This is what I imagine will happen in a few years time. It’s a logical extrapolation of several of the current trends in technology and politics with the nexus of these two centering upon the decentralized blockchains of the cryptocurrency world. While decentralization technology has given us the answer, authority still has not grasped the question. This is because it’s human nature to try to assert control.
Every few years the “Global” number keeps climbing. I remember when it was the G7, then G8, now we’re up to G20. This is centralization at work. A few at the very top, finagling a means to extract as much as they can from their populations through coercive cooperation while labeling it “diplomacy”.
It’s not reasonable to expect that authority will not continue to try to assert control. Their ability to do so is seriously undermined with decentralized technology, but they can continue to work on the ignorance of the people in order to trick everyone into believing that they need to be in control “for your own good”. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. One of the tools at their disposal is using the media to propagate fear…
Terrorism is a Byproduct of Authority
(created in Fireworks using Coca-Cola font)
The elephant in the room here is the extremely small risk. School shootings and bombings get classifications that lead to the Hegelian dialectic (problem, reaction, solution), so that there’s this knee jerk reaction to do exactly what powerful individuals wearing a government badge want.
The reality is that the risk of dying from a school shooting is many orders of magnitude less than dying in a car accident. So why isn’t there a call to ban all cars? Obviously the real reason isn't about preventing the loss of life. Think this through and take all the time you like…
We might ask what the definition of terrorism is (from Miriam Webster dictionary)…
Definition of terrorism - the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.
So I checked out the definition of terror...
To simplify, I would say that it is the use of fear or intimidation to get a particular political result. Authority wants you to grant an exemption to its use of fear and intimidation while appearing to be against violence, then the terrorist is so labeled as being in favor of violence.
Does this distinction really matter? IMO, no it doesn't, because if you fail to bow to the threats of a so called "legitimate state", that gun pointed at your head will still fire. We see this happening on an escalating scale with police brutality. In fact, one is 8 times more likely to be killed by a cop, than by a terrorist in the USA.
Current Authority Structures are Failing to Keep Pace
This technology is like the Road Runner and the government is like Wiley... always far behind. Eventually there will be blowback. Soon, lawyers will have to know programming on the blockchain in order to stay relevant. They will seek to impose regulations wherever they can.
The result will be that centralized control on the blockchain will be squashed. So how is one to deal with the threat of authority not permitting individuals the freedom to engage in whatever technology they want? When too many people use something, those in control don't have the personnel to go after everybody. So they single a few out to make examples as a threat to everyone else.
The Basic Lesson: No Control means No Blame
Authority always chases other authority to track down who is responsible. This is probably why Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to stay anonymous. For example, Coinbase is an example of centralization on the blockchain and one of the points that the IRS is attempting control over because it made the mistake of "being in charge".
Many other exchanges made the same mistake, so this is where the most coercion is going to take place. People can be easily manipulated through threats of violence, imprisonment, etc, but machines running an open source protocol autonomously without anyone in charge do not respond to threats.
This means that authority will cause the technology that uses various blockchains to become further decentralized in order to become immune to the attack of central control. This is one of the reasons why I'm invested in the Bitshares DEX (Decentralized EXchange - it's not the only one, so don't take this as investment advice).
At some point, centralized exchanges will just become too dangerous to operate because as this technology becomes easier to use and it's adopted by the 5.5 billion unbanked, authority will start to get more desperate. Then they will find an ear in the top CEO's who run the worlds top centralized technologies (such as Amazon and Google) to try to steer the decentralized technology in their direction.
Most likely these companies like Facebook, Google, will oblige (they already are to some extent by banning crypto AD's) and they will seek out the current creators of these blockchains (people like Dan Larimer, Charlie Lee, Nick Szabo, etc) in order to try to twist arms and change the technology so that it's controlled by them. What prevents this?
At this point, the borderless jurisdiction of the internet makes this sort of collusion very difficult. In bitcoin, because the community is educated, this would cause a fork. Only the uneducated would go along with such a fork. There is also the inherent desire not to share power that prevents cooperation in this way (to some degree). But they will still try.
These mega corporations in the technical field will have a lot to lose and if they go down, then their failure might take down large portions of the internet with it. A decentralized internet such as Blockstack or Substratum can help, but at some point, the leaders of the giant techs will have to make a decision on the governance of the world. They will either have to abandon the current old political guard and do this on their own, or sell the population into a digital panopticon.
Financial Exclusion Comes to an End
As this happens, governments will begin to run out of money. As a last desperate act, a world war may be attempted which could sideline this technology for a while. I believe that a civil war at the elite level is more likely and that tech giants will eventually abandon their governments as they collapse. Amazon along with other tech giants will then probably seek out those like Dan Larimer who've already worked these ideas of governance out.
Dan Larimer is the genius behind Bitshares, Steem and the soon to be released EOS. These technologies use variations on DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake). Steem uses witnesses to validate blocks of transactions and they are elected to their positions. Sound familiar? Are we just repeating an old mistake of putting someone in control?
Andreas Antonopoulos once said that the effectiveness of these algorithms can't be fully known until they are tried at scale. None of these technologies has been tested at planet wide scale yet. Steem may be a small example with a relatively small stake, so it withstands attempts at cheating. But what will happen when the wealth of the entire world is on the table? Could a Steem witness withstand the pressure of collusion under these circumstances?
It would be more accurate to imagine EOS in this same position instead of Steem witnesses, where a constitution is built into the consensus algorithms. What rules would act as good governance for these representatives? Perhaps we finally decide that globalism is a bad idea and that we should localize everything so that the dunbar number doesn't create hierarchy.
Freedom Thrives under a Flat System
If we care about freedom, then in our future decisions we need to be aware that heirarchy is inherently stifling. Whether DPoS can achieve the right balance between cooperation and freedom remains to be seen.
Donations (public bitcoin address):
3FwxQsa7gmQ7c1GXJyvDTqmT6CM3mMEgcv
