The words "communism" and "socialism" are huge trigger words for most Americans, especially those that lean politically right wing. To citizens on the right, "communism" and "socialism" are like the worst things one could possibly try to implement, and are the enemy of 'freedom'.
Why is that?
Plain and simple: brainwashing.
And immediately this becomes a very tricky subject, because if I tell people they are brainwashed they are going to immediately think I'm totally full of shit. They're going to think I'm attacking their intelligence. They're going to shut down everything: the dialog and the ability to think critically about this topic. They're going to be offended and they are going to either exit the conversation immediately or go on the attack to defend their beliefs. That's not helpful; Not at all.
So now I need to issue some context on brainwashing.
Everyone is brainwashed. I'm brainwashed; you're brainwashed; everyone. We gotta get over this hurdle, because this conversation requires one to remove their ego and look at themselves from a non-biased point of view.
This is a tall order.
Such a capacity for self-reflection is well beyond the reach of most people. Again, that is not an insult; that is a fact. I am not somehow better than other people because my brain works differently: it's just different. For every attribute I gain, I lose an attribute somewhere else: that's how this works. Einstein would miss the bus if his wife put his coins in the wrong pocket. Reflect on that fact for a moment, because it's very significant. Intelligence is a vast spectrum, and IQ tests are ironically stupid.
How does one remove their own thoughts outside of their own body while completely ignoring personal experience?
It's not easy.
Know thyself.
Knowing yourself is surprisingly difficult. The next time you're singing that Christmas jingle: remember that you're brainwashed. The next time you remember that "Got Milk" commercial: ja brainwashed. The next time you decide that China is the reason the world is so messed up even though America runs the Imperialist Empire and controls the money (USD petrodollar)...
There's a lot of propaganda that's constantly being pumped out against China and Russia (in case we haven't noticed). Do China and Russia suck balls? Yes, of course they do: because every country is a messed up cesspool of centralized rulership. There are no exceptions. All propaganda is riddled with half-truths and believable exaggerations.
Gaining perspective:
What do you think Chinese people think about America? What do you think Russia thinks about America? What about Europe? Most people don't give a shit because they've decided that other people don't matter. How many times have you heard the term "American Lives" in reference to a conflict, war, or other tragedy? Who gives a fuck about the non-Americans that died? NOT ME! FUCK UM! In fact we see this with COVID as well: people want to know how many Americans died more than they want to know worldwide stats.
I'll tell you what most of the world thinks about America: we are disgusting oblivious trash-monsters. The Middle East LITERALLY thinks we are the devil (GREAT SATAN) and they are not wrong. Most citizens remain blissfully unaware of these facts as they zombie away at their 9 to 5 job and pay their taxes, feeding into the system, completely blind of any wrong doing.
I was just following orders.
These same people will say things like, "My taxes pay your salary." to police officers or "My taxes pay for your food stamps."
Bitch! Your taxes pay for Guantanamo Bay and the enslavement of the entire human race. Fucking dumb ass! Again, it's hard to stay objective when the stakes are so high and people are so woefully ignorant and brainwashed by the state.
As long as I can remember I've always maintained some pretty radically-left political ideologies. Communism can work. Why not? Socialism is a stepping stone to communism. Bring it on. Let burn this thing to the ground and start over. I'm here for it.
At the same time I've always gotten along well with libertarians, which I thought was weird because most libertarians lean slightly right. It wasn't until I saw one of these Nolan Charts that I realized that being a radical left-wing libertarian was possible. That must be what I am.
Weird!
We are like unicorns over here, you don't see many left-wing libertarians, that's for sure. Most people assume that if you want to enforce radical left-wing policy then 'obviously' you'd have to force people in an authoritarian way. This is not the case. The best policies and reinforcement tactics have always and will always be positive-reinforcement trumping negative-reinforcement.
Now that crypto is here to stay this becomes even more obvious. Crypto is all about opt-in competing systems that simultaneously force the community to do things a certain way (consensus), but at the same time allow any community member to opt-out. These new governance systems are borderless and can not capture the community and force them to do things against their will. Best of both worlds really.
