Currently reading Sovereign Individual – what an excellent book! The logic of violence and its game theory on different scales especially is a theme I've been pondering lately, and to which I'm getting some answers from this book.
Like why do large nation states with a lot of unconsensual transactions exist when praxeologically speaking prosperity is created with consensual trade.
The book suggests that it is because of the gun powder revolution which increased the returns on effectiveness of violence – the bigger you are, the easier you can overpower others. And these governments can survive and get away with unconsensual transactions because the other option would be to be completely oppressed by an even worse group and worse taxes. They can't tax it all, however, you have to allow some consensual transactions within a jurisdiction, otherwise they risk the parasite draining its host completely. This is why governments still have to allow some sort of market economy so that there's gonna be something to tax at all. But when capital was tied to physical places, they could abuse it because there couldn't be competition for governments. "Tyranny of the place", as it's called in the book.
However, the game theory of violence is going to shift dramatically with capital moving to cyberspace. Cryptography and private/public key technologies (bitcoin, NOSTR, etc.) create defenses that cannot be broken by increasing effectiveness and which cannot be monopolized by governments – now governments will start to have to actually provide value and a service to keep citizens, otherwise they'll leave with their capital.
celestal
npub1jl…fkpe9
2024-08-11 18:02:38
Author Public Key
npub1jlvqnts9f5c0t8lmd73mea3mmkn2jq5qhwvtaakkax7d3k3thkys2fkpe9Published at
2024-08-11 18:02:38Event JSON
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"content": "Currently reading Sovereign Individual – what an excellent book! The logic of violence and its game theory on different scales especially is a theme I've been pondering lately, and to which I'm getting some answers from this book.\n\nLike why do large nation states with a lot of unconsensual transactions exist when praxeologically speaking prosperity is created with consensual trade.\n\nThe book suggests that it is because of the gun powder revolution which increased the returns on effectiveness of violence – the bigger you are, the easier you can overpower others. And these governments can survive and get away with unconsensual transactions because the other option would be to be completely oppressed by an even worse group and worse taxes. They can't tax it all, however, you have to allow some consensual transactions within a jurisdiction, otherwise they risk the parasite draining its host completely. This is why governments still have to allow some sort of market economy so that there's gonna be something to tax at all. But when capital was tied to physical places, they could abuse it because there couldn't be competition for governments. \"Tyranny of the place\", as it's called in the book.\n\nHowever, the game theory of violence is going to shift dramatically with capital moving to cyberspace. Cryptography and private/public key technologies (bitcoin, NOSTR, etc.) create defenses that cannot be broken by increasing effectiveness and which cannot be monopolized by governments – now governments will start to have to actually provide value and a service to keep citizens, otherwise they'll leave with their capital.",
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