4 posts tagged with "power"

The Dispossesed is a sci-fi novel about an anarchist society formed on the imaginary planet of Anarres. The society has been founded after an anarchist revolution in Urras, which led its government to send the anarchists to an uninhabited Anarres to establish the society of their dreams. The story is told from the point of view of Shevek, who is a physicist in Anarres and visits Urras for furthering his research and collaborating with the scientists there.

The novel is a great exploration of how a society founded in anarchist ideals could actually function. The stark contrast from our established ideas of property, nation-states, marriage, etc. are very interesting and lay bare many assumptions which we make about how a society should be organized.

Below are just some of the ideas which I found quite interesting in the book:

1. The idea of Property​

“Oiie was an ethical man, but his private insecurities, his anxieties as a property owner, made him cling to rigid notions of law and order. ”

“I have something they want,” he said. “An idea. A scientific theory. I came here from Anarres because I thought that here I could do the work and publish it. I didn’t understand that here an idea is a property of the State. I don’t work for a State. I can’t take the money and the things they give me. I want to get out”

Anarres being an anarchist didn't have any idea of property. People lived in syndicates, did the work they were assigned by PDC (Production and Distribution Coordination). Hence, Shevek is appalled by the idea of state owning property. Since there is no idea of property, there is also nothing called money in Anarres.

Interestingly, different countries in today's world have different attitudes to property. Property is one of the central pieces of the American legal system and is considered an unalienable right.

From Property Rights in American History

Americans have long esteemed private property and economic opportunity.

Well before the formation of the United States the colonists enjoyed widespread ownership of land and were increasingly receptive to an emerging free market economy based on private contracts.

While in India, the Right to Property is not a fundamental right. By the 44th Amendment Act of 1978, Right to Property was removed from our Fundamental Rights and was made a Legal Right. It expanded the power of the state to appropriate property for social welfare purposes.

Locke argues that

Individuals can acquire full property rights over moveable and nonmoveable parts of the earth in a state of nature, absent government. Our natural rights include the right legitimately to acquire property, and any government must respect natural rights including rights to property.

It is quite interesting to see that though most of us consider right to property as our unquestionable right, the legal foundations of it are quite intricate and vary from one nation to another.

2. Is centralization inevitable?​

“you can’t have a nervous system without at least a ganglion, and preferably a brain. There had to be a center. The computers that coordinated the administration of things, the division of labor, and the distribution of goods, and the central federatives of most of the work syndicates, were in Abbenay, right from the start. And from the start the Settlers were aware that that unavoidable centralization was a lasting threat, to be countered by lasting vigilance.”

Although Anarres society was envisaged to be a decentralised one, organizations for coordination and communication had been instituted. For example, PDC coordinated all the production and distribution mechanisms. There were also institutes like Central Institute of Sciences which controlled most of research and publication.

The key question this raises is:

Is complete decentralization ever posssible or any decentralised organization will develop centers of authority/influence which will control the independent bodies. Is centralization inevitable and the only way to counter it is with being vigilant about such accumulation of power? But if such centralization of power comes about, will these centres want to lose power to enable decentralization?

3. Is "time" just a manifestation of consciousness?​

“It is only in consciousness, it seems, that we experience time at all. A little baby has no time; he can’t distance himself from the past and understand how it relates to his present, or plan how his present might relate to his future. He does not know time passes; he does not understand death. The unconscious mind of the adult is like that still. In a dream there is no time, and succession is all changed about, and cause and effect are all mixed together. In myth and legend there is no time.”

This is a deep philosophical question on the existence of time - Does time really exist? At least physics doesn't agree with it and time is just considered a perception from our existence in the space-time continuum.

4. The survival of the fittest for a social animal?​

“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!”

“Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical. You see, we have neither prey nor enemy, on Anarres. We have only one another. There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”

The laws of evolution suggest that the strongest survive. Though recent research on biology has suggested that evolution doesn't care about the survival of the individual - but that of the gene pool(more technically, genome). Sapolsky has a great set of lectures on Human Behavioural Biology where he argues how human behaviours and customs have emerged to accomplish this goal.

