Blockchain Leftism

Discussion

Daniel Pinchbeck:

"On the other side of this argument, there are some who believe that blockchain-based innovations are necessary. They can reinvent our economic and political systems to be far more equitable and ecologically regenerative. A number of new projects are working in this direction. I will briefly mention a couple of initiatives here. I hope to look at these projects – among others – more closely in future newsletters.

P2P Accounting for Planetary Survival

This report from the P2P Foundation focuses on ways that blockchain-based technologies can be the backbone of a profound redesign of society. According to the authors, the current political-economy of capitalism combines “strategies of artificial scarcity and pseudo abundance in a way that increase[s] social injustice and inequality”:

The idea of pseudo abundance is based on the mistaken premise of infinite material growth on a finite planet, where natural resources are actually fundamentally limited. Artificial scarcity refers to the strategies that prevent the sharing of technological and scientific progress because of excessively restrictive intellectual property rights. A sensible alternative is, of course, to recognize the limits of what we can use from the world of nature, of which we are an intrinsic part, and to allow for the sharing of all knowledge that can contribute to living within the limits of this ‘biocapacity.’

Capitalism forces ongoing competition for survival that could have been made obsolete by now. Exploitation of natural resources, emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollution are turned into externalities outside of its financial calculus. Capitalism engineers artificial scarcity – of intellectual property as well as basic necessities such as housing, food, and healthcare – to perpetuate itself.

The solution to this, the report argues, is what they call: “Commons-Based Peer Production.” Our future should revolve around “a new mode of production and exchange, where communities create shared value through open contributory systems, govern their common work through participatory practices, and create shared resources that can, in turn, be used in new iterations.” This new commons-based structure, the authors propose, can be mediated by blockchain-based distributed technologies, or further iterations of distributed ledgers, such as Holochain.

The report discusses a number of blockchain-based projects that can support the transition to a new social model based on commons-based peer production. These include Envienta, FabChain, DAOStack, Faircoin, Trustlines, Regen Network, and so on. Such tools “emphasize the elements of openness and cooperation, keeping locally-determined socio-ecological conditions in mind, involving mutualization, circulation and reuse of resources and outputs in integrated systems.” The new systems of “mutual coordination” must take place within the limits of defined planetary boundaries, requiring a “planning framework” based on how much of a given resource can be utilized without causing long-term harm.

Holochain

One technology they point to is Holochain. I have been struggling to understand Holochain for a few years now. The authors of the P2P report write that Holochain “reimagines distributed ledgers altogether based on principles derived from biomimicry.” Rather than seeking to build a mathematically perfect structure that eliminates the need for trust between humans, Holochain applies the concept of a “web of trust”: “If A trusts B and B trusts C, then trust can be assured among all the peers.” Holochain “uses mutual credit as its main mechanism for exchange of value,” and seeks to limit the decision-making clout of big investors. Holochain, as I understand it, is not a blockchain technology but a parallel system designed in such a way that it addresses the Libertarian biases inherent in most crypto projects, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Proof of Humanity / Democracy.Earth

Proof of Humanity seeks to address one of the core problems of the Internet – in fact, the essential flaw that led to the current catastrophe in which corporations like Google and Facebook control our personal data and sell it to advertisers as their product. The problem is that the founders of the Internet didn’t develop protocols around personal identity. The original pioneers were scientists and engineers who developed the basic Internet protocols for purposes of research and sharing information. Personal identity was not their focus.

When I started my company, Evolver, back in 2007, we wanted to address this problem of identity by implementing technologies that were being developed back then, such as the Identity Commons. The idea was to flip the logic of the Internet: Each user would have a secure holder for their identity and personal data. They would be able to choose what parts of their identity they wanted to share with any company or organization – instead of corporations building “walled silos” to data-mine their user base. But the financial incentives supporting the current extractive model were too powerful to allow for alternatives.

With Proof of Humanity, you undergo a verification process designed to prove you are a human being, not a Bot or AI. Once you have successfully passed the registration process, you start to receive a regular Universal Basic Income (UBI). I am not sure exactly how the funds for the UBI are generated, but apparently it amounts to several hundred dollars per month. This is already making a major difference in the lives of old people in Latin America who are signing up for it. If Proof of Humanity is scalable, it could help to bring about a more egalitarian restructuring of society."

(https://danielpinchbeck.substack.com/p/crypto-criticism-part-two?)