Source item

Western politics is zero-sum. For every 51% election winner, a 49% loser. However, the intensity of the competition actually turns it negative-sum. Each succeeding 51% election winner weaponizes (and thereby destroys) legacy institutions to fend off the 49% loser, leaving less for both parties after each cycle. The political conflict is so intense because the West is in relative economic decline. Unfortunately, intense conflict further accelerates that decline. Roon (@tszzl) is correct that the still largely positive-sum culture of Silicon Valley and the zero-sum culture of Washington DC couldn't be more different. I'd argue the next step is to realize that the Internet is now bigger than the physical Silicon Valley. Most major technologies in the physical world have already largely decentralized away from SV, as has been widely reported. And digital decentralization is also well underway if you look at the graphs for unicorns, crypto, and AI: Then, the next step is to realize that the dysfunctional Washington political system is not really capable of managing the global economy that they inherited. Indeed, the last several years have been about smashing all trade and diplomatic relationships to bits, and thereby ending the dollar economic zone. There's at least one round of money printing to go, but once that's done it'll end the Keynesian business model that funds the 20th century welfare/warfare state. Much consternation will then ensue. However, we do still have the Internet. And there are more Internet users than Americans, Internet currency is replacing US currency, Internet services are replacing US services (eg email vs USPS, SpaceX vs NASA, Uber vs taxi medallions), and in general the Internet economy is replacing the US economy — as we can see from the graph of the Magnificent 7 vs the S&P 493: So, even after the Western political system crashes, the Internet will stay up. Can we restore from cloud backup? Can we somehow print out the Internet? That is: we already print out Google Docs as pieces of paper, we "print" out Amazon shopping carts to our front door, and we "print" out Ubers to the curbside. Perhaps we can generalize this idea to similarly print out functional social networks from the Internet. Perhaps we can materialize cloud communities into the physical world, that actually are once again capable of democratic self-governance, because they agree on foundational premises, and aren't constantly fighting over 51/49 questions. Perhaps that's a new birth of freedom, even after the Western political system crashes. We'll see. @tszzl Good point. My counterargument is that (a) those countries are essentially just protectorates of the US, and hence downstream of US elections and (b) the specific dynamics differ, but the financial and political situation is similarly dire. https://t.co/W1ED5QxAe8 https://t.co/kfEh9ChtC7 Yes, but: (1) Relative strength is critical because the US business model is issuance of the global reserve currency. Losing relative status means losing that. (2) Much of the US economy is fake & financialized. Look at the debt and production graphs. https://t.co/rhWLOzMui5