Crypto requires consent.
And this is a libertarian aspect in nature, void of left/right politics, which is a good thing because if you're creating a community of diverse individuals you don't really get to pick and choose the individual politics of your members.
Brainwashing is a feature, not a bug.
The world is complicated, and the brain is tiny. Therefore we must prune the decision tree just like AI would. We must make certain assumptions about how the world works in order to build on top of that information and understand what's going on around us. If we don't do this our brain would be flooded with information and there'd be no way to make informed decisions.
Many of these things set in during our early developmental years. The experiences that happen to us around 4 to 8 years old are pinnacle in developing, not only personality, but critical thinking itself and many other things as well. Those are the primetime brainwashing years that get set in stone and will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
This thing we call brainwashing only becomes brainwashing when the thing that we believe is not only incorrect, but also damaging. In all other contexts this thing we call brainwashing is just forging unmovable pillars in our thought processes that can be used to understand the world around us.
Again, this is a feature not a bug. Remove the pillars, and the entire structure collapses. This is why 99% of people who end up brainwashed will not allow the pillars to be removed. It would crush their entire worldview, and the brain will move to protect itself from that kind of devastation.
Trust is the crux.
It all boils down to trust in the end. Humans are designed to trust. Again, this is a feature, not a bug. If people did not trust each other society would instantly fail. It is only when that trust fails do we start to question it and decide the system is bugged. That is not how reality operates. When something goes wrong with a pyramid, we can't fix the pyramid by removing the lower level. That again would lead to the collapse of the entire structure.
So we are forced to trust others.
The only question that comes into play at this point is: who do we trust? This is where reputation comes into play. Money itself is also a form of reputation. And crypto is the ultimate expression of trust as it pertains to money. We lose a massive amount of efficiency with crypto, but we gain all the trust from an unhackable decentralized ledger being copied a thousand times over by a thousand different trusted parties.
So when I say something "crazy" like I want to implement communism because communism is awesome... can you trust that? This is up to the individual, and it depends on my own reputation.
Perhaps this is an issue of semantics?
What do I mean when I say 'communism'? Definitely not whatever China is doing, that's for damn sure. China is an oligarchy controlled by a central bank. Russia is an oligarchy controlled by a central bank. America is an oligarchy controlled by a central bank. Gee, there seems to be a pattern emerging here.
Let's ask Google!
Give what you can, take what you need.
That is communism. Communism is an EXTREMELY idealistic utopian form of government. Everyone is contributing as much as they can (within reason) and everyone is taking only want they need from the communal pools of resources (unless there's a surplus that can be distributed in a fair way).
Unfortunately, as we all know, theoretically utopian societies do not work in practice, or else we would have done it already and it would have taken over the entire world instantly (because it's superior in every way to all other forms of government). That's not what happened, so what has gone wrong here?
Many would say that communism fails because it lacks the proper incentives. Why would I work harder for the same pay? That's not equitable. Of course the same people that make this argument turn a blind eye to wage-slavery and time-vampirism. Why would I work harder than my co-workers if I get paid the same amount per hour? Same logic. There are reasons why I would work harder, but that's probably a topic for another post.
This argument is totally invalid. Why am I writing this blog post right now when I can just as easily delegate my stake to @leo.voter and make the same amount of money passively without doing any work? Here I am writing this post instead of making passive income, so even on a personal-experience level the argument is totally ridiculous.
People are builders. We are programmed to work. People like working and building. We legit get dopamine hits from our brain telling us we are doing a good job. More than that: working hard and building value gives individuals a better reputation. This "social score" reputation is on a higher level than the reputation provided by money itself. More on that later.
Why doesn't communism work though?
Communism works... it just doesn't scale (yet).
Behold, Exhibit A:
I will never forget this TED talk.
It's just too good.
Micro-charges are the future of governance.
90 second in, he talks about the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A communist asks a capitalist:
Who is in charge of the bread supply?
lol what?
No one is in charge.
This is a self-regulating system.
This is the key as to why communism fails miserably.
