Have you ever wondered why there is always war?
You probably did when you were younger, but you've grown to accept it. That's just the way it is, right? There's nothing you can do, so you put a box around it in your mind so you can forget about it and get on with your day.
What else have you chosen to compartmentalize?
Why is there poverty?
Why is there so much suicide and depression?
Why do we seemingly do so little about pollution?
Why do we keep destroying our forests?
Why is healthcare so unaffordable?
Why do we eat unhealthy foods that slowly kill us?
Why do we keep voting for corrupt politicians?
Why do we take so many useless classes in school and accumulate massive amounts of debt?
Why are so many of us stuck in boring, dead end jobs?
Why are plant medicines illegal but addictive amphetamines and opioids are not?
Why do we not care that slave labor is used to produce our goods?
Why are we unable to stop all the violence, hate and anger in this world?
The answer to these questions is simple. And it is not because humans are evil. It’s because we are a product of the system. A system that makes us believe we have control over our lives, when in fact we are constantly being manipulated. A system of lies that makes us fear and hate both ourselves and one another. A system made to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
So what can we do to change it?
You may try to impose your beliefs or ideals on others, because you think you are right and they are wrong, and if only people would listen to you, then everything could be better. But you will convince no one, because everyone is on their own path, and their opinions are shaped by a lifetime of experiences, not to be so easily changed by a few comments from you.
You may be tempted to vote for this candidate or that, but how much power do politicians really have, when regardless of the election outcome, the same people remain in charge of the banks, and the same multinational corporations control what we consume. The real power lies where the money is.
You may desire to go out into the streets to protest, in order to remove certain people from power, but how do you know that their replacements will be any better, or whether they won’t eventually become corrupted just like their predecessors. What we need are not new leaders, but a new system.
So how do we create a new system? And how do we transition to it? Before we can do that, we need to realize something.
The existing system is not broken. It was designed this way.
Once we understand this, it should be obvious that a new system will not be created by our existing leaders. Change will never come from the top, and why would it? The type of change I’m talking about would require them to give up their power. It will only happen when regular people like you and me decide to stand up and do something.
We are the many but our largest obstacle is division. Divided by race, color, class, nationality, religion, ideology, or political party, there is constant temptation to fight each other instead of focusing on the real enemy.
Who is this enemy that I speak of? You may be tempted to try to figure out who the enemy is so you can expose them. But spending too much time on this will inevitably lead you down rabbit hole after rabbit hole and the next thing you know, you are spending all your time posting memes on social media, trying to convince other people that so and so is controlled opposition.
It is not necessary to know exactly who the enemy is. We only need to know that they exist and that they represent a miniscule portion of the population. Regardless of who the enemy is, the solution is still the same.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
- Buckminster Fuller
What is the existing model? Centralized power structures. Corporations run by CEOs. Countries led by presidents. States run by governors. Cities run by mayors. Economies run by central banks. “World” organizations such as the World Economic Forum, World Trade Organization, and World Health Organization. Too much power centralized among a few individuals inevitably leads to corruption. Hierarchy works when we have good leaders, but history has proven that it is only a question of time before we get bad ones and end up where we are today.
If centralization is going to be made obsolete, the only way to do it would be decentralization.
This transition has already begun. There is a rise in decentralized agriculture, as people who foresee food shortages are beginning to grow their own food. There is a trend towards decentralized education as more parents distrust the public school system and decide to homeschool their children. But creating decentralized governments, where its power is limited to only local areas, will require some coordination.
As soon as we are born, we are taught that we must follow certain rules. You break the law, you get in trouble. Trying to change the law seems unthinkable. That’s just how it is, right? But laws are only as good as the people who enforce them. If everyone decided to agree that they would no longer follow a certain law, then that law would no longer exist.
The same logic applies to our government. If everyone agrees that they no longer recognize the government, it would also cease to exist. But how can we get everyone to agree to something like that?
First, we must believe that it is possible. Our freedom begins in the mind. Life is actually just one big sandbox, where people before us have created all the rules. But just because they made the rules first doesn’t mean we can’t change them. We have the ability to wipe the slate clean and write all the rules from scratch. All we have to do is agree to it. This is simple contract law.
Coordination on such a massive scale would not have been possible 50 years ago. What is different now? What is it that allows the entire human race to agree on something, circumventing those already in power? What exists now that did not exist before?
"In a time not distant, it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and render it visible at any place desired. The perfection of this means of reading thought will create a revolution for the better in all our social relations."
- Nikola Tesla
Tesla is describing the internet. The internet is the great equalizer. Never before have we been able to pass information to each other instantly with the touch of a button. Never before have we had the ability to communicate with people on the other side of the planet, without ever leaving our home.
We can get information real-time, without the filter of the government or mainstream media. The internet gives me, just a regular person, the opportunity to communicate with you and billions of other people, to tell you that we are on the verge of true freedom.
With the internet, I can share a document. Let’s call it a Declaration of Independence 2.0. We can all work on it together, and once we agree on its contents, we can all ratify it. Unlike the original Declaration of Independence, which could only be signed by a few people in a room, this declaration can be signed by everyone in the world, making it more powerful. Since this document exists on the internet, it must be signed digitally, and to authenticate it in a decentralized manner, we need one more thing that was also invented recently.
Blockchain
Blockchain technology completes the internet, because although the internet allows us to connect, there is no way to verify a person’s identity. This anonymity makes it a paradise for imposters, bots, and scammers. So, in order to actually form contracts with each other on the internet without an intermediary, we need blockchain. This is why they are referred to as “smart” contracts. Using contract law and blockchain, we can come up with creative ways to interact with each other online, while autonomously enforcing the transaction. Code becomes law.
This ability to transact without an intermediary is also the key to creating online peer-to-peer markets. Without blockchain, we always have to rely on a “trusted” gatekeeper or middleman. Want to sell a product online? We have to use a service like Amazon. Want to get a ride somewhere? We have to use Uber. But with blockchain, we can find ways to transact directly with one another.
This is how we scale up a decentralized parallel economy on a global level. One might call it agorism on steroids. Once the peer-to-peer economy gains momentum, it will become unstoppable. As more people shift towards this decentralized network, the massive multinational conglomerates will gradually starve and wither away.
This goes for another gatekeeper as well, our government. But before we abandon the old government, we should already have a decentralized governance structure in place, ready to go. We need to prototype this new structure and develop a blockchain voting system that makes it impossible to cheat. We need to ensure that all government transactions are on-chain so that anyone can easily verify that this money is only used for the benefit of the people. Once we have debugged this system and minimized all avenues of corruption, this decentralized autonomous organizational structure can be used worldwide, but on a local level.
Does this all sound too good to be true? Have you ever heard of anyone speak about blockchain this way? Probably not. This is because the blockchain and crypto industry has been corrupted by greed, the same way Wall Street has. The majority of the crypto community only cares about the price of [insert coin], but creating a manipulated online casino is not the purpose of the most revolutionary invention of this century. Blockchain technology has the potential to permanently eliminate corruption, and its emergence could not have come at a better time.
"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity."
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Society, as we know it, is on the brink of collapse. But amidst this chaos lies the opportunity to build a better world. In order to really change things, we must change the rules completely, and we have that power the moment that we recognize it.
As a decentralization maximalist, my focus is on mainly two things: permaculture and blockchain. One is the decentralization of the physical world, and the other is the decentralization of the digital world. Both are necessary to succeed, and I write about them here.
- Phil