Lately I've been thinking about trying to process my thoughts more by writing. I hope someone finds it interesting.
I was recently listening to a Cory Doctorow interview on the Changelog podcast. The Changelog is a developer focused show that rarely gets into the political realm. Like many progressives in the technology space including the EFF, I find common ground with Doctorow on many topics. The importance of open source and the issues with digital rights management. Where we part ways is on the methods of correction or reform.
Let me start by defining some terms. When I use the word Capitalism I will be using the progressive definition of the word. Not mine. That is, the existing system in the United States and other democracies. These nations have largely free trade and stock markets but are not laissez-faire free markets. Governments do the bidding of big business at the expense of the consumer and small business. They abuse the public with little accountability due to their protection racket provided by the political elite class who they own. This system is what I and many others call crony-capitalism, corporatism, or fascism. Due to the abuse of the term Capitalism I try to use free trade when talking about the system I favor. To me, free trade is just the default state of humans. It is our natural state.
I've worked in the tech sector for many years with many fine people. People that I often disagree with politically as well as philosophically. I have rarely had any issues due to this because I don't look to win people over to my views or start arguments. I like to find common ground. What I have found over the years is that most engineers are not all that interested in politics or well read in the different political philosophies. There are exceptions and they are usually people like me. They hold some sort of heterodox view like left or right anarchism or far left socialism/communism. What I have found most common are the casual progressives. I'm not talking about social hot topic issues. Those are really quite uninteresting. No, I'm talking about economics, regulation, law, and rights.
I believe most of the progressives I've encountered over the years are good people. They aren't control freaks that love government. They don't realize the consequences of what they are advocating. They just exist in a world where there are two choices presented to them. One is a fake free market world where the market solves all your problems like magic. While that might sound close to true it is a fiction. The reality is that no nation actually has a truly free market. That said, even in our crony-capitalism system we have more prosperity than any truly socialist economy. In the U.S. corporations have gained a strong hold over state power and use it to their advantage. These abuses allow another perspective to sound more appealing. The progressive option is to rein in capitalism, to create a safety net and hold big money accountable. This latter option to the layperson sounds like the obvious side to pick.
The problem is that both choices have more in common than different. Both parties are bought and paid for by the same corporate overlords. The right-wing/conservatives are not in favor of truly free markets. After all, why would they be needed if we took their power away from them? They enact regulations just like their opponents would have 20 years ago. Think about it.
Conservatism is progressivism going the speed limit.
~ Michael Malice
The left wing side of politics is simply in favor of a more powerful state. More programs sold as helping the poor and restrictions on business to make a more fair world. When you look at it this way you can understand why so many nice people would pick the progressive side. At least I can. One side focuses on what it is against. The other on what it is for. But what if they are both wrong?
Back to Cory Doctorow.1 I've been aware of Mr. Doctorow from his days at Boing Boing. It was about this time that I discovered Ron Paul. I was raised on Rush Limbaugh conservatism. I won't go into it all that here but needless to say Paul led me to the ideas of sound money, anarchism, & bitcoin. As I was listening to Cory discuss the issues with DRM and the monopolies of Amazon, Google, and Apple(his words not mine) and the decreasing quality of the products we buy I couldn't help but think about the unspoken issue with all of his thoughts. He is assuming the solution can come from the same system that created these problems.
In his mind we can vote our way out of this. He doesn't seem to consider the incentives. The incentives of big business and those of the politicians. I remember when the light bulb came on for me. I realized that no matter what laws or rules you put in place, as long as you centralize control within a elected monopoly government the incentives are always going to lead to tilted scales of justice. Put more accurately, when you concede power to a small group of people you are going to attract the worst type of people to these positions of power. This is the core problem. Not our laws, or our voting habits. Its the incentives.
The base layer issue is actually not politics though. Its the money. The fuel of capitalism. The money, fiat is fake. It is manipulated by an elite group of bankers and politicians in an opaque system used to provide control over the masses and enrich a small group of elite people. The fact that these actors have control over the money gives them even more incentives to take money from corporations to do their bidding. While an election might make some superficial change that seems like a win in the short run. In the long run every time we elect someone to pass a new law we are simply give our master's more power over us.
What if the answer is not from the political system? What if the answer could come from the technologies we all use every day? The Internet, encryption, cryptography, and electrical power. What if we could build a new money system that is outside of the control of any individual or group of actors? What if we could make those corrupt, evil, and criminal politicians and the elite that fund them irrelevant? I mean, what if we could just make them less relevant? What if we could build a decentralized consensus algorithm that would strictly enforce a set of monetary rules? What if it was completely voluntary? That's bitcoin!
That last bit is often overlooked. Voluntary. Progressives often sound like the good guys that just want to make everything fair. They are looking out the little guy. Conservatives often sound like the bad guys because they don't have any answers to the progressive's problems. Here's the deal. Both sides need to use force to make their world views a reality. Like it or not we are facing down the barrel of a gun when someone says there ought to be a law. Every new law is another bullet in the chamber. Why don't we consider de-escalating? What if we could remove the gun? But bitcoin is bad because it uses so much energy so Cory doesn't even consider it. Its just for bros to gamble with and boil the ocean. Its sad how blind we can be isn't it?
Cory goes on a rant about how Amazon's Audible audio book service and its abuses of DRM and so called intellectual property laws. They will not allow him to publish on their platform if he also releases a DRM free version of his book elsewhere. His solution is to pass legislation to make this illegal. Here's the thing. He can obviously just not agree to Amazon's contract and do what he wants. The issue is that Amazon has such a massive market share that it would greatly reduce his reach.
I kept waiting for him to say we need destroy the lie of intellectual property which is at the root of the problem. That's what it is. An idea is not property. A song is not property. A photo is not property. These ephemeral things are not property. Property is only physical. If you think this sounds crazy, I was right there with you before reading Against Intellectual Property by Stephan Kinsella. In reality the Internet functionally wounded IP. It is likely a mortal wound that just hasn't yet been recognized. Once again, the base problem is the construction of intellectual property by the state. A base layer issue. The solution is to make it virtually impossible to enforce.
Then Cory started talking about social media platforms and open protocols. He mentioned Mastodon but never mentioned Nostr. His plan was to write legislation to require Twitter to use open protocols. Honestly, I'm not surprised at this point. But it still kinda blows my mind how people can claim to care about these things and not be interested in actual solutions that don't require violence(government). Is it just ignorance? For most people I think it is. For most people that are neutral or anti-bitcoin I think its as simple as ignorance. We will never convince them through argument. They will have to see our success and envy us. They will have to be in the water trying to swim before they get on the life boat.
Call me cynical but I just don't have much hope that most people of my generation (gen X) are gonna have their eyes opened. I have far more hope that younger people will see the light. I'm not a rose colored glasses kinda guy. I don't think we are gonna see a truly free voluntary society for many generations but if the base layers and foundations laid by bitcoiners can pave the way. I want to be a part of it.
Footnotes
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I'm not sure Cory Doctorow calls himself a progressive but he sounds like one to me ↩