This is my 2nd of a 30 day writing challenge and a call to action of sorts. This call to action is for us to begin and/or continue to think of better ways to be a good community and for us to support governance tools that we think can help us achieve that end. It’s a call for us to be examples we can someday be proud of. Many of us believe distributed technologies have, can, and will change the world as we know it. Let’s seriously consider together what that change is going to look like. Will it be tools that help the powerful subjugate the weak, or will it be tools that help the weak become powerful and lead us to a world where mutual consent rules the day? I realize the call to action is supposed to come at the end, and there is some more, but I wanted to give you a heads up in case this isn’t for you.
Learning From the Past
“We do what we know and we know what we do.” ~ Original Source Unknown
We follow traditions handed down to us from our forebears. Those who have gone before us pass on what they have learned, both good and bad, and oftentimes out of a sense of self preservation we follow in their steps. These traditions give us a sense of security and sometimes real security. We don’t eat poisonous things because someone in the past did and we learned not to follow their example. Sometimes we think something is advantageous or dangerous so we pursue or avoid it, only to discover the opposite to be the case.
We learn that things are likely to happen in the future because of what we have seen in the past. I’ll summarize this article by Nicholas Clairmont. The old saying, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” is actually only half of the reality. Those who have learned from history have also repeated it again and again. The human condition is the constant. We know people in power will attempt to subjugate those without power because some people want to have power over others. We know that some people will attempt to steal other people’s property because they have done so in the past.
To pretend to understand people’s motives is an effort in futility because every person is unique. Some people might just be jerks while others might really believe they are doing it for the betterment of others. Some may feel like victims of some system and be lashing out. One thing that has become clear to me over the years is that the individual almost always sees himself or herself as the hero of their own story. I know that is true for me. Faults notwithstanding, I’m the hero in my story and you probably are in yours.
Crypto at a Crossroads
Over the past few weeks Dan Larimer (@dan), the cofounder of Steemit and bitShares, and development lead for EOS, has posted a couple articles I’ve found challenging and quite profound. The first of these was posted December 17th, called “Does Freedom Require Radical Transparency or Radical Privacy?” Before reading this post I was totally on the Radical Privacy side of the argument. I had entered the crypto space because of Maidsafe afterall. Honestly before reading Dan’s article I didn’t realize there was an argument. I was just following some preconceptions and world views I had adopted as absolute truth. Let me throw out an example of an idea and the problems I had with it before I’d read Dan’s article.
I’m sure I’m not alone in that I really enjoy reimagining how things could be done differently. It’s a passion of mine. My problem has always been follow-through. At one time I had considered a type of alternative governance model starting at the local government level. I had envisioned people in a local community opting in to pay taxes in the form of some cryptocurrency and then voting on hiring freemarket public servants out of that pool to accomplish things the community needed to have done. Now I think a better solution would be a self funded governance system without any kind of taxation (think Dash’s auto budget pool with local voting by the public). The main issue with this kind of a system was how to allow for privacy and security. It never occurred to me that Radical Transparency might be the answer, in fact, might be the only answer. This is just one example and I might come back to it in a later post, but on to Dan’s second article.
On December 31st he posted “Proof of Good Governance” in which he lays out how to judge a community’s level of freedom by how safe they and their property are within them. He goes on to define the current state of Steemit and its Kickback Club mentality and the state of crypto in general as not yet the dream many of us have been longing for. Please read the article and let me know if you think I’m misrepresenting it.
Sometime between those articles Dan did an interview where he mentions the vacuum a lack of government would create, and this is one reason I've never fully subscribed to being a full-fledged anarchist. We need systems of self-governance to replace the oppressive ones before we can truly govern ourselves. I agree with Dan that we do not YET have those tools.
The Future is Ours To Make
Something else dropped a few weeks back but I just got around to watching it. Jeff Berwick of The Dollar Vigilante (@dollarvigilante) explained how he sees an inevitable hyperinflation coming and speculated on how the banksters might use it to usher in their own new system of control. All these things together compelled me to write this. There is a collective conversation happening and I want to add my own thoughts to it.
I'm not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet. I’m probably a bit more paranoid than some. I do see the signs of a possible fiat hyperinflation situation happening with the USD. Whether that is planned by the Banksters with their scapegoat target being crypto, or some kind of Real Value vs Faux Printed “Value” Economic Cold War 2.0, I don't know. Even if neither of those scenarios happen what would a strategy be for massive onboarding into a safe community of crypto in a very chaotic world look like? Imagine the potential of millions of people waking up, they start looking for help, and guess what - help is there. Not in the form of some power hungry oppressive government, but people who have it together. People who have the answers, or at least some answers. Imagine if you will, a community prepared for the worst with answers to such things as access to the internet and funds on the internet, as well access to a jobs market that pays in a digital currency that is not inflating like their current fiat is or is inflating at a specific known rate. Maybe a local level of self-governance like I wrote about above that is paid from a Dash style budget pool. I don’t know the details, but do you start to see the picture?
I think we (myself included) are tempted to think about this kind of chaos and throw our hands up in the air and say, “A problem like this is unsolvable. If it gets bad enough, what hope is there? I have my food, my crypto, my gold, my bug-out-bag, my…, my... We will make it through and see what is left on the other side.” But then I think about the brains behind our current crypto landscape. Some are only interested in financial gains. Others of us believe in the technology that will change the world for the better. You all are some pretty smart people (there are some of you who are really, really smart and innovative out there). We might ask, “Why should we?” I’ll ask, why shouldn’t we? Even from a totally self-interested perspective, imagine the droves of new converts joining the crypto ecosystem. Imagine something designed for evil (if Jeff is right, and I think he might be) being used to bring people into a totally safe community and learning how to be self-reliant with a little bit of help to find the way.
