In traditional governance people often conflate *big* government with *strong* government. Around the world the norm is mostly big and weak. There’s a lot of government but little governments can do, for various reasons.
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What little capacity for action they have tends to get divided between:
a. Policing
b. Stop loss of visible decay
c. Crony spoils distribution
Everything else is left to decay in a musical chairs mode. Person left standing when music stops is the bad guy who “broke” X
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Governments getting steadily bigger and weaker is a counterintuitive thing. I mean they have drones and surveillance state now. The Man must be getting stronger. Not so. The world is leaking governability fast, despite newer toys.
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Problem is complexity demanding meaningful governance is growing far faster than capacity to actually do it. “Bigger government” is relative to historical size trend, but “weaker government” is relative to current demand for governance.
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At first glance Web3 holds promise to increase both size and power of governance. Millions of DAOs on Discord, yay. But look closer and again size is increasing but power not so much. Demand for governance is showing up, supply not somuch. Despite tools that stretch capacity.
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“Decentralized” and “leaderless” are shorthand for quietly acknowledged lack of capacity for governance that casual observers mistake for appetite for anarchism. Nope. Anarchy remains a highly unpopular thing. It’s not what we want but what we get when nobody wants to govern 🤣
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But we knew this even in Web2. We called it participation inequality aka 90:9:1 rule. 90% lurkers, 9% casual participation, 1% serious involvement. With 80% of value from 1%.
It’s going to be the same ratio in Web3. 90: token holders, 9 stalkers, 1 doer
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Why us big plus weak bad if rich societies work that way? Because poor societies work even more that way and that’s how you go from rich to poor. Aka what sone are starting to call brazilification in the US
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Replying to @vgr
what's wrong with big and weak governments if lots of rich societies are so governed?
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Replying to
See this book. Too complex to get into here.
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Strength vs size distinction is something I picked up from @FukuyamaFrancis book Political Order and Political Decay. ribbonfarm.com/2016/07/16/the
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