Can DAOs codify complex social structures / behaviors in an increasingly complex world?

Human nature is very hard to codify via code.

I’ve been trying to process these new emerging forms of labor, community/collective organizing, and economic/social/political structures.

I’ve been listening to Molly White, a software engineer and Wikipedia editor, on the critiques of Web3 and crypto. It’s made me really re-assess even my own philosophies.

(How a Wikipedia editor became one of the loudest Web3 skeptics)

DAOs are a very emerging social/labor structure that attempts to use smart contracts/protocols to automate/decouple complex human governance and organizational design challenges in order to accomplish economic/political/social goals.

But man, human nature is very complex.

Especially once you have monetary incentives involved. Tokens. If everybody becomes a shareholder, all of the sudden, you start to run into the same problems you see in the real world.

Political lobbying. People buying off tokens. Class anxiety. Social currency and status signaling. People who are looking for a quick payoff, especially if one can liquidate their assets faster than an IPO.

The intent of Web3 is great.

The actual execution is messy, because monetary incentives open up a whole can of worms that create very polarizing dynamics that smart protocols can’t 100% address.

I’ve been spending less time on craft, and more about thinking about organizational design & human behavior.

We’ve now hit a threshold in human development where DAOs, web3, crypto, VR/AR are introducing human dynamics that we have to address.