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Citizens or serfs?

By on January 2, 2016 in Big Brother, Big Government, Civil liberties, decentralization, Democracy, Rule of law, Transparency

One way of looking at society is that it consists of free individuals – citizens – joined in a community. And in a democracy, the people elect a group of peers to manage a limited amount of things that are better handled together. But people are, in general, responsible for their own lives. This is a firm and sound bottom to top approach.

Then we have the opposite, the top to bottom point of view. Here politicians and bureaucrats are the nuclei of society. It is what they want that is important and they claim to have some sort of right to decide over other people. This ruling class can enforce its will with the help of its armed wing, the police. In this society, the people is totally subordinate to the state and its needs (and whims). This type of society is predisposed for central planning and control. And it is less resilient, as it will have many potential single points of failure.

Today’s modern western societies mainly fall into the latter category. We, the people are not free citizens — but serfs.

The concept of mass surveillance makes perfect “sense” from this perspective. You will have to control the people, supervising that it is doing what it has been told to do. And those in power often find it useful if the people fear the state, at least to some degree.

Meanwhile, governments are becoming less transparent. Ever more deals are struck behind closed doors. Democracy has become an empty excuse for rubber-stamping laws and rules that mainly benefit the system, those in power and their special interest friends.

Recently, the US took the top bottom approach to new extremes. The tax authorities, the IRS, now has the power to revoke people’s passports. If you owe taxes to the government, you can be prevented from leaving the country. What is this, if not serfdom?

The question is what to do about this development towards an ever more totalitarian society. Why are there no steadfast and reliable political forces trying to lead society right again? (Yes, I know. Libertarian political leadership is in so many ways a contradiction in terms. But what is the alternative?)

/ HAX

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Economic evolution, technology and politics

By on October 15, 2015 in Bitcoin, decentralization, Free Markets, Internet

If you order a Über car in Berlin, you will get a classic Berlin cream coloured Mercedes taxi instead. As in many other places special interest groups, politicians and bureaucrats are trying to stop market progress and competition. Sometimes they give somewhat understandable reasons such as insurance and tax issues. Sometimes they don’t.

But what is interesting is that still you will get a car, even though it might not be a black Über one. The service is being upheld, even if it’s only its interface that is used at the moment.

While it might be possible for local governments to prevent the ride-sharing side of Über (for the moment), the technical aspect of the concept seems to be unstoppable. Using the company’s smartphone app is much more cost efficient for taxi operators than having a telephone switchboard and some sort of local radio operated voice or data system to direct cars. And then there is the issue of not having to handle money or credit cards, as the payment function is already built into the system.

The Über concept also has proven to be popular with customers — as it is seen as easy to use, reliable, safe and hassle free. The same app can be used more or less worldwide

There is an underlying, slow but steady change towards a decentralized sharing economy in the western world. (Witch is was Über is really about.) This is a change of an entire market paradigm, allowing ordinary people to provide all different sorts of services to others. But for this to be a truly free and dynamic market it must be defended against over regulation and old business protectionism. For this to happen, it must be backed up by technical development.

It has been said that politics might overpower money — but that technology beats politics. This has proven to be right e.g. when it comes to the Internet, telecommunications and television. And it will be true when it comes to the emerging sharing economy — that is a yet fragile concept that politicians and bureaucrats cannot really get their heads around. (So they should keep out of it, but they rarely do.)

You can argue that cutting edge technology has become a prerequisite for economic freedom and evolution in today’s society. Which makes the fight for a free and open connected world even more important.

It might also be a good idea to hard-wire the new sharing economy with encrypted, decentralized digital currencies and payment methods, such as Bitcoin.

/ HAX

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What will the world look like without the Pirate Bay?

By on December 10, 2014 in decentralization, File Sharing, Intellectual Property, Internet

After a police raid in Stockholm, the worlds leading file sharing site The Pirate Bay is still offline. It might be back at any moment. Or it might be gone for ever.

The real tragedy is that a gigant cluster of information might be gone with it. Even tough TPB was a haven for illegal file sharing, it was also an open and popular platform for legal file sharing.

Personally, I used TPB to distribute a book of mine under a Creative Commons license. In the same way TPB has been used by thousands and thousands of artists–knowing that obscurity is a worse problem than pirate copying.

TPB was (or is) an open, easy to use channel for distribution of information. No need for registration, no credit card needed and no questions asked. As it should be.

