United Peoples
A Fairly Distributed, Transparent, Efficient, Trust-Based model for Economics, Education and Global Governance in the 21st Century.
By J. Kelsey
Abstract
The United Peoples is a proposal for a grassroots, global governing structure that has its leadership directly selected from a pool of qualified citizens through a random sortition, secured and incentivised by modern blockchain-based structures and mechanisms.
Sortion (also known as demarchy) is a method of randomly choosing public officials by lot. Utilised in Ancient Greece, sortition both provided a political education for its citizens as well as a practical application of the principles of equality.
Sortition has many proposed advantages over democracies, in terms of efficiencies, fairness, and security against corrupting influences, as summarised below:
- Sortition eliminates the need for expensive campaigns with charismatic, crowd-charming, career politicians.
- The relative ease of selecting candidates through sortition can allow for non-disruptive, staggered and efficient transitions of a single member to the next without entirely changing governments.
- A strong likelihood of an accurate representation of actual demographics, including age and gender.
- Lobbying, grooming, bribing, and influencing becomes more difficult due to the randomness of the final selection process.
- Sortition reduces the conditions and avenues of power that allow political parties, special interests, and oligarchies to form.
- Sortition tends to put the public officer back into public life, ideally incentivising honest behaviour.
Both the advantages and disadvantages of a simple and pure sortition-based system comes from the randomness of the selection method. Our proposed model has a number of features that address disadvantages through both the design of its control mechanisms, economic structure and technological framework.
Some of these features are:
- Applicants are asked to meet certain criteria to fit the job description of the office. The final selection may be random, but the overall applicants for any given position are not.
- Initial applications are put in a temporary pool that is on the blockchain, to be secure and publicly auditable. At any time, the public can view any volunteers that have applied for any position of governance.
- A Qualifying Body (QB) is established to check against the job requirements before being selected for the final sortition pool.
- A final pool of qualified applicants are placed in a blockchain-based database. Due to the nature of a blockchain database, every entry, decision and change is secure, transparent and tracked publicly. This helps ensure that the QB is definitely acting in an honest fashion.
- Each major position has a unique start and end date to help prevent disruptions to governance. These dates are overlapped so the prior UP officer can train the new position holder.
- A cryptocurrency (called Lift in this proposal) is associated with the United Peoples organisation. Some of the annual inflation rewards are allocated to the Treasury of the United Peoples.
- Being selected to any high position assigns this individual the keys to a budget, that is a portion of the Treasury. This is used by leader of a department to enact the policies, goals and tasks they are assigned to accomplish.
- Officers within the United Peoples may call an internal petition to trigger a vote of non-confidence on any fellow position holder, to remove ineffectual leaders from office.
- The public may also call for a public vote to remove a United Peoples officer or QB member, if a public petition reaches a certain threshold. This substitutes the right for voting in for a right to vote out. Ideally, voting out would be less frequent, and therefore more efficient.
- Any successful vote of removal, also instantly removes all access (keys) to the Treasury and any official labels of authority (ie. inter-organisational voting privileges).
The blockchain-based underlining structure ensures that the steps taken towards positions of governance—and power—are transparent and have strong levels of accountability that go beyond traditional systems of governance today.
Unlike the United Nations—in which government-selected members deal with issues from an intergovernmental perspective—the United Peoples is intended to be composed from global citizens directly and thus represents a more accurate perspective, will and wisdom of our increasingly connected world.
Structure Overview
There are three main powers proposed for the United Peoples (UP), that each provide a counter-balance to each other and have a single but equal vote. These main powers are simply the initial proposal, and additional debate, brainstorming and design is expected.
The three powers currently proposed are:
- The International Assembly: Each nation includes a head representative that is responsible for both coordinating UP activities and offices in each nation, and also assembles to communicate with fellow representatives to coordinate and vote on issues, rules and regulations. The Assembly's majority consensus acts as a single vote. The International Assembly has a rotating Key Speaker that acts as a coordinator and main representative for the entire assembly. The Key Speaker is intended to directly interface with the UN General Assembly (and a permanent voting position in the UN General Assembly is to be consistently sought).
- Governing Body : The Governing Body is headed by the Global Secretary, acts as the leadership of the UP, and provides formal representation as well as administrative duties and establishment of rules and regulations. This department is intended directly interfaces with the UN Secretariat and individual heads of government.
- Associated Councils: These are individual focused councils, each of which has a leader that can vote from the perspective of each department. The majority vote of each council is counted towards a single vote representing the AC. The creation of a council is determined by the Governing Body and is voted into existence by the International Assembly. Councils are created to take actions and tackle conditions related to key focus areas such as health, security, economics, education, environment, disaster relief etc. Many of these councils may have corresponding agencies in the UN, and strong ties are to be sought to help coordinate efforts and to help provide the UN with a direct voice that represents the citizens of our world.
As a further level of checks and balances, the Qualifying Body acts as a counterbalance to each of these three powers. The QB does this by filtering all potential candidates, helps run and manage the sortition process, coordinates any potential vote of non-confidence for any UP officer, and ensures that individual officers are replaced when their terms run out.
As each of these governing powers are supported by blockchain-based mechanisms to provide secure and transparent voting and sortition methods as well as the budgets for each department and individual, there are strong incentives to create effective actions that provide tangible benefits from each body.
