A nice blog about forced association vs free association.
I perceive democracy as a form of forced association. People who don't want to cooperate and are at each others' throat (either literally in a form of primitive violence, or intellectually - cancel culture, network effect enforcement) are forced to choose a government. Or rather - they have a process that chooses a government that is then forced to everybody.
It's like a pendulum - we piss you off, they you piss us off, and each voting cycle, everyone hopes that the "good ones" win and will show once and for all to the bad ones what the public really wants.
Free association does not have this problem. There's no force. Do you want to participate? Cool! Don't want to participate? Also cool, do your own thing.
I think there are three ways out of this mess:
1. Nothing changes. We do this for decades. At least half of the population is constantly pissed (who the half is is constantly changing). Long and slow decline
2. Authoritarian way - monarchy. Think Dubai. The ruler says how things are, you can stay or you can leave if you don't like it. No matter what you do, you won't change the outcome of government, so you do your thing.
3. Libertarian way - don't force things on people. Want to support Ukraine with weapons? Sure, here's a crowdfunding campaign. Don't want to? Sure, you don't have to. Want to vaccinate yourself against current covid strain? Go ahead, market provides. Think the vaccine is dangerous? Well, don't get injected.
I believe most people in the west will live under number one. Constant polarization and infighting. Many are leaving to number two. Migration to well working monarchies is going on. Many productive people no longer want to move to Europe, but to Dubai or even Saudi Arabia.
And us bitcoiners will find a way to live under number three. Parallel societies, detachment from where we were born and opting out of states and opting in to various parallel communities and Dark forests.
If you read history books, you might come to an impression, that history is one thread - ideas that won were all that happened. But the present and the future will be heterogeneous. Even for people who live in the same city in many cases.
🍿 and let's discuss.