The Strong Case for Web 3 & Crypto: Declining State Capacity & Increasing State Malice
I’ve been having many conversations with old friends and business colleagues over the last year as we’ve left the pandemic behind us. We pretty much left it in 2022. But I’ve only started reconnecting with them in 2024. One commonality was anger and sadness. 2020 broke so many of us. It wasn’t just the pandemic but the lockdowns, the forced shutdowns of so many commercial businesses & schools. The amount of mental health issues and psychological damage done to us, to our kids will be studied in decades from now. The repercussions of this won’t be felt for years. All that is left is simmering anger in the populace.
We had governments, through either incompetence or malice enforcing quarantines, shutting down discussions via cancellation from big online platforms. Big media turned into propaganda mouthpieces. In Canada, they even shut down access to bank accounts of the truckers protesting vaccine mandates. And of course, 2-3 years later on, it turned out the protestors were right.
In fact, so many so-called conspiracy theories have turned out to be somewhat correct but we weren’t able to discuss them. The lock downs, Covid vaccines & vaccine mandates, infiltration of woke agenda in corporates and government. Government incompetence in Afghanistan withdrawal, Iraq War disaster, Maui Fire disaster and the lackluster support for Ukraine. Why do I say lackluster? The USA sent in weapons & ammo too late, and drip-dropped them over a long period of time, prolonging the war at the expense of Ukrainian lives. And no one in government was punished or fired for any of this.
The sense is that we are undergoing one big Psy-Op aka Psychological Operation.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was reported to have said in reference to the Soviet Union: “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”
Well this pretty describes what’s happening in most of the Western world these days.
Yes, I believe that overall the USA and the Western world is a force for good. But all the data points to fast declining state capacity and ability. I would not bet against America in the long run and believe in the regenerative ability of the country. BUT this will take some time, like probably the rest of the 2020s, and I doubt things will be better until 2028 at the earliest.
And this is why despite the crypto and web 3 disaster over the last few years, decentralized technologies make even more sense. If crypto and decentralized technologies work as we hope but I do see there are still many smart people building in this space now.
Losing my access to Linkedin and Twitter for small time periods in 2023 were wake up calls to me on the reliance and dependence I have on them. It forced me to build out my newsletter email list and look at other channels. I use multiple different messenger channels as well.
But can you imagine being locked out of your bank accounts like the Canadian truckers and people who donated to their GoFundme? How devastating that would be?
If we are moving into more of a digital world, don’t we need digital currency? This is why Decentralized & digital money also makes sense. I’m talking about Bitcoin, not CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) which will turn into dangerous instruments of government control. And if we are going into an AI agent driven world, it probably also makes sense to have digital currency for our AutoGPTs & AI Agents to transact in. Thus, I’m watching this space very carefully.
Being reliant on one country, one currency, on one income stream and one main social media or communication channel is just not a good idea. In fact, it’s very dangerous. I’m not saying you need to go full on libertarian. But you do need to diversify everything to increase the odds of thriving in the new world disorder.