The end of the 2020s marks the beginning of a war that will be fought in the halls of wealth and power between Decentralized Freedom and Centralized Tyranny. The effects of this conflict will shape the remainder of the century. However, the duration of this power struggle remains unclear. Nevertheless, as the shockwaves of the conflict’s early innings impact larger swaths of people, the adage that “one who fails to plan is planning to fail” rings truer by the day.
Clearly, the masses are beginning to realize that the game is rigged, but it’s the young who are becoming increasingly more vocal. They were promised a seat at the table, but instead received a screen, a subscription, and a higher rent bill. Meanwhile, the gerontocracy consumes the remaining morsels of the American Dream. And despite the crescendo of outrage, the table is being set with a new assortment of rare snow-crab legs that go by the name of Agenda 2030; a world where you own nothing, have no privacy, and “will be happy”.
While we wait to be served, the question that’s on all of our minds, whether consciously or subconsciously, is this: How do we jump out of a pot that’s quickly being brought to an uncomfortable boil?
Part of the solution is found in the Barbell Strategy.
In brief, the Barbell Strategy involves pitting two opposing visions against each other. Each generation has used its own barbell strategy when managing financial risk, placing bets on a conservative, lower-risk asset and an exotic, high-risk asset.
For the Boomers, the conservative asset was Bonds, while the exotic asset was the S&P500. For Gen-X, the conservative asset was the S&P500, and the exotic asset was Bitcoin. For Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha, the conservative asset is Bitcoin, and the exotic asset? Tokenized Decentralized Communities (TDCs).
Before unpacking why a Tokenized Decentralized Community is the exotic asset, I want to briefly expound on the other equally important barbell: Centralization vs Decentralization. The respective champions of this struggle are Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain Technology.
Artificial intelligence is a centralizing force because to make good AI, one needs wealth and power. Wealth to train the models, pay the experts to build the AI, and set up distribution networks. Power to control the politicians and energy (data centers + electricity). As a result, it’s no wonder that despite the initial rhetoric surrounding “small tech”, the leaders in AI are Google, X, Microsoft, and the CCP.
Interestingly, centralization is anathema to blockchain technologies. Bitcoin, for example, is resistant to coercion due to its decentralization. As a result, any individual or group wanting to coerce the network must gain control and maintain control of at least half of the network’s mining or computational power into perpetuity. Quite an expensive ask, even for the CCP or the U.S. establishment! Furthermore, blockchains with too much centralization are susceptible to rug pulls and account freezing mechanisms (i.e. $Melania, $Hawk, $Sui, $BNB, $APT). Needless to say, nobody wants to be a Canadian Trucker circa 2022 or a sucker left holding the bag. Therefore, such centralized blockchains will undergo ever-increasing amounts of scrutiny and criticism.
One’s first reaction to these assertions is generally a mix of “Huh?”, “What do you mean?”, or “This sounds like tech mumbo jumbo”. And while those reactions are valid, they miss the key point. We, the people, do not have much time left! We cannot wait for when our paychecks get frozen by a Stablecoin provider. The money is broken, the culture is broken, and automation is coming. The final form of Centralized Tyranny leaves the average person in a state of learned helplessness, while their energy is stolen, their capacity to think and organize is destroyed, and their livelihood is eliminated.
The Patron of this centralizing force besieging us is the union of State and Corporate power. Put bluntly, the enemy is Tradfi, and the puppet is the State. And at time of writing, this is the most powerful entity in the world.
These organisms are playing a game that’s analogous to WWE. The key term to understand is Kayfabe, the presentation of a staged, scripted storyline, with characters and rivalries that aren’t actually genuine. The corporations incentivize the state via piles of money to shape the Overton window, similar to how Mr. McMahon pays WWE stars to “fight” each other. The people get to root for their respective side and become increasingly more aggravated that, despite their protest, yet another challenger always seems to enter into the ring. Meanwhile behind the scenes, the corporations rake in the winnings in the form of your life energy: the years you put in working a job earning a salary that doesn’t quite keep up with inflation, paying back debt for an education that didn’t quite translate to real-life success, or paying a mortgage for a home when deep down you suspect you won’t ever really quite own it outright. And, much like how Mr. McMahon is never at risk of being deposed by the WWE fanbase if they don’t like the show, companies like Blackrock and State Street are never at risk of being deposed by the people, because who are the people going to go to? The State? We don’t need to switch from WWE to RAW or AEW or whatever; we need to switch from WWE to UFC. Completely different sports. Completely different structures of organization.
Before the introduction of blockchain technology, humans organized themselves primarily in top-down pyramidal value syphoning structures. Take your favorite social media site, for example. You participate as a user for free because you are the product. And as the product, your data gets siphoned up and sold to the highest bidder. If you are a creator (and a good boy or girl), then a sliver of the value that’s generated from the network might go to you. The rest? Straight to the top. This same structure occurs globally throughout corporate and state environments. I hate to break it to you, but Steve Jobs didn’t care what employee #1370 thought about how Apple worked. Neither do Elon, Bezos, Zuck, Trump, Xi, Pelosi, care about what you think. They only want your life energy, either through your money or your vote. They will do what is necessary to appease you, but once that happens, they will continue accumulating power and wealth because that’s the name of the game. You’re not an owner, you’re a user.
