Building an Opt-In Society

An anonymous reader writes "In a talk at Y Combinator's startup school event, Stanford lecturer Balaji Srinivasan explained his vision for governing systems of the future. The idea is to find space to set up a new 'opt-in' society outside existing governments, and design it to take full advantage of technology to keep people in control of their own lives. That means embracing tech that subverts existing industries and rejecting regulation on new ways of doing things. '[N]ew industries are simultaneously disrupting existing ones while also exiting the system entirely, he says. With 3D printing, regulation is being turned into DRM. With quantified self, medicine is going mobile. With Bitcoin, capital control becomes packet filtering. All of these examples, Srinivasan says, are ways in which technology is allowing people to exit current systems like physical product production and distribution; personal health; and finance in favor of spaces of their own creation.' Srinivasan's ideas are a natural extension of a few proposals already in the works — Peter Thiel has been trying to build a small tech incubator city that floats in international waters, outside of government control. Elon Musk wants to have a Mars colony, and Larry Page has wished for a tech-centric Burning man that's free from government regulation. 'The best part is this,' Srinivasan said. 'The people who think this is weird, the people who sneer at the frontier, who hate technology, won't follow you there.'"

Comments

Power abhors a vacuum.

[devman]

Power abhors a vacuum. There will always be a government analog (even if it just your local warlord) wherever you go as long as there are other people. This is also the reason why weakening governments simply allows corporate power grabs, I'm sure there are some who'd love to return to the days of the East India Trading Company private armies and all.

no thanks

[Trepidity]

As a resident of a prosperous northern-European country with working infrastructure, a working healthcare system, relatively low poverty and homelessness levels, and generally a decent civil society that we all pay our share towards, I'll take the universal welfare state over some kind of ridiculous experiment in anarcho-capitalism. That's about as likely to work as any other anarchist experiment has worked. I guess America can have fun with it, though.

Re:no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess America can have fun with it, though.

Somalia is having fun with it right now. I don't think this is what even the craziest teabaggers want.
Fortunately with Obamacare, America is realizing that there needs to be some kind of social security. In the long run, there's no way around it if you want to keep exploiting people and keep them relatively peaceful at the same time.

Re:no thanks

[Kjella]

You're generally shielded from the burden of unskilled migration by your geographical location, shielded from invasion by your southern and eastern neighbors who recently joined NATO, you are far out enough in the periphery of world affairs to not attract the ire of regional powers, but near enough that everyone wants to woo you to their side. You have few people, yet have a claim to large swathes of ocean energy and mineral resources. While you have some exposure to the world and to racial diversity, you still remain one of the most ethnically homogeneous regions in the West, sparing you much of the social strife that other countries experience. Plus, most people have forgotten your country's contributions to murder, slavery, rape, and pillage, or they'd rather focus on someone else's. Pretty comfortable place to be. Though, not quite a place from which to judge.

Quite a lot of fair points there, though I'd disagree on the last one. While the people who lived through WWII is quickly dwindling, we're very aware of our not-so-distant history when most of northern Europe was in flames and we considered ourselves all but ethnically homogeneous with über- and untermenschen. An awfully lot has happened since then though and we've probably done more to mend our wounds in the last 70 years than many other conflicts that have gone on for centuries. But I think I speak for most of Europe when I say we don't want to become a United States of Europe, the English want to be English, the French French, the Germans German and so on. We've found a peaceful way to coexist with "the other side" ceasing to exist and if it sounds a bit like we're saying "we did it, you can do it too" then that's probably true.

what about a week later?

[raymorris]

He wants to build a society with built-in mechanisms that subvert existing businesses and institutions, while promoting new ones. Okay, that's fine on day one.

A week later, the "new" institutions are "existing", so those mechanisms subvert them. His plan then, is quite literally to build a society that subverts itself -where anything built is destroyed.

Deregulation

[EdZ]

'The best part is this,' Srinivasan said. 'The people who think this is weird, the people who sneer at the frontier, who hate technology, won't follow you there.'

But people who will be quite happy to exploit your deregulated society will be right there with you!

Complain all you want about 'big banks' unethical behavior (really, keep complaining, write to your local MP/senator/whathaveyou, make sure the issue doesn't get dropped) but government regulation of banking means that if you put your money in a bank, you can be sure (at least up to £85,000 per Bank in the UK) that you will always have access to that money. Without regulation, then you have situations like with Paypal where the holder of you money can just up and decide "Nope, you can't have it anymore. It's ours for at least the next 9 months. Oh, you want an explanation? Too bad!".
Or how about enforcing standards, like power supply? You want a situation where not only does every device have it's own plug, but your house may not even supply the same voltage or frequency as the neighbourhood a mile away? 'No government at all' works fantastically when all your actors are rational and honest. That is also true to Communism. Finding this mythical group of rational and honest actors (and keeping out even a single bad egg) is the hard part.