Bitcoin Forum

Digital technology, like bitcoin, is a disruptive force of decentralisation. It tears down settled hierarchical organisations and builds new networked ones (although, like Facebook, they can sometimes end up becoming very centralised too). Social media is “many to many” communication, rather than “one to many” broadcast. “Sharing economy” companies such as Uber and Airbnb are all about linking people and assets via smartphones. Even the internet itself is designed to be distributed, borderless and difficult to control.

That decentralising force is sweeping through society and economies and the affects are difficult to predict. The most fun to be had at Parallel Polis was guessing which industries would be “Ubered” next – that is, transformed into a peer-to-peer industry conducted on an app. Several companies are already monetising unused assets: borrowing cars (RelayRides), daily tasks (TaskRabbit), lending bikes (Liquid), lending money (Lending Club), home wifi (Fon) and even clothes (Neighborgoods). The conclusion at Parallel Polis – and indeed in Silicon Valley – is that any industry that takes a cut of a deal between two people or holds fixed assets that can be provided informally will be soon “Ubered”, because smartphones link buyers and sellers directly. Personally, I think estate agents might be next.

At some point, and probably sooner than we think, the current left and right offerings of the major parties, including (perhaps especially) the populist, will start to appear ludicrous and unworkable. New political movements and ideas will arrive before long for this industrial revolution, especially once the majority of the population will soon have grown up online. It will be a politics that offers solutions to the challenges society will face, and be bold enough to steer technology rather than be led by it, to harness it rather than dismiss it, to see it as a motor of social change, not just a job maker. Perhaps there will be some back-to-the-earth, off-grid thinking reminiscent of the 1970s. (There are already small hints of it if you look in the right places: bricks through Google bus windows and digital detox days). I’m not sure. More likely is that groups like the Prague crypto-anarchists, who will embrace the changes and experiment with entirely new forms of governance and society, will emerge. After all, they were right about digital technology, about surveillance and bitcoin and most of us ignored them. And for better of worse, I think they’re probably right about this too.

Not sure how The Guardian can take themselves seriously publishing this.

The Guardian has been a leading voice in promoting the politics of control, but the nice control, where the controllers are just looking out for your best interests, because they're so smart (and implicitly, you're not smart and don't know what's good for you)


As soon as all this less-than-subtle anti-liberal rhetoric, such as:

• The "neo-liberalism" euphemism (it's called corporate-governmental collusion, aka fascism you fucking sycophants)
• The "top-down socialism only works when it's done 101% by the nicest & most ideologically uncompromising socialists" BS
• Subtly supporting at least 2 hostile takeovers of Bitcoin, by way of editorial policy (they published one side only of the blocksize debate, no information about the people running the Bitcoin project ever appeared in The Guardian)

......but until then, these people have no place trying to make an ostentatious show of bathing themselves in the glow of Cryptoanarchy virtue. When it comes to the real meat and potatoes of the issue, they've got Facebook, Google and Amazon to bow down to, who are having none of it.