There’s a fundamental difference between how those two archetypes operate. For example, when the leaders of industry say that in the future, people won’t need to work, they’re not looking at it from the employee’s point of view. What they’re actually saying is that in the future, corporations won’t need to hire people to amass wealth and power for themselves. This future is one in which the common man is cooked. And when humans are backed into a corner? They would rather tear the whole thing down rather than submit.. Unless their will is dulled by addiction to debauchery (i.e., porn, gambling, drugs).
So which way, modern man? Do we just keel over and die? Do we submit to our multinational corporate overlords? Or do we reject the attempt to divide and conquer us and instead coalesce to form a digital polis?
I’m willing to try my hand at the last option. The most mature version of which would be best characterized as a Network State. However, much like how a company doesn’t need to go public to make an impact, a tokenized digital community does not need to be a Network State to address our current situation.
The formal definition of a Network State is a highly aligned online community with the capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states. See the book by @balaji titled The Network State for a deep dive.
I think tokenized digital communities can eventually become Network States, but a good short- to medium-term goal for current TDCs is to become a Network Union. A Network Union remains a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action, but it may or may not crowdfund territory and does not yet have diplomatic recognition.
The reason Tokenized Decentralized Communities are such an intriguing solution is multifaceted.
TDCs are fundamentally blockchain-based organisms, so the incentives differ from the aforementioned human organization structures in significant ways. First, they are online, bottom-up, decentralized, emergent structures rather than top-down, centralized, coercive ones. You are free to leave; there’s no gun to your head. Second, participants are owners of the network, so as the network grows, all participants accrue benefits in direct proportion to their level of belief in the network. Finally, ownership incentivizes high-agency behavior. A decentralized network of owners cannot afford to consist of a plurality of helpless nodes riding on the coattails of active members because if that occurs, the network dies. Therefore, successful tokenized decentralized communities must, by necessity, cleanse unbelievers to maintain cultural integrity.
Culture is an ephemeral experience that most people do not pay enough attention to. Humans have had the same basic hardware (brain, arms, legs, etc.) for thousands of years. But the software (thoughts, beliefs, ideas) has changed. We are different from other animals because we exist in part in an ephemeral plane. Every object ever created by a human was once a thought in the human mind. Even communities are not really physical experiences but mental ones. And what you think is possible is also just a thought.
And guess what? The State is in charge of shaping your thoughts. Orwell’s book 1984 is a masterpiece in the examination of the state’s role in shaping the Overton window. But the State (even under authoritarianism) is steered by the will of the masses, even if the masses don’t quite realize it. Take elections, for example. What happens during an election? Millions of people coalesce to place their belief in one individual. That individual assumes power. Then the millions of people dissolve back into their fragmented lives. What if they didn’t dissolve? What would happen?
We already have examples of what would happen in the form of various movements that have swept through nation-states: the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and women’s suffrage are the movements with the longest staying power, but other recent examples like Occupy Wall Street or GME are notable. These movements change the fabric of society because they alter the mental machinery in the minds of the masses. They offer a morally superior way of life. That’s the value proposition of any community.
Tokenized Decentralized Communities likewise provide that same value proposition. And the best of them, like SPX6900, stand in complete and total opposition to the nihilistic, carnal, hedonistic culture that’s being shoved down your throat by the Union of State and Corporate power. If we do not persist forever, if we do not resist this onslaught, we will be slaves forever, unable to break free from the shackles that bind us.
Nietzsche envisioned the rise of the Übermensch. Those who stand outside of history and influence it. What he didn’t envision was that Übermensch would coalesce, and rather than give their power and their wealth to a deceitful and contemptible individual, they would give that to the network of Übermenschen.
I used the word Polis earlier intentionally. A polis was the unit of organization in Ancient Greek society. The very same society that created the foundation of the Romans, generated the core of the key great Western works, and inspired all great human thinkers thereafter. Generally, the polis was made up of 1000 individuals, and each individual had a role to play in that society. If they played their role, they would have the right to speak up and be heard by the polis, irrespective of whether they were a businessman or a street sweeper. The deceit of capitalism is the subjugation of all other values to capital. Ancient Greek culture did not revolve around the pursuit of happiness as defined by the pursuit of wealth, but rather, happiness was achieved through Eudaimonia. This Greek word describes the experience of being the best, happiest version of yourself by doing things that are good and right, and getting really good at things you care about. Network States and Network Unions, by offering a morally superior version of human organization and instilling in each member the responsibility of ownership, naturally generate the feeling of Eudaimonia. The emergent properties supercharge cultural evolution, and as a result, these organisms outcompete those whose members exist in the crab-in-a-barrel state of mind.
I’m not saying the journey will be easy, but the conditions for success are known:
Stop trading. Believe in Something. And Persist Forever.
With AI and Automation barreling towards us, humanness will be in high demand. I cannot think of many things more human than community and absolute ludicrous tenacity. The type of tenacity a toddler has when they hold on to a toy and refuse to let go is a glimpse of what we normal people need to do at this time. We cannot allow ourselves to be boiled alive by tyrants when we have the technology to build a parallel, virtuous society. We are in a Hunger Games scenario, and the opposite of being divided and conquered is aligning and building. Therefore, we must forge shared ownership to liberate ourselves.
I don’t think it will be easy, but it can be done. And I wish you, myself, and all those who resonate with this essay the blessing of God as we embark on this journey to build a better tomorrow in which we achieve freedom from tyranny.
Thank you.