In Part 1 of this post, I discussed a particular example - that of decentralised Uber to decipher if a decentralised Uber makes sense, or in general is decentralistion always better?

In this post, we will explore some the theoretical basis of the argument.

Braess's Paradox​

Braess's paradox (often cited as Braess' paradox) is a proposed explanation for the situation where an alteration to a road network to improve traffic flow actually has the reverse effect and impedes traffic through it.

You can find the complete explaination of this example here. I will just suffice to say that the total commute time from Start to End is lower if there is no link from A to B vs when there is. It would be better if a rule is laid down that only a certain number of people are allowed in the road A to B. Keeping it open to independent choices of everyone produces an outcome which is sub-optimal to everyone

Decentralisation is not a value in itself​

I recently came across a very interesting tweet by Simona Pop of Bounties Network.

There is no inherent value in decentralization. What decentralisation enables is of value for some people or in some contexts. Does it make people more efficient? Can theynow do things which government or regulators didn't want them to? Does it give them more control of their lives? These are the questions which actually matter.

Democracy vs Dictatorship​

In context of nations, the tradeoff between democracy and dictatorship is very similar to that between decentralization and centralization.

Though nations have much broader and varied goal, compared to organizations. For example, companies have a clear metric of creating more shareholder value.

What are the metrics on which decentralised organizations should be judged? Is it the value accrued to network participants?

How much value can be assigned to network participants not getting censoured - which is one the key benefits of decentralised orgs.

Countries' metric can be GDP, GINI coefficient or the happiness level ( Bhutan actually uses this metric)

Historically, Decentralisation always emerged as a response to restrictions in centralised systems​

Here's a great post which talks about the rise of decentralization in context of mp3 file sharing. The author points that decentralization always arises in response to the law when a certain use of centralized technology is denied.

A quote from the above post which sums this beautifully

Ask yourself, what can some people not do on centralized systems which they should be able to do? If you look closely, you might be able to spot informal strategies people are using today to get around the rules, and these could help inform what to formalize into a protocol.

What do people really want?​

I think the key question is - What do people really want? Are they OK with sacrificing some privacy and freedom for better user experience and less effort.

If we try to reason with organization of states, most states have high level of centralization. US, China, Russia are some examples which come to mind. Direct democracies in comparison have been few and has only worked for fewer states.

Other advantage of centralization is that it concentrates power on the top layers. These people want to increase their power - leading to more alliances, subjugation or attacks - ultimately leading for the organizations to be more powerful.

Similar dynamics can be seen in corporate orgnizations. The profit motive actually helps them become bigger and concentrate more power. This drive is lacking in decentralised organizations.

Urusula Le Guinn in her book The Dispossesed portrays this beautifully. The book talks about a society born out of anarchism, an extreme form of decentralization. These people establish a society from ground up in a new planet. What was interesting was that even in this anarchist society points of centralization emerged. For example, people were given names by a centralised computer systems. Important people controlled means of production and media. The book is a great portrayal of the dichotomy between centralization and decentralization.

The emergence of miner centralization, high level of control by developers, etc. point to this phenomenon in current crypto ecosytem. It emerges primarily for better coordination and efficiency.

This begs the question:

Isn't the inherent tendency for people to strive for power a deterrent against decentralization? And what has fundamentally changed in the last few years which would tilt the balance towards decentralization?

China's history is very complex and interesting and developed in a microcosm which was very different from how other countries developed

Wife brought up the husband in early 19th century​

“Following the custom, my great-grandfather was married young, at fourteen, to a woman six years his senior. It was considered one of the duties of a wife to help bring up her husband.”

China had a fractious history​

Many warlords who kept on fighting with each other. Emperor only in name. There was a golden period in Song dynasty (960-1279 A.D) when China flourished. In 1900s, China was ruled by a weak emperors of Qing Dynasty before the establishment of republic in 1912.

In a way, China shows the complete cycle of greatness to abject poverty and then rising to greatness again.