Because in order for "communism" to scale up, the current implementations require that every aspect of society be controlled in a centralized manner by a "trusted" party. Yeah, that's not communism. That is hammered dogshit. Therefore, communism does not scale without decentralization of power. Sound familiar?
Why is crypto communist/socialist?
Because at the base layer the community controls the means of production. That's all you need to be communist/socialist. Welcome to your own nightmare: republicans. Don't worry, it won't be as bad as you've been led to believe.
Back to the subject of connotation.
You can't even call these things communism/socialism in public, because those words have been so deeply rooted in a negative connotation that the public will simply not accept them no matter what anyone does. We need a new word for these things. There's no reason to fight the current if you want to end up downstream. But first, what is even the difference between socialism and communism?
Basically they are exactly the same thing on a core level.
The community must own the means of production.
Simple enough: sounds like crypto to me.
But we still need another word for it because people will outright reject it simply based on previous brainwashing.
How about... Anarcho-Capitalism!?!
Wow, sounds pretty sweet!
This is all a matter of semantics, how we define these concepts, and connotations. Communism becomes anarcho-capitalism when communism becomes decentralized. With no one in charge of the centralized attack vectors associated in traditional communism, ownership becomes once again private and the government has very little power over the citizens.
There's really no other way to accomplish this in a digital environment, because what are you going to do? Threaten your citizens with "internet prison"? Yeah, that's not real. This isn't the Matrix. This isn't the Metaverse (yet).
If someone doesn't like their borderless digital government, they're just going to move to a better one. This is the nature of the emergent attention economy. It's forcing everyone to compete in the most healthy form of free-market capitalism the world has ever seen by exponential margins.
But capitalism isn't good enough... or is it?
Free-market laissez-faire capitalism only cares about making as much money as possible, and in theory building as much value as possible. This is where the tragedy of the commons comes into play. What happens when one entity depletes all the common resources and ruins the game for everyone? That's when you have to create authoritarian rules that stop the bad actors from fucking everything up. There will also be a push and pull requirement to balance freedom with an objectively fair ruleset. The problem today is that the people forging these rulesets are anything but objective. What the world really needs are Philosopher Kings.
Humanity is a hive primarily filled with drones.
Check me out talking about Hive in 2018. kek
My personal example of crypto "communism".
- First, we need to centralize the geography.
- This becomes a potential attack vector in terms of the military industrial complex. There must be defenses in place to prevent an imperialist takeover of the system. Luckily, decentralized infrastructure is a natural defense to centralized takeover.
- At this point we have many people in our digital community located in the same geographical region. This has many advantages and disadvantages. The centralized attack vector must be leveraged into extreme efficiency gains to become justified.
- It's also important to have many members of the community outside this geographical region in case shit hits the fan.
- All members of the community (or perhaps all members of the community within the approved geographical location) benefit from "universal basic income". All members own the automated means of production. Any profits made via automation are distributed back to the members equally.
- To incentivize work-ethic, any products or services produced by non-automated means can be pocketed by the individuals that participated in this process. But the ultimate goal of this society would be to eventually automate these non-automated processes and then redistribute that value back out equally among community members. This frees up the work-force to move on to the other projects that haven't been automated yet.
Now tell me, is that... "communism"?
I would call it communism. I'd also call it anarcho-capitalism, but it's unlike anything the world has ever seen. Expect crazy stuff like this to happen over the next decade or two. New never before seen governance models will pop up all over the globe. This is why I constantly harp on the fact that city-states are going to return, because the advantages of a community being located within the same geographical region are vast when building value in the real world rather than the digital metaverse.
The main point to be made here is that people can not imagine a world that isn't owned by central bankers. When communities own the means of production within the physical and digital world, in addition to controlling their own currency, the world is going to become a very strange place. The Balkanization of everything is coming, and those who cling onto the old dying institutions are in for a nasty surprise.
Conclusion
Do you think that communism is "bad". Most people do. Because we're all being told it's bad constantly over the course of our entire lives. This is propaganda. This is brainwashing.
All that matters is that communities need to retake control of the means of production in addition to currency itself. It doesn't matter what we call it. That's just semantics. What matters is freedom. Communism and freedom are not mutually exclusive concepts.