Degen Communism
= concept proposed by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ethereum project
Contextual Quote
"Do not try to enforce stasis. Instead, embrace the chaos of markets and other fast-paced human activity. At the same time, however, tweak rules in such a way that the upsides get funneled into supporting public goods (including quality of the governance itself), and the downsides get capped or even outright removed for the people who are not able to handle it."
- Vitalik Buterin [1]
Definition
Vitalik Buterin:
"A political ideology that openly embraces chaos, but tweaks key rules and incentives to create a background pressure where the consequences of chaos are aligned with the common good."
(https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/04/01/dc.html)
Description
ChatGPT:
"on an April 1, 2024, blog post titled "Degen communism: the only correct political ideology," Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin introduced the concept of "degen communism." This term combines "degen," short for "degenerate," a slang term in crypto communities referring to individuals who engage in high-risk, speculative investments, with "communism," suggesting a collective approach to resources and decision-making. Buterin's proposal aims to merge the chaotic, risk-embracing culture of the internet with mechanisms that promote the common good. He suggests that while traditional political ideologies are becoming obsolete, a new system that embraces chaos and aligns it with societal benefits is necessary. This includes implementing democratic decision-making processes that are dynamic, bridge different groups, and prioritize quality. Additionally, Buterin advocates for mechanisms to protect smaller participants in the crypto space, such as prioritizing refunds for small investors in the event of hacks or project failures, and encouraging meme coin projects to allocate a portion of their issuance to charitable causes. It's important to note that this proposal was published on April Fools' Day, indicating it may be a thought-provoking exploration rather than a concrete political stance."
(February 2025)
Discussion
Vitalik Buterin:
"The two main forms of chaos in the broader world are social media and markets. Rather than trying to defang both, we should embrace both (especially markets), and try to tilt them toward more often serving the common good. Politics is inherently a more slow-moving domain, so the proposals will seem 10x milder. However, the increased scale of their impact more than makes up for it.
...
One of the most beautiful and deeply good ideas in early communism is the internationalism: the focus on "workers of the world uniting" and songs like The Internationale. In 2024, we are unfortunately in an age of rising nationalism, where it's considered normal for each nation to only care about each own citizens, at the expense of people unlucky enough to be born outside. Faced with these restrictions, some are taking matters into their own hands, making their way into wealthy countries the old-fashioned way - the way that pretty much everyone did up until globalist schemes of social control like passports were introduced about a century ago.
A degen communist would embrace dynamism and change, especially when it seems like such dynamism and change might benefit the global poor more than anyone else. Degen communists would greatly expand safe and legal pathways for people to visit and live where they want to visit and live, trusting in liberalized housing construction, plus governments made wealthy by taxes from such construction, to build needed infrastructure for them. Restrictions would be focused on keeping out particularly risky or bad actors, rather than keeping out almost everyone. A "proof of stake" scheme could be adopted where someone can put down funds (or the right to make future invitations) at stake on a claim that a given person will not break any rules, which would then give that person an automatic right to enter. Security can be improved while total freedom of movement is increased.
Decision-making in degen communist institutions would be democratic, and would follow three equally important principles: dynamism, cross-tribal bridging and quality. Decisions could be made quickly, using algorithms that identify ideas that are held in common across groups which normally disagree with each other, and which elevate quality without entrenching a fixed set of elites."