Empowerment and Establishment
In ideal circumstances, this sortition-based governing body would be enshrined, accepted and funded by the world governments immediately; afterwards great strides towards a more cooperative world could immediately commence.
The Governance and Communication departments of the Establishment Phase will be focused on attempting to rapidly facilitate global legitimacy amongst governments, and international bodies such as the United Nations, as well as directly with the global citizenry on a grassroots level.
Yet this proposal makes no assumptions on whether it shall be granted legitimacy by existing institutions and world governments; instead UP looks to be granted legitimacy by the global civic body directly through its grassroots approach. By becoming a trusted ally of the people, UP seeks validation through authentic and tangible efforts to educate and uplift an entire generation. With a growing and trusting support base, it may be possible to empower the disenfranchised and start tipping the balance of power towards a future that is healthy, sustainable and works for the benefit of all.
The means for the early organisation of UP to grow, empower and entrust comes through an approach that initially utilises three readily distributed, fair and effective strategies that cover economics, education and communication, underpinned by a strong governance model that is secured by blockchain-based mechanisms. The particulars of these founding strategies are to be covered in further detail in the following sections.
The Model
Primary Mandate
The primary mandate of the United Peoples is simply to "promote mutual and healthy cooperation for all".
This mandate, inspired by the P2P Foundation's motto " Together we know everything, together we have everything." This mandate is designed to be both simple and comprehensive, allowing our members to measure each action on whether it is promoting mutual and healthy cooperation for the widest possible circle in each circumstance.
Equality and mutual respect are at the very core of this spirit of cooperation. This mandate includes—but is not excluded to—all human activity. It includes cooperation with the biosphere and amongst all living creatures. This mandate is based on a recognition that although competition and evolution has much to do with the ability to survive, the ability to thrive hinges on cooperation. The United Peoples aim is to help support and facilitate a spirit and common culture of cooperation that is intended to help life thrive on Earth, and possibly beyond.
The communication, education and economic models that are set in motion as a focus during the Establishment Phase are intended to be created with this spirit of cooperation in mind.
In addition, this focus on cooperation allows for the UP to leverage existing entities, such as governments, corporations, NGOs and the United Nation as potential partners in helping solve problems and establish lines of trust and communication. With cooperation and collaboration as representing the core fundamental principle that defines the primary mandate, this becomes the measure in which all actions and policies are tested and measured against.
Road to Establishment
The United Peoples has two initial phases of growth, each of which will further define its structure: the Founding Phase and the Establishment Phase. Once the organisation is firmly established, additional and relevant Councils will likely be added to the Associate Councils over time.
With blockchain and distributed decision making, it may be asked, what is the purpose of all these councils? Are they intermediate steps towards more radically democratic forms? Truthfully this is currently unknown, as it depends on which level the UP is granted, or establishes authority and legitimacy. For the initial short-term vision, it is assumed that the most practical method would be to try and interface with current organisations utilising the structures that they are familiar with. This also fits the mandate to "promote mutual and healthy cooperation for all" as this mandate includes the idea of cooperating widely, including existing entities and established powers.
Over time, as the more radical aspects of the United Peoples becomes more understood, relevant and firmly entrenched, additional levels of improvement and relevancy can naturally take place.
As the aim of the United Peoples is to become a global governing body that is comprised from the global citizenry directly, it will need each of the various bodies and individual councils to engage with existing governing bodies such as national governments, businesses, NGO, as well as environmental and humanitarian concerns directly. As such policies would be complex, and would depend highly on the policies and strategies of such bodies' future members, these ideas are to be covered simply as a high-level conceptualisations in this proposal. Once the Establishment Phase was underway, it is realistically assumed that more practical details would begin to emerge.
Founding Phase
The Founding Phase starts as a small and efficient body composed primarily of the founding members, as they work towards establishing the rules, mandates, sortition mechanics, and initial Qualifying Body.
The establishment of the United Peoples hinges on developing a fair and transparent blockchain-based application selection and screening method, as well as the technology to create a fair and secure method of randomly choosing the final candidates via sortition.
As such, technological development will be the primary focus of development in the Founding Phase. The founders shall seek qualified experts to create the initial application selection process that shall end up as blockchain database entries as well as a robust and secure sortition method that cannot be tampered with.
Once the means of application, qualification and sortition is established, individual candidates for the three bodies of power will be sought. The QB will filter these candidates for the sortition to take place. Once the candidates are selected, each will sign a series of mandates promising to put the plan of developing the Establishing Phase into action.
Due to the ambitious and experimental nature of this proposal, the Founding Phase is where the models and mechanism are simulated, tested and adjusted towards greater effectiveness before they are put into practice.
Another key component to the Founding Phase would be the creation of the Lift cryptocurrency. This currency is intended to be a Universal Income, which is given to members that provide strong KYC requirements to mitigate bad actors, such as bots, multiple accounts etc.
In addition the Lift cryptocurrency would provide additional rewards for securing the network, participating in votes, and connecting in trusted ways with others. Such activities modify the amount of Lift given. Future additions to this concept may cover education, participation in charities, and other nudges towards a more empowered and informed citizenry.
One of the key goals of the Lift currency is to help incentivise leadership. Other cryptocurrencies include incentive models to accomplish goals such as: securing the network, engaging in transactions, securing data, participating in social media activity, contributing articles etc.
