On Demopisty

There's a word missing from our vocabulary, something discussed by Vitalik Buterin and Glen Weyl in their episodes of the 80,000 Hours Podcast. I'll give this the name "Demopisty", from the Greek "Piste", meaning Trust. Demopisty is the idea that credit should originate from the people, contrasted with our current society, an Oligopisty, where trust only comes from a few people with extraordinarily high power.

Money is a concept that we made up for convenience, to make trade easier- instead of bartering a necklace for dinner, we have Liquid Trust that allows me to get my dinner without worrying about if the farmer has a need for what I have to offer. But Liquid Trust flows and pools up more for some people than others. Demopisty doesn't take away trust from those who already have trust, but gives the community as a whole the ability to put trust in places where the market might not lead it.

Quadratic funding is the quintessential embodiment of Demopisty- each person has some say in where trust goes, but ultimately it is not any individual, not a small group of people, but the community as a whole, who decides where trust goes.