Cascadia is more of a state of mind. This idea was meant for everyone. If you live outside of the main Cascadian area, you are encouraged to connect with us anyway.

As it is, this platform is meant to split into different experimental groups to test out different variables. If you want to start something like this in your neighborhood, just talk to us!

This is an open source project, so everything will be available for free use and collaboration.

If you want this to happen faster, help us out! Please connect wtih us and see what you can do. As of now, it is pretty optimistic to say that a beta version could be launched by May 2019 with our team as small as it is currently.

In truth, there's no telling at this point how long it will take. Really, there needs to be a fleet of people involved to make it successful, and the outreach efforts have barely started yet. Check the progress bar in the news section if you want to know approximately how it's going.

Yes, in fact this is legal! Organizing under co-op rules, members can democractically decide how to conduct themselves. If any decision is made that clashes with the established law in the US or Canada, the action of breaking that law still applies to any individual member that breaks it, just like it normally would. YourCascadia does not condone breaking the law in any way, nor any sort of formal seccession, and will not implement ideas into the framework that would be illegal. At points of conflict, the disagreement between members and governments becomes a show of opinion, for the consideration of the powers that be.

Mob mentality is totally a thing, and historically a lot of people haven't been too knowledgable about specific topics. However, times are changing.

Now, we have all the information in the world at our fingertips. What's missing are tools to properly analyze beliefs in a logically comprehensive way.

In addition to providing the structure needed for critical thinking on all sides of an issue, YC will also give you the ability to attach your votes by proxy to any expert of your choice. Any issue or category of issues you don't care about or understand, leave to someone you know you can trust.

Loosely speaking, "we" are everyone who believes the world needs better tools for democracy, more responsible ways to shop, more money, and more power to effect positive changes in the world. I assume that includes you. I assume it includes almost everyone.

Strictly speaking, the "we" referenced throughout the site is current mostly "me" (Elliott). At least in terms of who is organizing the effort and writing all the words on this page. There are roughly 20 others who are actively involved so far in some way. It'd be really great if you and your buddies joined, cause then the "we" would truly be representative of "us."

It'll come from the same place as our current money: thin air. Actually, better than that. It'll be from a fixed pool of crypto-Tokens, verified scarce and immutable. The value is tied to the dollar, and remains stable through the power of demurrage, which acts as a counterinflationary measure by removing continuously calculated amounts from circulation via different methods.

For example, a community may decide to put a "half-life" on newly traded tokens, make occasional percentage cuts across everyone's token stash, or budget tokens to be taken back out of circulation.

Indeed, this class of platforms can facilitate a vast number of alternative systems, many of which could contain elements of social controls, bureaucracy, and other such horrors. I did say this can eventually become anything you can imagine, right? Already in China's new social credit system, there are some scary things like your travel or finances being restricted depending on your social score. Everything including your social media posts, time spent playing video games, and friends you associate with can affect this score.

We can do much better here to ensure no one's rights get trampled upon. This system has the major advantage of being run by direct democracy. So before or during any glimmers of dystopia showing up in a community, we can all quickly shut that noise down.

Through the magic of blockchain! We can make sure that everyone's votes and transactions are accurate, without necessarily exposing their personal information if they don't want to. Everything is cryptographically broken into chunks, which are distributed throughout the network and checked for consistency between devices. This is how we can ensure the data cannot be manipulated or hacked, while still allowing for total anonymity.

So in practice, everyone will have full access to see all transactions and votes, but not necessarily who is involved by name and personal details. Of course, people will be able to volunteer this information to whomever they please.