RE: @ura-soul: Analysis of Organisational Structure Proposals for a Steem Foundation

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RE: @ura-soul: Analysis of Organisational Structure Proposals for a Steem Foundation

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bluefinstudios in #foundationproposal • 7 years ago

Thank you for the mention, of my Foundation Proposal

I would like to answer the suggestion you make above, with these corrections to your comment:

Indeed, the Proposal is very specific about describing how balance is created, in order to factor in Stake Weight. In addition, the Proposal is specific in noting a mechanism for removing bad actors, as you mention. In fact, one of the few proposals to address these issues.

You will note in the Proposal very specific descriptions addressing how to balance Stake Weight, and one account, one vote representation. Each part of the Board of Directors is answerable and elected by the membership. Whales and Witnesses vote for specific board seats. General steemit membership votes for specific seats, corporate and funders as well. Of the proposals, this one is the single one that allows for those of large vote stakes to have a voice, as well as new members and redfish. In my experience with many foundations in the real world, this hybrid approach is one of the very few that address the needs and views of both the many and the few.

I appreciate the chance to reply and look forward to seeing an updated post reflect your new awareness of the issue!

Thanks,

Greg, @bluefinstudios

7 years ago in #foundationproposal by bluefinstudios

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ura-soul 7 years ago (edited)

Hi Greg,
Re-reading through your proposal, I stand by my comments here because when I referred to the fine points of dealing with bad actors and power balance, I was referring partially to the actual details of how bad actors would be removed in a balanced and transparent way. It's fine to set out a vision of transparency and fair play, but what will actually cause this to manifest in a tangible way? From what I can see, the traditional corporate model you describe here really depends on honesty from the board members and their reliability and not much else. When we look at the governmental and corporate world away from Steem, we see corruption and malfeasance at every turn and so from my perspective, any attempt to reuse such systems needs to address the fact that traditional organisational structures do little to ensure the performance that we know could be found here in a way that is optimal. We only need to look at the way that hard forks have been proposed and then adopted by top 20 witnesses in the past, which in then turned out that few had done any real testing of and that there was a kind of peer pressure to conform among them that resulted in huge centralisation - to see some of the problem here. If you study some of the biggest state sponsored crimes of human history, they generally tend to always involve a centralised and conforming power structure - so precisely defining the mechanism by which the community can prevent this from happening in realtime (as it happens) is needed here.
You wrote:

the Proposal is specific in noting a mechanism for removing bad actors, as you mention. In fact, one of the few proposals to address these issues.

Here are the lines in the proposal that relate to this:

Rules and procedures can be placed to allow board of directors to remove an executive committee member for non responsiveness to the community at large, or in the case of malfeasance.

The association may set guidelines for board member participation and removal in case of non participation, or malfeasance.

Rules and procedures will be put in place to allow removal of board members and executive committee members that are not responsive or are acting against the goals and mission of GROW-THE-CHAIN.

That's all fine, but you haven't specified how such rules would or could be designed and that is why 'the devil is in the details'. Any world dictator can create such rules too - that work purely to his/her advantage. We have here a challenge whereby power is distributed among a small group of people, none of whom want to lose their position and your proposal basically logically translates to: "they will figure out how to do that fairly and play nicely together" - I'm sure most people understand that this is not as straightforward as your proposal makes out.

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bluefinstudios 7 years ago

Understandable, and maybe here is where my participation in actually setting up foundations comes in to play. During the process of actual corporate bylaws, as every foundation must do to formally incorporate, we always write in clauses and the mechanism.

Essentially, in by-laws, the trigger usually is one of two ways to remove bad actors:

A petition from membership at large can request a vote for removal of board members, or:

A majority of board members can vote to remove another board member, or executive committee member.

As you mention, the devil is in the details
I assume in my head, that when setting bylaws, certain standard clauses will be added to corporate bylaws.

I will endeavor to be more specific, with such legal basics next time. my apologies, for not saying so.

And thanks for being patient, and commenting!

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ura-soul 7 years ago

Hi, thanks for responding.
My position on this is that basically, I don't trust the prevailing corporate mechanisms on this planet to deliver integrity - I have seen too many examples of them failing. So that's why I am interested in getting into the details so as to attempt to make something better. For me, the idea of 'asking for a vote' is not one that I see as effective... It seems like the same kind of situation we have with national governments where people 'beg and plead' to be listened to.. Even after 4 months of rioting in France, the 'people's government' TM are still sending in shock troops against the huge numbers of people involved, instead of engaging as mature adults.

To clarify: "A petition from membership at large can request a vote for removal of board members" - Does this mean that people who have paid to join the foundation can ask the board members to hold a vote to find out if the board are going to be sacked?

The design for the foundation is totally open and many people think totally differently to each other - so it is definitely helpful to spell out as much as possible. Cheers!

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bluefinstudios 7 years ago (edited)

And to clarify, the Petition of members, calls for a vote of Membership to remove A Board Member. The board is not involved in the petition, nor the vote. That would indeed be like asking the foxes to police the henhouse.

No, the people can call for a vote by all members, and remove board member, without approval of Board itself.

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bluefinstudios 7 years ago

Ahhh, well, to each his own.

That's the big difference between a Corporation, and a Non-Profit Foundation. the corporate structure of non-profits are much more member driven than For Profit Corporations. It's why I chose to work with them, over corporate.

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