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You may be vaguely aware of how the voting system in Steem works, your vote power is calculated against your Steem Power, and functions more or less exactly the same as Cumulative Voting. Here is a link to the Investopedia's explanation of this variant of democracy:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cumulativevoting.asp

Now, there is a slight difference in this. The votes in corporate elections take place in order to select representatives, in the form of Board Members. As it stands right now, we have a similar procedure in the selection of Witnesses, who are essentially Steem Inc Corporate Board members. They participate in an internal election every time there is a hardfork, and whether they adopt the new version or not acts as an election upon how the Steem blockchain operates, in other words, they are like our Congresscritters.

Except they are not elected for a term, their position in the top 19 has changed dramatically since the inception of the network. If wanted changes are not integrated by them, and problems remain unresolved, every user has a stake weighted share of the power to drive out the witnesses who are not doing what is best for all of us.

This is essentially much the same as voting on new bills, as the changes in the code that operates witnesses controls the rules of Steem, much the same as congress votes on bills that alter the redistribution of funds and determines what is legal and what is not. The witnesses are basically The Code, in a literal sense. They replace the function of administrative bureaucracies.

Steem elections are completely transparent. No secret ballot.

We can all see how each other votes in Steem. This makes us accountable. This is also important in other respects as well, such as the collusions that can occur between people to favour votes for a user's posts, which is also why there is the serious concerns amongst some sections of the community about sock puppets and plagiarised and fraudulent profiles.

Because it is visible to everyone, the relationships between user accounts can also be seen, such as transfers of liquid assets between them.

If a government was run on the same principles, it would be a very very different picture for how political action takes place.

There is at times quite heated discussions about downvoting, aka Flagging, and some propose this as a means to defend against trolling behaviour and other antisocial behaviours in the community. I personally think that these are counterproductive measures.

When it comes down to it, the system is completely equitable. The pool of non-liquid assets, Steem Power, is a measure of investment as well as the building of reputation. Sure, there may be some degree to which the pool of rewards is misallocated towards collusive players as described above, but this behaviour is relatively uncommon anyway, and compared to the total pool of assets and the distribution of rewards, it is only a tiny fraction and it is unlikely that it could ever build up to become a significant factor affecting the majority of rewards, or the voting towards witnesses.

Essentially, Steem's architecture is a model of a government system.

It is somewhat more complex in a government system, as there is more things to concern it as to the various kinds of activities it regulates. But it's not hard to see how as it evolves, there can be ways to further develop it towards this end. The concerns about gaming the voting system, for example, could be solved with another council of voted members who are in charge of making judgments about this behavior, based on some kind of a 'ticket' system when concerned users, much like a Docket in a court system.

An idea for a Steem Judicial Council

The complaint could be raised, there would be a notification to the accused who have the right to make counter-arguments, and then the group of elected Judges would then at a certain point be required to vote (and punished if they do not vote within the allotted time window), and then there would be a decision within the Judicial Council as to what the appropriate punishment should be, which would nominally be the revocation of the payments they fraudulently acquired, which would return to the pool, and other measures like blocking their voting power for a period of time in order to mitigate the harm they cause in the future.

Eventually, a system like Steem could become a government

It is just a matter of implementing the systems to do the administration, and creating the roles for the humans who take part in the leadership of these parts of the system.

In fact, some ways down the track, Steem could become recognised as an independent nation, and issue identity documents, it could form the basis of a transparent, equitable social insurance system, it could run a court system, and it could form a framework within it for independent parts of the operation that trade in the marketplace in any and all kinds of activities.

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We can't stop here! This is Whale country!

Loki was born in Australia, now lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. IT generalist, physics theorist, futurist and cyber-agorist. Loki's life mission is to establish a secure, distributed layer atop the internet, and enable space migration.

I'm a thoughtocaster, a conundrummer in a band called Life Puzzler. I've flipped more lids than a monkey in a soup kitchen, of the mind. - Xavier, Renegade Angel

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All images in the above post are either original from me, or taken from Google Image Search, filtered for the right of reuse and modification, and either hotlinked directly, or altered by me

I was inspired to write this after reading this post: @mindhunter/karl-marx-chasing-yesterdays-in-a-modern-world

I am quite tired of hearing still over 100 years later so much fan-mail for Karl Marx because his ideas are so antiquated, and while he has his points, he does not deserve the reverence so many still hold for him - because most of the people don't realise they are justifying feelings of envy. Besides, complaining without making any effort to provide or support those formulating solutions is just whining.

The ideas above are related to a growing understanding I have for how a distributed network system can eliminate bureaucracy, enable a fluid population of representatives, enable various kinds of complex insurance systems (like taxation, but with much more control over its distribution), provide a marketplace and accounting system, and even, as I have described, a legal system. And even, protecting privacy, which is another feature I have been agitating for and conceiving a model for enabling this.

It's a State, Jim, but not as we know it...