Anarchy as a jurisdiction, and moving towards 'technologically-mediated anarchy'

in #anarchy8 years ago

The Bitnation jurisdiction began with Bitcoin, an autonomous network that dictates its own law, and that authors its own rules, and that provides benefits to those who interact within that jurisdiction. Then with Ethereum, Aragon, and Ethereum 2.0s, that virtual jurisdiction is only going to grow.

The virtual jurisdiction is made possible by the externalization of law, leaving the confines of human brains that are dependent on genetic imperatives. Within virtual states, running on top of computers, laws can survive and prosper that could not have survived within a nation-state.

Laws as a sub-set of memes, used for co-ordinating groups of brains

I use the word law to described a subset of memes that are used for co-ordinating groups of brains, what could be described as "external narratives".

With religious organization in the 13th century for example, laws would propagate by threatening annihilation of the genes on one hand and promising “eternal life” on the other. With the nation-state and legal systems, laws are freed from the confines of brains that are dependent on gene multiplication, and there is less need for laws to co-opt genes for their purpose.

"Virtual states" would be a continuation of the process to detach law from dependency on genes, which began to take shape with representative government, enabling new types of mediation, new incentive systems which can harness our attention in new ways.

Nation-states have limited capacity so they have used a one-size-fits-all model because of that. With smart-contracts and "virtual states", those can unlock for everyday users the wonders of private law previously only available to the rich, what could then also be called "sovereign law".

Anarchy as a jurisdiction, and moving towards 'technologically-mediated anarchy'

When ruled by anarchy (and chaos and stigmergy), laws, memes, beliefs and culture is able to survive and propagate that would not have been able to survive within centralized organization. These laws can then produce trails that are followed similar to how ants follow pheromone trails, and dictate the direction that a human culture will evolve.

Technologies are being developed that make it possible to organize in ways that scale beyond dunbar’s number. These technologies allow for ‘technologically-mediated anarchy’, economic protocols that mirror the sort of organization that anarchists have proposed all along, and it’s going to make current society look like the middle ages.

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Exciting times ahead, for sure, with many creative possibilities...