Decentralization of Public Services

Community mindedness today risks veering from its original meaning. Self-governance is, by definition, a bottom-up, not top-down, approach.

Elected authorities from amenable jurisdictions become local heroes for greatly reduced taxes. Private companies are paid more and on time.

* Please note: this challenge is open to proposers from all continents and nations.

Proposers are welcome to explore and weigh the merits of transaction metadata, smart contracts, tokens, smart markets, and/or any combination thereof in the determination of how best to align services with specific zones & localities (such as street cleaners and/or garbage collectors, for example), contracted for a given term.

Collaboration will prove a key factor here. A project of this scope will require talent and expertise across a wide array of skillsets and disciplines. Prospective proposers are encouraged to engage (across the project's Discord channel or elsewhere) in order to build a team that can arguably, if successful, help change the tide of history (more on that below)!

Of greatest initial importance will be the opt-in, by at least one local government authority and a service provider, to accommodate a Proof Of Concept within a pilot jurisdiction. The boon from a successful POC, for any politician (as a now-lauded and pioneering visionary), will yield them a near certain re-election and serve as a model for blockchain efficiency, with subsequent demands for its expansion and implementation elsewhere.
Key metrics:

• The proposed solution must demonstrate a substantial savings to be had by the taxpayer, as compared to the amount local governments set aside for the contracted service from a given tax (like property taxes). Each local government participant is expected to act as an honest broker in these arrangements, redacting 100% of the respective service(s) being off-loaded; the key word being "expected". This comparison should be made between the projected operating costs of the proposed solution, once deployed, versus the status quo. Initial development costs will no doubt skew this comparison in the beginning, so it's important to keep in mind the savings from an ongoing perspective, especially when instantiated across multiple jurisdictions.
• Initially, service providers themselves should expect remuneration to not only be significantly greater than when contracted by their local authorities, but also to be paid far sooner than is typically the case for any government contractor.
• As time progresses, new businesses wishing to compete within the service provider's space should also be accommodated for proposals to the local community from within the deployed solution, so that citizens may collectively choose for themselves which provider the service will be granted, and for how long (with a likely quorum being required for the contracting of a given area or district); much like a digital "Town Hall" for each local community, for citizens to decide on local matters.
• As with any advancement in automation and technology, government jobs can also be expected to be made redundant/nonessential. While this isn't necessarily the kind of key metric they themselves might look forward to, private markets have born the brunt of such consequences of innovation to a disproportionately larger degree, and for far too long. If there's any sector in need of economizing and reducing waste, for sure it's within the government. What's good for the goose is surely good for the gander!
• Last but not least, while politicians themselves may regret the latter, they can most assuredly expect a much happier electorate as a result, redounding to a re-election. It really depends if they are for big government, or small.

It is indeed a challenge to any community to redefine the very concept of itself in the apparent absence of applicable, historical precedent. Without a relatable narrative, even the most imaginative minds can be forgiven for falling back on legacy concepts and inherited structures, all while seeking to break the mold and redefine it. And according to what model?

What does it even look like, to live in a truly decentralized, self-governing community, when all we've ever known is an essentially top-down, command-and-control infrastructure?

Sure, there's 32 flavors to choose from at Baskin-Robbins, but one's choices narrow significantly from there, the more important they become. A truly trustless technology carries the promise of liberating humanity, however, and so this implies the unraveling of existing modalities of governance, far more so than the creation of new ones.

If the goal is the strengthening of self-governance, and the shaping of legislation and commercial standards accordingly, I posit the best approach to be a practical one, in keeping with the true bottom-up nature of decentralization. As for historical precedent, who would've guessed the answer to that age old question, "But without government, who will build the roads?", can be found in a piece of near-forgotten history from over 180 years ago?

Alexis de Tocqueville was an aristocrat and political scientist from the Courts of Versailles, France, who eventually became Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he is universally acknowledged as the father of sociology and social anthropology throughout most all of western academia. As with many others in Europe at the time, de Tocqueville was mesmerized with this strange new nation called America across the sea.

