The idea's been percolating for a while - one of the major facets of blockchain technology is that it can be used to effect many kinds of transactions, where traditional finance is just the simplest one to conceive of. Simultaneously there's been a thread of philosophy arising from various sources(Singularity writers, cypherpunks, Anonymous) that advocates new governance forms that fully exploit digital technology.<p>My favorite book on this is Binding Chaos [0] - most of the material in it clarifies problems with existing governance structures and their inevitable tendency towards power inequality. The remainder suggests that a better system would contain two major concepts: stigmergy - essentially, "space-making" instead of our existing "leadership" model, where environmental changes can automatically direct the next action of the group - and epistemic user groups: Communities that are focused on a particular form of expert knowledge and its study.<p>We already have some models for this in open source projects, Wikipedia, etc. but the book is light on specific implementation ideas. What is really needed is software innovations on these concepts, and blockchain hacking is one way to go about it.<p>[0] <a href="https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/binding-chaos/" rel="nofollow">https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/binding-chaos/</a><p>edit: forgot this isn't reddit