Swissfication
I expect the world to go through the cyberpunk route before parts of it hopefully turn into a Swiss copycat
We are entering a cyberpunk world: high tech + dysfunctional institutions, here's why:
Institutions are rules and protocols that allow us to cooperate at scale, e.g. culture, language, media, education, healthcare, courts, money, trade..
Their common denominator is the existence of consensus-driven sources of truth as in Bitcoin, since Bitcoin is the institution of wealth transfer.
Those with centralized and decentralized sources of truth face now scrutiny, questioning and criticism because we now have on the internet massive access to alternative sources of it, although of course centralized ones face even bigger threats:
- culture as well as politics is being atomized and polarized to a point where it is easier to agree with a like minded individual living on the other side of the globe than with your neighbor.
- Languages where a central authority says what's right or wrong are completely doomed compared to those that evolve in a decentralized way.
- Media is probably the best example of how the mainstream is being completely destroyed by decentralized sources of truth like social networks
- you can find the best educational tools on the internet, so much better than your traditional local university and your opinion about it is not one bit better than that from anyone else.
- do you follow healthcare advice online? Be careful but if you do a good job, you'll have an advantage over those following mainstream medical advice.
- with such an extremely wide number of points of view available nowadays, you can feel entitled to criticize almost any court ruling
- you can now use forms of cyber money outside the control of regulators
- trade is global while most of our laws are local
The ultimate consequence is that earlier functional institutions seem now to suffer a one-size-fits-all problem: there is no such a thing as an institution that pleases everyone.
We consequently lose trust in them and parallel ones emerge that are more global, digital, that are/can be more neutral and censorship resistant, that enable better consensus but that also create new challenges since they also leave the doors opened to all sorts of cyber scams.
All of a sudden your well being is more your responsibility than that of your elected politician. You have way more opportunities but also face way more threats and our traditional institutions are simply unable to protect you.
I expect customization to be the key to solve this one-size-fits-all problem our traditional institutions face: digital ones can better cater to your needs as code can be forked and you can embed transaction logic (aka smart contracts) but not all our needs can be satisfied with digital ones, i.e. physical ones will still be needed and there will be an increasing pressure to secede, to find more customized institutions.
Perhaps it's an opportunity to follow the successful Swiss model where each Canton with self-governance, history and language ends up shaping who settles there, but until/if that materializes things are going to get very cyberpunk-like IMO.
We’re the West though, we can change our opinions and adapt.