Lift is uniquely designed to incentivise leadership, and thus it is structured to be the means that the main United Peoples organisation fills key roles with highly qualified and effectual candidates, as well as empowering these candidates economically.
Even amongst Lifts other role as a source of Universal Income, the multipliers to that income are derived from collaboration, trust and (eventually) self-improvement—which in turn helps foster the environment for leaders to develop and thrive.
Establishment Phase
The Establishment Phase comes after the first sortition-based selections chose the initial leaders and officers. One of the primary goals of this phase is to create a fully established global organisation that is trusted and accepted by most (if not all) of the world populace, as well as world governments, corporations and other organisations. This includes a more mature and robust structure that mirrors—for practical purposes—some of the departments and agencies of the United Nations (albeit one with less of an intergovernmental-centric focus). This trust will be fostered by ensuring that practical positive actions are made by a
The early members of the first Qualifying Body shall be chosen manually by the founders to help filter the initial candidates for positions for the International Assembly, the Governing Body and the few initial agencies of the Associated Councils. The Qualifying Body will also be set to help keep accountability over these members by helping employ the means to remove officers that are not effective through a vote of non-confidence, from within UP or as a public vote. Besides the very first selection of members of the Qualifying Body, all future members will also be subject to the same pr
Since all actions taken by the QB, in terms of addition or removal of any officer, is to be recorded on a decentralised, publicly-accessible blockchain database, transparency and accountability will exist at a fundamental level. Additionally, since members of the QB will also be subject to potential votes of non-confidence, this will further strengthen integrity within the total organisation.
Limits on the number of times a candidate may apply for a position (or for any other position) would also be a responsibility of the QB.
By utilising the combination of qualified members, a simple three-tiered power structure, and an empowered Global Secretary, it is expected that effective decisions can be immediately and efficiently employed to address global challenges.
Formation of the Associated Councils
To help reach maturity and influence, the Establishment Phase has it's early focus chosen carefully to help assure that maximum effectiveness and influence is reached in a minimal period of time. This focus is to be actioned as a series of mandates that the initial members of the United Peoples sign.
During the Founding Phase the initial body that composes the Associated Councils is to be formed. The areas of focus for the creation of each of these initial councils are:
- Technology : Develops the IT infrastructure, assists the other departments in the development of their technology. Also helps develop and maintain the means of sortition and the blockchain database that holds all candidates.
- Education : Designs a widely-distributed, fun and engaging education platform and curriculum which is gamified, and includes smart algorithms and tracking to help facilitate teaching.
- Economics : Designs a blockchain-based digital currency based on circles of trust and provides this as a universal basic income.
- Communication : Public Relations and Marketing are covered in this department, as well as assuring that all departments have effective means of communication amongst each other, with external partners and entities, as well with the various languages of the majority of the world's populace.
The initial focus of these early Councils make up a part of a strategy of empowerment, both for the people and the body of the UP.
As the UP becomes more firmly established and empowered, additional Councils will be formed towards a growing and more effectual body that is capable of acting on a variety of global issues.
Governance Structure
The main structure of the United Peoples is a triadic structure, with the Qualifying Body acting as a watchdog agency that provides both entry and exit mechanisms for key individual candidates.
The Governing Body, International Assembly and Associated Councils each has its own internal operations, as well as checks and balances, structural mechanism and communication channels with each other.
Although there are checks and balances to prevent clear abuses of power, the Global Secretary exists as a clear decisive head of the organisation with the ability to order executive actions. This allows quick and immediate decisions to be called to action on potential global issues.
Global Secretary and Governing Body
The Global Secretary is the head of the organisation, and is not a figurehead position; it holds definitive power through the decision of approving executive actions, which are carried out by appropriate Councils. These executive actions can be either internal or external to the entire organisation. The rest of the Governing Body interfaces with both the International Assembly and the various agencies that make up the Associated Councils.
To keep reasonable checks and balances against abuses of power, either the Associated Councils and International Assembly can call for a vote against any executive action through a petition that represents at a percentage (i.e. one-third) of each voting body.
The Governing Body is able to change any rule, budget, security action or mandate within a set of given constraints, including the formation of an additional agency within the Associated Councils.
The Global Secretary may also put a temporary limitation of petitions on either the International Assembly or the Associated Councils, only if a certain defined threshold of petitions has been called within a period of time. This is to prevent excessive and crippling delays that may affect decisions from being actioned.
Example constraints are as follows:
- Budget allocation require a majority of the Associated Councils to vote in agreement to pass (with the exception of any security related budget, which falls under the constraints for security-related matters, as below).
- Security actions, and budgets require both the IA and AC to vote with a large (i.e. two-thirds) majority.
- Changes to any of the mandates, that affect the direction of the entire organisation, also require a large majority vote within both the IA and AC. In addition, the mandate cannot change until six months into the new term of the next Global Secretary (in which the new Global Secretary can attempt overturn the change in the mandate via an executive action).
At any time, the public can call for a petition to trigger a vote of non-confidence of the Global Secretary. If this petition reaches a certain number and distribution (yet to be defined), a public vote is called to remove the Global Secretary from office. With such a method, the public can essentially 'fire' any leader that is deemed to be disingenuous to the office and public trust. Even petitions that are short of the threshold required for a vote may be used as a warning or indicator of public opinion. This can hopefully serve as a constant reminder of where such a public servant's' duties lie.
