1. Bitcoin; Technology Beyond Ideology And A Call For Evolution
2.  
3. Posted: 27 Jun 2015 06:18 AM PDT
4.  
5. Activism - Nozomi Hayase:Six years since the invention of the blockchain,  
6. more people are beginning to see the powerful political implications that  
7. this technology brings. People from diverse backgrounds have been weighing  
8. in on its disruptive potential. While libertarians embrace the potential of  
9. cryptocurrencies to break up monopolies of the too big to fail banking and  
10. payment companies, the rise of this technology was met with skepticism by  
11. many socialists. Activists who call for economic equality and oppose  
12. governments harsh austerity go further to say Bitcoin will become another  
13. tool for neoliberalism. So what is the disruptive force inherent in this  
14. technology? Is it tied to a specific political ideology?
15.  
16. Critics from the left primarily come from observations of particular events  
17. surrounding decentralized digital currency. On the surface, the trend of  
18. speculators trading Bitcoin and manipulation of exchange rates can resemble  
19. gambling, and some see Bitcoin as recapitulating the existing Wall Street  
20. casino-style derivative economy. This investment friendly image is  
21. strengthened when economists chime in to depict Bitcoins fixed monetary  
22. supply (a total of 21M bitcoin is created) as a currency mimicking assets  
23. like gold and criticize it as having a deflationary monetary design that  
24. would incentivize hoarding and increase wealth inequality.
25.  
26. Contrary to these perceptions, Bitcoin was never meant as a get-rich-quick  
27. scheme. While it possesses gold-like characteristics, it is also radically  
28. different, as it is highly portable and divisible (Bitcoin can be divided  
29. into 8 decimal points and more if consensus is reached). This is a new  
30. monetary design that has never existed before.
31. Competition vs. Cooperation
32.  
33. Bitcoin creates a currency with unprecedented flow. It melts borders and  
34. artificial barriers of ideological differences. It resists any stagnation  
35. of thought that tries to mold it to carry certain special interests.  
36. Careful examination reveals how it is an architecture that embodies innate  
37. human nature and is designed to uphold our internal governing structures.
38.  
39.  From Socrates dictum of know thyself to the modern age of reason,  
40. throughout history people have tried to understand the internal laws that  
41. constitute man. Naturalist Charles Darwin, upon observation of biological  
42. phenomena, identified and defined this internal law as an evolutionary  
43. force that guides all species.
44.  
45. In his first work, The Origin of Species, he brought the theory of natural  
46. selection and random variation. The notion of survival of the fittest,  
47. first coined by English philosopher Herbert Spencer to describe his  
48. economic theory and later taken up by Darwin, promoted a view of man as not  
49. much more than claws and teeth. This became a prevailing ideology behind  
50. the rise of social Darwinism and was used to justify European colonialism  
51. and modern predatory capitalism that was spawned in the late 19th century.
52.  
53. Yet, this narrative of fierce competition for life was only half the story.  
54. Russian philosopher Peter Kropotkin wrote a response to the predominant  
55. Darwinian interpretation of natural hierarchy. In his book Mutual Aid: A  
56. Factor of Evolution, he argued for the feeling of solidarity, empathy and  
57. cooperation as the ground for human evolution.
58.  
59. This alternative view was held also by Darwin himself. Psychologist and  
60. system scientist David Loey in Darwins Lost Theory of Love debunked the  
61. narrow reductionist interpretation of Neo-Darwinians that emphasized the  
62. notion of the selfish genes. He argued how most had buried a major  
63. contribution Darwin made when he moved beyond pre-human evolution to  
64. examine mans moral sensibilities. Loey pointed to how Darwin, in his second  
65. work The Descent of Man, had recognized that nurturing, expressed as  
66. sympathy for the weak was a primary evolutionary force that drives humans  
67. to develop higher agency with the principle of mutuality.
68.  
69. The seemingly unbridgeable ideological divide between socialism and  
70. capitalism can be looked at as an expression of a contradiction that  
71. existed between Darwins earlier and later works. It is experienced as two  
72. forces constantly battling within us. On one hand, we have a drive for  
73. individual pursuits and independence and on the other aspirations for  
74. altruism and a deeper connection with others.
75.  
