Kant offers us a theory of enlightenment to understand why we should be able to think freely in society. This theory has supported various innovations throughout society and will continue to explain why humanity is enlightening itself further. In this paper, I will argue that the advancement of blockchain technology is also an advancement of Kant’s theory of enlightenment, by providing people with more incentives to vote and potential politicians with more tools disseminate their views. As blockchain technology empowers both parties, society will become more just. Through reflection on Kantian enlightenment, I will attempt to provide a specific argument for why blockchain eliminates voting bias, and why this will allow for more freedom, which will ultimately grant equality and social justice.
I. Theory of Enlightenment and Voting
Kant argues that a man is enlightened when he can use his knowledge to determine his actions without assistance. During Kant’s time, he perceived many to be unenlightened because guardians or authorities would assist them. Therefore, most individuals would be immature because they primarily relied on others to formulate their thoughts. Kant used the word “immaturity” to describe those who were inclined towards “laziness and cowardice” (Kant 1). He believed that the majority were like this because it was easier to delegate the tasks that required a particular type of skill and logic than to acquire the skills needed for the tasks. This invisible force that had led people to delegate tasks was ultimately the laws and economics governing society’s interactions. Kant specifically blames the “autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression” which has exploited the public and caused them to remain immature (ibid.). This “power-grabbing oppression” mainly existed because people were easily susceptible to pay others to do their work. Kant considered those who invited this oppression as “cowardly” and enslaved intellectually by authorities (ibid.). On the contrary, those who questioned the oppression and scrutinized why the authorities needed such powers were considered “enlightened” (Kant 2). Kant reasons that these people would test their opinions by validating them with others, who would decide the accuracy of such ideas. Through this process, humanity would improve as a whole and become more enlightened because each member of society would understand an existing viewpoint from the previous viewpoint or viewpoints, which were backed with arguments. This ledger-based concept of validating a current viewpoint using previous viewpoints, which were proved inaccurate by using reason and logic, was the essence of the Kantian message.
The lack of reasoning from the public that Kant describes can be seen throughout many facets of life, one of which is the lack of political participation within the United States. This lack of political participation represents a failure of Kantian enlightenment because by delegating the task to others, man would be intellectually enslaved. In order to become enlightened, man would need to think for himself, without the help of others. One way of demonstrating this ability was by voting. Despite the Kantian view, many still do not vote. The reasons why voting may be unpopular vary from person to person. For instance, some may believe that their vote is insignificant in the sea of votes. Others might argue that “political activity represents only one way among many of pursuing the common good,” so there is no reason for why voting should be an emphasized activity (LaBarge 2). Not to mention that when people do vote, they often vote with knowledge from biased sources, elect candidates who might eventually lose to opponents with greater ties to special interests, or face external problems such as voter fraud. These are only some of the major external issues that voters face when navigating through such an arduous process. Furthermore, there are also a multitude of issues for candidates who desire to represent the public. These issues include the costs of campaigns, prerequisite internal partisan connections, and other bottlenecks, which reduce the number of candidates that voters can choose from. Because of these barriers, potential candidates are unable to introduce their ideas for how best to govern the state even if they wished to, while candidates who are considered more experienced or popular largely dominate the political arena. The aggregation of all these problems that currently exist throughout the system largely disincentivizes voters. Hence, the immense wealth of disincentives creates a voting system that discourages the act of voting and prevents new ideas from reaching the public. In Kant’s perspective, these disincentives merely contribute to people’s ignorance in voting.
I would agree with these views, and I would even elaborate further on them from an analytical perspective. Like many who were born in America, I believe that there are various commitments that need to be made when voting for society’s wellbeing. Although some individuals are able to maintain these commitments when voting, I am not able to do so for a variety of reasons. The first commitment I am unable to preserve is perhaps the time commitment in gathering insightful and unbiased information about candidates, which usually is a difficult process given the volume of information scattered among various media. Examples of such media that are integrated within American culture are the television and the internet, which rarely contain unbiased information. The scarcity of truth from these common sources, which are easily accessible, further complicates my making decisions on any political issue. For example, popular televised political channels might include CNN or Fox News. While both networks have similar infrastructures, they have reporters who have fundamentally different views. Their political reports reflect this dialectical relationship by constantly contradicting one another. When one network has a certain opinion, the other almost always acts as the opposed counterpart. You rarely see ideas from Fox News and CNN in agreement, which is a strenuous problem for those who desire to take a stance on any one issue. Furthermore, sometimes a news network may purposefully lie, exaggerate, or manipulate, solely to present the opposing view and attack the other. This deception adds to the clutter of biased information provided to the public. As a result, if one desires to validate a report from the media about a political cause, they must spend more time to cross-examine on top of what they have already spent listening to or watching the media, which adds on to the long list of economic costs for voting.
