Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: We Don't Want Democracy, We Want Consensus!
by
DannyHamilton
on 02/09/2015, 18:12:46 UTC
Consensus is great if all the participants have the same general goal.

It is impossible if the participants have significantly different and incompatible goals.

In that situation, the best you're going to get with your proposal is either:

Democracy with exile:  Anyone that refuses to accept a compromise that the majority of participants find reasonable is simply accused of making "it clear that he does not believe in the Consensus Building Process and is doing nothing to help in it's success" and is therefore exiled from participating in the process at all.  The process repeats until all those that disagree with the majority have been exiled.  The remaining (non-exiled) participants therefore have 100% consensus.

Stagnation: Those with different goals than the majority can simply refuse to accept any "compromise".  They can furthermore continuously propose "compromises" that are unacceptable to the majority of the participants. The decision making process gets help up indefinitely, and changes that most sensible people feel are important and urgent don't get implemented.