Flux: Australia's New Political Party for 'Permissionless Innovation'

There’s a new group from Australia that calls itself a “Governance 2.0” created by two Bitcoin consultants from the region. The group is called Flux, and they are looking to make a statement during the 2016 election cycle with what they call an “Upgrade Democracy.” Flux will use a “vote token” that will be traded between citizens and party members making the political system more transparent.

Also read: South Korea’s Korbit Introduces ‘Aggregator for Cross-Border Payouts’

Flux: Permissionless Governance

The new party was founded by Max Kaye and Nathan Spataro and currently boasts 550 validated members and close to a 1,000 registered members. Spataro is the founder of CoinReport and Kaye is a software developer and blockchain consultant. Both are passionate about changing the current political paradigm and believe technology can handle it the best. The Flux websites explains their goal:

Flux, as a system, is a way to cooperate with fellow voters and distribute power in order to increase the amount of good legislation passed, and make passing bad legislation very expensive and difficult. The focus of Flux is not to be absolutely proportional, or give all voters an equal say on everything. Rather, Flux aims to solve particular problems by enabling those who are particularly well suited to solve that problem.

Flux says they are a group of motivated Australians who believe in democracy and technological solutions particularly “permissionless innovation.” They say they don’t agree with most of the political parties in the country like the ALP, Greens, and LNP. The current system is entirely inadequate, and they want to disrupt the status quo. “We do not believe the current system of governance is adequate for today’s world, and we are determined to do something about it,” the party states. The group is dedicated to raising living standards, provide employment, lower crime, and solve social policy. In contrast to what most people believe a democracy is where the majority is the ruler, Flux states:

We must have policy backed by the best explanations, not the most voices.

According to Flux, the Governance 2.0 concept is fully transparent as the group has no control over the voting system. Moreover, membership is free to all, and the group may be looking to integrate digital currency in the future for funding purposes.

“Yes. Membership is free forever,” explains Flux. “We don’t believe charging a membership fee is necessary, and are working on other methods of funding to ensure we can provide open access to democracy to as many people as possible.”

The votes will be run on a distributed public ledger that the public can verify at all times. Flux hopes to be registered as a federal party by April and will also have collaboration with other rival parties within its system. The group will participate in some traditional practices of getting elected in the region, which includes Glenn Druery’s minor party alliance. Druery believes many of the participants could be successful in the 2016 elections including Flux, but says:

They have certainly brought a refreshingly radical approach to the minor party scene, but they may have to look at some old school ways if they want to first get elected.

The concepts the group is trying are not new, and there are other parties with similar ethical standards and political beliefs. For example, Sweden’s Pirate Party is a group that would also like to disrupt the current game and use technology as a tool to do so. As more and more citizens of the world are increasingly questioning the political system, novel ideas like cryptographical assurance may replace the representative models of the past. We know humans are fallible and relying on mathematical probability over trust coupled with the possibility of human error is starting to look like the pragmatic solution.

What do you think about the Flux party? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of the Flux website, and Pixbay