Email, 14th Jan 2016
What happens if everyone decides to vote for a policy that is contrary to some of the higher principles you have. For example everyone registered decides to vote to [insert terrible actions here]?
Flux, like any democratic system, is able to be used for evil as well as good. What we focus on is the ability of Flux to correct mistakes, instead of pushing through the 'right' policy from day one (which we think is part of the problem with canonical democracy). Ultimately we always make room for the possibility that whatever is current policy is wrong, and this means sometimes we might exist in an intermediate place that isn't ideal. To answer your first question: the integrity of Flux is of the utmost importance, so we vote in such a way to maintain that always. Simply: if Flux maintains integrity it is still able to fix mistakes later on, but if we try to vote on personal morals (ignoring the direction of the Flux system) we destroy the integrity of Flux and thus can't use it to fix mistakes later on (or at least the ability is diminished), thus we err on the side of protecting Flux.
The Flux way of dealing with this problem is not to tackle it head on, but rather to incentivise the creation of new options. Some people might call this 'finding a middle ground' but this is misleading because it implies compromise and a mix of two policies. Rather the new options that can solve these sorts of issues are orthogonal to that middle ground. It's difficult to come up with examples because that would solve the problem in and of itself, though I'm sure there are good ideas out there which aren't being considered (and is one of the reasons we're creating Flux).
I want to assure you that if we thought Flux would be to the long term detriment of humanity we wouldn't be pursuing it.
Because of the sharing and swapping marketplace Flux creates (for political power), maintaining long term bad policy is very difficult and expensive[1]. Particularly, in a case where there are two clear sides determined to 'fight it out' each side can continuously introduce amendments and cause the other side to engage (lest legislation passes). [Aside: This is particularly a case where 100% of the parliament used Flux to keep it simpler.] This causes each side to focus their energy and resources on two paths: directly defend the status quo (or attempt to alter it, respectively), and submit amendments or new policy strategically. This sort of system produces an equilibrium that is unstable in the direction of better policy. This itself is a really fantastic feature, but isn't immediately obvious or easily explained (yet!).
If you don't mind long books: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch lays the framework for the explanation. The book is about a way of understanding knowledge and particularly the behaviour of knowledge (which might sound like an odd thing to say, but what I mean is it answers questions like "what do all good explanations have in common" and "what sort of conditions are necessary for progress").
I'm thinking of starting to make some videos where I just answer different questions. The one you've asked is probably the biggest one to answer, and might require an essay in itself.
Unfortunately I'm short on time at the moment, so I will have to leave the explanation somewhat incomplete, though I hope you can see the scaffolding.
Cheers, Max
Footnotes:
[1] Some definitions:
'bad' policy: formed without an explanation behind it, just an ideological position rather than explanation, arbitrary, etc
'expensive': in the Flux marketplace tokens exist to swap. When attempting to acquire a monopoly position in a vote it becomes asymptotically difficult due to demand and supply.