TPB also had (has) critical mass. Being the world leading site for file sharing–almost everything you want or can imagine was (is) available. No one really can compete with that.

A world without TPB would be a poorer, duller and worse off place.

Regardless if TPB will be back or not–there should be a TPB II. A truly open and decentralised system for trouble free file sharing. A system without a singe point of failure.

/ HAX

TorrentFreak: The Pirate Bay HAS NOT Been Resurrected – YET »
Forbes: Can Pirate Bay Weather The Storm? »

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Crypto-currency will rule in a decentralized world

By on November 3, 2014 in Bitcoin, Blockchain, decentralization

Via Decentralize, I have just discovered the Ledra Capital blog. This might very well be one of those places where future is being shaped.

One LC post puts words on something I have tried to make understandable (for myself as well as for others) for a long time is: Bitcoin Series 26: the Polemitis Impossible Trinity »

This explains why crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin are just as good as the dollar or the euro. Or rather, it’s not worse than fiat currencies. It’s just a dog with different fleas. Kind of like… gold.

Then, let’s move on to the post: Bitcoin Series 27: Bitcoin – a 6-sided Market and Network Effect »

It’s about Bitcoins “superb setup of market incentives for the first currency to hit escape velocity”. It’s smart. It’s intuitive. It’s plausible. And it’s arousing, kind of.

What first lead me to the Ledra Capital blog was the Decentralize blog post about all the stuff LC has listed as possible to decentralize with Blockchain technology: Anything you can do I can Decentralize! »

Birth certificates, gun permits, wills, contracts, accounting records, car keys, betting records, coupons, trademarks, licenses, vehicle registries, spam control, nuclear launch codes… You name it.

I guess this is what happens when spontaneous order and a truly free market (politicians don’t know about it yet, and they will never understand it) meets with new and disruptive technology. I like it. I like it very much.

/ HAX

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The coming revolution must be user friendly

By on July 26, 2014 in decentralization, Internet, Privacy, Uncategorized

I’m into privacy issues and the fight for a free and open Internet from a political background. Even though I’m not a complete technical idiot, I really don’t know what’s going on under the hood. Show me a command line, and I will freeze without a clue what to do about it.

So, I’m like most people.

At the same time, the world badly needs some tech-based change. We need to build platforms for digital currencies, as alternative to government fiat-money. We need to rise the prize for surveillance by building decentralized systems, by making encryption the default option and by developing various P2P solutions.

At present, this is far beyond the ordinary user.

Ergo: We need to make privacy orientated technology user friendly.

Last year international information activist Smári McCarthy made this very point in his keynote at FSCONS 2013. A few extracts…

“Most people don’t care about technology, they care about doing the things that are meaningful to them. They don’t want to spend all day fiddling with GnuPG’s parameters or figuring out whether their XMPP session is being transferred over SSL. They don’t want to know about IPSec or AES.”

“No. They want to be farmers, or merchants, or dentists or doctors. They want to teach our children languages and mathematics. They want to build houses or spaceships or plumbing or bridges or roads. They don’t have time to work with bad technology that we made badly because we didn’t care about them.”

“What’s worse: when companies that don’t care about those people either give them highly usable software that doesn’t respect their fundamental rights, most people will go for it because despite its failings, it at least gets the job done. If what we offer them as an alternative is not at least as good in terms of getting the job done – from the perspective of a nontechnical user, it does not matter at all how ideologically pure our offering is.”

Spot on.

I like to believe that I’m at least as smart as people in general. Still, I prefer to have some qualified guidance when diving into these things.

As a matter of fact, I had Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge to install everything on my Linux laptop. And to guide me into PGP. And Swedish Internet icon (and 5 July chairman) Oscar Swartz to get my Mac to act in a reasonably safe way. I might have managed myself. But it would have been a slow and very painful process.

But people in general don’t give a fuck. They choose user friendliness before privacy. They are happy if whatever they get from the Mediemarkt shelfs works, no matter how exposed it is to government surveillance.

To fight back, privacy oriented options and solutions supporting an free and open internet must be the best ones. They must be ordinary peoples natural and carefree choice.

This said with the greatest respect for all the fine people who are putting their time and energy into fighting Big Brother command line by command line.

/ HAX

Smári McCarthy at FSCONS 2013: Engineering Our Way Out of Fascism »

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