September11/Todd Boyle

Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 12:53:11 -0700 From: Todd Boyle  To: decentralization@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: De-centralization IRL

Today's economic and governance structures have inadequately registered some very large, pent up frustrations in the Islamic countries. I blame this on the unquestioned power of governments to control their citizens, and to take actions which harm other regions for the sole benefit of internal decision makers inside national boundaries.

Governments work tirelessly to advance the interests of their own citizens, exporting harms to other nations. 100 measures of harms are gladly inflicted on neighbors, for the sake of 1 measure of benefit within the geographic borders. Brokering to reduce this dispararity is the opportunity of decentralization but it will require great courage.

Today's organizational system registers the tiniest whims of consumers in western countries. Meanwhile, billions of people in Islamic nations see only oil extraction activities, and foreign militaries. http://www.islamicweb.com/?folder=begin&file=population

The rightness or wrongness of the parties is an independent question to the design of systems of organization. The activities of governments and corporations, by design, follow the financial imperative. But they are relatively blind to other dimensions, and externalities. These externalities can never be rectified by legislation or regulation alone -- or by terrorism. What is needed is decentralization.

Western governments are a mechanism. This is a defective mechanism which does not serve Americans or Europeans well. This mechanism must be somehow improved because it functions all too well in advancing *only* the interests of its constituents to the absolute exclusion of other regions. Let's not even talk about the problem of corrupt partnerships between business and government.

Governments reaction to todays events will be imposing even more barriers, more restrictions on privacy of communication, more regulation of decentralized commerce. That is absolutely nuts. This is like the period leading up to the Vietnam war. A billion Christians in the western nations drift towards war with 1 billion people in islamic nations, in a collossal mistake driven by defective systems of organization.

I want you geeks designing the internet to understand the consequences of your designs. You are just as responsible for today's world, as nuclear engineers, in the 1940's.

Western systems of social organization are the real root of our problems in America. We have today, a monopoly on governance, by government people. People in governments are sometimes good and wise, sometimes not. But all governments are based ultimately on force, and all are based on hard geographic lines. By force they all impose laws and crush minority opposition. In the US for example, more than 2 million people are in jails and prisons, with 5 million on parole and other supervision.

The reasons most Americans support their government are easily enough understood, and the mechanisms of operation also obvious. Government is a collective assertion of power by hierarchies of social and financial organizations within the geographic borders. Those social and financial structures collaborate because of the tremendous financial and security rewards in government. But these organizations do, in fact, span the national borders, which offers some hope. Maybe not much but some.

Consider, it might be a good thing if governments lose some of their power to block, tax, and interfere with economic collaborations that span borders. Put aside your fear for a moment-- and keep paying your taxes by all means-- but intellectually I ask you, why is it morally right that the public sector control 1/3 of the GNP in most countries, under threat of imprisonment of anybody who disagrees?

The economy has always had various means to route around governments. This decentralization must reach further into the Islamic nations, so that their peoples can achieve their own aspirations and desires. Bluntly, we need to napsterize the whole economy so that their governments and our governments cannot organize into warfare.

Put positively, decentralized computing and communications can


 * improve the accuracy and efficiency of dissemination of information,


 * improve the effectiveness of the nodes (ultimately, people) in understanding and responding to that information by their actions,


 * improve the webs of trust and honesty necessary for efficient business,

and prospering in private enterprises outside the visibility of governments.
 * ultimately give all humans the power to refuse to cooperate or participate in any wars, by giving them the independent means of living

To re-emphasize, war is not the answer.

U.S. terrorism experts say Islamic terrorism cannot be stopped because it is composed of cells. What if the entire global economy is also comprised of economic cells? What if there are no skyscrapers and no pentagon? Who will the terrorists kill? Their local network will find them and neutralize them, much faster than foreign governments.

I feel that it is a key objective that all peoples can express their economic requirements empirical and explicitly into the network, and that other people can understand these expressions of demand and satisfy them with offers of production in satisfaction of those demands on a nonviolent way.

When demand signals and supply signals are available there is no doubt that economic collaborations of any required scale will be quickly organized, whether in the form of corporate or private partnerships. Computers and the internet are good at that.

The contribution of decentralization is to provide avenues for people to route around these existing, large, centrallized forces in the global economy that block freedom and organize military actions between peoples.

Governments, thru their two implements of police/military power and centralized control of the financial system, are the very foundation of barriers to finance and trade across geographic borders between countries. There is an unquestioned assumption of the legitimacy of these border arrangements, which all governments are eager to maintain.

These barriers must be softened, and relations between peoples must be normalized. Governments impose excessive barriers to travel, excessive fees and costs on money flows by individuals and small business, which are not levied on large corporations. I repeat: the national boudaries are the basic problem.

We have unicode now. We have machine translation. We have technical solutions for electronic money, and global integration of B2B commerce, distribution and supply chain. We have the means for globally integrated multicompany accounting, and allocations of income and costs.

Regarding yesterday's events. Just remember, they began with government by force. Governments cause wars, and the planet is getting too small for today's governments.

Todd