Even when I vote for a candidate with knowledge from the mainstream media, there are still various issues. The first is that I will still face the possibility of voting for the wrong candidate. This possibility of incorrectness would not only adversely affect the common good, but also affect me morally. Hence, I would instead remain silent than negatively impact the country. Secondly, if I have spent the time researching a particular candidate, but he or she is eliminated from further participation, the time and effort I have spent will have been in vain. On the contrary, instead of researching political candidates, I could have spent time making an impact for the greater good directly. Furthermore, if this candidate is eliminated and I still am inclined to vote, there may not be an available candidate left who is prioritizing the common good; instead, they might be pushing alternative agendas, either cynically or otherwise. Because of these issues, I delegate this enormous task to other citizens and those who represent me, who I hope are more informed than me. In this regard, I am the type of person that Kant would consider “lazy”. Those who don’t believe in this view will obviously vote either knowing that their opinion may be biased or unaware that their opinion may be subjugated by invisible forces. Therefore, because these factors cause the public to vote inappropriately or simply not to vote, the voting system is only one facet of the various government systems that has been corrupted with inefficiencies.
There is a solution, which if implemented, that will improve not only the problems surrounding voting, but also other controversial issues throughout society as well. The technology that I believe will benefit society is blockchain technology, which if implemented within the government’s voting system will improve the security, transparency, and accountability of the government. These three benefits will allow society to be more enlightened, less “lazy,” and more incentivized to participate within the political realm.
II. Introduction of Blockchain Technology
However, before I elaborate upon how blockchain can benefit the voting system, I will provide an analogy to simplify the technicalities of blockchain. During this simplification, I will assume that only my classmates will read this and that you all have used Google Docs for various classes in the past or are currently using it. If you have not used Google Docs, it is a technology that allows those who have a network-connected computer to produce a document cooperatively or individually.
The first step when two parties decide to use Google Docs is to assign one person to be the administrator, who has full control of the document’s settings. The administrator’s role is similar to that of the blockchain developer’s, who creates the initial framework for the blockchain. Unlike Google Docs, when the blockchain is released to the public, the initial developer is unable to modify its contents. If the administrator were using Google Docs, given this analogy of blockchain, he would be unable to change the words, sentences, or paragraphs after programming the document’s settings. This would be antithetical to Google Docs’ purpose, which is for the administrator or creator to write a new document. Hence, while a group of developers or a developer creates the blockchain, similarly to how the administrator creates the document, the developer should not be able to edit the contents of the blockchain after its release. This lack of central editing authority is the first property of blockchain.
The second step when creating the document is for the administrator to set specific settings such as who has access to the document and whether they can view, edit, or view and edit. The document’s access setting can be simplified into two choices: public or private. A private Google Docs is similar to a private blockchain, and a public Google Docs is similar to a public blockchain. If the Google Docs is set to private, only you can access it. Similarly, if a blockchain is private, only a restricted number of people with certain credentials can access it. However, a difference between the private Google Docs and the private blockchain is that current participants in the private blockchain may grant access to certain individuals in the public by an election-like process. By contrast, if the Google Docs is set to public, anyone can view and download a copy of it. Similarly, the public can view a public blockchain’s contents without permission and download a copy of it. Hence, the private and public customizable aspects satisfy the second property of blockchain.
