Amorphous State

Countries are useless

In the past few months I've been consumed by this thought that we as a society need to start solving the issues of unemployment and social and financial inequalities.

I've been consumed by this thought because not long ago I've discovered Bitcoin, a new kind of currency that is not only truly global but it’s also cannot be controlled by a single entity (or a group of entities).

This means that the monopoly of creating money, the blood of our society that brings energy and nutrients to where they're needed, can be broken and we no longer have to rely on banks and companies like PayPal to do businesses on a local and global scales.

Furthermore, in recent years our planet have seen several social uprisings almost in every country there is. People are sick of the situation they're in, and they want to better it.

What gave these people the opportunity to uprise is the internet itself, or more accurately it’s the social networks that we've become so accustomed to in the past decade or so.

The Status

Currently there are about 8 billion people on earth.While there are about 200 countries, each has it’s own cultural and social ideologies, they are pretty similar.

Most of the countries on the planet are “democracies”, most of these “democracies” are not really democratic at all — they present the option for their citizens to vote for a candidate or a party, but when it comes to running the country and making the rules, most of the time commercial and financial institutions are heavily influencing the democrats to do as they please.

They also have similarities in their financial situation, or rather the citizens financial situation. Most of the countries have an official unemployment rate of somewhere between 10%-40%. But from our personal experience we all know that the official numbers that our governments present to us are usually pretty low and the reality is usually much worse.

Woman are often neglected to be counted as unemployed because they’re either not allowed to work, because of social norms or otherwise, or simply don’t report themselves as unemployed because they’re sit-at-home-moms.

Furthermore, people who consider themselves as “artists” and are working on whatever it is they do, are often considered as unproductive citizens because they don’t do normal work, that is to sit at the office or drive a machine from point a to point b all day long.

My point is that our unemployment figures, on a global scale, are not only wrong in that they underestimate the actual unemployment rates, but they also dictate to us what is considered employment and what does not.

Throughout the history of human kind we’ve had artists and philosophers being supported by kings and lords because they think and sometimes produce somethings that are not produced by the working people, and yet in our society where robots are quickly eliminating the need for any kind of physical labor, and soon they will also eliminate much of the white collar jobs as well, we are worshiping the unemployment rates as if they actually matter.

Our society is warped beyond insanity. We’ve, or more correctly our parents and grandparents, have established a system that benefits those who can control and manipulate the system, and they do control and manipulate the system so that it benefits them.

In todays society we are no longer believing the farce that we've been thought at school, that there are people behind the border who want to kill us, that there are evils out there that try to rob us from our freedom and way of life.

Not all of us are awakened by now, but more and more do awake every day thanks to the internet and the social networks.

We begin to understand that most of the people on this planet want only one thing: the option to live. To live we as humans only need a few basic things, food, shelter, clean water, and recently telecommunication. As we've started to talk to one another, across borders and social boundaries, we learn that most of what we've been thought in schools or on TV is primarily bullshit.

The people across the pond don’t want to kill us, they don’t want to change our way of life because it doesn't suite theirs, they simply want to live their life as they see fit, and usually our fears of the unknown are just that — fear of the unknown, and now that the unknown becomes known, we no longer fear it, we start to understand it and realize that they are exactly like us — all they want is to live their lives, support their families, and have a place to sleep at night.

Automation

Our species evolved to be what it is today because of several key things that we can do, we can communicate between ourselves in the present, and we can communicate between ourselves in the future — write down or remember what we’ve learned and use it in the future by our children and grandchildren.

Another key tool that we have is our ability to dissect a problem, and learn how to solve it systematically. In earlier times we’ve thought our workers how to plow the fields and herd animals, in more recent years we’ve replaced workers with machines that do this far better than what we could do with our own hands.

We’ve increased food production specifically and goods production in general, and yet we still have starving people. We’ve invented technologies to make water from air, and to desalinate sea water, and yet there are people who die of thirst every day.

Why is that?

Because there are more of us? The planet can support only a limited amount of humans living on it?

Maybe, but I think that it is the way it is because we’ve brought along our society’s failed experiments along with us to the present day.

Democracy as it is today, has failed. There are some notable countries that democracy works well there, but that’s mostly because they have overhauled the entire process from the ground up.

But still, even working democracies are heavily influenced by the powers that control most of the “free world”. It’s not that democracy is a bad thing or a broken idea, the problem is that some people have found early on how to manipulate the system to benefit themselves, and ever since they control the system and enslave the rest of the people who are governed by the system.

This happens almost to every type of governance that we invent, no matter how ideal it sounds at first, someone finds a way to “work” the system so that they benefit the most of it, while robbing the rest.

How does that happens? Why does that happens?

I believe that it happens because of lack of transparency, and where things are transparent, they are overly complicated that no one actually understands anything within the system.

This superficial complexity of which examples are many in our modern society, the financial system, the democratic system, the rules system, and practically everything else we can think of is overly complicated not because it has to be, but because it was built that way so that no one can easily fix the broken parts.

I say broken parts because from most of society’s viewpoint, these systems are indeed broken, but they are not really broken, they are designed to work like that, even if not every single aspect of it was designed, the overall outcome is designed and intended to be the way it is.

