Hello everyone!
There is a sci-fi book called "Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson. In its storyline it discusses the concept of "Phyles" among other things. The word "Phyle" comes from Greek, meaning clan, tribe, or to descend from. In the book Phyles are a means of organizing people into groups. The stark contrast to today's method of dividing people into nation-states by coercion is that people associate in phyles by voluntary association and/or contribution based on their own choice of a particular phyle with which they share values, culture, heritage, religion or whatever else they might deem important. So contrary to nation-states which are centralized and coercive, you get phyles, which are decentralized and voluntary.
The book first came out in 1995 and so far I haven't seen signs of widespread
conscious adoption of the concept. There are some phyles, for example the subscribers to publications of Casey Research (hope I don't violate forum rules by mentioning by name?) are encouraged to form local phyles, where they discuss investment ideas, politics, economics and whatever else they like to with like-minded people. You could argue that forums like [Suspicious link removed]ites like 4chan or 9gag and organizations like Couchsurfing represent proto-phyles. But those are just decentralized associations of people based on shared culture, interests etc. for now. What is needed for an idea like that to lift off and become a real alternative to today's system is a way to do commerce in the same voluntary, decentralized spirit of the phyles.
This is where Bitcoin and other altcoins might come in. Bitcoin is open-source technology, so anyone wishing to start their own blockchain is free to do so. I've seen a post here somewhere thinking along similar lines: groups of people (phyles) having their own coins and exchanges to facilitate trade between those coins springing up. This might make the concept of phyles operational as a concept for people to organize their lives around.
What I am trying to imply is, that phyles have the same relationship to nation-states as Bitcoin has to national fiat currencies. They bring decentralization, voluntary association into the picture as an alternative to centralized power and coercion. Leaving out why this might be morally preferable, I think this is a much more stable and efficient method of organization as well! Information gets seriously distorted in hierarchical power structures and people in positions of power end up making their decisions based on some very bad information, so even if they had good intentions to begin with (which is dubious at best, seeing as power corrupts and also attracts the corrupted), they end up being as efficient at managing the system as an Elephant might be at folding origami.
Right now I'm not saying we should all go do this now. There are reasons, why this concept was first discussed in a sci-fi book and is not (yet?) widely present in the world. The infrastructure is mostly there, but as usual cultural evolution is lagging behind technological invention. But I think that the creation of Bitcoin is a crucial step in making phyles viable. Bitcoin will need to prove its capability to function as a medium of exchange and store of value to a critical mass of people first, but watch out for it, this might just be the tune the future will dance to and I think it's a really good vibe
EDIT: so when I mention "Bitcointalk" forums I get a [Suspicious link removed]?
All hail Discordia!
The way i understand these philes is that they need to be embedded in a bigger societal context.
The problem is in fact with their decentralized character.
Say you have this phile called X which is distributed throughout large parts of asia.
One member lives in Xizang and he needs a road.
How will he convince his fellow phile members around asia that they need to invest in a road that will be used just by this one member?
And assuming he will not get the funds for his local road from his fellow phyllies, how would this man need to get organized to get a road in front of his house?
I'll tell you, he needs to get together with the people from his village.
He doesn't need a Phyle, he needs a local commune first and foremost. His whole livelyhood depends on the people around him. Why would he even think about getting together with likeminded people far far away when he needs the people around him the most.
So i think that these decentralized communes can only work if there is some bigger structure already providing with some basics like electricity and technology. Without these centralized basics communication with far away people is impossible.
And imagine what would happen if indeed we had these phyles and some would go to war.
You would have a globally distributed threat/war. Suddenly the possibility for war is everywhere and invisible. Your neighbour could be one of the factions and his opponents may think it is a good thing to blow up his appartment. Unfortunately for you you live above that appartment.
So i think it could only work if we can prevent violence between these phyles. Having wars between distributed invisible players that are embedded in society doesnt sound like a sustainable situation. And these phyles
will go to war at some point when the interests are high enough.
Conflicts between competing phyles would drag civilization down into the mud. People would become fearfull of walking on the street because anyone could be the enemy. Society would become pretty broken with these embedded distributed conflicting factions.
So to manage these conflicts you
need a bigger structure agreed upon by everyone involved to set some rules that prevent any faction from dominating another faction.
