Blockchain: a pathway up

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2015 Monrovia, Liberia. Grandma Ginger Wine; Locally produced Liberian (West Africa) drink. Localizing as many elements of commerce as possible reduces logistic vulnerabilities.

It will require a scientific study to convince me Grandma Ginger Wine isn’t just cough syrup mixed with fingernail polish remover. Beyond disappointing taste critics, Grandma Ginger Wine, a local West African drink, holds greater significance demonstrating the power of localized business. Every step of Grandma’s process; producing, bottling, marketing, shipping, retailing provides value-generating jobs. Localizing as many elements of commerce as possible reduces logistic vulnerabilities. Hence creating resilient, networked supply chains that promote profit retention in the local economy.

Grandma Ginger Wine has to overcome the same barriers any startup faces. However, understanding the limited access to functioning financial services in West Africa makes Grandma’s presence on retail shelves nothing short of an economic miracle.

The Blockchain will provide more financial options to entrepreneurs around the world. Once Grandma Ginger Wine isn’t the exception, but the norm, local entrepreneurs in developing markets will be able to climb once insurmountable barriers to market entry. Working with regulatory agencies through transparent, distributed ledgers without the need for intermediaries like banks, the Blockchain will allow entrepreneurs to garner economic, political, and social power previously reserved for entrenched elites.

The Blockchain provides new avenues to generate value with cryptocurrencies. In reaction, national governments are making their positions known on cryptocurrencies and their associated Initial Coin Offerings (ICO). China blocked the practice and rumors swirl around other European nations about which direction these nations will take.

Side-stepping the hyper-focus of coins, tokens and currencies, the focus then turns to the Blockchain itself — the Blockchain creates a transparent, zero-trust working environment. Trust is a vital element to business and overall human interaction. The Blockchain allows us to encode trust directly into the system itself; allowing for more risks to be taken.

The “Haves” amassed resources to quickly fabricate trust; policy, technology, past performance, while the “Have-nots” struggle with building trust and are bound by the entanglements of operating without trust. The Blockchain creates a glass house where all parties can trust one another because everyone gathering on the Blockchain is agreeing to operate under computer-aided parameters.

Bootstraps

American culture grew up in rebellion to bloodline authority of European monarchies — valuing merit over birthright. This fight against being defined at birth is how movies like Rocky, Rudy and Star Wars have universal cultural appeal. We love to watch people overcome their pre-destination and achieve. However, less romantic and more important is the need to create systems where one doesn’t have to do exceptional things like Rocky, Rudy or Luke Skywalker to prosper— the Blockchain provides a path based more on effort and less on privileged access.

Absent these equalizing systems our culture demands a self-rising or bootstrapping effort for vulnerable groups to advance. Vulnerable groups stand to gain the most as we all move to equalizing comforts of the zero-trust Blockchain. These groups lack access, resource and time to protect themselves from exploitation — putting commercial interaction on the zero-trust Blockchain will ensure ethical behavior and mitigate infractions. In result, the Blockchain reduces the need for legal representation as a requisite for justice. Justice is now built into the way we operate!

Predicting the Future

This is easy — -northern Europe will recognize access to the Blockchain as a Human Right, and most over-centralized nations will deny access. The US and other Western republics will fall along this spectrum in unsurprising rank-and-file. While I’m making easy predictions, Alaskans can count on snow this winter.

Governments that reject the Blockchain will do so at the expense of denying their masses the ability to make local judgments of value creation. Systems that embrace the Blockchain will out-perform non-embracers in economics and governance. Traditionally, populations flow to where governance works better. The Federalist papers describe this as horizontal competition in governance. Governments compete for the affections of the people through pubic policy[i] — -City A attracts new business and skilled labor through good management of local resources and setting the conditions for prosperity; forcing City B to craft competing policy to keep business and labor in place. We may be able to predict shifts in human terrain by watching how the Blockchain is employed around the world. People will flow to better economic and governing systems the Blockchain offers.

Highway to Social and Economic Advancement

Offering anyone a zero-trust environment and ability to set operating conditions to computer automation will facilitate the advancement of more people and communities to efficiently organize and create value. The Blockchain is a pathway to upward social mobility. Equalizing the commerce playing field will raise the bar for the 1% and raise the floor for the 99%.

[i] Pierre Salmon. Horizontal competition among governments. [Research Report] Laboratoire d’ ́economie et de gestion (LEG). 2005, 21 p., bibliographie.

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2015 Monrovia, Liberia. Grandma Ginger Wine; Locally produced Liberian (West Africa) drink. Localizing as many elements of commerce as possible reduces logistic vulnerabilities.

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