International Assembly
The IA exists as a means of representing nations, as well as a widely diverse and distributed body that works as a primary means of providing the necessary checks and balances to prevent corruption.
Each nation of the International Assembly has a number of delegates that represent each nation's population (this is based on the average of all countries as taken from the world population). As an example, the minimum number of delegates awarded to a country may be one, with the maximum number as being eight. This is to acknowledge each nation as a respected member, as well as acknowledge that, in some cases, a large portion of the world's people reside in a select few countries. Yet it does not suppose that having a large population is necessarily a method in which countries can hold overly excessive power. For example, with the delegate criteria capped at 35 million (similar to what an average country's population equals), both a small country such as Tonga and a large country such as Canada would have only a single delegate. Under such a threshold Turkey would have two delegates, Japan would have three delegates, Russia would have four delegates, Brazil would have six delegates, and Indonesia would have seven delegates. Under this example scenario, only the United States, India and China would have eight delegates. Instead of structuring the world around nuclear or economic prowess, the voices of the majority will have strength, without conversely drowning out the voices of the minority cultures. (This scenario is but a proposal and would require additional consideration).
Rules on how the delegates for each country are capped will be first defined during the Founding Phase, with further amendments and readjustments to be defined by the Governing Body, and voted upon by the International Assembly.
Although the International Assembly is to be initially structured around the concept of nations, the future structure may move beyond this to help provide voices to minority cultures and groups that exist within larger nations (i.e Kurds, Catalans, Cherokee, Aymara, Maori) to acknowledge and recognise our diverse perspectives and cultural traditions, giving a global presence to the previously voiceless.
The Key Speaker, which will rotate between delegates, is the acting leader and facilitator of the entire IA. The Key Speaker directly interfaces with both the Global Secretary as well as the United Nations, and other global bodies. If, for any reason, a temporary situation suddenly removes a Global Secretary from office, (such as a tragedy or vote of non-confidence) the Key Speaker will act as a temporary Global Secretary until the sortition method replaces this key individual.
The Key Speaker has the rights to put any proposed laws to a public direct democratic vote.
The IA may also vote put a limitation on executive orders, if a predetermined threshold has been exceeded within a set period of time. This is to prevent the Governing Body from overstepping and abusing its power.
Like the Global Secretary, the IA may have any individual delegate voted out of office, by either triggering a petition leading to a vote of non-confidence within the IA, the AC or the public.
Associated Councils
Each of the individual agencies that make up the greater body of the Associated Councils represents the method of actioning and responding to any challenges or global needs.
Each agency of the Associated Councils is ultimately under direct leadership of the Governing Body, headed by the Global Secretary, although each agency has it's own distinct leader. Leaders of each agency may resist executive orders from the Global Secretary by either petitioning within the entire AC, or by asking the International Assembly to intervene via their own petition.
Leaders of each agency of the Associate Councils may decide on their own actions to commit to, but must let both the Key Speaker of the IA, as well as the Global Secretary know of their decisions. The Global Secretary can block such an action through an executive order.
The AC, like the IA, has the ability to vote put a limitation on executive orders, if a predetermined threshold has been exceeded within a set period of time. This is particularly important for the AC, as executive orders have the potential to either action or block important necessary responses of a type of subject matter that a particular agency of the AC is most experienced and familiar with.
Each leader of the AC may also be voted out of office, if a petition within the AC, the IA, or the public reaches a minimum number of votes.
Empowerment Strategy.
To ensure that the United Peoples has the means to make effective and meaningful contributions to our global society, a number of strategies need to be considered from the very start of the organisation.
A basic principle of the Empowerment Strategy is 'empowering the people'. Just as companies, communities and nations that empower their own people eventually reap the benefits of such investments, the United Peoples expects to have a similar result.
Economic
Without resources, it will be nearly impossible for the United Peoples to have any meaningful impact on the world stage. The strategy of the organisation relies on having a solid and enduring economic structure, accomplished via two main strategic paths: fundraising and cryptocurrency creation.
The current United Nations funding model relies on contributions from member states, and depends on the goodwill of contributing nations. For the United Peoples to be granted the same right, strong support and legitimacy must be granted, and then the question of whether nations wish to provide funding for two global organisations must be raised.
With the United People's focus on directly representing the global citizenry, would nations be willing to support what they have little control or say over?
To ensure that the United Peoples is not reliant on contributions by member states, nor beholden to be shaped by the wishes of powerful nations, a funding model is to be tried that, not only provides a means for the United Peoples to have autonomy, is also a means to help empower the citizenry,—on which the entire concept of the UP depends.
Part of the focus of the early United Peoples, will be to secure funding through traditional means, while another focus will be on putting together a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that has similarities to Bitcoin, but with a more fair and even distribution system. For the sake of this article, the currency will be called Lift.
Lift is to be designed with the following features in mind:
- A blockchain based economic model that is open and secure.
- Decentralised and resilient, able to act even if the global network is down or unreachable.
- Based on (and encourages) consensual trust.
- An inflationary model.
- Provides a Universal Income to individuals that meet clear KYC-style identity requirements and/or group consensus on identity (to provide the undocumented with a means of identity).
- Every unit of Lift that is generated and distributed to individuals as Universal Income, a percentage (to be determined) is also generated and given to the United Peoples Treasury.
