Will Blockchain Change the World Economy or Should it Aim Higher?

2 of my favourite books are News From Nowhere by William Morris and The Iron Heel by Jack London. Both deal with visions of a future where socialism plays a significant role.

News from Nowhere written in 1890 partly is an antidotal response to the horrors of the Industrial Revolution. Critiqued as an idealistic wish, it nonetheless described a society in which the planet, the people and trade all existed in a homogenous paradise. Whilst Morris may have glossed over the inherent human sins of Avarice, Lust and Crime, he succinctly countered their impact on a world ruled by consensus.

Jack London’s narrative in The Iron Heel (1908) is altogether more confrontational and dystopian pitting Socialism and Capitalism against each other and offering a glimpse of hope before its bloody climax.

Technology can be a double edged sword. It can bring positive changes, but, in some cases, it also has the potential to negatively affect physical and emotional health.

Blockchain (or more specifically decentralized consensus) has already impacted on the world economy. Bitcoin is the most sought after commodity today and will replace gold in the near future according to Thier’s law. Thier’s law applies through space and time and eventually people will stop accepting bad money in favour of good money, such as bitcoin.

The central banks are already part of a useless historical ecosystem with virtually no purpose. (They already know this and are scrambling around trying to discredit virtual currency to buy themselves a bit more time). So how can we ensure that decentralization of wealth creates a more stable and egalitarian world? A world somewhere between the visions of Morris and London?.

Blockchain has the power to share wealth in an unprecedented way. Furthermore it has no inherent centralized or capitalist interference mechanism. This is why poorer or more inherently corrupt nations such as Brazil and Kenya have thriving digital currency economies.

Technology will always be vulnerable to appropriation by Governments or Centralized systems but the beauty of blockchain is that it is impossible to ban. The only weapons that the archaic financial institutions possess, are fearmongering, misinformation and a reliance on the status quo.

Projects such as the Toroidal Economy promoting a universal basic income and the Nuggets News Podcasts are a yardstick for where we are heading.