teaching. We have to know not only what is happening, but why we skew and distort everything. In other words, we have to know about human nature and how it inherently presents matters according to its own subjective view, which caters to one’s own interest. To “clear” ourselves from that deformity, we must learn how to rise above our personal interest and develop an equally favorable attitude toward others. This is our only guarantee that our interpretation of things will be even and correct. Once we achieve such an attitude, we will discover that the bad things we see in our world reflect our own, internal wickedness. Our ill-will toward others creates a world where ill-will governs, and so the world is filled with wickedness and cruelty. Therefore, all we need in order to create positive leadership-and to generally eliminate ill-will from the world-is to generate goodwill within us. When we nurture goodwill toward others, we will fill the world with goodwill. As a result, the world will fill with kindness and compassion. By changing ourselves, we will create a world that is opposite from the world we have created through our desires to govern, patronize, and often destroy other people.
I really liked the debate, it was interesting to know about different forms of governance that can be adopted and instead of deciding on any one particular format I think it's important to keep trying and fetching for new ways that can deliver the best result. Also, Zeid's idea seemed much more familiar and safer and maybe this is why it resonated with so many people but I think Toni and Brett's ideas shouldn't be ignored, I think it just needs more clarity and that missed the connection. Anyway, good debate or to be more precise, a good discussion overall.
Here is the problem, as long as people running for office make the priority people who contribute large amounts of money to their campaigns nothing will change. Who do you think these people in government care more about? The voters or campaign donors? $$$ it’s obviously the campaign donors. Not including lobbyists and special interest groups
there is nothing wrong with not trusting the government with the corrupt and unethical behavior of the governments in the past we should distrust government
