politics

1) The political theory of crypto is grossly underdeveloped. Accelerating the Onchain Transition will require a serious, cohesive, and widely understood intellectual framework.

The Cypherpunk Manifesto, the Bitcoin Standard, Vitalik Buterin’s blogs, and other similar writings are inadequate for the purpose.

Crypto @ Coinbase, foreign policy, political theory. yugacohler.twitter

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3) It is not sufficient for crypto to be a curious hobby or an appendage of libertarianism; it must rigorously defend its modern relevance on its own terms, with reference to Kant, Hegel, Weber, Marx, etc.

4) Critically, this work must be situated within media that the State and the Academy consider legitimate: peer-reviewed journals, prominent mainstream publications, etc. Because the traditional Elite trust these outlets, publishing in them will have significantly more impact than doing so via blogs and the like.

5) Bringing the world onchain will require many different components. We are approaching the point that the technology itself is capable of doing so. What is needed is a serious body of written work articulating the necessity of cryptographic decentralization embedded in our political and economic infrastructure.

6) It should openly contend with Acemoglu’s claims of the “minimum required centralization of a state”, with Keynes views on the necessity of a sovereign monetary authority, and so on, to establish a canon of onchain thought in conversation with the full range of intellectual history.

7) A coherent political theory of crypto will usher in more participants into the Onchain Transition, because it will provide a common philosophical motivation and missionary tract. Moreover, it will be widely considered legitimate because it was propagated through the traditional avenues of the Academy.

8) We are going to bring the world onchain, and to do so, we are going to articulate a serious political theory of crypto.

2) We need a robust body of work that contextualizes crypto within the Western intellectual tradition, starting with Locke/Hobbes and ending with contemporary politics.

I want to hear more from you. 
Post more here in /politics please!!

1000 $degen

Great thread. Thanks for sharing! 

1000 $DEGEN

Looks like you've got a good outline and good understanding of what's needed. And when you put it like this YA it's needed badly and it's pretty shocking there's nothing like this already out there in crypto's 15 year history.

💯 People should be able to explain why a polity that permits decentralization and permissionless money will outcompete a polity that does not. 

There are historical examples for and against the argument, but the theory should be worked out more fully.

Agree. They are good but written by degen for degens. We also need something more on top of those.

Agreed. I think crypto feels a lot like anarchosyndicalism. As do the more academic flavors of decentralization, like the fediverse.

Why do you consider the vast intellectual canon of the Austrian School not sufficient for contextualizing crypto for the Western thought?

It’s still not mainstream because of the self-predicted pushback by the state. But a few years into the Milei’s term we’ll be living in a somewhat different world.