Furthermore, when participants desire to view specific changes within a public document, they can do so by checking the revision history. Similarly, when the public desires to check previous changes in the blockchain, they can do so by looking at previous blocks. One key aspect of the revision history ledger (attached to every Google Docs) is that it cannot be changed because its data is stored within Google’s servers. Google guarantees the immutability of its data because its employees guard Google’s servers continually. Infiltrating their servers would be extremely costly and almost infeasible. This type of security is known as centralization, in which one party guarantees the security of the ledger; in this case, it is Google. On the contrary, blockchain guarantees the security of its data using cryptography, integrated within each block and transaction. This feature secures the immutability of previous content while also allowing the public to reach a consensus on whether the current content is valid. If after a certain number of participants deem the content to be accurate, the content will be added to blockchain’s ledger. This ability to reach a consensus in a democratic-like manner allows for properties such as transparency and efficiency to exist when recording content.
III. Voting Using Blockchain
My proposal in using blockchain to alleviate the inefficiencies of the voting system may not be the final solution nor the best solution. However, I believe that by utilizing such technology, society will be taking the first step towards forming a more perfect nation that attempts to advance itself by being more enlightened instead of stagnating. Hence, this proposal might not resolve all the reasons why people refuse to vote. Instead, it attempts to establish a foundation that may allow for more technological developments with blockchain to improve voting rates in the future.
In order to remove the disincentives that prevent people from voting (discussed in part two) and to achieve Kantian enlightenment using blockchain, wholesome changes need to be made within the current voting system. These changes include providing people with easily accessible digital content that comes from a trusted course, providing a simple and cost-efficient way to vote, and guaranteeing the correct results of an election. Blockchain can be the foundation to guarantee the transparency and the efficiency of some of these aspects, but not all of them. Other technologies will need to be built along with blockchain, such as machine learning, to validate the information or content within the blockchain. This validation process, combined with the security from blockchain, would allow the public to make decisions based on trusted sources with accurate information. Information not considered to be trustworthy would be filtered and eliminated by the blockchain-based system. Such information may include Facebook posts, which might manipulate public opinion in a bad manner. These posts would be identified using the public blockchain’s setting, which mathematically rates these posts based on factors such as the author’s reputation, the public’s opinion, and the platform’s history as an accurate source for information. For instance, the blockchain would assign a rating to the author’s reputation based on his or her previous posts and credentials. A political candidate who posts a personal opinion would be ranked higher than someone anonymous on Facebook who posts about the political candidate’s viewpoint. Other factors will also need to be considered to provide the public with unbiased and accurate information. These factors will be included within the rating by using other technologies. When the government can combine blockchain with these other technologies, issues such as voting based on biased information and needing to scout vast resources to find truthful and accurate information will be eliminated. The disincentives described will be removed, and voting rates will increase because legitimate information will be made more accessible. Although this may not radically change the behavior of ordinary voters, it will lessen the issues that they may face when they do vote. Hence, when these issues and barriers are eliminated, the Kantian enlightenment may be one step closer to being realized.
Another significant barrier that disincentives voters and prevents the Kantian enlightenment from being realized is the inefficiencies of our centralized government. One such inefficiency is the requirement for individuals to enter a polling place should they wish to vote. This requirement comes with a financial cost and a time cost that disincentives and prevents people from becoming more enlightened. Blockchain can resolve this by using its property of cryptography to allow anyone to vote, using any device connected to its network, securely and efficiently. Unlike voting using the internet, which hackers can potentially tamper with, blockchain voting involves many participants that store votes from others along with their own by using this network. Should a hacker desire to change a vote, they would need to tamper with multiple ledgers throughout the network to reverse the decision of that one vote. This tampering is extremely difficult and extremely costly for a hacker. Hence, by securely using the blockchain network to provide a more convenient way for voters, people are more likely to exercise their reason and become more enlightened.
Society can be enlightened by removing many other disincentives using blockchain’s decentralization. The decentralized system would allow people to become more enlightened throughout the long-term by creating a pure democracy with more incentives for people to participate in other aspects of politics besides voting for representatives. This long-term goal includes enabling people to participate in political affairs such as acting as judges during important country decisions, deciding on legislation, and other essential matters. When people are willing to participate in these areas, the Kantian enlightenment will be realized to its full extent. However, I will not elaborate upon this any further because I am not a clairvoyant and I don’t intend on transforming this doctrine into a book. However, I will emphasize the importance of needing radical reforms on our current political system if we ever want people to become more enlightened and less cynical. Blockchain is one of them.
Works Cited
Kant, Immanuel. What is Enlightenment. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992.
LaBarge, Scott. Why We Should Vote. Santa Clara, 2016.
Bridges 