6 ms·

Let a thousand societies bloom

38 points by fbrusch 9mo ago

TimorousBestie 9mo ago
Much like the Hundred Flowers campaign led to the Anti-Rightist campaign, an Archipelago model makes it easier for the ambient sovereign power to crush and destroy the various micro-societies that interfere with its agenda. Scott (redacted)’s original fictional instantiation of this theory worked around this problem, as I recall, by pretending no pre-existing sovereign power was around.
- wizardforhire 9mo ago
  The current status of the music industry is a real world example
AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
What crypto purists don’t appreciate is that money, commerce and economic activity is all a social function they’re not “technical problems” When I first read the Satoshi white paper the immediate response I had as somebody who has studied political economics is that “this will never work because governments will never allow for disintermediation of their currency because it’s one of, if not THE, primary sources of control over a population” The promise of crypto fundamentally misunderstands how humans work, relate, exchange, and negotiate energy and power. Contracts are just an extension of politics, digital contracts are no different
- victorbjorklund 9mo ago
  At least in theory though on chain contracts could have value in that they could lower the cost of the transaction. Of course in practice it did not happen and it’s just speculation on the price.
- burnerRhodov2 9mo ago
  > this will never work because governments will never allow for disintermediation of their currency because it’s one of, if not THE, primary sources of control over a population So, has trump coin and world liberty financial proven your friend wrong? What about El salvador or the cayman islands? It seems that it was you who misunderstood human nature. Greed always wins.
  - lawlessone 9mo ago
    >What about El salvador or the cayman islands? What do these prove? some people dodge taxes?
    - burnerRhodov2 9mo ago
      A country, accepting it as legal currency... the exact scenario that the OP said "Could never happen"
      - lawlessone 9mo ago
        The Caymans are just a Tax haven and El Salvador is a concentration camp. Not sure they're great examples.
  - treyd 9mo ago
    TrumpCoin and WLF are obvious grifts by parties associated with Trump and not actually part of government policy, and the president is not a rational actor trying to maintain a capable government. El Salvador's experiment was generally a failure for various reasons, and they agreed to start rolling back the policies as part of an agreement with the IMF for another loan. These projects happened because, yes, greed wins and destroys everything in its wake.
    - burnerRhodov2 9mo ago
      What about blackrock etf's? Tether being a huge buyer and holder of US treasuries for like 8 years straight? How the US and other countries are paving the way for stablecoin legislation. Tether is one of the most profitable companies of all time working with major banks on decreasing settlement times by days into seconds.... El Salvador did not roll back their policies... they have been a continual buyer, they just rolled back their "Required by law to be accepted", they added a bunch of special cases where you don't have to accept it, but alot of tourist destinations like el zonte still accept it (or atleast they did when i was there in late 2024).
  - Terr_ 9mo ago
- scyclow 9mo ago
  I agree as it relates to bitcoin: It's positioning itself as a store of value... and it kind of works as long as the collective delusion that it _is_ a store of value holds up. But that sort of self-fulfilling prophecy is kind of flimsy. Governments get to decide what money is based on charging taxes and demand how it gets paid. Legal contracts are similar. They 100% are reliant on social and institutional forces for enforcement and meaning. But I think smart contracts are different because they are self-enforcing. It would be very difficult to use a smart contracts as a replacement for legal contracts in most circumstances. But when the contract relates to state and digital assets on the network then it's a great tool. And if you end up with a network that hosts a lot of these important contracts, then the native crypto asset (which is used as gas to power said contracts) has value as a commodity. And if that commodity also shares all the properties of good money (fungibility, durability, portability, etc.) then all of a sudden you have money.
