The Future of Society
A prediction for the worlds community structure
We have recently been listening to Balaji Srinivasan and his thoughts on the future of our society.
Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) is an angel investor and entrepreneur. Formerly the Chief Technology Offiver (CTO) of Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (Venture Capital firm), he was also the cofounder of Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), Counsyl (acquired by Myriad), Teleport (acquired by Topia), and Coin Center.
Balaji has been doing the rounds online talking about crypto and society for a while now. He has penned multiple essays on Technology, civilisation and Bitcoing, all of which can be read here.
Recently he has been discussing his thoughts on the community silos we may find ourselves caught between at some point in the near future. He suggests we are watching the rise of three distinct poles that will come to dominate global politics:
Communist Capital - “You must Submit”
The Chinese Comunist Party (CCP) is one of the most powerful authoritarian systems the world has ever known. As they are powerful, its citizens must therefore submit. Once they have submitted they are then allowed to go make money (within the CCP’s rules) and live their lives. Communism has never worked in full practice but we see the modern blend in the current CCP as a hybrid of submission + capitalism. Create wealth but under their directive. There is no denying it has been a successful model even if to the western mind the oppression can be distasteful.
Woke Capital - “You must sympathise”
In 2013 the New York Times Stock Price was looking pretty low. In order to survive the switch to online subscriptions and clickbait marketing, publishers realised they could no longer afford to be politically neutral. Below documents the rise of specific words within the NYT editorial after that decision:
Wokeism had found its champion. Wokeism requires you to apologise for your advantages and to hang your head in shame and submission. Once you have proven your allegiance to the ideology you can go make money, live your life and earn online validation by perpetuating wokeist culture.
Crypto Capital - “You must be Soveriegn”
To qualify as a Bitcoin Maximalist only you can hold access to your money, no third parties should custody your wealth. You must be a Sovereign individual, not requiring trust in state actors. Trust through Verification or the ability to.
Extreme Maximalists think bitcoin is the only coin and just like wokeness they believe all other coins are pointless. Only time will tell if the utility of the alt coins will survive and hyperbitcoinisation (bitcoin is the worlds reserve currency) of the world will prevail. Likely a blend of the two, but as a global reserve there can only be ONE. Maximalists firmly believe it is Bitcoin.
The Future
The majority of the worlds population will sit somewhere in the middle of these silos while the extremists try to validate themselves by luring people closer to each silo.
Each extreme comes with its risks:
Communist Capital comes with the risk of the state seizing your assets and probably your life. The state runs the risk of building its power on ‘yes’ men and corrupt orderlies, neither of which are valuable in building and maintaining the system.
Woke Capital rewards individuals with social validation for attacking others whilst lining up those who resist for being attacked. As you climb up the echelons of woke power you become an increasingly large target for everyone around you until you too are ‘cancelled’.
Crypto Capital pushes you to be totally independent but in reality this simply takes too much time and effort. It is also extremely difficult to force any support for collective action when everyone is sovereign and self-sufficient. Centralised institutions are hugely convenient and being totally sovereign is hugely expensive and onerous. Delegating responsibility to institutions can save time and money.
Balaji see’s these parameters of change playing out in real time and we do too. Communist Capital and Wokeist Capital are already powerful political forces with Crypto Capital making its presence known more recently.
The important part to focus on from a wealth generation perspective is the “new field” of growth, the Crypto World. The other two (Communist and Woke Capital are still manifestations of Authoritarianism) are not new entrants, just the latest reincarnations of the same failed ideology.
It will be no surprise to our readers that we much prefer Crypto Capital over the other two. As we believe we are heading into a difficult part of the societal cycle we are reluctant to surrender anymore power to centralised governments than we have to. Governments are very bad at relinquishing power and we would rather have the means to opt out of the system than be enslaved by it.
Until Next Time
The Wealth Gap