Fairness and Justice in Tokenholder DAOs

After a week of being involved in the @Polkadot drama, as well as all I have learned in the past few months of being a Head Ambassador as well as weighing issues as a Decentralized Voice, I think the issue is much deeper than just about how the HA team works together.

What is happening is a symptom of a larger issues of fairness, justice, self-governance and identity as a community and DAO in Polkadot.

It's the result of living in a plutocratic system, where token weight is decision-making weight.

It's the result of living in a system where good deeds may not be recognized because of the current whims of the system (large token-holders) or "politics."

It's the result of living in a system where is not a balance between consequentialism and deontology. On both big and small scales, does the ends justify the means? Or do we reward good behavior, intent, and actions? OpenGov as it is today not set up to answer these questions. These are the messy undefined parts of the social layer above the chain.

How do resources get distributed in a fair way? What happens when one or a few individuals have enough power to sway the vote? And when those resources are depleted via external forces (market) as well as divisive spending, this is a big powder keg.

What happens when ecosystem agents (not just HAs but many others) are devoting significant portions of their work lives to solving the biggest problems in Polkadot today but they are unappreciated, not compensated and overlooked? While others get large sums of money from the treasury? When being good at politics wins out over being good at contributing?

In a system where there is no independent justice system that provides a reinforcement of fairness, then the only thing to for a citizenry that feels aggrieved to do is to institute vigilantism. Sometimes this is needed in society - we see examples all around us in today's world. But it's a temporary solution for an eventually productive society - we have to recognize the downside, which is things may go too far or innocent people may get injured along the way.

Perhaps it started before, but I think we can trace the start to the advent of OpenGov, which happened just over one year ago (around mid 2023 I think). This was when a $300M treasury was put in the hands of the "community." But there are multiple definitions of community.

Is the community tokenholders? Who have a voice based on token weight? Or is the community stakeholders, who may be contributing a lot to the future value and impact of the network but may not be financially rich today?

Is Polkadot meant to protect the world from a potential "future" crisis where individual freedoms are trampled on? Or does it need to have an impact today and solve more "mundane" problems that generate an ROI for today's corporations and society and lead to current adoption?

Can we as a community have some alignment (in a decentralized way) on how to move forward?

The solution shouldn't come from any particular group, e.g. elected leaders, self-appointed leaders, technical leaders. We can and should behave better of course. It needs come from the community, because ultimately it needs to be embraced by the community to move to the next step.

Communication is the key that enables us to get to a solution. We need to bring the real questions, concerns and objections to the surface to move forward together. The issues that are driving behavior under the surface need to come to the surface in order for us to take the next step in strengthening ourselves as a DAO.

Community norms/rules/interactions → What do we want to achieve → What is the strategy → LFG

I believe we can upgrade ourselves from this experience. We can do this while maintaining decentralization and resilience.

p.s. Thank you to leaders from the technical side like @shawntabrizi, @bkchr, @wirednkod and @TienNguyenK (and more) for keeping sense and meritocracy in the picture. We need these voices more.