Governance Problems
What are the biggest problems preventing fair governance for the greater good?
Where is an open list of the biggest problems faced with public immutable records on decisions for prioritisation and implementation strategy?
The Incentive Trap
When power concentrates, the game becomes rigged:
| Failure | What Happens | Root Cause |
|---|---|---|
| Short-termism | Optimise for next election, not next generation | Incentives reward visible action over durable outcomes |
| Crony capitalism | Positions filled by connection, not competence | No verifiable track record of performance |
| Opacity | Decisions made behind closed doors | No accountability mechanism that can't be gamed |
| Ego over ethics | Leaders optimise for status, not outcomes | SCARF model — status drive unchecked |
This is why the thesis is protocols over politicians — rules encoded in systems, not dependent on the integrity of intermediaries who benefit from opacity.
Coordination Failures
Borrowed money in the hope of solving problems without verifiable systems to extract insight or mechanisms to enact progress:
| What's Broken | What Would Fix It |
|---|---|
| Tax spending untracked | Immutable records of allocation and outcomes |
| Public assets mismanaged | Real-time monitoring of real estate, resources, infrastructure |
| Meetings without decisions | Decision journals with public commitments |
| Payments without audit trails | Blockchain settlement with proof |
Rehabilitation
How successful are rehabilitation processes in reality? The question isn't moral — it's economic and systemic. What platform produces people who contribute rather than drain?
| Current Platform | Better Platform |
|---|---|
| Criminalisation as primary tool | Treatment as primary tool |
| Punishment without support | Rehabilitation with verification |
| Stigma preventing reintegration | Clear pathways back to contribution |
DAO Governance
Decentralised autonomous organisations face the same coordination problems in new form:
| Challenge | Why It Persists |
|---|---|
| Voter apathy | Small minority decides for everyone |
| Coin voting | Wealth equals voice — Vitalik argues against it |
| Legal grey area | Regulations designed for centralised entities |
| Smart contract risk | Code is law until the code has bugs |
| Optimal size | Dunbar's number applies to digital organisations too |
DAOs still require leadership and real-world human interaction. The tooling is new. The coordination problem is ancient.
Context
- Problems — The metacrisis these governance failures feed
- Societal Problems — Personal manifestations of system failure
- Financialization — When capital extracts instead of produces
- Protocols — Rules in systems, not people
- Crypto Problems — Adoption barriers for decentralised coordination