- Allows for petitions to lead to direct voting of removal (to assist in disempowering bad actors via votes of non-confidence).
- A fair and even means of distribution.
- An income that grows over time similar to the mechanism used by coins such as Grantcoin/Manna [1]
As a currency, Lift is designed with features that show and encourage trust, provides a universal income that grows over time, and builds and strengthens local cooperation. Some blockchain-based cryptocurrencies are currently attempting to accomplish these goals, and UP will use these models as a template to create the Lift currency.
Of these many contenders for a Universal Income, the model that is most similar to Lift is the Circlesconcept created by Martin Köppelmann. This design works from the grassroots level, by establishing (and rewarding) circles of trust. As circles of trust widen, the currency becomes more global in nature.
Because of Lift's central design focus on encouraging local trust, it reduces the advantage and value of holding multiple accounts, as few people will truly trust such accounts, rendering the value to be very limited. In a similar way, having multiple IDs holds little value outside of criminal activity, and once the user is found out, all value of such a strategy is rendered obsolete.
Despite many similar contenders, for a Universal Income to truly catch on it needs to be 'universal'. By establishing a global, representative body such as the United Peoples—who in turnbacka global, secure currency—there can be a level of legitimacy that few other types of cryptocurrency currently claim to possess.
If a global body such as the United Peoples, can create a trustworthy Universal Income there can be many immediate benefits:
- Lift is given a strong level of value through legitimacy with a global body.
- Part of the funding efforts of the United Peoples can gather fiat money to be later internally exchanged for Lift, helping raise and stabilise the value.
- Growing realisation that the sooner an individual accepts this free, Universal Income, the more wealth can be acquired over time, then the chance for this currency to spread virally increases substantially.
- Through Lift, people will have an income, a platform, and an ID, to participate in governance.
- The United Peoples can use Lift to support tangible, positive efforts.
- The United People's can fund workers to assist in areas that currently receives very little financial support, such as environmental cleanup, stopping human trafficking etc.
Over time, it is hoped that the trust-based emphasis will create a global currency that holds confidence and reaches higher relative value than the current fiat-based currencies. As it does, the United Peoples, as an organisation, will be increasingly empowered to make actions that have true impact. Similarly, many existing cryptocurrencies are currently valued at a rate that far exceeds any other fiat-based national currency.
Since Lift will potentially be a source of great wealth, resources and empowerment for the UP to effectively deliver its mandate, it will be key for Lift to be established widely and to have strong, stable value. Promotion and establishing Lift as a valuable and useful medium of exchange will be part of the agenda of the early UP.
There are additional advantages of having a global cryptocurrency, created and backed by such a global entity. For instance, such a currency can be borderless and highly secure, as shown by Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. It can represent a debt-free currency with guards against inflation and deflation, more similar to resource-backed currencies than the current floating fiat-based currencies.
Additional benefits are that blockchain systems can be designed to be communication and collaboration tools, such as Steemit. They can include methods of secure and accountable governance models that have been proven, or in development, by projects such as BitShares, DASH, EOS, Cardano, and Steemit.
UP's primary purpose, however, is not simply to be a distributor of cryptocurrency (no matter how fairly distributed); it is a body that it designed and structured to truly represent the people of the planet and the many challenges that we face.
Once the United Peoples starts to become established as an organisation, part of the initial mandate is to to empower itself, and the people of the world, from a grassroots level. This starts with the global and even distribution of a fair cryptocurrency as the beginnings of a promise, but needs to quickly extend itself into tangible means of active support.
Education
One of the most powerful means of active support lies in education. To create a cooperative society where we are able to shift from moving beyond surviving challenges to one where we are thriving with opportunities requires a global, fair and widely distributed model for education. Education is a known factor in reducing disease, poverty, warfare, population growth, human trafficking and other ills that are common in our modern world.
Before the information age, distribution of education was difficult. Today is a very different story as we happen to live at a time rich in educational resources and methods of distribution.
In addition, fun, engaging entertainment models are starting to be found to enhance learning. Data-tracking systems and smart algorithms can hone in on the strengths and weaknesses of students to help deliver optimal and timely lessons or encouragements. Gamification techniques are being proven to accelerate and ease learning, taking students to higher levels of knowledge in shorter periods of time. Means of encouraging and developing creativity are being established. A well-designed education system with these models applied effectively can have provide many advantages over current systems.
It is common that parents, who have the means, are often willing to pay for the very best education. If an engaging, effective, digitally distributed model can be developed that is portable and facilitates use amongst educators, then such a service can be distributed to impoverished regions to help rapidly educate an entire populace within a single generation. Essentially, the profits gathered from financially able customers will be used to fund these initial redistribution efforts.
The global education market is estimated to be over $4 trillion and it is expected to grow significantly, especially in growing markets such as China and India. Currently it is over eight times the size of the software market and three times the size of the media and entertainment industry. Besides being a very lucrative field, this industry includes significant influence to transform and shape lives as well as societal and economic dynamics—potentially within an entire generation.
Part of the goals of the United Peoples initial phase of growth is to establish a world-class, highly-effective and easily distributed education model that is based on the latest gamification techniques, data tracking, AI data analysis and social and psychological research. This education is intended to exceed most current models, allowing it to immediately be given great social and economic value, as such value will help fund and propel the UP.