In 1831 he finally visited and chronicled his travels within his famous, 'Democracy in America', published in 1835; the second volume published another 5 years thereafter. In it, de Tocqueville described the astonishment with which he found a near total absence of government in nearly every township he paid visit to, save for the local post office. This was unfathomable to him, for in his native France there were government offices everywhere, with breadlines feeding the poor and destitute, stretching for blocks… By contrast, in America, what little he could find of the poor and needy were all dutifully cared for by an abundance of charitable organizations; the people keeping 100% of their earnings while looking after their own communities themselves. The discrepancy in literacy rates also astounded him, with barely 10% who could read in his native France, compared with the over 90% literacy rate he found in the States.

People maintain that charities could never sustain the needs of the poor today, but if you try to feed the homeless in most cities you will be arrested!

A better way of phrasing the aforementioned question of "Who will build the roads?" isn't by hearkening to any notion of zero government, so much as highlighting its replacement with self-government instead. Roads and public services were of course funded directly by community-minded citizens in the old Town Hall meetings of New Hampshire, for example, without any of the trustless automation that can now be leveraged. Centralized, top-down administration of these services have become so intertwined with our very concepts of how communities must operate, it's not surprising it was a source of bewilderment to Monsieur de Tocqueville just as it is now for us today, and so many years later…

What's perhaps more surprising is why you've probably never even heard of de Tocqueville until now. Given these historically remarkable findings from early American society, and his being recognized as creating the science of anthropology itself. Yet even if one studied the subject now, it would probably surprise one even more to discover his near-complete absence from the books currently in print…

As former Secretary of Education under Reagan, Gary Bauer, openly declared: for every $1 collected in tax for the purpose of education, only $0.25 ever goes to the actual schools to pay for the teacher's salaries and books. A full 75% of it simply lines the walls of the ever expanding bureaucracy there in D.C., like some malignant tumor! I was so stunned by this announcement when I finally heard it (many years later), I personally contacted his offices to confirm it, and he told me now it wasn't even $0.20 out of every dollar…

I then researched the average expenditure in taxes per pupil in D.C. for that year, and it was over $26,000 per head - more than a year's tuition at Montessori! But private schools are just as dependent upon government licenses to teach as those that are declared public, and the books, now bereft of any hint as to how communities can indeed thrive much better under the liberty of self-governance, reflect the purposeful neglect a top-down mode of governance imposes for its own sake just the same. But as far as public services are concerned, I know education is still perhaps a bit too delicate a subject for most to accept the decentralization of. Best keep it to street cleaning and such for starters!

The concept of a decentralized, self-governing community is so foreign, most people assume there's no historical context by which it may be easily conceptualized. The fact de Tocqueville is acknowledged as the father of socio-anthropology, and yet had his own observations removed from all the books on the subject, says something as to why… but what he recorded is proof this has been achieved before, and was so powerfully successful compared to the top-down models of governance, its example had to be censored.

"A Republic, if you can keep it." ~ Benjamin Franklin

Cardano very much represents an opportunity for, not just a return to sound money, but a return to a truly decentralized community of self-governance, such as the Republic to which Franklin referred.

Also Ben: "When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the Republic."

This is unfortunately beginning to happen now, and it's easy to understand why. When the ability to earn oneself a living is removed, of course people will vote themselves money ad infinitum, but this must be acknowledged as an extremely urgent and dangerous situation! Especially when the concept of decentralization, while generally positive, still resides somewhere in the "nice to have" category of perspective; much like the other benefits of blockchain, such as immutability, security, inclusiveness, etc. People are still looking at decentralization and thinking, yes that'd be "nice to have"…

Well let's take a look at what we do have at the moment:

- Central Credit Monopoly
- Media Mind Control
- Destruction of Private Industry

Essentially, Planks 5, 6, & 7…

Decentralization is not a "nice to have", it is a must.

As mentioned in the metrics section, this challenge is for proposers from all nations, and a truly decentralized, self-governing society is the goal. America is where we may find the greatest, socio-anthropologically confirmed, recorded example of decentralization's outstanding success. By contrast, another example of what's being hailed as a "self-governing" success, are the new, private company governed townships being offered in Nevada, where technocratic Lord-Barons pose to make a dubious return (see https://reason.com/2021/02/08/tech-companies-could-form-their-own-governments-under-a-new-nevada-proposal/).

Power always seeks to maintain its perch, and expand it where ever it may. The technology available to us now will be wrestled over to this end, and this may be our last chance to show the world how much better a truly self-governing society can and would be, should that power be finally pushed to the edges.

Thank you for your consideration and your time!

"A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him." ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

https://sleepingnatives.org/projects.html#alexis