- dbdr 9mo ago
  > this will never work because governments will never allow for disintermediation of their currency because it’s one of, if not THE, primary sources of control over a population Isn't this similar to saying "democracy will never work because kings will never allow it"? I'm not saying it's exactly the same, just the fact that some existing power structures do not like the change does not guarantee they will manage to stop it. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
  - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
    It is once you realize that those are both systems enforced by the society not deterministic outcomes The ruled choose their rulers as much as rulers choose who they rule
cogman10 9mo ago
I can't see these "societies" as anything more than toys for rich people. They simply aren't real. Creating a real society with so few people just doesn't work. You have to rely on a lot of input to make the society work which means you are defacto relying on the external structures to make your utopia function. These are nothing more than going to weird conferences for an extended time at best, and the setup of a cult compound at worst. Consider basic things like "How do we get food, water, sewage, trash taken care of". No way these little societies aren't simply fudging when it comes to those problems.
arjie 9mo ago
I like many of these attempts at creating new communities. One thing I have noticed with many of them is that none of them have progressed to the point where there is a first follower - someone who isn't part of the originating culture but is induced by something to join. As an example of one that I find interesting is the Esmeralda project, led by Devon Zuegel. These things select for the kind of people who will attend a talk on crypto, rationalism, urbanism and so on every evening. I imagine that this is intentional to start with. You need some critical mass of true believers to get things off the ground. But is that really the property of every successful community? I imagine that, like a tree, the majority of us are the trunk, the phloem that conducts the resources through, so that there are leaves and fruit and so on. I have no problem being the trunk of such a community, but I don't think I can be the fruit. I don't mean in a non-participatory sense. I mean that if the leaders are the High Priests, then the rest of these people are the rest of the clergymen, but they have no laymen at the sermon yet.
- eswat 9mo ago
  > I don't mean in a non-participatory sense. This is the issue I've seen in new communities. Although my framing is from seeing mixed digital nomad and local communities. But ones that have the ambition to start a tribe or even a hub, if we’re going by Vitalik's terminology. If you allow in more “non-believers”, just anyone that can join a group chat and physically go to a Google Map pin, more often that not most people will be non-participatory after their first contact. This makes it harder for a core team to get things off the ground if they have bigger ambitions than just a weekly meetup. I think the crypto community took that to heart in particular due to DAOs having very few successful examples, and many of these new crypto-adjacent societies are using a different model that’s more similar to building a startup.
  - arjie 9mo ago
    Yeah, that makes sense. They're just too early in the religion for the laymen, to keep that analogy going. Right now it's just Jesus and his Disciples. Well, I can't wait to see what they come up with. I think there's lots of new kinds of cities we could build.
- 9mo ago
epsilonic 9mo ago
[dead]
camgunz 9mo ago
These aren't communities; they're resorts. Where would my kids go to school? Who picks up yard waste? Who do I see for antibiotics and flu shots? Who do I report crimes to? That's right, a real society with a real government in a real country. We don't need more stuff for rich single people (mostly dudes).