The first phase of this education is to immediately develop a premium service to areas of wealth and influence, and then, as a second phase, to extend these services to middle-class areas. The cost of this education will be in Lift, to help encourage use and increase the perceived value.
Once the education system is developed enough, it will be distributed to impoverished areas. A single tablet, projector and solar charger may empower a teacher to bring education to the most remote villages on earth. The software will be designed to do most of the heavy-lifting, in a way that makes the teacher more of a facilitator or coach, presiding over a number of fun and engaging lessons and activities. In this way, even in areas where the teachers are not very educated, a generation of students can be brought to an even level with their wealthier counterparts in nations and cities thousands of kilometres away.
In addition to the economic benefits, providing effective, enjoyable and fairly distributed methods of education will both engender trust and value to the United Peoples as an organisation, it will help establish a generation of cooperation-seeking individuals that hold the potential to vastly improve our world. Effective education provides a strong base of future leaders to draw upon, and as UP intends of being a global organisation, it needs effective and knowledgeable leaders from every corner of the globe.
Education, in itself, also holds the key to help solve many of our world's most serious problems.
- An educated populace, even if rural and poor, can potentially reduce population growth rates.
- Education tends to improve equality within a society.
- Increased education often reduces crime.
- Education is widely assumed to increase wealth and economic growth in a society.
- It is also assumed to decrease human trafficking (as illiterate parents often succumb to scams that result in children being abducted).
Part of the mandate of this proposed educational system is to encourage cooperation. The proposed educational structure will nudge students towards an outlook of having unconditional respect as a core individual principle, as respect leads to trust and, in turn, trust leads to greater cooperation, harmony and wealth.
By adding Lift to the equation, this education model may also have indirect incentives. Trusted teachers may be able to, in a version of local trusted consensus, provide a multiplier to each graduating student's Lift account. Thus this education model turns into an effective onboarding process for adding an educated, informed citizenry to help grow the United Peoples globally. In addition, for many places where infrastructure is poor, this may be the only way to provide secure identification for the many existing undocumented individuals existing on our planet today.
If such an education system is put forth, backed with a Universal Income, and guided by additional resources from the United Peoples, then an empowered and capable workforce can be created to be put to work on helping solve the many problems we have today such as:
- Environmental cleanup.
- Protection of wildlife.
- Education.
- Peacekeeping.
- Uplifting the poor.
- Growing sustainable crops.
Instead of human population being a burden, it can start to shift to be a resource to put in the work to restore a thriving ecosystem and a cooperative global culture. Over time, as education spreads more widely, population levels will likely begin to subside, leaving a more respectful and cooperative-leaning empowered global culture to inherit our planet.
Communication
One of the primary and necessary key strategies of the initial early body of the United Peoples is to create and maintain strong channels of communication both within the organisation and with external entities, including the public.
With the primary mandate being centred around facilitating cooperation, strong and positive channels of communication becomes a fundamental core strategy.
The Associated Councils will have a Communication agency, as one of the first agencies brought into being. This Communications agency will be responsible for ensuring that communications are occurring in a healthy and positive manner. Part of this focus will also to be to ensure that communication noise does not start to delay or prevent important decisions and actions from taking place.
The Communications agency will be responsible for:
- Ensuring that the leaders of each agency of the AC are communicating and working together on strategies that are efficient and in unison.
- Ensuring that the leaders of the AC, the Key Speaker of the IA, and the Global Secretary of the GB are communicating and working together on strategies that are efficient, effective and in unison with the spirit of cooperation, as set-out with the primary mandate.
- Promoting and educating the public on how the United Peoples can work with, and represent everyday people.
- Interfacing with other external agencies, and ensuring that good collaborative opportunities can be acted upon with relative ease.
- Creating marketing material, including an internet and social media presence for the United Peoples and its individual bodies and agencies.
- Helping ensure that participation in the sortition process is widely understood and distributed, as well as the ability to call for a public petition towards a vote of non-confidence.
- Ensuring that the Qualifying Body has the most accurate criteria for selecting candidates for each body and agency that they assist with, during the sortition process.
- Ensuring that processes and decisions within the United Peoples are transparent, are recorded and able to be presented clearly to the Global Secretary, the Key Speaker of the IA, each agency head of the AC, as well as the public.
- Push for legitimacy, amongst governments and people of the world, as well as for financial and legislative support.
- Building and strengthening lines of respect and trust. This will be one of the core measuring criteria to determine if communication is healthy.
- Providing a channel for the public to know about Lift and its benefits.
- Providing a channel for the people to know about the digital education and its benefits.
In the initial years of the United Peoples, spreading the word of what the organisation represents and establishing lines of trust, legitimacy and collaboration are to be a key focus of strategy of communication. The growth of the economic and education strategies depend heavily on ensuring that the knowledge of the benefits people can gain from the United People's activities. It is also important to build a groundwork of trust, and to encourage people to submit their candidacy submissions for key positions within the UP.
With the Communications agency coordinating and facilitating the flow of information and understanding both internally and externally, the mandate of the United Peoples can be more rapidly put into action, thus helping to empower the organisation and those that it serves.
Conclusion.
For the first time in human history, it is possible to have a global government that chosen in a decentralised fair, transparent and evenly distributed manner due to the ubiquitous nature of digital technology, particularly the invention of the blockchain.
