How to Code Unstoppable Nonviolent Revolutions

Introduction

Nonviolent protest makes revolution unstoppable by changing the incentives of the oppressor.

Typically, this requires enormous discipline on the part of the protesters. But in the blockchain era, we can create unstoppable nonviolent revolutions in code.

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Moral laundering: The oppressor’s primary tool
3. The unstoppable revolutionary
4. Codifying nonviolent revolution
5. Example 1—Financial oppression by central banks and governments
6. Bitcoin as codified nonviolent revolution
7. Example 2—Narrative oppression by corporate media
8. IdeaMarkets as codified nonviolent revolution

Moral laundering: The oppressor’s primary tool

An oppressor must launder his moral revulsion and make the act of oppression palatable to himself. That is — denial is a prerequisite for injustice.

Nonviolent protest works by making denial psychologically expensive, which disrupts the moral laundering process and makes oppression unpalatable again.

Few people engage in moral laundering consciously. These are steps of progressive self-deception, by which an oppressor maintains his sense of self as a “good person” while doing things that are “bad.”

Moral laundering inclines a person’s incentives toward oppression.

It changes the choice to oppress from this:

into this:

The oppressor’s commitment to oppression depends upon maintaining the latter set of choices in his mind—maintaining denial.

How moral laundering works

Moral laundering is a progressive self-deception that allows an oppressor to commit injustice while maintaining his self-image as “morally good.”

Like all humans, oppressors ultimately want to satisfy their needs and desires. For example:

• Economic: We want to exploit their economy and the cheap labor they can provide
• Psychological: We want someone “lower” to project our shame onto (not usually consciously expressed)

Through moral laundering, a would-be oppressor progressively deceives himself into an opinion that allows for both injustice and a sense of moral righteousness.

Here’s how the progressive self-deception unconsciously works:

1. Seize what is desired by force, while avoiding moral responsibility.

Problem: If I have a physical or economic advantage, I can just take what I want. But that’s what “bad guys” do, and I don’t want to be the bad guy. How can I meet my needs while still feeling like I’m a “good guy”?

Solution: Find a narrative in which overpowering and exploiting others will seem virtuous, or at least neutral.

2. Avoid moral responsibility by denying humanity of others.

New problem: Under what circumstances would exploiting and overpowering others be virtuous?

Solution: If the people I want to exploit are inferior, perhaps fit to be exploited, perhaps even benefiting from being exploited, then exploiting them is virtuous.

3. Deny humanity of others by embracing and justifying prejudices.

New problem: There’s no reason to believe others are inferior.

Solution: Accept and double down on prejudice.

What is prejudice?

Prejudice is a by-product of protecting ourselves from shame and self-judgment by projecting our shortcomings onto others.

A simplified example:

• Step 1: Idealization. Fearing we are barbaric, we idealize “civility” — we create an unspoken, personal definition of what civility looks and feels like, and then we try to live up to that ideal. Our ideal of civility often conveniently de-prioritizes our own areas of potential barbarism.
• Step 2: Denial. If civility is sipping tea and crossing one’s legs properly when seated, we can sip tea farmed by slave laborers in Nicaragua and feel perfectly fine about it. As long as we perform our idea of civility to ourselves, we can remain untroubled by the realities of our barbarism.
• Step 3: Projection. However, if someone squats in public like many Slavs and East Asians do, they’re breaking our personal civility rules. If we were to do such things, we would regard ourselves as barbaric — so instead, we regard them as barbaric.

(Look at the poetry of this — appreciate the orderliness of the mind, even in delusion.)

Our “personal civility rules” from Step 1— or respectability rules, morality rules, whatever you want to call it — help defend us from our own vicious self-judgment and shame.

But the inevitable by-product of this self-protection mechanism is prejudice— negative feelings toward people who are different. These negative feelings, which we could never admit come from ourselves, can be useful in justifying to ourselves the sense of superiority required to oppress others.

Therefore, the oppressor’s solution to “there’s no reason to believe others are inferior” is to accept and double-down on the negative feelings about others that are the by-product of their defense against their own consciences.

Whatever the others appear to the oppressor to be — barbaric, stupid, servile, etc. — the oppressor’s incentive is to look for more evidence of this and amplify it.

Justification for the denial of others’ humanity is the lifeblood of oppression.

Nonviolent protest works by making such justification psychologically expensive, or impossible to obtain at all.

The Unstoppable Revolutionary

Nonviolent protest is unstoppable because it unstoppably inclines the oppressor’s incentives toward truth and justice.

In the example above, “evidence of inferiority” allows the oppressor to launder his moral sense. By being relentlessly exemplary, nonviolent revolutionaries halt the laundering process. This is why self-scrutiny, dignity, innocence, etc. are required for nonviolent protest.

It’s far easier to tell yourself people are cowards, when they run away; savages, when they fight back; evil, when they curse you. When protesters do none of these things, they starve their oppressors of ammunition for their justifications of superiority—they make denial psychologically expensive. Watch this clip from the movie The Butler — prejudiced diners heap abuse on black protesters, whose conduct remains serene and courageous:

The unstoppable revolutionary is unstoppable because his strategy is such that no matter what, the oppressor fails to launder his moral revulsion, and this changes his incentive landscape.

