Democracy and Governance Effective Decision Making in the Modern Context

Poor governance could be thought of as a meta-problem in that it is a shortcoming that fundamentally

leads to or allows for the existence of all of the other problems that we discuss as development or
conservation challenges. In this way, solving the governance problem would allow for the timely
resolution of all sub-issues and thus resides at the core of a pragmatic approach to resolving systemic
global challenges of all kinds. In this context, governance is used in its broadest sense as all processes of
governing inclusive of market and network effects outside of the standard governmental connotation,
making the issue one of global scale and all-inclusive nature.

The opportunity lies in the ability of technological integration to create unbiased templates for moral
decision making, and affords an opportunity to effectuate a system that incorporates all available data
into a singular, but multifaceted, decision-making and optimization platform. Such a system would be
able to unite all of humanity behind individualized moral goals given global, collective context and
actuation potential.

Existing governance issues are caused largely by imperfect information upon which decisions at every
level are made, the deleterious effects of which compound within low or no-feedback systems and
ultimately result in systemic failures that prevent progress toward collective goals. Current approaches
to resolving these impasses rely primarily on fighting for relative advantage for ones
group/party/organization/team and utilizing the available policy or market levers to push for ones
vision of improvement. The social/political/financial capital spent in such endeavor can then not be used
to maintain said comparative advantage, which often makes the exercise unpalatable once a group
attains advantage within their respective power structure. More specifically, entrenched power
structures, preference for traditional solutions, misinformation about technical capacities and individual
pessimism in regard to the capacity for global cooperation are among the most significant barriers to the
adoption of such a system, and of these the most effectual targets for a small organization would
undoubtedly be the misinformation in regard to technical capacities and individual pessimism, both of
which can be addressed purely through advocacy models that are well established within the
philanthropic and development sectors.

The primary assumptions that need to be rethought in this context are that decision making has to be
done by a human and that it is not possible to aggregate moral frameworks on a global scale. Both of
these assumptions were once true but currently represent purely technical limitations that have been
largely surmounted. I posit that an integrated system that combines global polling for value assessment
and prioritization, automated remote sensing for validation of approach efficacy, life-cycle analysis
methodology for inter-need comparison and accounting of external costs and benefits, and a block-
chain cryptocurrency to serve as a quantification of impact and incentive for effectual and moral action
on individual and group levels. Once at appropriate scale, such a system could both self-validate and
allow for dynamic resource allocation given ever changing individual desires, global needs and
technological capacities, operating transparently and optimally throughout.