The proposed United Peoples model may only be possible in today's mobile and digitally connected world, through the secure and decentralised qualities of the blockchain. Such a model allows for features such as digital transparency, comprehensive checks and balances, economic incentives, secure identity, limits on powers, and strong avenues of decisive action. It also provides a sortition method allowing an efficient, secure selection process that selects skilled candidates fairly and with diversity that matches our global populace. Voting and petitions will also be secure and decentralised through the blockchain.
This blockchain technology also enables the creation of a digital currency (Lift) that can be widely distributed as a Universal Income. Lift, as a currency, may have additional value if it is backed by a global trusted body, unlike current cryptocurrency implementations which have limited legitimacy at present time.
The eventual focus on education holds the ability to be both a key driver of revenue, as well as a driver for wider societal change. Over time, the distribution of a world-class education model is expected to engender trust in the organisation and create an empowered citizenry. Profits from the educational arm will be reinvested into ensuring that the model can be distributed as far, and as fairly as possible. Over the long term, payment for the educational services are to be converted into the Lift digital currency, to help strengthen the value further, and to assist in paying educators using the platform across borders.
To ensure such a model spreads rapidly, efficiently, and allows for quick and informed decisions, communication (both internal and external) is a key and vital aspect to the United Peoples' model of governance. This will be facilitated by a Communications agency that has a strong role in ensuring that the mandate, 'promote mutual and healthy cooperation for all' is understood and put into practice.
With such a model, it may be conceivable to create a unified world governing body that directly comes from—and directly represents—the people of this planet in a truly fair and equitable way. This would be the historic creation of a truely representative global government from the grassroots; a system of governance that has the potential to mitigate power from the existing order into the will, compassion and wisdom of our highest human ideals.
Additional Notes
1. Core Values
The United Peoples values are defined from its basic mandate to ' promote mutual and healthy cooperation for all'.
This mandate is at the centre of the entire organisation's core values and extends to all of humankind, as well as the ecosystem that we inhabit. From the vantage point of 'mutual and healthy cooperation' each decision and action is made towards an attempt to provide the widest and most beneficial outcome that involves as many active parties as possible.
By structuring and framing all decisions against this criteria, it is expected that respectful means of cooperation can be at the forefront of all decision-making and problem-solving. Looking at groups in terms of establishing healthy dynamics are in place and ensuring that good streams of communication exist between all parties would be essential to this model.
The qualified sortition-based structure of choosing primary candidates of the United Peoples ensures that an authentic and broad sample of the population commonly holds positions of power and influence in the organisation, ensuring that diversity and equality is an essential part of the model's ongoing structure.
Respect, equality, global health, equal rights to excellent education, environmental preservation, fair distribution of resources, peace and understanding are a part of these core values, and are natural extensions of the mandate that seeks 'mutual and healthy cooperation for all' at its outset.
2. Decision-Making Capacity.
With the Global Secretary representing a clear and decisive head with the ability to call for executive actions to be quickly acted upon, this model holds the promise of being able and ready to address global challenges with immediate solutions.
Since the Global Secretary position, under this model, will be selected randomly from qualified members that hold the experience of governing and managing large, global bodies and organisations, it can be relatively assured that such candidates will have the experience, insight and qualifications to address challenges on a global scale.
Due to the staggered overlap required for any key position within the United Peoples—including the Global Secretary—any required knowledge, insight and general 'know-how' has adequate time to be passed on from the residing Global Secretary to the next candidate. This is to help ensure that the handover of power is far more smooth than in current governments, allowing key and important decisions to continue without delay.
In addition, the fact that Global Secretaries hold the potential of coming from any demographic it can be expected that the world will benefit from a variety of perspectives and outlooks, as the reign of each role passes along and, in whole, represents a wide section of leadership.
3. Effectiveness.
The United Peoples model has a number of features that are structured to enhance its effectiveness in handling challenges of a global nature.
- Leadership : Has a clear and decisive head capable of making immediate and clear executive orders.
- Qualified : Includes a clear structure to ensure key members are qualified to work their post.
- Representative : Each member selected by sortition is random, and has strong potential to select diverse and widely-distributed key positions. In addition, the International Assembly holds representatives from all nations, which are also selected via sortition, thus representing diversity within their own individual nations. Over time, the fair and equitable education focus of the organisation will help ensure that qualifications can come from all walks of life.
- Efficient Selection : Without requiring complicated logistics that would likely be necessary for a global democracy (large, coordinated global elections and primaries), the qualified sortition method of this proposal is more suitable for a global governance structure that still provides fair (and likely more representative) candidates to be selected directly from the global citizenry.
- Efficient Handover : Each newly selected member has a period of overlap with the existing position-holder as a method of training and job preparedness. Staggered timing of the expiry date of each position ensures that the government can continuously function. Secure blockchain-based petition and voting mechanisms work for any situation that calls for the termination of a position prematurely.
- Transparency : A blockchain database allows for full transparency with the global public. Candidates are placed in a blockchain database ensuring that the public can view and assess whether the Qualifying Body is selecting or rejecting potential candidates unfairly, or not. In addition, decision, executive orders, rules, laws and regulations are placed in publicly accessible blockchain databases that are decentralised, and secure from tampering. This ensures that each member's actions are transparent to the greater public (and also amongst members of the entire organisation).