Without the ability to launder his moral revulsion, the oppressor must either face the truth or tell progressively more egregious lies.

The choice thus changes from

to

Nonviolent protest is unstoppable because it changes the incentive landscape for the oppressor, making denial more costly than the truth, and the truth more profitable.

Codified nonviolent revolution

Traditional nonviolent protest:

• Uses primarily psychological and emotional incentives
• Requires discipline of the oppressed

Codified nonviolent revolution:

• Uses primarily financial and economic incentives
• Rewards discipline in the oppressed

Codified nonviolent revolution succeeds instead by building something that rewards public discipline in a way that in turn changes the incentive landscape of the oppressor.

Example 1—Financial oppression by central banks and governments

Under central banks and fiat, economies are upheld by oligarchic governments that rob the public using quantitative easing, fractional reserve, and accredited investor laws.

The resulting incentives look like this:

Centralized banks before bitcoin

1—Inflate fiat currency

Inflation costs Americans about 4% per year in purchasing power.

2—Gamble with people’s money

Corporate banks meddle in multi-trillion-dollar derivatives markets, and when something goes wrong, the public must bail them out to avoid global economic collapse.

3—Encourage consumption

The perception of economic growth is driven by consumption, so the public is encouraged to spend money to feed the machine.

The public before bitcoin

1—Lose 4% per year to inflation

Everybody does it, and nobody feels able to do anything about it. The alternative would be to stage a national protest movement more powerful than Occupy.

2—Trust banks to store money

Conveniences like worldwide locations, credit and debit cards accepted everywhere, the FDIC insurance policy of $250,000 per account, and the conveniences of modern mobile banking make trusting banks to store money the easy choice for most people in leading economies.

The downside is banks can freeze funds, cancel transactions, charge fees, cause delays, alter your credit, and exploit customers in other ways. They are also vulnerable to the same threats as all centralized entities, such as losing your data to hackers.

3—Spend money, accumulate debt

Someone on Twitter put it like this:

If you had $500,000, you wouldn’t buy a $500,000 house and then have $0. Why when we have $30,000 do we take out a loan to buy a $500,000 house?

Accumulating debt is not only easy, it’s expected.

Bitcoin as codified nonviolent revolution

Amid an economy driven by consumption and spending, Bitcoin makes people want to save money. Not only that — it makes people want to bear risk, cultivate frugality, and learn economics, all of our own accord. Bitcoin rewards the public for being as disciplined as we’ve always needed to be in order to reform the banks.

The public after bitcoin

1—Buy bitcoin

Bitcoin gives the public an alternative to fiat currency that operates in the digital age and is not subject to inflation.

2—Self-custody, transact trustlessly

New solutions are making Bitcoin self-custody easy for the public. Bitcoin operates on a trustless network and users are not subject to account freezes, transaction blocking, overdraft fees, credit scores, or massive data leaks.

3—Save money

Whereas the prospect of taking out a mortgage 500% the size of your net worth may have seemed exciting before, Bitcoin offers the opportunity to drastically increase purchasing power over time, without creating debt.

These changes in public behavior, incentivized by the existence of bitcoin, in turn affect the incentives of corporate and central banks.

Centralized banking after bitcoin

1—Use bitcoin as reserve currency

As economies like Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Spain struggle, the first to incorporate Bitcoin into its reserve strategy will set off a chain reaction of imitators.

2—Respect “hard money”

Banks and governments must acknowledge that bitcoin has qualities possessed by no other kind of money. These qualities make bitcoin the “hardest” money in human history; the most absolutely limited in supply and the most difficult to recover if lost. If banks gamble with bitcoin and lose, no amount of public taxation can bail them out.

3—Drastically improve banking for users

Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and other blockchain-based financial infrastructure is acclimating consumers to vastly improved banking experience. Blockchain-based bank accounts can yield double-digit interest, enable instant collateralized loans, and involve none of the fees and delays found in the corporate banking experience.

In order to compete and retain users, corporate banks will somehow need to do even better. Will they? We’ll see.

Example 2—Narrative oppression by corporate media

Returning financial sovereignty to the public is only half the battle—oligarchs continue to dominate the public by controlling the narrative.

In the same way that fiat currencies are valuable only because governments say they are, fiat narratives are true only because media corporations say they are.

(For more on Idea Markets: ideamarkets.org)

Corporate media before IdeaMarkets.org

1 — Control public opinion

Media corporations have near-limitless power to enforce fiat narratives using tactics like these:

• Limiting the scope of discussion (“Democrat vs. Republican”)
• Astroturfing (paying people to imitate a grassroots movement)
• Distributing airtime ($4B of free airtime to Donald Trump in 2016)
• Sponsoring entertainment and media (CIA involvement in media)
• Great firewalls (China)
• Banning media outlets (Facebook and Twitter)
• Interrupting members of US Congress to cover Justin Bieber (Video)
• Scripting local news on a national scale (Video)

Corporate media took 50 years to tell America smoking is harmful. What is it hiding from us now?

