Totally with you in recognizing the conditions that lead people to yearn for a way out or a way through a precarious situation. But this does not mean that the fantasies and yearnings will come true. If anything, an environment where the status quo is failing many is likely to lead to abuses and wild speculations which do not bear fruit, as people are easier to take advantage of when they are desperate.
My initial and preliminary reading of blockchain and web3 is that it is a symptom of a lack of social trust, and a feeling of impotence and helplessness when compared with a society where existing linkages between industry and political power create winner take all dynamics. We can fantasize all we want about disruption to the status quo via blockchain, but it seems to me to be a poor substitution for the political struggle needed to make the political and economic system response to human and biosystem values, and not just the value of dollars and the powerful.
In the end, the flourishing of a blockchain in a society that presents a very high degree of corruption and capture is likely to reproduce these dynamics of domination, but through slightly different means. Thus, while I think experimentation is interesting and we should continue it, not at the expense of the basic struggle for the incumbent systems in economy and government. We should try to express many of these values into the likely monetary and political systems that are likely to persist.
> We can fantasize all we want about disruption to the status quo via blockchain, but it seems to me to be a poor substitution for the political struggle needed to make the political and economic system response to human and biosystem values, and not just the value of dollars and the powerful.
I trust that you’re a regular reader of my blog and know that I am not proposing we substitute technical practice for political struggle. I share your frustration with the latent attitude that the former will yield the latter. As I wrote in *This Internet, on the Ground*:
> My complaint about blockchain is that even those developers who are well-meaning, which is some vanishingly small subset of the community, believe a naive technological determinism at times. To paraphrase Amir Taaki, they want to do the revolution, but they think they can party while they do it because their tech will do the revolution for them. That’s never how it works. That did not work for the [techno-utopian designers of the early internet]. And if this community, even the good people in this community, aren’t careful, they will deliver their technologies to the same state and capital interests as their predecessors.
My proposal is a *method* for political struggle that embraces certain aspects of ongoing technical practice, both due to their technical affordances and to their situatedness in ongoing economic struggles. The end is a politically activated citizenry empowered in a meaningfully democratic society. Technical practice is *part* of the means. Call it a tactic.
> In the end, the flourishing of a blockchain in a society that presents a very high degree of corruption and capture is likely to reproduce these dynamics of domination, but through slightly different means.
Our work is to ferment a new ideology from the grassroots.
> Thus, while I think experimentation is interesting and we should continue it, not at the expense of the basic struggle for the incumbent systems in economy and government.
There are varying degrees of pessimism about the incumbent systems you reference. On one end, there are people who believe they're irredeemable. Many have applied the critique you raise—that corruption and capture will reproduce dynamics of domination—to the prospect of reforming them. On the other end, there are those who believe reforming these incumbent systems will end our crises.
I find myself somewhere in between. Some institutions cannot be sufficiently reformed through the mechanisms they make available. For those institutions, experimentation could create institutions to succeed them. Other incumbent systems need to be taught radical lessons through small-scale practice. For those institutions, no experiment as described will be at their expense. Quite the opposite.
> We should try to express many of these values into the likely monetary and political systems that are likely to persist.
We should express our values in any institutions that persist or exist. But what values? Whose values? Active experimentation can make specific the values of a politically engaged polis—a citizen in the sense of an enfranchised political actor.
If those experiments result in reforms for incumbent institutions, that’s wonderful for those institutions and for us. But our work continues regardless.
Hi Nick,
Totally with you in recognizing the conditions that lead people to yearn for a way out or a way through a precarious situation. But this does not mean that the fantasies and yearnings will come true. If anything, an environment where the status quo is failing many is likely to lead to abuses and wild speculations which do not bear fruit, as people are easier to take advantage of when they are desperate.
My initial and preliminary reading of blockchain and web3 is that it is a symptom of a lack of social trust, and a feeling of impotence and helplessness when compared with a society where existing linkages between industry and political power create winner take all dynamics. We can fantasize all we want about disruption to the status quo via blockchain, but it seems to me to be a poor substitution for the political struggle needed to make the political and economic system response to human and biosystem values, and not just the value of dollars and the powerful.
In the end, the flourishing of a blockchain in a society that presents a very high degree of corruption and capture is likely to reproduce these dynamics of domination, but through slightly different means. Thus, while I think experimentation is interesting and we should continue it, not at the expense of the basic struggle for the incumbent systems in economy and government. We should try to express many of these values into the likely monetary and political systems that are likely to persist.
What do you think?
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
> We can fantasize all we want about disruption to the status quo via blockchain, but it seems to me to be a poor substitution for the political struggle needed to make the political and economic system response to human and biosystem values, and not just the value of dollars and the powerful.
I trust that you’re a regular reader of my blog and know that I am not proposing we substitute technical practice for political struggle. I share your frustration with the latent attitude that the former will yield the latter. As I wrote in *This Internet, on the Ground*:
> My complaint about blockchain is that even those developers who are well-meaning, which is some vanishingly small subset of the community, believe a naive technological determinism at times. To paraphrase Amir Taaki, they want to do the revolution, but they think they can party while they do it because their tech will do the revolution for them. That’s never how it works. That did not work for the [techno-utopian designers of the early internet]. And if this community, even the good people in this community, aren’t careful, they will deliver their technologies to the same state and capital interests as their predecessors.
My proposal is a *method* for political struggle that embraces certain aspects of ongoing technical practice, both due to their technical affordances and to their situatedness in ongoing economic struggles. The end is a politically activated citizenry empowered in a meaningfully democratic society. Technical practice is *part* of the means. Call it a tactic.
> In the end, the flourishing of a blockchain in a society that presents a very high degree of corruption and capture is likely to reproduce these dynamics of domination, but through slightly different means.
I agree. As Yanis Varoufakis articulated, web3 technologies will not liberate an otherwise kleptocratic society. https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/yanis-varoufakis-on-techno-feudalism/
Our work is to ferment a new ideology from the grassroots.
> Thus, while I think experimentation is interesting and we should continue it, not at the expense of the basic struggle for the incumbent systems in economy and government.
There are varying degrees of pessimism about the incumbent systems you reference. On one end, there are people who believe they're irredeemable. Many have applied the critique you raise—that corruption and capture will reproduce dynamics of domination—to the prospect of reforming them. On the other end, there are those who believe reforming these incumbent systems will end our crises.
I find myself somewhere in between. Some institutions cannot be sufficiently reformed through the mechanisms they make available. For those institutions, experimentation could create institutions to succeed them. Other incumbent systems need to be taught radical lessons through small-scale practice. For those institutions, no experiment as described will be at their expense. Quite the opposite.
> We should try to express many of these values into the likely monetary and political systems that are likely to persist.
We should express our values in any institutions that persist or exist. But what values? Whose values? Active experimentation can make specific the values of a politically engaged polis—a citizen in the sense of an enfranchised political actor.
If those experiments result in reforms for incumbent institutions, that’s wonderful for those institutions and for us. But our work continues regardless.