This article is about 2 competing agendas which like it or not, we’re all directly or indirectly subjected to, and at least sometimes motivated by … and that’s the distinction between recognising that the status quo is fucked, yet we’re under its control, as it holds all the resources.
What this means is also that many proposed “solutions” to real world problems, are designed with the status quo in mind, do nothing to challenge it, thus perpetuate it, thus don’t solve anything (they merely push the problem from one area to another, and the pressure continues to build) … IF EVER THERE WAS A REAL WORLD CASE of the story of the boy sticking his fingers into holes in a dyke, our modern world is that case.
I’m getting into a further investigation of Ethereum at the moment, as I am hoping to lend from what is good about it, but ultimately what I’m not seeing within this developer community, is anywhere near enough recognition of the fact that property/trade/currency-based economics will always be fundamentally flawed (no matter what you fix about it) … and while yes is vastly better, it’s still missing at its core what I am trying to develop.
Now, Ethereum has the backing of some very big companies, and it’s nice to see them interested in decentralised economics & power … but unfortunately all they appear to be doing is entrenching it, because they’re using these developments to further their own interests … and they are fully embedded in the debt based monetary system.
The upside is the technology is there and opensource, the downside is the funding is predominantly only going to those aspects of it which also are themselves entrenched in the idea of property, trade & currency.
Survival within the status quo means dealing with it, sure … BUT SURVIVAL in general means REPLACING the notions of property, trade & currency completely … for whether via cryptocurrencies, the blockchain or ANY of other hypothetical scenario, the following remains true:
- ONLY HUMANS can engage in such systems, putting ALL other species at the very least, at a severe disadvantage;
- ANY ECONOMICS BASED ON PROPERTY OWNERSHIP motivates humans to exploit resources;
- THERE EXISTS NO ASPECT of any form of property ownership, which inherently requires concern for consequences, because ownership doesn’t deal with any consequences other than what you have and don’t have, which is why such concerns have to be completely separately engineered into the system via some other principle like law, which in turn is why they also need enforcement, which in turn is why you’ll never achieve 100% success.
… and unfortunately the best mechanism I’ve seen within this arena so far, is direct democracy; which yes, is an improvement on representative democracy which is inherently easy to corrupt, and either way inherently flawed … BUT … direct democracy too is subjected to the present scenario, and all possible other scenarios, which returns us back to the title of this article, the competing agendas of survival versus survival within the context of the status quo.
Direct democracy is great, BUT it is still democracy, it is still relying on a weight of opinion to provide the best answer, which so often is simply not the case … people vote for what they understand, they vote for what makes them feel comfortable, they vote for whom is most presentable to their own prejudices, and they vote for all sorts of other such irrelevant agendas … but the worst agenda, is they vote for who will promise to deal with their immediate concerns under the status quo.
What we need is a socioeconomic, legal and political scenario where:
- There is no hierarchy, no power structures;
- There is nonetheless commons power, wielded by many against potential oppressors;
- There is no species bias in the system, so human or otherwise, your own interests from your own perspective are considered important;
- There is no motivational basis for exploiting other people or species “for profit”;
- There is no motivational basis for exploiting the non-living aspects of ecosystems “for profit”;
- There is no mechanism at all requiring growth and consumption.
Ethereum and similar developments in the commons do well on the first 2 points only, but after that, they completely flounder … they’re trying to fix problems by creating efficiencies in an existing system, or efficiencies in a modification of the existing system, without recognising there exists no version of this system that will not re-exploit anything they save, as there’s always a motivation to do so … the profit motive.
This is an inescapable conclusion. The existence of the profit motive is entirely dependent on the existence of the property/trade/currency-based economic paradigm, the profit motive drives resource exploitation, the profit motive drives entrenchment of power, and the profit motive will always remain inaccessible to all other other species.
Save something in one area …
Someone else uses that saving to generate THEIR profit.
You haven’t for one minute addressed a single non-human-centric issue … you’ve isolated the problem to the human condition, and you think it’s solved by removing poverty, so you try at all costs to spread “abundance” to all humans via a system which destroys abundance, because it loves scarcity.
Scarcity is the friend of profit, abundance is not (per se) … ONLY the exclusivity of access to abundance (thereby creating scarcity elsewhere) is the friend of profit.
This is fundamental to the nature of property trade & currency based economics … it cannot be changed and yet still have a property trade and currency based economic paradigm after that change … it is only changed by replacing that paradigm completely.