Public blockchains have way more transparency than existing systems. Please provide an example of an existing democracy you consider to be more transparent, i.e. every single action that is made is public.

Transparency is a part of accountability, but accountability is not transparency.

Let's say, hypothetically, that voting for the president was done on a public blockchain, that anyone can audit, and there were cryptographic guarantees that the people voting are who they say they are. Does that not make that voting system more accountable? In this case I think transparency does lead to accountability.

You don't need a blockchain to do that, and there's a reason voting records for individuals are not made public. It's to protect against coercion, among other things.

Each individual can have a unique identifier that is not linked to their identity. It could be a public key that they generate from their private key. We'd have to figure out the details of how that would work exactly, i.e. making sure people cannot vote twice, but that's possible to figure out.

I don't think there's any way to do this without giving trust to some central entity without a public blockchain. The public blockchain does become the source of trust, but you need a resource (like energy), that is finite, to secure that network.

However, going back to your original comment, you said we are assuming a zero carbon footprint, so that would assume some future where this trust could be put on a network in a way that would be environmentally sustainable. All I'm saying is that there are more possibilities to this technology than I think you are acknowledging.

> Each individual can have a unique identifier that is not linked to their identity.

If that idenifier is unlinked to their identity, how do they cryptographically prove their identity when voting? How do you audit voter rolls?

This is a red herring anyway since I was specifically talking about cryptocurrency. In a purely decentralized cryptocurrency economy, taxation becomes impossible. You can't prevent pseudonymous economic transactions and the existence of privacy orriented cryptocurrenciesean that transactions can always route through that layer to turn that pseudonymity into anonymity.

The entire current use case for cryptocurrencies is literally evading the rule of law (and speculation.)

I have sympathies with anarchic ideals and issues with democratic processes, but please don't try to pass one off as the other.

> We'd have to figure out the details of how that would work exactly

Good luck with that.

Hmm... They are anarchic in theory but in practice there's a strong hierarchy - few rich guys control the majority of coins.

Democracy is primarily about representation and individual freedom. "Rule of law" is one of the main selling points of authoritarian ideologies. Are you sure you didn't drop a minus sign somewhere?

Authoritarian regimes don't have "rule of law".

The entire point is that all institutions in an Authoritarian country are under the control of the authoritarian leader/party.

If the judicial system has independent power and can hold the rulers accountable when the violate the law, it isn't an authoritarian regime.

This is precisely why the US has a system of checks and balances and why the judicial system is an important part of that.

I prefer laws over guns.

Laws are enforced with guns.

Except in crypto.