Free World Theory

Chapter One

Free World Theory

Chapter One

by Chas Holloway

1.0

Free World Theory is the science of creating and sustaining societies without the use of centralized coercion. It explains the rules of the emerging networks that will decentralize and control civilization simultaneously.

1.1

Incoherent Visions

Here’s the problem.

Nobody has an optimistic view of the future. People are gloomy and terrified and depressed. They worry about climate change, police drones, the AI apocalypse, nuclear war, trans-humanism, collapsed borders, rising terrorism, mass hypnosis, and more. In general, they break into three groups. First, there’s the global bureaucracy set.

This group says that nation states are moving towards a one world government. Soon, America, won’t exist in its present form. Some sort of World Charter will emerge and the USA will become part of a global bureaucracy, something like a World Forum or the United Nations. Global ministers will vote on where, throughout the world, to raise taxes or impose regulations. They will decide where military installations are needed. They’ll decide who eats bugs and eats steak. They will get steak.

With the help of AI, these bureaucrats will control the world. There will be no more individualism. Every place will look like every other place, and the monotony will be punctuated, here and there, by terrorism.

That’s a bleak view, but the second group is even more pessimistic It is the global annihilation club.

They say, as the United States loses power, the world will become multipolar like it was before the outbreak of World War One. Back then no nation was the dominant power, but many wanted to be. Adventurism was tempting. Every nation knew somebody was going to go for it. Germany launched before someone else did.

Today, it’s becoming the same. There’s the rise of China, Islam, even India is in the game with it’s population of 1.5 billion. We’re already seeing the struggle between a trapped and endangered Russian dictator and a senile American puppet President.

As nations weaken further, this group says, ambitious tyrants or fanatic terror groups will get their hands on nuclear weapons, and somebody will start using them. This will escalate into World War Three. Billions will die. It will be the end of human civilization and possibly even the end of humanity, proving we are a defective species. At best, the world will plunge into a new Dark Age that could last a thousand years.

These two groups are not the most common views of the future, however. The majority of the population is in group three.

This group says that we will muddle through. People have always muddled through their problems before, so we will again. Somehow, we’ll solve our difficulties — don’t ask them how — this group doesn’t know. But, we’ll get through it in one way or another. Meanwhile, they prefer to not think about the big questions. Why spend time worrying about things you can’t change?

Talk to anybody long enough about the future, and you will expose one of these three points of view.

Free World Theory [FWT], however, offers a different view.

It says, that with FWT, humanity will finally emerge from its present state of “High Barbarism” and achieve real civilization for the first time in history.

FWT is a science of social management. It explains how to eliminate tyranny, eliminate war, and tells why our current period of confusion and instability will fade away — along with the old political institutions that are now, and always have been, the source of all civilizational breakdowns and tyranny.

FWT does this by explaining what freedom is and how to attain it.

Once freedom is successfully implemented, no one can tell what will happen in the future. Except that humanity will evolve to a higher state of being. All this can only occur, however, if FWT is understood and put into practice by talented entrepreneurial leaders.

So, that’s what this book is about.

1.2

A Decentralized World

Western civilization is on the ropes today. But a only few years ago libertarians were optimistic. Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he was, introduced Bitcoin, a non-government currency. Suddenly, there was the blockchain, and a whole new future.

One Bitcoin enthusiast, Vitalek Buterin, wrote a white paper which became Ethereum and people then envisioned a world of DAOs and dApps, smart contracts and freedom. But the vision lost its lift. The great blockchain revolution hasn’t gotten off the ground. The government has had time to catch up, and devise ways to use the chain to increase their power, not yours. Now, the centralizers are in control again, and they’re using the tech to implement their plans, a huge central bank, for example, and a digital currency, with rationing, travel restrictions and social controls built-in. At least, that’s what many fans of freedom claim.

It’s ironic. As soon as freedom looks like it’s within reach, tyranny gets worse.

Would you like to know why the word today is so chaotic and unstable? It’s because the rise of technology is clashing with political culture.

Politicians have always wanted to control society. They have always wanted to control everything people do. And today, because of the rise of tech, they are actually gaining the means to do so.

But the rise of tech is a blade that cuts two ways. Yes, it gives leaders more power to control. But it gives enormous power to individuals, too. It democratizes. Political bureaucrats want to centralize every aspect of society, but the rise of technology, and the concomitant lowering of the cost of technology, tends to decentralize the world by enabling individualism.

That’s where the instability is coming from.

Billionaire, Peter Theil, once remarked that there’s a war going on between the rise of the State and the rise of technology. One side will defeat the other. It’s not yet clear which side will win.

Add to this how virologists are designing bio-war scenarios, how AI is developing too quickly with no controls, how the trans-humanists want to plug human brains into the Matrix to create super armies, and the blockchain revolution is starting to look old fashioned.

Nevertheless, what is happening to the blockchain prophets is a good case study to illustrate how the so-called visionaries of today actually have no vision. They’re completely missing the real problem underlying all of the chaos.

