The Political Implications of DAOs and Cryptocurrency
A DAO is like if worker owned cooperatives had a baby with unions but didn’t need to ask permission from the government to redistribute wealth and create transparent organizations.
Initiating the Uninitiated
To the uninitiated cryptocurrencies may seem like a fad that will eventually fizzle out. Many don’t care about some nerdy kids who got rich on the latest internet buzz because we have more important things to do like feeding starving children. I agree with that premise and that’s exactly why I am so interested in the world of DeFi, short for decentralized finance. When you decentralize you remove middlemen who serve as nothing more than a toll collector. The Federal Reserve, banks, credit cards and payment processors all scrape a fee out of the existence and usage of money. Cryptocurrencies remove all of those middlemen and enable democratic control and transparency of money itself—but you’ve heard this before and still aren’t impressed, so let’s talk about DAOs.
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is like if worker owned cooperatives had a baby with unions but didn’t need to ask permission from the government to redistribute wealth and create transparent organizations. It has liberal principles like worker ownership and wealth redistribution and conservative principles like being non-governmental and anti-bureaucratic while demonstrating the ability to scale well beyond a traditional co-op network. DAOs rely on the same blockchain technology that enabled Bitcoin to scale to a market cap of over one trillion USD without any centralized decision maker.
The Decentralized Revolution
A revolution is slowly being built all around us but many are not yet aware of it. dTravel is a startup competitor to AirBnB, if you own a house on the platform you get to participate in its governance using what is known as a governance token. dTravel said to capitalism, “hold my beer” and then decided guests should also have a say in its governance. Remember when AirBnB, Lyft and Uber had low platform fees? In dTravel you, the customer, would have to approve increasing the platform fee instead of a handful of people at the top, this ensures the fees go to maintaining the platform and nothing else.
Hyve is a community governed platform for freelancers and teams of workers. Livepeer, Theta, Audius and LBRY (Odysee) are creating decentralized media streaming infrastructure that can enable independent creators to make more money than traditional alternatives like Spotify, Netflix or YouTube. NFTs, by the way, another one of those buzzwords, give creators the ability to set royalty payments on their terms. FreedomFi and Helium are building a decentralized 5G network that pays you to run a node on the network; if you can set up a WiFi router you can set up a 5G router. It’s the gig economy but we’re deleting the middle man and taking their cut for ourselves. It’s wealth redistribution without asking for permission and without giving an authority figure an irresponsible amount of power. Banks make 15% per year by reinvesting the money you keep with them and as a reward they give you a whopping .1% (note the decimal in that number) of their returns but Celsius says, no we can give you 8%.
The Ballot Box
Here’s where you, the voter come into play. Believe it or not, some people who stand to lose money as our rapacious economy slowly becomes obsolete, will lobby against the legality of these organizations. They will likely say scary things like, “Bitcoin can be used for fraud”, when you hear that remember: so can regular money. The difference is that cryptocurrencies use peer reviewed mathematical proofs to ensure transparency at the root of the economy and force fraud downstream of money generation. DAOs are built on top of that and similarly have open source, peer reviewed software to enforce transparency.
The best way to make sure a level economic playing field is not made illegal is to educate yourself and others on these new projects. Do research on the projects I mentioned, find other projects, go down the rabbit hole, have a red pill, hell, have a blue one too, what could go wrong? Spread the word and do not treat crypto as a vehicle to get rich quick, treat it as an economic and philosophical revolution.
Evolution will not be Centralized
For more on the economic and governmental possibilities watch my video below. Grab some popcorn and watch as government 4.0 emerges from the ether.
Government 1.0 = tribalism
Government 2.0 = feudalism
Government 3.0 = you are here
Government 4.0 = more economic freedom, more community governance, more democracy, more transparency, less politics, less bullshit, less hatred, less division
Lastly, if someone you’ve never met on the internet says that if you send them cryptocurrency they’ll send you more in return, don’t send them anything, that’s a scam.