The idea of having to find something to "bow down to" seems dystopic and oppressive to me. It leaves a bad aftertaste. Since I don't follow rules unconditionally anyway, I like to think of the goal as creating the tools for self-regulation. I've been reading a lot about statistical incentives and think something could come from there that would trump centralised authorities.

The idea behind statistical incentives is that there are behaviours (I mean this psychologically) that can be encouraged through active and passive measures (examples I took from a quick google: 1 & 2). These techniques are already being used every day by companies, urbanisation planners, AI developers from Facebook, Youtube, etc.; I'm sure you've read about this already. You will also find that people have different attitudes after certain events.

Look then at Steem where downvote pools were made available, and certain blockchain changes were made (the 50/50 that you mentioned) that created enormous change in people's activities. These are small code alterations that can be said to have practically changed the life experience of thousands of people. It wasn't a total success but we're just starting.

Imagine planning the internet the way architects plan urbanisation. Just as Steem had goals that were easily met with code, and it massively changed community interaction, other tools such as Steem can be created that have goals, something interesting to pull users, and structures that encourage specific behaviours quantitatively.

I think there's something beautiful to encouraging both critical thinking and positive behaviour in parallel. When there's a choice between ideological imposition and structural incentive, I see no reason to go for the former. For me, it's the same as Catholicism did to me when I was young. There were two things I could have been told:

• If you act like a jerk, people will dislike you, so act according to social rules and you will be rewarded with things you will like from others, such as kindness, generosity and happiness.
• Things like lying, stealing, killing, being jealous, etc., are bad because God said so, so you must bow down, feel ashamed because you are tainted by the original sin, or you will go to hell. If you follow God's rules, you will be a good human, and you must strive toward this or you will be forever incomplete.

I was pressured for most of my youth to join this homogenous idea both in mind and body. I was mentally tortured by the idea of either belonging or being a failure. Once I broke from my belief of God, I rejected many ideas of morality, all of those things I did only to please Him. I was never taught the value of morality, only that I had to bow down to it or I would be incomplete and lose God's approval. It took me years of being a violent mess, of believing in the remnants that Christianity left in me, of defending justice by insulting and mocking people, because I somehow felt superior. The absoluteness of morality was the most harmful thing to my conduct, to the point where I missed many, many opportunities in life, and lost many things that I valued.

It was only when I gained the ability to critically evaluate ideas that I understood that "morality" as a handbook for behaviour in specific communities has enormous value, not due to "humaneness" or "completeness" but because it's a tool to have fulfilling human relations. I feel cheated and am disillusioned by my community's efforts to lead me astray from my own desires. I still follow many general moral rules, and I don't do much that may make people unhappy because I feel good when I do it. So while I say that I am amoral, I act morally in general, and I consider myself to be a much more apt member of society than when I was pushed inexorably down by the endless lies, shame and misconceptions.

I guess my point is that if we can avoid creating a lie-and-imposition system to accomplish the goal of general prosperity, then there is little reason to still go for it. Especially when that time could very well be dedicated to doing the opposite and promoting education about individual choices, and the creation of behavioural encouragement systems that move communities toward prosperous attitudes without removing the person from the equation.

edit: I should also mention that since there are plenty of different moral systems, imposing one or another would be like playing crusader or jihadi. If we want to create a prosperous system while allowing all beautiful cultures to stay alive without changing everything that makes them unique (relevant article I wrote), then the solution, more than central morality, is well-researched goal-oriented encouragements for focalized environments (worldwide lens allowed).