Market Theocracy

The connection and integration of the human species will not bring about utopia. It will not solve the problems of scarcity or violence. It will not turn human beings into angels. It will, in fact, reveal once and for all that human beings are not, never have been and never will be angels. That human beings are human: fallible, sometimes petty, often irrational, and always surprising.

And, quite often, entirely marvelous.

What connection and integration will do is to allow those marvelous qualities to manifest quicker and with greater regularity than ever before. It will allow those failures and petty actions and surprises to become apparent almost instantly and be dealt with more efficiently. It will allow us to never be separated or alone. It will allow our economy to grow and flourish.

Most importantly, it will make sure that those who demand power can never again separate us and force their will upon us in tiny groups that are easy to control. It will make lying an almost impossible art form. It will make education a simple organic process, available to all for time expended.

The tools to accomplish this exist, though they are currently bulky and rather expensive. The overall framework also exists: in a primitive and ridiculously complex form. Personal computers and the Internet are the beta versions of the integrated connection to come. Eventually we will stop sitting at our computers and communicating over bulky wires. We will no longer rely on centralized servers and third party routing. We will wear those computers and our communication will dance on the melody of invisible waves. Every user will function as their own server, and the routing will be chaotic, ever changing and on the fly.

The true net will be built from the bottom up on an encrypted basis. It will be individual-centric and a beautiful conflicting mass of standards and jury-rigged systems. The eventual protocols will not be administered from on high but will emerge from the vicious natural selection of Darwinian standards: the smallest, cheapest, sleekest and cleanest aps and tech will win.

The open source movement, the crypto-libertarian front, the shadowy fringes of file sharers and cyber bootleggers: these are the people who will build the overnet. They will be the people who first use it to disappear from the radar of the state. These will be the ghosts and phantoms of the coming digital revolution.

These will be the people who integrate human action and bootstrap the overnet. These are the people who will place a copy of the map of mankind into the hands of every soul who wishes for one.

The state is currently allowing this to happen, though they are retarding and slowing it as much as they possibly can. The reason they aren’t stopping it directly is that they suffer from the same lack of communication that bedevils the peons: they don’t communicate well enough to realize the vast danger it represents to them. By the time they possess the ability to do so, it will be too late. The peons will have it as well.

And the peons outnumber them. And can outthink them.

Once they have it, they will look upon the ’system’ with new eyes. They will wonder why they’ve trusted these foolish control freaks for so long. they’ll wonder how they could have ever considered something as nebulous and simple as ’society’ as their lord and master. How the excuse of ‘bettering’ society could ever be achieved through pain and theft and imposed misery. How those rancid objectives helped humans to communicate with each other. How those wars and divisions did anything to build the world.

When that happens, the State will be finished. It may go out with a spasm of violence, but it will indeed go out. The revolution will more than likely be fairly bloodless. What blood is spilled will be those control-freaks who simply refuse to relinquish power. When secession and non-compliance is met with violence, the revolutionaries will be forced to use violence themselves.

Thus freed, human society will become truly global and truly voluntary. The map of mankind will fill every nook and cranny of this planet. Eyes will be cast beyond, towards the other worlds around this sun and out to the stars. The connected human race, like a great choir, will need new arenas to fill with the song of human struggle. With the joy of structure. With the clean new lines of explored places, and adventures worth telling children in hushed voices.

We are the human race. We are the makers of maps. We will not be satisfied with an explored globe. It will be the vast uncharted edges that call to us in siren song. And we shall rush to them, as fools rush. We will die and fail and create legends.

Eventually, we will conquer the vacuum and spread the map of mankind across this galaxy and beyond.

This is our destiny.

It is a good destiny.


NEXT: You Are Here (III - Finale)

OK, I’ve had quite a few people ask me why I call this blog ‘Market Theocracy’. The truth is that there are several reasons. I shall summarize:

1) A couple years back I had a group blog with some friends of mine that went by the name Market Theocracy. It had no real theme and the name came from the fact that all the bloggers were market anarchist types and one of them (my friend Aaron who I never freakin’ see any more) was a devout Christian and quite used to taking our many jokes about him being a theocrat. While that blog didn’t last and was read by almost no-one, I have many wonderful memories of it and have always been proud of my posts and those of my pals. Unlike most blogs, MT was actually funny. It had passion and did things no one expected. I was quite sad to see it fade.

2) I am, for the most part, a market anarchist - -a term I prefer to the awful ‘anarcho-capitalist’. AC does nothing but piss off anti-capitalist anarchists and cause misconceptions. I am not pro-corporate. I know that corporations are fully state dependant creation intended to shield businesses from market forces. In short, ‘capitalism’ is not a word I’m willing to go to the wall for or even bother defending.

Among market anarchists there is a tendancy to see ‘the market’ as a sort of God, and the laziest answer a market anarchist can give is ‘The market will handle it.’ This (although true in certain situations) is basically the non-religious version of ‘The Lord shall provide.’

Market Theocracy, then, is a sort of exaggerated tounge in cheek version of my own philosophical mindset.

3) I think it’s both funny and interesting as a name. It’s memorable. It brings to (my) mind a collection of Misean monks in some post-apocalyptic future, hoarding gold and computational equipment, attempting to preserve free-market thought against the onslaught of survivalist communitarian altruism! They say things like ‘By Hayeks beard!’ and ‘For the love of Friedman!’ when troubled. They trade the products of their gardens and their accounting services to the mutated bands of collectivist scavengers that pass beyond their walls.

So now you know.