It's amazing how many daily happenings and structures that we take for granted, not knowing where they originated or why do we need them, if we truly do. no matter where you exist in this world, there is some form of government there micromanaging your daily activities. To really understand the possible impact of cryptocurrency and blockchain on governments, we need to revisit the history of our government.
History of Government
Since prehistoric times, mankind has always functioned in groups, it makes us stronger and more successful when we function together as units with common goals, rather than trying to accomplish tasks individually. However, during prehistoric times population was much less, and most groups were just family members and friends that stuck together to survive the harsher adversities that they had to face then. According to Encyclopedia Britannica:
"So long as humans were few, there was hardly any government. The division of function between ruler and ruled occurred only, if at all, within the family. The largest social groups, whether tribes or villages, were little more than loose associations of families, in which every elder or family head had an equal voice."The invention of Agriculture and the irrigation system, which dates back to as far as 20000 BC, is believed to be the real cause of the change from a small family or tribal communities to larger gatherings with a central leadership. A coordinated approach was necessary to ensure that fields downstream and upstream the main river were both irrigated fairly. These types of gatherings evolved into what we now know as Monarchical Government.
However, in the monarchy system supreme authority is vested in a single person and succession usually passes from father to son or follows other arrangements within the family or monarchical dynasty. Overtime, this government system was found to be flawed, as due to the greed and selfish part of human nature, some leaders were not for the people but only for their own gains. Many groups of people oppose this governance approach, which gave rise to a more wholesome leadership approach known as Democracy.
Democracy, which means rule by the people, allows the entire population to play a role in determining who leads and what rules are administered to the mass. This idea originated in Greece around 5th century, but really started to take flight in the 16th to 17th century when we had revolutions like the American Revolution and the English Civil War, where the people revolted against monarchical governments and begun to form parliamentary or democratic states.
21st Century Government
Fastforwarding to today, democracy is now the most popular type of government, but we still experience: abuse of power by government authorities, unfair and misguided elections, physical abuse in some cases; and these are just a few among many other government corruptions. We still face some of the major governance problems that we have had since prehistoric times. The 21st Century has already seen several anti-government revolutions, rebellions and uprisings around the world including:
- The Syrian Civil War - At least 122,997 Syrian civilians died in the conflict, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SoHR).
- Nepalese Civil War - 17,800 people died during the war, and 100,000 were displaced; as per The new Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction estimation.
- The Lybian Crisis - 10,000 died, as per UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Libya, Ali Al-Za’tari spoke. Libya Humanitarian Response Plan also identified 2.44 million people in need of protection and some form of humanitarian assistance.
- Kyrgyz Revolution - 400,000 Uzbek people internally displaced.
- The Ukrainian Revolution - 1000s died, as per Ranker.com.
- Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution - more than 300 protestors died at the hands of the government, and as many as 700 more were injured; as per Ranker.com.
Cryptocurrency and Blockchain will change Government
The main problem that we have with government is trust. We can never be sure that any leader will be strong enough to resist the urge to abuse the power vested in them by the people.
- The blockchain is a secure trustless network that will never go against the initial consensus.
- The blockchain is nearly impossible to hack or manipulate, which makes it perfect for application of government protocols and elections.
- All government activities will be recorded on the blockchain.
- The blockchain would be 100% transparent about all government activities, as a copy of all activities will be held by every member of state, in the form of a ledger, and all ledgers would be updated simultaneously.
“Cryptocurrency is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen. That lack of central authority is the primary reason governments are afraid of the cryptocurrency.” source: investopedia.Third generation cryptocurrencies like EOS and Cardano (ADA) are now demonstrating that it is very possible to have a fully decentralized government on the blockchain. Cryptocurrency and blockchain may very well be the foundation on which to build type of government that we have been searching for since prehistoric times.
Source of picture: unsplash.
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