Decentralization is abstract. 
But control is concrete.
Who is in control of a digital system?
Can someone delete you?
If they can, it’s centralized.
If they can’t, it’s decentralized.

This is why crypto is inherently political.

It takes the endless, eternal human question — who is in charge? — and expresses it in code and puts it on the internet.

Who is in charge is an intrinsically political question, even if the answer is “no one”.

Yes, we can layer apolitical use cases on top of a blockchain’s base political assumptions.

But these are apolitical in the sense that driving to McDonald’s is apolitical.

Why is the road there? Why is capitalism even legal? Those were political decisions that set platform rules. Then we do things on top of that.

There is another view, that crypto reduces or eliminates the need for politics.

This is also true if you define politics as electoral power struggles. It’s taking things out of that arena.

But doing that is itself meta-political.

Why is decentralization important?
Because control is important.

Who is in charge
Who has root access
Who is the system administrator
Who has the final say
And do you have a say…over who has say

These aren’t just abstract technical questions, they are concrete political questions.

He who can destroy a thing, can control a thing.

But most people never get deleted. Composability is more concrete.

You secured tickets to Taylor Swift on TicketApp because you own the “Top Listener” nifty for listening to her for 5+ years on MusicApp?

Couldn’t happen offchain.

Unfortunately this scenario needs some network effects, but will happen.

Majority of people seem to want to be controlled due to laziness, ignorance or centralized system incentives, and gladly give away their delete rights. 

Crypto needs to offer much better incentives to change this dynamic. I hope it does.

Is all of this a subset of the fundamental question, not “who gets to set the rules?” but “how should the rules change”?

The evolutionary error correction function seems like epistemic root node of the crypto thesis - all the axioms you mention drop out of this

Crypto is political because they want the ability to control and cancel you,

Great thread.