ghosts and silent schoolyards

a bicycle built for none, daisy’s rung her last bell

On these rare days, a world made strange.

Yesterday, Toronto Star contributing columnist Don Tapscott of the Blockchain Research Institute wrote an interesting article. There’s a good chunk of it that I don’t agree with, or that largely misses the big picture, or that’s outright dim, but there are parts that have me feeling positive.

Here’s where I raised an expectantly optimistic eyebrow:

… the next era of the digital economy could bring epoch prosperity, with new networked models of global problem-solving to realize such a dream.

To meet these new challenges, the time has come for Canada to reimagine its social contract — the basic expectation between business, government and civil society.

This “social contract” that’s so often regurgitated in order to justify the ongoing control by the state of the people is not only a perversion of any concept of morality, justice, fairness, or human rights, but it’s also an assault on intelligence that requires you to simultaneously hold mindbogglingly self-contradictory statements while denying the reality that’s right in front of you. Any semblance of logic or common sense must be ejected in its defense.

Consider this mushy-headed blather:

Canada is learning the truth about the horrific history of our Indigenous population, which in turn now has tools to speak out and organize collective action.
…
People everywhere are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” As such they have become vulnerable to populism, xenophobia and scapegoating minority ethnic groups, races and religions for problems. Centrist parties are in rapid decline and extremist right-wing parties from Hungary and Poland to France and Germany are on the rise.
…
We need to protect the security of personhood and end the system of digital feudalism. Individuals should own and profit from the data they create. We need new laws …

Let’s reword this without pretending that things happen in a vacuum:

Canadians are learning about the horrors largely imposed by the government on natives, citizens are being driven to extremes due to the policies and actions of their governments, and people are subject to “digital feudalism” within a system created by and maintained by the government. What’s the answer? Of course, it’s more government (i.e. new laws, regulations, bureaucracy)

Like I said … nonsensical mush.

That being said, if “reimagining” the so-called social contract means actually thinking about it (and bringing such thoughts to their inevitable conclusion), then I’m all for it. Yeah, people should think a little deeper about why and how they became the property of the government and if, maybe, they don’t need to be owned for their own safety.

Here’s the part in the article where I actually smiled:

We must adopt new models for citizen engagement in our government. In blockchain we have found one such model, with the possibility of embedding electoral promises into smart contracts.

Now, while the part about sticking electoral promises into smart contracts is shockingly naive (that’ll definitely stop politicians and bureaucrats from breaking their promises and lying to people), getting the public to use blockchain-based and cryptographic solutions is a good way to sway them towards the idea that lies, threats, theft, violence, and other criminality may not necessarily be the price that has to be paid in order to live in a “civilized society”.

Realizing that there are realistic alternatives to the unrelenting fist of the state, in other words, might cause people to take up the mantle of their own rights and responsibilities and maybe, just maybe, understand that the government is composed of the very same type of people that it’s ostensibly protecting them from.

Do we really need a bloated, deceptive, overpriced middleman to build and maintain roads, schools, and sewers? Are we really so violent that we need others like us to wield a much greater violence over us? If we disagree with who gets state benefits, would it not be better if we could directly decide not to provide them instead of having them seized and distributed against our will? Are people really so greedy and selfish that the goodwill organizations that exist now, under government, would cease to exist without the shackles of law and red tape?(*) Would corporations be able to put us into strangleholds without the protections of the state to maintain their patents, copyrights, and other “intellectual property”? Would monopolies exist without the state (the biggest monopoly of them all), protecting them against competition by throwing up barriers and putting down groundswells of resistance?

* I know from direct, firsthand experience that contrary to the opinions of “deliberately deceptive or recklessly ignorant” pundits like the New York Time’s David Brooks, who is quoted in the Blockchain Research Institute’s “manifesto” as proof that “the social fabric, the safety net and the human capital sources just aren’t strong enough”, there would be ample resources and willingness to help those in need — without government. Yeah, I’m calling a steaming pile of bullshit here.

The mere existence of such questions in broader discourse would be a very good thing indeed. Instead of sneering derision and vapid dismissal, people might be prompted to think about solutions to problems instead of simply accepting “necessary evils”. After all, voting for a lesser evil is still voting for evil. Why not spend that time and energy creating something good instead?

I wrote about this exact thing about 6 years ago. I’d like to believe that I was ahead of my time but in reality what I was discussing back then wasn’t either new or original, I just had to be both open and skeptical enough to discover it.

While the Star article represents only an incrementally tiny shift in consciousness, at least it seems to be a shift in the right direction.

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