Over on The Thread That Must Not Be Named, DE has raised some legitimate questions and presented them rationally, so I am happy to address them.
1. Non-voting owner's who are happy to accept the decisions of active voters are effectively delegating decisions to those who do vote. It is their choice. In the 17% voter turnout example given, it is clear that most owners are happy to go with delegate selection by those who do vote. I will speculate that they do this for the following reasons:
a. Rational Ignorance. It's not worth their time to figure out who to vote for. It doesn't matter to them which subset of generally acceptable candidates get elected because delegate ability to do something undesirable is negligible. A delegate either signs blocks and includes transactions faithfully or not, and everyone can tell if they don't. Those in full-time positions need to avoid having a lynch mob form to vote them out and so they need to continuously answer the question, "What have you done for us lately?"
b. They have no objection to any of the delegates that are being elected by those who vote. If an issue comes up, then they presumably are reserving the right to weigh in. Low participation means owners are generally satisfied. I don't vote my stake in cold storage for this reason, but if I'm not happy at some point, I will go to that extra trouble. So that could also be the case for many of the other non-voting stake out there. Similarly, smaller stakeholders can go to the extra trouble of rallying others to their cause (i.e. "colluding").
c. In general, a large voter cannot vote in a delegate that doesn't already have broad support from everyone else. It is true that a large voter can swing which of the otherwise lesser approved delegates get picked. It is even true that a very small voter can switch who is in positions 101 and 102 by changing one vote. Similarly, if many small voters agree on certain delegates, there is nothing a big owner can do about it. This is how it should be. The bigger your stake, the more you have at risk, and the more say you should have in who runs the business. This is far more fair than many traditional business that are intentionally structured to disproportionately favor the big guys.
2. Owners have a right to form political alliances to achieve their objectives. You can call it "collusion" if you want. The rest of the owners have a similar right to team up (collude) to overrule them. If an owner doesn't like what the "ruling collation" decides, she can sell her stake. The company is, by definition, only owned by people who approve of how it is being run. It is the right of those owners to run it that way. Blockchain technology is there to ensure transparency in whether the agreed upon rules are being followed.
Bottom Line: BitShares has been implemented with a well-defined transparent form of decentralized government. We have tried to make it be fair enough to attract a large number of happy owners. (We would be fools to do otherwise.) Those who find that acceptable and profitable will own it. Those who don't, won't. If there are enough who want it run differently, they will actively vote for changes or clone a competitor. So far, the current community seems happy with what they have.
http://bitsharesblocks.com/delegates
This picture really says it all. The top delegate only has ~17% of the vote. This is a perfect example to show how easy it is for the wealthiest stakeholders to control the delegates.
This picture really says it all. The top delegate only has ~17% of the vote. This is a perfect example to show how easy it is for the wealthiest stakeholders to control the delegates.
That's true that in all blockchains stakeholders/hashpower can collude, but they can only collude in a one-to-one proportion to their stake/hash. Since approval voting is used in delegate elections, I maintain that large stakeholders can effectively collude to a multiple proportion of their stake. Whereby, for example, 20% of colluding stake can disproportionately influence the elections of more than 20% of the delegates. This leads to a coalition of a few wealthy stakeholders being able to determine the outcomes of the mass majority of the delegate elections. This is especially true considering that voter turnout of smaller stakeholders will be lower than the voter turnout of larger stakeholders. As I said previously, it would be the intention of the colluding wealthy stakeholders to not harm Bitshares, but to elect delegates from which they would derive monetary gain in excess to their proportion of stake in the system at the expense of all other stakeholders.
Let's give an example. Remember, in "approval voting", voters do not just vote for one delegate. They can select as many or as few delegates as they wish and the entire weight of their stake counts towards each delegate they choose. Say for instance that the top delegate has 50% of the vote and the 101st delegate has 30% of the vote. The voting spread percentage is 20% (50%-30%). If the votes per delegate is a linear increase according to delegate rank, an additional 10% of the stake vote will move the 101st delegate to the 50th position. Likewise, a removal of 10% of the stake vote from the lower 50 delegates will result in them losing their delegate position. By strategically voting, a few wealthy stakeholders can influence a disproportionate number of delegate positions in relation to their actual stake. In this example, a coalition of 10% stake was able to control 50% of the delegates.
Does this sound fair to you?!
Does this sound fair to you?!
1. Non-voting owner's who are happy to accept the decisions of active voters are effectively delegating decisions to those who do vote. It is their choice. In the 17% voter turnout example given, it is clear that most owners are happy to go with delegate selection by those who do vote. I will speculate that they do this for the following reasons:
a. Rational Ignorance. It's not worth their time to figure out who to vote for. It doesn't matter to them which subset of generally acceptable candidates get elected because delegate ability to do something undesirable is negligible. A delegate either signs blocks and includes transactions faithfully or not, and everyone can tell if they don't. Those in full-time positions need to avoid having a lynch mob form to vote them out and so they need to continuously answer the question, "What have you done for us lately?"
b. They have no objection to any of the delegates that are being elected by those who vote. If an issue comes up, then they presumably are reserving the right to weigh in. Low participation means owners are generally satisfied. I don't vote my stake in cold storage for this reason, but if I'm not happy at some point, I will go to that extra trouble. So that could also be the case for many of the other non-voting stake out there. Similarly, smaller stakeholders can go to the extra trouble of rallying others to their cause (i.e. "colluding").
c. In general, a large voter cannot vote in a delegate that doesn't already have broad support from everyone else. It is true that a large voter can swing which of the otherwise lesser approved delegates get picked. It is even true that a very small voter can switch who is in positions 101 and 102 by changing one vote. Similarly, if many small voters agree on certain delegates, there is nothing a big owner can do about it. This is how it should be. The bigger your stake, the more you have at risk, and the more say you should have in who runs the business. This is far more fair than many traditional business that are intentionally structured to disproportionately favor the big guys.
Quote
In this example, a coalition of 10% stake was able to control 50% of the delegates.
Yes, and another coalition of 11% of the remaining stakeholders is able to override them. 2. Owners have a right to form political alliances to achieve their objectives. You can call it "collusion" if you want. The rest of the owners have a similar right to team up (collude) to overrule them. If an owner doesn't like what the "ruling collation" decides, she can sell her stake. The company is, by definition, only owned by people who approve of how it is being run. It is the right of those owners to run it that way. Blockchain technology is there to ensure transparency in whether the agreed upon rules are being followed.
Bottom Line: BitShares has been implemented with a well-defined transparent form of decentralized government. We have tried to make it be fair enough to attract a large number of happy owners. (We would be fools to do otherwise.) Those who find that acceptable and profitable will own it. Those who don't, won't. If there are enough who want it run differently, they will actively vote for changes or clone a competitor. So far, the current community seems happy with what they have.