How do we fix it?

Perhaps we can start reforming the laws in our countries. Or maybe we can make everything really transparent using the internet. Or maybe we can change our political governance system.

In nature, rarely do organisms change themselves when they’re broken, they usually just die and something else takes their place. That’s how I view our society today, or more correctly that’s how I see our countries today.

Broken systems that are designed to be inefficient in some aspects in order to ensure the survival of the system as it is today and ensure control of the system in the future by those who have the means to control it today.

We, the citizens of our countries, do not control any aspect of our countries progression, or regression. We have the illusion of control, or at least influence over the system, but most of us know that it’s only that — an illusion. Just grab a cab and talk to the driver in almost any country on the planet, and they will tell you just that.

So, again, how do we fix it?

We don’t. We can’t.

The system is build that way so it’s rigidness is ensured, so that the only ones who can control or steer it are those who are in control today, and it’s not you and me, it’s not 99.99% of the people that live in this system.

We cannot fix this system because it’s not really broken. It works just as it was designed to, it’s just that we don’t agree that this is a healthy situation.

So what can we do?

We can build a better system. We can, really.

With the advent of the Internet, we can truly allow direct democracy, or even better, liquid democracy where a person can delegate their vote to someone they trust on certain subject.

With the advent of Bitcoin, we can allow a true capitalism where the system is balanced by the majority and not the minority.

Neither liquid democracy nor Bitcoin are perfect, but they are a good start, they give us something that we needed in order to be able to make a working system where complexity isn’t hiding injustice or plain wrong doing, where our common sense and common knowledge can actually improve our way of life and not for the privilged few, but for every man and child on the planet.

Historically we've established territories based on geographical locations; neighbourhoods, cities, counties, countries. But recently we see a shift in that our territories are no longer needed.

Most of Europe has no borders between cities or countries, and yet nobody invades anyone else in Europe nowadays. In the last couple of decades we’ve realized that wars are plain and simple, bullshit.

We now know that our wars are being fought not for us and our freedom, but for the privileged few who want more power over more people.

Moreover, we see a new kind of ruling entity emerges in the recent decades, an amorphous entity that provides its citizens with everything they need and yet these citizens are also the citizens of the states and countries they live in.

I’m talking about the likes of Google and Facebook, gigantic companies that rival most countries on the planet in sheer size and wealth. I should note that these companies are not democracies, they are governed as totalitarian regimes, and yet people chose to be part of these companies, and they feel that these companies provide them with far more than what their countries provide for them. These companies are also spread across the globe, they officially avoid taxes in most contries they operate in, and yet they are continuing to grow and expand with every year that is passing.

So how can that be? Are we to go back to totalitarian states? Is this the answer?

I don’t think so. I think that we need to look at those companies as a successful model of management, but not as a way of governance.

I think it’s time we’ve started thinking about establishing Countries that are not necessarily associated with a particular place.

I believe that we now first the first time in history can establish citizenship as we do with employment. People can be free to chose what citizenship they have, regardless of their physical location.

Eventually I believe that we’ll see a single government ruling most of the planet, not unlike it is today in terms of globalization, but very much different in that the complexity that is used to control the masses is taken away and replaced by simplicity and true transparency.

Our countries no longer provide us protection from invasion, all our countries are doing for us are establishing a set of rules under which we can operate and interact with each other, and provide us with an economy in which we can work for the society and for ourselves.

Our rules are generally pretty similar from country to country, we generally don’t like murder and stealing, and we can easily move from country to country and still be quite familiar with what’s OK and what’s not.

So perhaps we can start thinking about establishing a global rule that we all agree on, and allow ourselves to govern ourselves in our communities the way we see fit.

A country is not a community. Far from it, most countries have millions of communities of varying types and sizes, and it’s the communities that eventually dictate the rules, not the country in which they are located in.

I believe that our governance of ourselves is a stack of communal functions beginning from the individual and growing to a family, a building, a neighbourhood, a city, county and eventually a country.

But if most of the countries are basically operating under the same rules, and the actual difference is between the communities within each countries, what purpose does the country serve? Perhaps it is doing more harm than good?

My amorphous state is a fully transparent entity that is not located in any single place on earth, but rather it is growing and shrinking as more and more people chose to be part of that state.

Even in cities which are in close physical proximity we often see huge difference in what is considered to be OK and what not. Why do both of those cities need to have the same rules?

You might argue that what I’m proposing is moot because that’s what’s happening already, but I’ll retaliate and say that this is what we think should be happening, but in reality this is not what’s happening. In reality we are constrained by the rules of the countries that we live in simply because it benefits someone somewhere, often not physically close to us.

In conclusion to the above wall of text I want to start a global discussion of how we can establish a governance system that can benefit those who are governed by it, and instead of making a choice of government based on your physical location, a choice of government should be just that — a choice we can make regardless of where we are located.

I believe that the internet with Bitcoin and Liquid Democracy are the easiest starting points for this new amorphous state,and I believe that it’s about time we started thinking about building a system that is a choice to be had, not a privilge to be born in to.