Decentralization, Social Evolution and New Organisational Models for Firms, DAOs and Countries

Podcast Ep. 31 with Max Borders

Key Insights

• Interview with Max Borders, Executive Director at Social Evolution, a non-profit organization dedicated to solving social problems through innovation.

• Borders views existing institutions as increasingly ossifying due to their monopolistic nature coupled with high switching costs. This system is holding back humans from technological and spiritual progress.

• The concept of holacracy, and how alternative forms of governance such as DAOs (digital autonomous organizations) provide a useful avenue for experimentation.

Episode Description

Max Borders is an author and public intellectual. He wrote books like "The Social Singularity" and "After Collapse". He is also Executive Director at Social Evolution, a non-profit organization dedicated to solving social problems through innovation.

We start the conversation by discussing competitive governance and using "exit" to improve existing institutions. Max views existing institutions as increasingly ossifying due to their monopolistic nature coupled with high switching costs.

This democratic operating system (“DOS”) is holding back humans from technological and spiritual progress. For example, the "welfare-warfare" state has increasingly replaced mutual aid organizations and outsourced community care.

We further talk about how both centralizing and decentralizing pressures influence how large organizations become (Ronald Coase's "theory of the firm"), the concept of holacracy, and how alternative forms of governance such as DAOs (digital autonomous organizations) provide a useful avenue for experimentation.

Towards the end, Max talks about his new project of a "Shadow Constitution" that's taking the work of Balaji Srinivasan's "The Network State" further.

Max plans to provide the "ought" to Balaji's "is".

What I liked about this conversation was that we got deeper into talking about organizational innovation.

As humans, we need to collaborate in larger groups - the question is what are the best mechanisms to cooperate, and how do we make collective decisions?

I’ve hired 50+ people in my career and led teams - it’s very hard to coordinate even small groups of 5 people effectively.

It’s fascinating for me to think about how structures that can coordinate millions of people can be coordinated.

There is a lot to learn and a lot of value to unlock by experimentation in firm governance, e.g. through prediction markets, DAOs and holacracy.

Enjoy the conversation!

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