I don't have a clever meme, I just have some ideas.
I don't have a clever meme, I just have some ideas.
So I've spent a bit of time over the past few years trying to reason my way trough society breaking away from our capitalist overlords.
Let me try to summarize some of my thinking as simply as possible; you start a second economy, one founded using Blockchain technologies and algocracy, with an utter focus on human welfare and ensuring resistance to tampering and unjust accumulation of power and wealth. You siphon the global population over to this new economy effectively stifling the old economy where the totality of the 1%'s wealth resides and is therefore rendered worthless.
The above is by no means a complete summary and there are a bunch of other concepts loosely associated with this such as environmental sustainability, transhumanism, degrowth, fostering small communities etc.
I've written about DACs, one of the components of the above here: https://sturlabragason.github.io/blog/2023/07/04/Decentralized-Autonomous-Communities.html
Blockchain
Honestly, I don't think the data structure we store financial information with is the problem.
Agreed. It is not the main problem.
Of course what I've written about here above and in my link is not a complete picture. I mention Blockchain less in relation to financial information and more as a way to store data in an immutable and transparent way, as opposed to the current proprietary closed systems. More public decision making, how funds are spent etc. For example if you go to a doctor in Denmark, you can read what he wrote about the visit in a private portal afterwards, or another example, where some municipalities in the Nordics make financial data available to the public trough easily digestible websites. I would imagine that if we were to store most financial information in a form where it could be easily accessed and understood it would likely lead to better financial practices. "The Blockchain Revolution" by Don and Alex Tapscott has some more to say about similar thinking -> https://blockchain-revolution.com/.
What I am proposing are blueprints for betterment, not magic beans. Sorry 😊.
I just don't think changing the way data is stored has any effect on public decision-making or how funds are spent. Any relational database could be used to do the things you propose and make data more transparent or immutable. It's the way we use technology that needs to change, the technology itself is completely agnostic. Before we change the way we think about public decision-making changing the technology is useless in my opinion.
Oof... That's a no from me on the crypto currency.
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are not synonymous 🙂. More here -> https://www.simpleshowing.com/blog/web3-vs-blockchain-vs-crypto
The technology used to achieve socialism is irrelevant. The lack of technology was never the issue.
We know what we must do. End private property. That’s it.
How we organize the economy in specifics is not important. Not in such details as you go through.
The real system that will be born from the principles of communism and ashes of capitalism will not be exactly what anyone envisions.
I feel Marx understood this, which is why he hesitated to much to prescribe.
Valid points. Regrettably my Donning Kruger effect is not strong enough to allow me to believe I have the solution. However, conceptually, I like to imagine of things working like scalable software implementations. Create a system that can be "easily" implemented such as creating a single DAC, I mean CityDAO is already a few years down the road and they seem to be doing alright. Starting small and scaling up seems like something that could be more easily experimented with, than running whole Marx-derivative states.
Being a very literal person; I like implementation specifics more than only proposing ideals and theories 😊.
Let me stop you right there. Basing an aspirationally egalitarian economy on the blockchain is like fertilizing your garden with powdered uranium: even IF it sorta kinda works at a glance, you're poisoning your garden and anything near it as well as the planet in general.
Can you expand on your answer? Why do you say that using blockchain (and I mean blockchain and not cryptocurrency) would be no good?
Also I love the colorful imagery of "fertilizing your garden with powdered uranium" 😄
I had Midjourney draw it up for us:
The system we abide by is, in part, due to a kind of momentum that keeps it going and there would be a great innertia with a sudden change of direction. But for the most part the current system exists because of the way people are. People are a) totally up in their heads believing the intellect is a human's highest capability, and b) utterly miserable. We know how to engineer every little aspect of life to further pur convenience except the aspect that counts: ourselves.
We have no idea how to engineer ourselves to be joyful, peaceful, energised and equanimous beings. It doesn't come from a change of environment. Internal change must be engineered in another way.
I'm suggesting a gradual shift towards a society that would have time to do exactly this ❤️