Technology

Maybe the tools/technology dichotomy isn't so clear, but I guess I'm talking about how technology is applied and how tools are designed. Like the difference between a wood axe and a polearm - both are built on the same fundamental principles of adding a sharpened metal object to the end of a wooden stick, but one of them is good for chopping wood and the other is good in battle. You could swap them around, but they'd be almost useless at one another's jobs. How they are designed dictates how they are used, and currency technologies are no different. They are a type of accounting, but they are built around lack of community. Debt the First 5000 Years by David Graeber is a great book on this topic, explaining the social origins of debt and how money really isn't such a big part of most of human history, only rising to its current form with the advent of imperialism and colonialism.

I guess my point with the blockchain thing is that even though I can see some use for keeping records in a decentralised way, I still don't see blockchain solving any real problems there. Again, if you need decentralisation you should base it on trust, and basically anything you do in that sphere you can do with simple authentication, which is a type of cryptography we've had for many decades now. If the outside world is using blockchain you could make a case for using it in a limited way when you absolutely have to, but I certainly wouldn't advocate for supporting blockchain.

Advocating for it on the basis of hypothetical future uses for it is basically falling afoul of the AM/FM distinction, AKA Actual Machines vs Fucking Magic. Actual machines exist and you can see their track record; fucking magic is whatever the scam artist sells it as. If the technology hasn't proven itself yet, then you can't make plans based on it.

My point about international relations was that "trust" works even in that cutthroat context. I love Beau btw, he's absolutely right about that point. Weirdly I think the first place I understood that concept was from reading Ice Station by Matthew Reilly, which is just the most trashy action novel you could imagine.

I agree that anarchism is slowly emerging everywhere, and that's kind of how it has to be. I imagine it as a smattered, regional emergence in disparate places, which once it passes a crucial tipping point it floods everywhere all at once. Like I think people would be shocked at how fast society can change once the systems of oppression crumble.

The question of nuclear war is a sobering one. It is in theory possible that one continent goes before another, and in that case perhaps a nuclear power might decide to attack with nuclear weapons. The only thing you could do in that case is say, "Well, our territory now contains nuclear weapons too, so MAD is still in effect." It's not a great answer, but it's the only one I can think of.