76. In current civilization, the tendency toward personal gain and competitive  
77. drive has been overriding the principles of cooperation. What has now  
78. become apparent is that the greed of a small minority in a race to the top  
79. has subverted a broader evolutionary force, holding people hostage in a  
80. brutal animal-like kingdom of kleptocracy. The survival of the species in  
81. modern times has turned into a game of survival of the crudest and most  
82. rapacious corporations and bankers. This has now escalated into an arms  
83. race to the bottom, creating resource wars, economic apartheid and  
84. environmental catastrophe, likely leading to planetary crisis.
85. Digital Scarcity
86.  
87. The imagination that infused the blockchain technology intervenes in the  
88. course of human evolution that has been heading down this destructive path.  
89. Decentralized consensus at the core of this innovation gives us a platform  
90. to reconcile seemingly opposing forces manifested as this ideological  
91. divide and brings a creative solution to global problems outside of  
92. electoral politics.
93.  
94. Bitcoin is like one big organism that regulates itself through algorithm.  
95. With no company, CEO or individuals in control, it maintains a ledger  
96. transparent to all. Its ecosystem evolves to manifest a vision encoded in  
97. its DNA, through stimulus and active interaction with its environment.
98.  
99. The core of this technology is algorithmic consensus that enables digital  
100. scarcity; a way to make an object in the digital world scarce without  
101. central control. This solves the problem of the double-spend. Cryptographer  
102. Adam Back, whose invention of Hashcash contributed to the creation of  
103. Bitcoins digital scarcity, noted how Bitcoin “constructs a computational  
104. irrevocability from proof-of-work and consensus”. This makes permissionless  
105. transaction and innovation possible, as well as removing monopolistic  
106. control of the production and transfer of money. But more fundamentally,  
107. this scarcity offers a key to open society to move beyond the current  
108. oligarchical rule of the neo-Darwinian dog-eat-dog world that has now  
109. turned into the lions eating the lambs.
110.  
111. The market logic that governs the existing extractive system is that of  
112. central control. As a hallmark of the industrial era, capitalism bases its  
113. foundation on the idea of land ownership. This places production and  
114. distribution into private hands. Scarcity was created through monopolistic  
115. control of resources and energy (such as the oil spigot), which has mostly  
116. been done in secrecy.
117.  
118. What became the owner class began setting rules for the rest of the  
119. population through their undue influence on governments. This controlled  
120. market slowly destroyed healthy price discovery processes by manipulating  
121. currency and creating monopolies. Government giveaways in the form of  
122. corporate welfare stifles true entrepreneurship and innovation. Forces of  
123. privatization have been swallowing the commons. With scarce access to  
124. resources and jobs, people are pitted against one another, engaging in a  
125. rigged game that just keeps enriching the richest.
126.  
127. Unlike the managed scarcity of centrally controlled markets, Bitcoins  
128. digital scarcity is created through voluntary agreement of its  
129. participants. Its open source protocol grants users power to choose what  
130. kind of network they wish to create or be a part of, as codes can be  
131. modified by anyone. Combined with game theory that enforces fairness, this  
132. scarcity creates a new form of capital, one that is open source and  
133. distributed. This brings a radical departure from the current vulture  
134. capitalism that promotes cheating and wealth without work by means of  
135. usury, rent-seeking and QE (taxation through inflation).
136.  
137. While central banks use fiat currency as a force of coercion, Bitcoin  
138. currency is a token of value that provides an incentive to generate  
139. productivity and efficiency of the workers (miners). This pays for the  
140. labor required to build a whole new global financial system. In a sense,  
141. each Bitcoin mining pool is like a worker-owned cooperative that requires  
142. members to both work together and also compete within the network to  
143. perform the issuing of monetary units and clearing of transactions.  
144. Solidarity generated through collective hashing power maintains the ethos  
145. of decentralized consensus.
146.  
147. Perceived deflationary characteristics touted as Bitcoins flaw is actually  
148. a vital incentive structure that bootstraps the whole venture to build a  
149. new infrastructure in this time of transition from a massive teetering debt  
150. economy. This networked scarcity encourages the funding of start-ups and  
151. fueling of innovation on the edges. All around, new projects are emerging,  
152. ones that could fulfill the aspirations and needs of various communities,  
153. fostering a new network effect of altruism. Crowd-funding platforms like  
154. StartJoin and Bitcoin Capital are good examples of this.
155. Distributed Accountability
156.  
157. Bitcoins self-organizing is not easily understood from outside looking in.  
158. It is like a caterpillar in the cocoon before turning into a butterfly.  
159. Market manipulation and outright theft within exchanges like Mt. Gox appear  
160. to confirm the view of man as selfishly driven. Yet, this is occurring in  
161. centralized offshoots and simply a reflection of the greed rampant in the  
162. existing system.