The practice of feet binding​

“But her greatest assets were her bound feet, called in Chinese 'three-inch golden lilies' (san-tsun-gin-lian). This meant she walked 'like a tender young willow shoot in a spring breeze," as Chinese connoisseurs of women traditionally put it. The sight of a woman teetering on bound feet was supposed to have an erotic effect on men, partly because her vulnerability induced a feeling of protectiveness in the onlooker.”

“In those days, when a woman was married, the first thing the bridegroom's family did was to examine her feet. Large feet, meaning normal feet, were considered to bring shame on the husband's household. The mother-in-law would lift the hem of the bride's long skirt, and if the feet were more than about four inches long, she would throw down the skirt in a demonstrative gesture of contempt and stalk off, leaving the bride to the critical gaze of the wedding guests, who would stare at her feet and insultingly mutter their disdain.”

Strange practices which developed. Also as a way for women to keep weaker?

Thats why communist had uniform dressing. Both men and women wore similar dress with shirts and trousers.

Communist were the good people​

The communist revolution was a peasant revolution which promised to get rid of Koumingtang and Japanese.

Interestingly, when Communist came to power they started abusing power themselves. So it can be argued that power is the cause of corruption

Why democracy doesn't work in China​

“The 804 members of parliament had to be bribed. Xue and General Feng stationed guards on the parliament building and let it be known that there would be a handsome consideration for anyone who voted the right way, which brought many deputies scurrying back from the provinces. By the time everything was ready for the election there were 555 members of parliament in Peking. Four days before the election, after much bargaining, they were each given 5,000 silver yuan, a rather substantial sum. On 5 October 1923, Tsao Kun was elected president of China with 480 votes. Xue was rewarded with promotion to full general. Also promoted were seventeen 'special advisers' all favorite mistresses or concubines of various warlords and generals. This episode has entered Chinese history as a notorious example of how an election can be manipulated. People still cite it to argue that democracy will not work in China.”

People were used to bribe and corruption. The above historical incident was used as an historical example to claim that democracy won't work in China, and to crush any attempts to bring democracy.

Mao made himself God like​

“Mao made himself more godlike by shrouding himself in mystery. He always appeared remote, beyond human approach. He eschewed radio, and there was no television.

Few people, except his court staff, ever had any contact with him. Even his colleagues at the very top only met him in a sort of formal audience.”

Capitalism was villified​

When I was in the boarding nursery and did not want to finish my food, the teacher would say: "Think of all the starving children in the capitalist world!" In school, when they were trying to make us work harder, the teachers often said: "You are lucky to have a school to go to and books to read.In the capitalist countries children have to work to support their hungry families."

Self Criticism​

“Mao had attacked flowers and grass several times before, saying that they should be replaced by cab bales and cotton. But only now was he able to generate enough pressure to get his order implemented but only up to a point. People loved their plants, and some flowerbeds survived Mao's campaign.

I was extremely sad to see the lovely plants go. But I did not resent Mao. On the contrary, I hated myself for feeling miserable. By then I had grown into the habit of self criticism and automatically blamed myself for any instincts that went against Mao's instructions. In fact, such feelings frightened me. It was out of the question to discuss them with anyone. Instead, I tried to suppress them and acquire the correct way of thinking. I lived in a state of constant self-accusation.”

Peasant Revolution​

“The revolution was fundamentally a peasant revolution, and the peasants had an unrelentingly harsh life. They were particularly sensitive about other people enjoying or seeking comfort. Anyone who took part in the revolution was supposed to toughen themselves to the point where they became inured to hardship”

Strict discipline and rules​

“ But he met fierce opposition from my mother's boss, Mrs. Mi, a peasant woman who had been a guerrilla. It was unthinkable for a peasant woman to take a rest if she was pregnant.