Take Ethereum. Complex systems can be built upon this platform. Futurists claimed (some still claim) we will see entire economic sectors working like automatic vending machines, in cyberspace.

Imagine a business running automatically, an insurance company. It takes in money in the form of crypto, issues policies, accepts claims, matches agents with clients like Uber matches drivers with riders, all automatically. It’s completely outside of government’s reach. It’s a business with no central control. It just exists everywhere, and runs autonomously. If a business like this could work, then theoretically, whole industrial sectors could develop and melt the boundaries between nation states. This is, in fact, developing right now. New DAOs are being created every day. There is a gold rush on. It has dawned on people that decentralization could be the economy of the future. Entrepreneurs are delirious about the profits, VCs are positioning to cash in, and activist coders are in a frenzy to stake their claim in what they call, The Decentralized World.

Libertarians say, that decentralization via the blockchain is the most disruptive event that’s ever happened to the political class. The Decentralized World will soon be upon us. But here, we have a problem. Because nobody really knows what a “decentralized world” is.

Coders have a few techniques to get tiny pieces of  decentralization in the computing world. But when it comes to the bigger picture of society, in general, they don’t have a clue how to achieve it, or even what “decentralization” means.

What exactly is “A Decentralized World?”

• Does it mean no government controls on society?

• Does is mean no social hierarchies in which one person has power over another?

• Does it mean no more bureaucracy?

• Does it mean everyone is equal in some kind of “pure mutualism?”

• Does it mean some sort of new special relationship between business and government?

The truth is, nobody knows. Entrepreneurs and blockchain developers haven’t thought that far ahead.

1.3

Freedom or Tyranny?

Let’s say, today’s activist coders and libertarians get what they want. Imagine it’s ten years from now. Cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and DAOs are commonplace. That means the world is decentralized, right?

Or is it?

In the brick-and-mortar world, cities still pay for roads. Police still control crime. Nations still need defense. These things have to be paid for, and organizations on the blockchain have to pay their fair share, too, correct? 

Are DAO creators and entrepreneurs working with politicians to autonomously collect taxes to do these things? Are they working together to impose political regulations?

If so, isn’t that the exact opposite of decentralization?   

The truth is, blockchain developers don’t know. They haven’t bothered to think it through. Some just assume the future is going to be a world with no hierarchies, at all. They vaguely imagine networks of people, where everyone is equal, sharing technology in some sort of mutualism movement.

But a world of mutualism has never been a practical idea. It failed among the American settlers during the 1600’s. Robert Owens’ New Harmony, Indiana, failed in the 1800’s. It failed in the communes of the 1960’s. It will fail again, today. Why? Because what do all entrepreneurs and developers really want? Well, just like everyone reading this book, they want Big Money.

Getting Big Money is and has always been Goal Number One. Building a mutualist society — well, it may be nice, but it is far down on their list of things to do. The profit motive drives all markets and always will.

That’s why, ten years from now, it is not going to be the utopian mutualists, but pragmatic powerful companies that will dominate the economy. Big companies will be the big players. They will out-compete the share-everything people, just like today. Just like always.

So, here’s the dilemma. A few idealistic developers today believe they are building a decentralized world. But if the companies they work for, make deals with politicians around the planet to collect taxes and impose regulations — like companies always do — that recentralizes everything.

As for other quixotic groups, the radical libertarians, the anarchocapitalists, and so on, none of them know what a decentralized world is, either.

1.4

Voting and Consensus

Voting is built in to many blockchain projects. When an important decision has to be made about the organization’s functionality, members vote to achieve what developers call “consensus.” This is how coders try to attain decentralization. Not all DAOs are organized this way, but the ones who claim to be decentralized are.

The blockchain developers who use voting to attain decentralization in the computing world assume that all voting leads to decentralization. This includes voting in political elections. They abstractly believe that if you use voting, you get decentralization.

But it this true?

Is creating a community that votes the same thing as creating a decentralized world?

If so, the USA is a voting democracy. How come it’s not decentralized?

What is the precise relationship between democracy and decentralization?  What is the causal connection between the two? How does one lead to the other? How do they work together to achieve a freer society? Can you explain it? Can you flow-chart it? Or is the connection a bit vague?

Many “fans of the chain” believe that democracy and decentralization somehow work together to achieve freedom. But what is freedom? Do they know? Do they have any idea what kind of social system they are trying to build? If they don’t know what freedom is, how can they build it?

The truth is, they can’t.

In fact, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could inadvertently create less decentralization and less freedom without knowing it. You could make the world worse. Even though it is not your intention, you could unwittingly put a powerful new weapon — DAOs on the blockchain — right into the hands of the centralizers, and possibly even into the hands of some future hyper-centralized mega police state. Without even knowing that is what you are doing.

Free World Theory changes all that. The first thing FWT does is explain what centralization and decentralization mean, what the differences between them are, and the strengths and weaknesses of each.

End of Chapter One.