Few thoughts on this:
-
I’m categorically against any sort of ‘retro delegate rewards’ on a delegate-by-delegate basis. This will just lead to more I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine type dynamics between delegates and whoever decides the rewards. It creates a simp economy and can even distort the way people vote.
-
Just rewarding being a delegate is also bad–it’s like a participation trophy. Also, it could lead delegates to govern in a way that entrenches their ‘salaries’. Rather, the program should aim to reward being a high-quality delegate, which basically means a track record of ‘voting correctly,’ in some sense.
-
One possible way to go is a weaker futarchy style…basically reward those who vote for the ‘winning side’. This however doesn’t work unless voting is blind (commit/reveal)–otherwise it will just cause flocking behavior. And we don’t currently have blind voting.
-
Another idea would be to do retro style rewards, but based on retroactive rating of proposals rather than individual delegates. An existing or new BORG/council could rate each proposal after each governance ‘season’ (with ratings spaced out enough to allow time to show how the proposals played out) and basically just reward each delegate that voted ‘the right way’ in retrospect. So if you voted yes on a proposal that was approved and that proposal still looks good some time later, you get a reward, if you voted no on a proposal that was approved and that proposal later looks like a disaster, you get a reward. And so on. This avoids simping and grifting dynamics because it treats all delegates who voted a particular way on a particular proposal the same as each other.
Another point is that delegates should be completely disqualified from having influence over delegate rewards, beyond establishing the program in itself. i.e. if there is such a BORG/committee as described in #4, no delegates should serve on it.
Later Edit: another thing I’d be interested in, with any delegate reward scheme, is finding a way to disproportionately reward self-delegation. This may sound paradoxical, but I truly believe those with the most skin in the game will make the best decisions.