Last night I wrote an article with a loose theme of disenfranchisement, which means being deprived of rights, often used when it comes to voting, where the disenfranchised have no influence over governance. Yet, I think this is something that there is more to it than just this, as "franchise" itself comes from being granted rights by that same government, which means that the only way to feel disenfranchised is to believe in the legitimacy of government granted rights. Should the right to an adequate standard of living be on government grant or, should it be part the role of government directed by us, the owners.
I think part of the reason why so many people feel disenfranchised, is that we no longer own much, we ae all kind of renting our life, either by riding on debt or as employees working on the land of others, whether that be farm land or the real estate of business. When we are working the lands of others, we do not have rights over that land and with the increasing ownership of everything in a decreasing amount of hands, more and more people have less and less rights.
The increasing participation in cryptocurrencies and digital assets is a response to this, where people and even businesses, are looking to take control over the economic realities and begin to own once again. While a lot of the land has already been taken control of, the digital landscape keeps growing, with more space and opportunity opening up before us. What is interesting with this is that perhaps due to our conditioning, we again feel that we need to be granted rights to use the land we own, we are again legitimizing the authority of a government, effectively handing over our ownership and putting our franchise in their hands. I find it increasingly interesting that governments want us to create value for ourselves, as long as it is on their terms and through their gateways, while they are working for us.
There is nothing wrong with governments per se, except that they have taken the control granted them and decided that it is theirs, as if they are the ones that own, when in reality, they are working on our land for us as a group, which is why they are called public servants. I think that what we are seeing now is a push back against the scope creep where instead of doing what is in our collective best interest, they have been doing what is in theirs.
A lot of people seem to think it is a binary choice, government or no government, but I don't think it is that simple. I do think that there are aspects of the economy that benefit us, but the open market will not take care of adequately, as they will focus on what has the highest incentive, the highest profit, which obviously isn't healthy for the group. For example, one of the common arguments is that without government, "who would build the roads" kind of thing. But, there needn't be this on-off approach, since we have technology that can be far more sensitive to our activity and needs.
As an example and one that is not fleshed out and has a multitude of caveats, image having a flat rate of tax on all people of 20% - but, rather than all going into a pool that is controlled by a government, 50% of it goes into the pool to take care of a number of shared services and market segments, for example roads, and the other 50% is able to be allocated to other activities and services, for example, military spending. This means that every citizen has a tax wallet where they will be able to make decisions as an individual as to what they are willing to support, which cold be allocated in several ways granularly or from a more general sense. I wonder, if people had to pay for war directly form their wallet, would they? Rather than on and off, we would have the sensitivity of a dimmer switch.
As said, there are many sides to this, but I believe that what we are currently doing is reimagining and exploring the way we organize ourselves locally and at a global level. But, in order to be able to do this, we need to each have skin in the game that matters, which in the past has only really taken into account monetary skin, not activity, which is a heavy-handed approach. With the ability to tokenize activity and apply a value of some kind to it, we will be able to create a voter profile of some kind that captures much more than a yes or no decision in order to discover what is really important to us. Based on this, resources can be allocated in a more dynamic way, without the reliance on a centralized point of governance.
Having the ability to make our own decisions is having agency, which gives us ownership of our direction. This means that we make the decisions for ourselves and cannot be unseated, cannot be disenfranchised, because our privilege isn't granted, it is earned and requires no signing authority, as it is underpinned by a community in a trustless network.
The world as we know it is changing form and it is going to be torn apart and restructured at every level over time. One of those shifts that takes place is going to be the move from government to governance, something that makes us owners of our direction again. The revolution coming is going to cause a lot of disruption, but the real changes are going to be a slow takeover of everything that we know today - some things will work, some won't, but it will continue on looking to improve, the more we participate in the process.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]