From history we can see that when masses of people are in hardship situations, it is much easier for the power brokers to incite the group and get them to identify themselves as victims, even if they are in fact victims of the power brokers themselves. It's easier to turn public opinion away from the true cause of the hardship (printing money at the highest rates than ever before for the last decade, low to non-existing interest rates, etc) and towards a false enemy (i.e. crypto). We've seen things like this happen again and again (not with crypto yet, but overthrowing despot governments for even more tyrannical governments). History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme, because it's part of the human condition. The people in these situations put their faith in any promise of help and end up deeper in oppression unless there could be another way.
Okay, now let's assume we brainstorm and build, or at least start to build, something for the absolute worst situation and, guess what, it doesn’t happen. We were a bunch of paranoid fanatics. But it wasn’t for nothing. We would still have a serious system of tools at our disposal. We would have a system built for chaotic times that’s not even using all its capacity because times are easy. We get some folks trickling in over time. The system is easy to use, easy to evangelize, and easy to bring people on board. And guess what else, we have something that is ready for another Venezuela or Greece. Something smaller scale to help local regions so they don’t have to rely on folks from the IMF or the likes, who are only interested in controlling their future production. How awesome would that be?
Feel free to continue the conversation and see if we might brainstorm a system that will let people fly out of the ashes on fiery wings! There’s the mascot, logo, and name for starters - The Phoenix Protocol (and from what Dan has been saying about governance ~ built on the EOS Platform)
Future #challenge30days Potential Post
- The Phoenix Protocol - I might do some more brainstorming on this.
- Tribute to my Uncle Raymond (98 years old and we just went to his funeral yesterday Jan 2nd)
- The addictive dice game my wife and I play at the kitchen table now that our kids are growing up and doing their own things.
- SFEOS - Developing a Crowd Founding Platform and Network of Gamers from the Ground Up.
- EOS Development (Learning on the Test Network - both local and public test net)
- Taking down the 2017 Christmas Tree (We love Christmas at the M house)
- Codemash 2018 (A yearly developer conference I attend in Sandusky Ohio) - Probably multiple posts on this. My family has been attending with me the last few years. They have fun doing the water park while I geek out with my peeps.
- My life as a traveling gospel teacher.
- My Personal Fight for Economic Freedom for Everyone through Crypto
- My struggles to stick with things over the years on a consistent basis… This one is going to hurt a bit and not sure how much I’ll share.
- Anything else I can think up...
So much thought put into that and very well written. I'm just scratching the surface now as I have to go back and read the articles cited, and then come back to read this a second and perhaps a third time.
I'll be looking forward to hearing more (followed) about The Phoenix Protocol. I have a small tendency towards paranoia myself and have thought of a few scenarios regarding crypto that don't turn out so rosy. As you might imagine they typically come from trust issues with the powers that be.
Wow, interesting post and thoughts. You probably want to add an image to your post to attract attention. Also could add extra tags like "history" and "cryptocurrency". I'm going back to read more, especially about Dan's points. Peace
That's always been my issue with anti-tax/ anti-gov positions...yes it would be nice to live in that utopia, but people crave leaders and power so the only choice is to try to create a system with good leaders and equality. Also, I like libertarian thought, but always had issue with how the commons and public spaces are magically taken care of. It just doesn't happen like that.
well it will be hard, people can't quite reach a consensus on governance, if you don't agree check out that dan post and ned's response, still I'm looking forward to a good conversation so I hope this picks up some steem :)
cheers to the #challnge30days and @dragosroua ;)
I owe my blogging beginnings to him and his initiative :)
Good luck :)
Yep, I have been following the comment threads for that post. Sometimes people get pretty adamant about their opinions ;)
I personally think Steemit is awesome! I also see some very bad things going on within it. The Kickback Club mentality and bots are some thing that I just have a real hard time with. I'll read posts and see comments that show the views number way lower than the vote number. As a new member, I look at that and think "How is this fair? Does this represent the original intention of promoting really good content?" I don't think it does. But I'm still going to keep going forward with things, without using bots and by keeping my accounts from voting for one another. I want to see a totally organic and natural growth. We shall see what happens.
I'll be posting more about "The Phoenix Protocol" in the future. That idea just excites me to my core. I'm just talking about it though and hoping something along those lines might someday come to pass.
I've been there as well, there was a time before when posts were making ~100 rewards on the trending page and I was laughing when I opened them to see, 5 views :D aaaand 150 upvotes to back that up :D those were the days when the bots were strong
here is a quick list of the timeline I've witnessed :D
https://busy.org/challenge30days/@j3dy/re-maxg-2-30-steemit-hall-of-fame-20180104t151025871z
and I will go into more detail from my perspective in my upcoming post
Damn it, Chadrick!! I was just settling into the idea that maybe there was a chance that radical privacy is possible, and you go and throw me a curve ball. Really, though, thanks for this really thought-provoking post. Dan's posts are elating and disturbing at the same time. I think he's right in ultimate principle, at least that's what seems to align with my basic philosophy of life being a game between the expansiveness and inclusiveness of Love on the one end and the contraction and isolation of Fear on the other. It's the chicken and egg problem of getting to the far side of the bell curve that is pretty scary. Again, Love and bravery, I guess.
Unsettled but inspired. Thanks.