Social distancing taxes poverty by fixing a quote for lust for life. Will digitized Utopia shelter social capitalism?

The ultimate Oligarchies' pandemic

Social distancing isn't about keeping a fair distance among human beings to ward off contagion and, thus, preserve lives; the genetics-rooted code of self-preservation would serve the purpose without making an excessive clamor. In a collective hangover of myopia, ruling classes acclaim social distancing as the ultimate solution, make the terrified targets of this unprecedented coordinated propaganda (workers, city dwellers and students alike - blind as much as deaf - ) ignoring what's the end game: to draw the ultimate divide between social classes by preventing unauthorized access to the One Asset which has been evenly distributed since the Discovery of Fire: la joie de vivre

The Berlin Wall lasted for 28 years, it took 2 days to build and 1 day to be torn down; it had been built as a tangible physical fence surrounding a section of one unique city to prevent people on the East side from escaping to the West in search for freedom (not money, money comes sometimes as a byproduct). In the 2020 pandemic, the digitized behavioral fences being built around us are intended to eventually prevent the diverse crowds (of a much narrower planet) from entering the golden-plated rues of the incumbents' regional country clubs.

Eventually, the bizarre combination of (i) monetary collapse driven by the transition to a full-equity economic system and (ii) lust for life, will overwhelm the digitized fences of the unsustainable divide.

Time will tell who will act first to try to tear down the digitized fences

Why Blockchain will rescue the Financial Systems, Politicians & Policymakers will hard land (and Corporations will Lead Nations)

Last summer, poisoned by intolerance to widespread lack of vision, I started organizing my thoughts on what's ahead in the next 10 years. I share with you a few excerpts from unpublished "Hebe and Her Seven Sisters", inspired by the endless Ithaki Seas, nurtured within an apparently safer, yet lavishly decadent, pre-COVID environment.

Adjust to volatility and enjoy

1. The dilemma

[.....] Economic undecided priorities foster political instability and lack of governance. Three alternative scenarios will face global policymakers within the next 10 to max. 20 years:

• The Plutocrats’ Apartheid. Massive liquidity allows the rich to become richer and the other to be squeezed in liquidity traps (a sort of cheap for nothing). In a world that is not compensating savings but just risk-taking, the best equipped are those that can bear losses, not the others. In turn, this generates very discriminating access to the best education, health systems, food, etc..
• The Technocrats’ Supremacy. With digital technology substituting imaginative problem solving with concentrated calculus capabilities, the digital powerhouse and the obscure nerds’ communities can penetrate our lives in millions of unthinkable ways. Which expose most (all) of us to, eventually, loss of identity and self-identity
• The Divergents’ Renaissance. Cutting the drapes is always painful. Most of us have been educated (and self-educated) by the belief in the prevailing virtues of democracy, growth, and inclusion. Today’s verdict is dismaying: democratic capitalism has supported exclusive growth, with apparent social mobility remaining the exception to the rule, and access to superior education building steeper fences. The strength of the economic paradigm and the penetration of socially homogenous behaviors sidelined many features that make humans some much different from animals. In the highway to conformity, next expected attitude will be “technological” compliance, i.e. to be reachable 24/7, to be available on social media, to provide own date to allow businesses and governments to better care about oneself, etc….Divergence means cutting the grass on which hegemonic constituencies fill their stomachs and veins. Disregard what entraps our freedom to feel, project and execute

2. Elective nations

[...] Within a globalized society, with invisible wars been fought outside the radar screen and [....] the digitization-ignited collapse of behavioral boundaries, human mankind faces an unprecedented phenomenon: one can elect one's nation and we may have more than one.

As elective citizenship is driven by individual choices, being part of an elective nation becomes subjective and requires very minor registration procedures. The digital world keeps creating digital elective nations and/or digitizing existing ones, whose ultimate strength is that citizens have opted in; onboarding has been their own choice, not somebody else’s

Soccer teams' supporters, consumers of super brands, social media conglomerates, etc....have formed nations (and presumably, they do not need any passport to cross the borders) beyond any seals of approvals. Elective nations have outplaced emotionless politics. It seems Utopia has sprung off the ocean caves, but it’s for real. Certainly, elective nations would improve the way they are deemed to perform some nations’ basic duties (namely, inclusive education, a responsive health system, effective communication, etc...) but as long as they able to federate specialized service providers into the nation’s ecosystem, the game becomes pretty fascinating

Let’s think about taxes: the government of a civil nation funds most of its budget is by selling goods and services on the open market and by imposing taxes to reluctant citizens; elective nations cover most of its expenses by providing goods and services to willing users and by sharing the value of users’ personal data with cooperating nations. As taxes are hard to bear, even data ingestion is surrounded by growing hostility. Yet, just like taxes, one 's willingness to cooperate is based upon trust, not obligation.

The evolution of Monetary policies is even trickier: native nations’ economic exchanges were supported by barter; eventually, civil nations, to make trades easier, started to issue currencies backed by reserves, gold, capital stock, etc.... Finally, the issuing capacity was detached from the magnitude of reserves and linked to growth and trust. At the current stage, neither growth nor trust...on these premises, if civil nations relentlessly print their own money, what would prevent genuine elective nations from doing it, too? [.....]

3. Blockchain & DAOs, i.e enabling elective nations to compete vis-a-vis governments

[....] Blockchain is a technology that allows for transactions to be registered into separate blocks, immutable, openly traceable, and trusted as based on consensus and reward. There may be several blockchains, and the underlying technologies may provide specialized consensus/reward mechanisms. What is important is that the chain is fully integer and it is shared. If Blockchain is the underlying technology and bitcoin is one successful application of said technology, a DAO is the organizational derivative of a Blockchain. By making the consensus and reward mechanism among peers (instead of vis-à-vis a centralized trust enabler), a DAO is the Utopia taking center stage in the digital era.

Cryptocurrencies - thereby including payment tokens, utility tokens, security tokens, and the like - are one of the most exciting applications of the blockchain concept; if blockchains are essentially rooted in traceability and trust, cryptocurrencies are the ultimate application of decentralized trusted systems. No wonder they're kept segregated as moral hazards (whereby central banks keep writing uncollateralized derivatives on economic growth and peoples' retirement outlook) and confined in the backstage (for how long ?)

Bearing in mind that (i) utility tokens are based on trust - i.e. I am paying know for something that would become available later - and (ii) Security tokens represent digital certificates tracing some underlying financial or real assets and the cash flows thereof, Corporates' tokenomics essentially allow for stances of far-extending magnitude:

• Unbundling corporate business model and execution into its sheer organizational components
• Creating the platform on which a Corporate, an affinity group, a community however defined......may leverage on own goodwill (i.e trust) with the user community

Hence, an elective opted-in constituency may share with her users the generated utilities (monetary or not) by printing her own and mutually accepted means of exchange

Bound for social hard landing? The time of not wasting Time

[....] Policymakers have to wake up and direct the vessel somewhere; technocrats’ supremacy and plutocrats’ apartheid will certainly lead large portions of the Planet to a very hard landing: military revolt, the former; slavery, the latter.t Fostering the humanistic recovery implies slowing down the unsustainable pace of most visibly impacting activities. Certainly, not a striking political dividend. Nevertheless, if a social hard landing is unwanted, brave stances are needed and fewer intoxicating pogroms have to be heard of [....].

Time has come not to waste Time