- Checks and Balances : Along with transparency, numerous checks and balances are designed within the structure of the organisation. These allow the various main bodies, individuals within the organisation, and even the general public, to put reasonable stops to abuses of power, without crippling the organisation.
- Cooperation : With a similar structure to the United Nations, the UP intends to cooperate with both this global entity, as well as individual governments, NPOs, NGOs, charities etc.
- Incorruptibility : As candidates will be randomly selected, serve with some overlap with the prior candidate, and can be voted out of office by internal and external means, it will be difficult for external agencies to corrupt members of the organisation. Without knowing which candidate will be chosen, grooming a candidate for bribes becomes more difficult. Even if a single candidate is corruptible, votes (from within or outside the organisation) can end the term of any candidate that is caught. Even if a candidate remains corrupted but hidden, the term will inevitably end. The new, replacement candidate will inherit the aforementioned difficulties in outside attempts of corruption. In addition, the diversity and transparency of the model will further prevent corruption from having a natural hold, as diverse organisations have potential to be more resistant to corruption. These corruption-reducing mechanisms also apply to the Qualifying Body, which will have its members (after the initial, founding body) also chosen through the qualified sortition method.
- Financial**** Independence: Part of the intention of the United Peoples, is to provide a digital cryptocurrency that is promoted, used and traded with traditional fiat currencies. In addition, the organisation intends to fund itself through providing high-quality digital education, which already a high-value growth industry.
- Associated**** Councils: These councils represents the active arms of the organisation that exist to address certain key areas (Education, Communication, Security, Health etc.). As the organisation grows, the power, reach and effectiveness of these bodies is expected to grow over time.
4. Resources and Financing.
Although the United Peoples may require resources through traditional fund-raising techniques initially, much of the initial focus will be to create a digital, blockchain-based cryptocurrency (Lift) to help raise additional funds.
This type of model is currently very common in the cryptocurrency space. A coin/token is created in what is called an ' Initial Coin Offering" to help raise funds for their creator's efforts. Lately these efforts include distributed computing, data-analysis, deep-learning and other types of high-value efforts.
With such ICOs entering the realm of billions in terms of USD of valuation for their creators, and with coins such as Bitcoin totalling hundreds of billionsin market capitalisation there is potential for a globally-backed digital currency to hold substantial value.
In addition, the United Peoples strategy rests on creating a fun, engaging, digital education system that is easily distributed With digital education a lucrative global growth industry, the intention is to offer a high-value education system to wealthy and middle-class customers at a premium to raise finances. This same education is to be distributed to poor communities throughout the world. Designed to be very teacher-friendly, utilising smart-tracking and deep-learning principles to nudge students to better results, it is hoped that even poorly educated facilitators can manage a class and uplift an entire generation.
These strategies are intended to help provide the means to financial resources. As for human resources, it is hoped that the financial health, core values, and clear and positive intent will attract qualified candidates to the sortition-based selection process, thus fulfilling the human capital required by the model.
5. Trust and Insight.
The education, and Universal Income strategy has the intention of engendering trust to the United Peoples organisation from a grassroots level.
For the discerning and critical part of society, the entire organisation is subject to clear and transparent scrutiny, through its requirement of publishing all decisions, rules, mandates etc. on a cryptographically secure, decentralised, blockchain database.
This data will ensure that journalists, political-observers, watchdog agencies, aspiring candidates, and anyone with the inclination to follow the everyday machinations of the organisation can clearly know what decisions were made, and by whom.
The Qualifying Body is to also act as a watchdog agency, and provide public visibility into any disingenuous activities within the United Peoples organisation.
6. Flexibility.
With a Governing Body/Global Secretary as the decisive head of the entire organisation, rules, structures, components, strategies, and mandates can be changed as the governance model adapts to the needs of an ever-changing world.
These changes do have set limits, and can be pushed against if needed, but a great level of consensus is required to push back.
Part of the flexibility of the model lies in the Associated Councils, which provides an avenue to create sub-organisations with a specific utility in mind. Such councils can also be dissolved when their utility is no longer relevant.
7. Protection against the Abuse of Power.
Both the International Assembly and the Associated Councils may also vote put a limitation on executive orders, if a predetermined threshold has been exceeded within a set period of time. This is to prevent the Governing Body from overstepping and abusing its power.
In addition, individual delegates in all three bodies can be voted out of office, by either triggering a petition leading to an internal vote of non-confidence within the United Peoples or externally from the public (petitioned to the Qualifying Body).
Certain actions, related to matters such as global security, changing of mandates, rules (or in the future, laws), require votes from the IA, AC, and GB to be put in effect, at different thresholds of majority. This is to ensure that critical decisions are countered by a minimum level of consensus.
In addition, the random sortition has strong potential to limit the types of corrupting influences (such as grooming candidates) that typically exist in current forms of governance.
8. Accountability.
Since this model includes a method of removing abusive individuals from power, as well as transparency into the decision-makers and their actions by keeping a record on a secure and public blockchain-based database, this model clearly has methods of holding decision-makers accountable for their actions.
Even an unsuccessful petition to hold a vote of non-confidence can be a warning to remind any decision-maker of their required responsibilities and trust.
Since a successful vote of non-confidence means that the public official loses their allotment of the Treasury budget, as well as access to the voting rights within the governing body, this is an effectual means of providing recourse when trust has been compromised.