[ExI] Power vs. Money

[Ben Zaiboc]

Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> While I made the case a
> couple of weeks back that we will all be rich in the future, I am now
> going to assert that in one important way at least, we will not all be
> powerful. While we can simulate power over others in virtual worlds of
> our creation, we will not all exercise real power over our peers,
> except in the same kinds of small numbers that exercise such power
> today. So power will maintain its importance (to those who care about
> it) into the foreseeable future.
> 
> I would assert that power will become even more concentrated as we
> move forward, and that the ranks of the powerful will become smaller
> and smaller. In the past, there were more locally powerful barons,
> dukes and so forth, and now power is collected in the cesspools we
> call national capitals, and even worse, places like the United Nations
> and Brussels for the EU.
> 
> In the future, the nation state seems doomed to me, because you can't
> govern a global village of highly interconnected individuals with 120
> separate sets of rules. I don't really like that part of the future,

You don't like the idea of a global village of highly interconnected individuals with 120 separate sets of rules? (1200, 12,000, or better still, one set per person).  Not sure I understand why.  Would you like the idea of a single set of rules that apply to everyone? Effectively, a World Gubmint? <shudder>


> The best we can hope
> for is some kind of united states where individual states maintain
> some independent rights, but there is also centralized world wide
> power to police those things that do not have location as a
> significant property. Stupid efforts at anarchy like Wiki Leaks push
> the day of the international brown shirt closer than it might
> otherwise be, but I digress.

I thought WikiLeaks was an effort at public accountability, not anarchy (not that there's necessarily anything wrong with Anarchy, as long as you know what it actually means).

 
> The point is, that it seems nearly inevitable to me that power will be
> concentrated in even fewer individuals than have power today. Perhaps
> through some miracle of technology individualism will be largely
> eliminated, and we will merge into a single unibrain of some
> architecture we cannot now understand. Perhaps we will develop into a
> true democracy where everyone has enough bandwidth to pay attention to
> all of the details... but totalitarianism seems to me to be the most
> likely outcome, at least at some points along the historical path...
> it probably will oscillate some.
> 
> So, does anyone envision a future where we all have more power than we
> do now? If so, how do you see that working?


I envision a future where everyone has much *less* power over other people (ideally none at all), and much more power over themselves.

The only real excuses for a central authority with power over others are 1) to combat universal existential threats, and 2) to prevent coercion of one individual or group by another. 
The powers of such an authority should be strictly limited to those necessary to combat such threats.  Nobody should have the power to tell me, you, or anyone else, what they should be wearing, thinking, having sex with, doing on a sunday, eating, doing with their own resources, telling other people, agreeing with other people, listening to, watching, smoking, etc., etc., unless it materially harms other people, or results in their coercion.

My hope is that the ranks of the powerful will indeed become smaller and smaller.. until they reach Zero.  Everyone will have absolute power - over themselves - and nobody will have any power at all over others.

Ben Zaiboc