She worked right up to the moment of delivery, and there were innumerable stories about women cutting the umbilical cord with a sickle and carrying on. Mrs. Mi had borne her own baby on a battlefield and had had to abandon it on the spot a baby's cry could have endangered the whole unit”

The communist revolution was a bottoms up revolution, and the party members expected everyone to go through the same hardships which a normal peasant would go through.If somebody considers himself better, then he was frowned upon as "capitalist"

What was Mao's philosophy?​

“In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. ”

Programmed Lives?​

“The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives.”

Social conditioning

Use of disinformation and control of media​

“In reality, Mao turned China back to the days of the Middle Kingdom and, with the help of the United States, to isolation from the world. He enabled the Chinese to feel great and superior again, by blinding them to the world outside. Nonetheless, national pride was so important to the Chinese that much of the population was genuinely grateful to Mao, and did not find the cult of his personality offensive, certainly not at first. The near total lack of access to information and the systematic feeding of disinformation meant that most Chinese had no way to discriminate between Mao's successes and his failures, or to identify the relative role of Mao and other leaders in the Communists' achievements.”

Thought Control​

“Many people had been reduced to a state where they did not dare even to think, in case their thoughts came out involuntarily. Even if they did entertain unorthodox ideas, few mentioned them to their children, as they might blurt out something to other children, which could bring disaster to themselves as well as their parents. ”

Creation of myths and models​

“In the learn-from Lei Feng years it was hammered into children that our first and only loyalty should be to Mao. A popular song went: "Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao." We were drilled to think that anyone, including our parents, who was not totally for Mao was our enemy. Many parents encouraged their children to grow up as conformists, as this would be safest for their future.”

This question came to my mind listening to this interview by Chamath. He mentions that there are maybe 150 or 200 people who actually control the world. They may not be the people who we hear about in the news, but folks who pull the string to decide what comes in the news. And, unlike what you are probably suspecting, it's not the tech entrepreneurs.

So who really are they?

If you think about it, consumerism and capitalism are two major themes of our times. Communism which came as an alternative in the early 1900s is now mostly a spent force with most of the communist countries in ruins now. Most notable among them is Russia which is only a shadow of its glory days in the Cold War era. China has actively embraced capitalism and is one of the best examples of State Capitalism - a capitalist economy with strong control by the state. This can be easily seen from how tightly the big 3s of China (Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu) tow the government line.

So, with the capitalist system being the dominant ethos of our times, the power is really derived from the basis of the capitalist system, MONEY.

Who really controls the money? For the uninitiated, money is supposed to be a metric of value created by a society or person, but it really has taken a form of its own and is now the primary source of power.

US can't do anything against China because China practically owns the US by being the major buyers of US sovereign bonds. China is the manufacturing base of the world, so governments think twice before messing up with China.

But I digress. Who really controls the source of power? The money. You see, money is just a myth which a society agrees to believe. It is one of those Noah Harari's intersubjective ideas, which hold value because people believe in it.

Entrepreneurs don't really have the power. because the budding entrepreneurs are like laborers employed by Investors who deploy their capital to support ideas which they think can bring the maximum returns. Otherwise, why would there be so many bike rental/sharing startups which are being valued as unicorns (having a market valuation of more than 1 bn USD)

Firms like Softbank make bets which control the entire industry. For example, they have invested in every major cab haling company in the world. They are now the biggest investors in Uber, in India based Ola and Southeast Asia's Grab. So, they are not betting on a particular company, they are buying the index. They know that app-enabled cab hailing is an idea which is here to stay and so they are buying every effing big company in that market. They can afford this because they have a 100 bn USD fund. So you can say, the goal of all entrepreneurs now is to get invested by Softbank. Softbank now decides what entrepreneurs work on. So, does Softbank wield the ultimate power?

No. That would be an error in assumption. Softbank itself is funded by Saudi Sovereign fund which owes most of its money to petrol export. So, this is basically an effort to convert old money (Petro Dollars) into new money, one coming from tech. So, in a way, Saudi government calls the ultimate shot on what should the world work on - just because they have excess money from the export of petrol.

