Saved by sari and
Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Greater scale should mean greater good as valued by an increasingly wider set of people: the creation of positive externalities.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Consider a classic public good: a public park. We might say park visitors are generically "users" of this public space, or that anyone within driving distance is adequately served. But this categorization feels distinctly unsatisfying. "User" does not capture meaningful detail about a population that collectively values free acc
... See moreSam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
We are members of a multitude of publics, and we must bring the perspective of our full selves to the creation of public goods.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Without a specific idea of the good to build towards, the financial interests of large tokenholders have become over-represented in protocol governance. In our view, this constitutes a centralization risk.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Many protocols are already learning this lesson with regards to governance: discussion and consensus-building is a necessary precursor to voting. Likewise, discussion of values is as important, if not more so, than the act of voting itself. A value system is fostered through storytelling and negotiation in forums of public discourse.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Public goods are enacted by social institutions that reproduce patterns of behavior in the public interest.
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
When we think of the public, we should think expansively. This is not to say that we must consider everyone in the world as a part of our public. As we emphasized in our essay on squads, we also celebrate small, self-selective communities and trust-based groups. But by considering the effects (positive and negative) that we might have on groups at
... See moreSam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
while voting is symbolically powerful, this model misses an important truth: we do not discover shared values through individually revealed preference. If public goods are to satisfy shared values, then public discussion of what's of value matters!
Sam Hart • Positive Sum Worlds: Remaking Public Goods
Each of these examples is based on a different idea of what makes life meaningful—on an idea of what is "good" (Taylor, 1977). Public goods are non-excludable and non-rivalrous, but more importantly, they are objects that satisfy values that are shared.