163.  
164. If we dig a little deeper into this ecosystem, what is happening within the  
165. mining process also appears to affirm the theory of natural selection,  
166. where those with powerful computer chips and hashing power can increase the  
167. chance of winning the game. Indeed, mining equipment is now highly  
168. specialized and is becoming more like a kind of survival of the fittest  
169. (where ordinary computers can no longer participate in mining). This brings  
170. concern about the potential centralization of mining. Yet, just as Darwins  
171. first work does not complete his full picture of evolution, the mining was  
172. also designed to be subservient to the imagination that infused this  
173. innovation.
174.  
175. The fierce mining competition fosters efficiency, helping make the relative  
176. capacity of the Bitcoin ecosystem significantly less energy intensive than  
177. the existing financial system and the most ecological one when fully  
178. utilized at a global scale. This also helps create a solid foundation upon  
179. which a social contract of a truly democratic society can be built.
180.  
181. The creator of this technology, Satoshi Nakamoto found a way to secure the  
182. system from the risks of concentrated greed and destructive seeds within  
183. our selfish genes. This was done through implementing a particular  
184. consensus algorithm that enforces people to show the proof of their work.  
185. Rewards here function as a mechanism to keep everyone honest and the  
186. equilibrium of supply and demand distributes accountability as a form of  
187. self-regulation taken up by those who participate in the mining.
188.  
189. All this has become an engine to build a system that is impervious to  
190. internal or external attacks. The mining rings that have now achieved  
191. global level security perform a kind of safeguard of real democracy,  
192. through which spontaneous forces of We the People can be unleashed. With  
193. its feature of infinite divisibility, value created through a peer-to-peer  
194. exchange of autonomy and reciprocity can become an abundant flow that  
195. nurtures all people, especially those who are made weak and vulnerable by  
196. current Western exploitation.
197.  
198. This even makes it possible for the other six billion, the unbanked and  
199. under-banked, especially in the Global South to participate in the world  
200. economy on their own terms. This is already starting to happen as  
201. investment and interest in transforming the massive remittance market is  
202. increasing, while charity and tipping is the fastest growing usage of  
203. Bitcoin in the West.
204. Paving the Way for Altruism
205.  
206. Many of us wish to evolve; to act more freely and extend kindness and  
207. compassion to others, but our actions are restricted and controlled by  
208. oppressive governments, religious fundamentalism and de-facto corporate  
209. dictatorship. As commercial-led globalization expands, the entire globe is  
210. shackled to the tyrannical logic of extreme capitalism and cowboy banksters  
211. autocratic control over the flow of money. People with good hearts are  
212. forced to adapt to the harsh environment of austerity and rule by the rich.  
213. They have to make hard decisions; either to be kind to others or suppress  
214. that innate nature of altruism just to survive.
215.  
216. The blockchain removes these obstacles, allowing us to align ourselves with  
217. internal forces of evolution. The built-in incentive structure of this  
218. game-changing innovation offers humanity a path to divest from the  
219. military-industrial complex, war economies, sweat shops and debt slavery as  
220. well as Stasi-like surveillance. Instead of supporting oligarchs that print  
221. money at will to buy missiles and tanks, people can independently invest in  
222. mining gear and channel the selfish and aggressive parts of humanity to  
223. serve the larger whole.
224.  
225. Artificial scarcity in centrally planned economies fuels destructive  
226. competition among people, dividing all through fear into separated nations,  
227. religions and ideologies, and justifies wars and hatred. Now the  
228. competitive drive that has been cut off and stagnated can be brought back  
229. to its origin of creative power and transformed into one that encourages  
230. each to strive for their best in service to all.
231.  
232. With decentralized cryptocurrencies, we can move away from the  
233. deterministic future imposed by central banks and divisive political  
234. ideologues and build a society that represents who we really are. Those who  
235. are ready and want it will find a way to chart a new path. Those in power  
236. can choose not to evolve, but they can no longer take the rest of us down  
237. with them.
238.  
239. Humans it seems are being degraded into killer apes. As the ideals of  
240. distributed consensus enshrined in mathematics are fully developed, they  
241. become the killer apps that can help humanity redeem itself. In this new  
242. world entered through the blockchain, we can now move beyond struggles for  
243. existence and ascend as a species capable of love.