You may think that governments control the world. Well, this may in some respects be true. The magnitude of surveillance that the Chinese government imposes is straight out of the pages of an Orwellian novel. The Indian government also, with a continued effort to link every aspect of your life with an Aadhar number, is well on its way to achieve the same. That too when Aadhar is full of security loopholes. You are required to link your PAN ( income tax id), Bank Account and any investment account with Aadhar. Even your mobile number, you should link with Aadhar. I am really not sure, what's the purpose of all this - apart from having a strict account of what you do. Big Brother is watching you! Man, how can George Orwell be so prescient?

But again, power doesn't belong to amorphous groups of people like Government or bodies like Politburo in China. It's individuals who seek power. Nietzche, I think, understood this most accurately when he published the Will to Power. The Will to Power describes what Nietzsche may have believed to be the main driving force in humans – achievement, ambition, and the striving to reach the highest possible position in life.

Well, there are few competing philosophies of life. Desire for meaning, Desire for happiness. But I think Nietzsche has really distilled it to its core. The first stage is a desire for happiness. The absence of pain and agony from one's life. But one soon realizes that long-term happiness only comes from having a meaning in one's life. Something meaningful which one can pursue throughout one's life. Something which outlasts oneself. Something which defies mortality.

But what if you reach that stage where you have something meaningful to work for. Something which apparently has an inherent meaning. You soon realize that the world simply doesn't care. There is nothing which has inherent meaning to it. The meaning you find is the meaning you assign to it. So, if there is nothing with inherent meaning - YOU decide what has meaning.

This is the origin of Will to Power. Since nothing has meaning, you want to enforce your worldview. If there has to be any dominant worldview out there, why not yours. So, to impose your worldview on the largest number of people you develop a Will to Power. It's surprising, how Nietzsche cuts through all the layers and hits straight to the point.

Chamath mentions this briefly in his interview that the people who actually control the world don't really care about your worldview. They have a worldview and they want to impose it on everyone. The Will to Power. And since in a capitalist society, power is controlled by people who have the money or those who control it, it's their worldview which gets imposed.

You might think that the major religions of the world really do have power. Afterall, doesn't the Papacy control the western world?

Not so much anymore. They used to call the shots when the world was controlled by Aristocrats and Kings who derived their power to rule from the divine rights given to them. This was often sanctified by the prevalent religion of the time, and hence the power ascribed to the Papacy. That holds water no more. Governments are run by people who are elected or at least want to give the impression, that they are democratically elected. Only China is the place, which despite not being a democracy, has been able to make so much apparent progress - without any revolutions and protests.

India, on the other hand, was never controlled by a religion. Hinduism in itself is too decentralized a religion to wield any power. It allows all sects to exist, all views to thrive. This may be the reason for its apparent lack of power. There is no seat like that of a Pope or Imam who controls all Hindus. It is too decentralized. This also ensures its longevity as the more embracing a religion is, the more long lasting it would be.

So who really controls the world?

We saw that it's not the religion. It's the centers who control money flow. Governments, Corporates, Individuals.

Chamath mentions in his talk about the Koch Brothers.According to Forbes Magazine, the Koch brothers are now worth $80 billion. They have amassed immense power not only from their wealth but also from the connections they have developed and loyalties they have bought. They invest heavily in the US political process and swing the dialog in the domain which they are comfortable with.

So who really controls the world? I will hazard a guess here.

1. The Capitalists in the US (not the politicians)
2. The Standing committee of the Chinese government led by Xi Jinping
3. The petrodollar owners like the King of the Saudi and whoever controls their sovereign funds
4. Numerous other capitalists who move the pawns and set the game according to their liking in the capitalist system of ours

How long this capitalist system will last is anybody's guess. After all the feudal system in Europe was just prevalent some 200 yrs back, where all the power was controlled by the aristocracy. Will this capitalist system be more long lasting? I don't really have an opinion here. The one good thing about this system is that at least it gives the impression that anybody can rise in this system if he has the brains and guts to make enough money. If one has enough money, they have a seat in the table and can impose their worldview.

As Chamath says, "Take the money" and then you can impose your worldview. After all, WHY NOT?