Conversation

Replying to
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.
3
23
“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 🤣
2
21
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
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
what's wrong with big and weak governments if lots of rich societies are so governed?
3
14
Hypothesis: anarchism is often the right question, but never the right answer. Humans just have too much desire to be governed. Governance is about reducing the complexity of life. Via lots of defaults. Hopefully sensible, but we’ll accept senseless defaults over no defaults.
3
19
This stuff is on my mind because tomorrow the will be releasing an early draft of a paper on online governance, at our second annual meeting. We’ve been grappling with these issues for 18 months now, as have most other such communities.
1
7
Undergovernance is at the root of things we misdiagnose in many other ways: meaning crisis, burnout wave, great resignation… Nobody is being led, managed, supported, or complemented as much as they’d like to be, in the ways the want. “Not paid enough” is the tip of an iceberg
1
24
Replying to
Not the nice Ursula Le Guin kind, like Annares in The Dispossessed, with beautiful, functional mutualism among responsible adults, but the “hey where do I find this link on this discord” kind 🤣
1
4
I'm bullish about what Web3 (the technology) can do in principle, but bearish and pragmatic about what Web3 (the people) will do with it in practice.
1
27
tldr of this thread… Web3 is shaping up to be a major macrotrade for me in terms of time investment, but my expectations are not simple.
Quote Tweet
The best macro trades combine boundless optimism about technological progress with bottomless cynicism about human nature.
1
10
Replying to
What's the distinction between anarchy and DIY? Because I think (although not one myself) anarchists believe in networks and other collaborative working relationships, and that's not the same as the hard grind of DIY. Most people who exit society end up in DIY hacks, not anarchy