2 — Compel public attention

Meanwhile, corporate media earns money by selling advertising, so the success of a publication is measured in its ability to capture a large audience. Media are thus encouraged to show content that scares, hypnotizes, and addicts viewers rather than inform them.

Like other large-scale “attention farms” (e.g., Facebook), corporate media exploits the vulnerabilities of human psychology to compel attention. Attention is systematically extracted from the public in the same way that money is under a central-bank-controlled fiat economy.

3—Encourage ideological division

By misinforming each side about the other’s beliefs and motivations, corporate media cultivates not only distrust, but contempt for people with opposing viewpoints.

Cultivating contempt for ideological opponents makes it nearly impossible for the audience to switch sides, cementing its allegiance to one’s own platform and point of view.

The public before IdeaMarkets.org

1—Trust corporate fiat narratives

The American public has been told for centuries that the purpose of the media—the “fourth estate”—is to defend the public from the excesses of the state.

Many people grew up in an era when it really seemed to do this: through its role in ending the Vietnam War and exposing Watergate, Corporate media disillusioned the Baby Boomer generation of the post-WWII feeling of American innocence and government benevolence. Corporate media was the hero.

It’s no surprise that the Boomer generation continues to trust the heroic voices of its youth.

2—Be satisfied with “infotainment”

While many are aware that sins of inclusion occur, like the moment CNN interrupted a Congressman talking about NSA spying to provide an update on the Justin Bieber trial, corporate media’s sins of omission are far less obvious.

Corporate media’s most egregious miscarriages of journalism occur in what they do not cover, and this can only be found through independent research.

Consuming corporate media out of a sense of duty to “stay informed” is often enough for people who need to spend most of their time working to feed their families.

3—Avoid shame and ostracism

As a result of corporate media conditioning, considering other viewpoints often comes with the risk of identity crisis and of losing the acceptance of friends and family.

By cultivating contempt for alternative viewpoints, corporate media trains people to avoid changing their minds. When one has contempt for people who think differently, the prospect of coming to agree with them could require re-evaluation of one’s entire life. The answers to questions like “What have I done in the name of previous beliefs that I no longer agree with?” can cause shame and guilt.

Questioning corporate narratives also often involves questioning the beliefs of one’s community. The risk of social ostracism is often too much to bear, even without the identity crisis.

IdeaMarkets as codified nonviolent revolution

To end the domination of fiat narratives and restore narrative sovereignty to the public, we’re building something called an Idea Market. An idea market applies a stock-market-type investment structure to matters of subjective judgment. Instead of measuring public confidence in companies, idea markets measure public confidence in publishers.

In the same way that bitcoin rewards the public for educating ourselves and exercising discipline financially, idea markets reward the public for thinking well and exercising discipline in our relationship to information and belief.

This new behavior changes the incentive landscape for media corporations which, like banks, must now reform and actually provide value if they wish to stay competitive.

The public after IdeaMarkets

1—Question corporate media

IdeaMarkets.org inserts investment due diligence into the process of narrative evaluation.

Narratives that have been popularized by corporate media are extremely likely to be “overvalued.” Narratives that have been ignored by corporate media are by comparison “undervalued,” and offer far more upside with less fundamental risk. The Epstein murder conspiracy is an easy example.

2—Do your own research

IdeaMarkets provides a new standard for narrative credibility. Instead of relying on corporate media to legitimize a narrative, the public can legitimize our own narratives by taking on risk.

Given this new standard, information consumers must decide for ourselves which among the narratives competing for legitimacy seem the strongest.

When controversies rage on social media, people who “put their money where their mouth is” by investing on IdeaMarkets.org will be listened to. People who don’t will not.

3—Consider other viewpoints

IdeaMarkets.org makes considering other viewpoints a financial necessity.

In order to increase and returns and reduce risk, investors must understand what others are likely to believe and why. This allows investors to anticipate viewpoints worthy of enduring public support, and avoid buying beliefs that can’t withstand the scrutiny of our entire civilization.

Corporate media after IdeaMarkets

1—Earn public trust

With IdeaMarkets.org setting a new decentralized standard of credibility, corporate media can no longer depend on the mere perception of public trust. Corporate media will lose its audience to platforms that earn trust until they reform—perhaps using IdeaMarkets as a “farm system” for identifying worthwhile narratives—or go extinct.

2—Show good faith

Corporate media can demonstrate their commitment to earning public trust by pledging regular amounts to invest in their own token on IdeaMarkets.org.

Consider the equivalent of one day’s advertising revenue per month — if corporate media decide not to invest this, they tell the public they’d rather have 3% more income in the short-term than a chance to earn our trust ever again.

3—Encourage cross-ideological understanding

A reformed media corporation may possess more persuasive power than its independent competitors. If it uses this power to identify narratives that unite people, it could generate enormous trust and profits, including from the appreciation of its good faith pledges on IdeaMarkets.org.

Conclusion

The world is run by incentives — not militaries — and blockchain allows us to build any incentive structure we can imagine.

This means the tools for creating permanent global peace — deceiving no one, oppressing no one, excluding no one—are fully here.

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Ideamarkets.org is raising our first angel round in June 2020.