38 points by fbrusch 9mo ago

Much like the Hundred Flowers campaign led to the Anti-Rightist campaign, an Archipelago model makes it easier for the ambient sovereign power to crush and destroy the various micro-societies that interfere with its agenda. Scott (redacted)’s original fictional instantiation of this theory worked around this problem, as I recall, by pretending no pre-existing sovereign power was around.

wizardforhire 9mo ago
The current status of the music industry is a real world example

AndrewKemendo 9mo ago

What crypto purists don’t appreciate is that money, commerce and economic activity is all a social function they’re not “technical problems” When I first read the Satoshi white paper the immediate response I had as somebody who has studied political economics is that “this will never work because governments will never allow for disintermediation of their currency because it’s one of, if not THE, primary sources of control over a population” The promise of crypto fundamentally misunderstands how humans work, relate, exchange, and negotiate energy and power. Contracts are just an extension of politics, digital contracts are no different

victorbjorklund 9mo ago
At least in theory though on chain contracts could have value in that they could lower the cost of the transaction. Of course in practice it did not happen and it’s just speculation on the price.
burnerRhodov2 9mo ago
> this will never work because governments will never allow for disintermediation of their currency because it’s one of, if not THE, primary sources of control over a population So, has trump coin and world liberty financial proven your friend wrong? What about El salvador or the cayman islands? It seems that it was you who misunderstood human nature. Greed always wins.
- lawlessone 9mo ago
  >What about El salvador or the cayman islands? What do these prove? some people dodge taxes?
  - burnerRhodov2 9mo ago
    A country, accepting it as legal currency... the exact scenario that the OP said "Could never happen"
    - lawlessone 9mo ago
      The Caymans are just a Tax haven and El Salvador is a concentration camp. Not sure they're great examples.
- treyd 9mo ago
  TrumpCoin and WLF are obvious grifts by parties associated with Trump and not actually part of government policy, and the president is not a rational actor trying to maintain a capable government. El Salvador's experiment was generally a failure for various reasons, and they agreed to start rolling back the policies as part of an agreement with the IMF for another loan. These projects happened because, yes, greed wins and destroys everything in its wake.
  - burnerRhodov2 9mo ago
    What about blackrock etf's? Tether being a huge buyer and holder of US treasuries for like 8 years straight? How the US and other countries are paving the way for stablecoin legislation. Tether is one of the most profitable companies of all time working with major banks on decreasing settlement times by days into seconds.... El Salvador did not roll back their policies... they have been a continual buyer, they just rolled back their "Required by law to be accepted", they added a bunch of special cases where you don't have to accept it, but alot of tourist destinations like el zonte still accept it (or atleast they did when i was there in late 2024).
- Terr_ 9mo ago
scyclow 9mo ago
I agree as it relates to bitcoin: It's positioning itself as a store of value... and it kind of works as long as the collective delusion that it _is_ a store of value holds up. But that sort of self-fulfilling prophecy is kind of flimsy. Governments get to decide what money is based on charging taxes and demand how it gets paid. Legal contracts are similar. They 100% are reliant on social and institutional forces for enforcement and meaning. But I think smart contracts are different because they are self-enforcing. It would be very difficult to use a smart contracts as a replacement for legal contracts in most circumstances. But when the contract relates to state and digital assets on the network then it's a great tool. And if you end up with a network that hosts a lot of these important contracts, then the native crypto asset (which is used as gas to power said contracts) has value as a commodity. And if that commodity also shares all the properties of good money (fungibility, durability, portability, etc.) then all of a sudden you have money.
dbdr 9mo ago
> this will never work because governments will never allow for disintermediation of their currency because it’s one of, if not THE, primary sources of control over a population Isn't this similar to saying "democracy will never work because kings will never allow it"? I'm not saying it's exactly the same, just the fact that some existing power structures do not like the change does not guarantee they will manage to stop it. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
- AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
  It is once you realize that those are both systems enforced by the society not deterministic outcomes The ruled choose their rulers as much as rulers choose who they rule

cogman10 9mo ago

I can't see these "societies" as anything more than toys for rich people. They simply aren't real. Creating a real society with so few people just doesn't work. You have to rely on a lot of input to make the society work which means you are defacto relying on the external structures to make your utopia function. These are nothing more than going to weird conferences for an extended time at best, and the setup of a cult compound at worst. Consider basic things like "How do we get food, water, sewage, trash taken care of". No way these little societies aren't simply fudging when it comes to those problems.

arjie 9mo ago

I like many of these attempts at creating new communities. One thing I have noticed with many of them is that none of them have progressed to the point where there is a first follower - someone who isn't part of the originating culture but is induced by something to join. As an example of one that I find interesting is the Esmeralda project, led by Devon Zuegel. These things select for the kind of people who will attend a talk on crypto, rationalism, urbanism and so on every evening. I imagine that this is intentional to start with. You need some critical mass of true believers to get things off the ground. But is that really the property of every successful community? I imagine that, like a tree, the majority of us are the trunk, the phloem that conducts the resources through, so that there are leaves and fruit and so on. I have no problem being the trunk of such a community, but I don't think I can be the fruit. I don't mean in a non-participatory sense. I mean that if the leaders are the High Priests, then the rest of these people are the rest of the clergymen, but they have no laymen at the sermon yet.

eswat 9mo ago
> I don't mean in a non-participatory sense. This is the issue I've seen in new communities. Although my framing is from seeing mixed digital nomad and local communities. But ones that have the ambition to start a tribe or even a hub, if we’re going by Vitalik's terminology. If you allow in more “non-believers”, just anyone that can join a group chat and physically go to a Google Map pin, more often that not most people will be non-participatory after their first contact. This makes it harder for a core team to get things off the ground if they have bigger ambitions than just a weekly meetup. I think the crypto community took that to heart in particular due to DAOs having very few successful examples, and many of these new crypto-adjacent societies are using a different model that’s more similar to building a startup.
- arjie 9mo ago
  Yeah, that makes sense. They're just too early in the religion for the laymen, to keep that analogy going. Right now it's just Jesus and his Disciples. Well, I can't wait to see what they come up with. I think there's lots of new kinds of cities we could build.
9mo ago

epsilonic 9mo ago

[dead]

camgunz 9mo ago

These aren't communities; they're resorts. Where would my kids go to school? Who picks up yard waste? Who do I see for antibiotics and flu shots? Who do I report crimes to? That's right, a real society with a real government in a real country. We don't need more stuff for rich single people (mostly dudes).