Technocapitalism (2024)

2025-01-07 10:23:55 Primitive Reading

From The Network Company

Technocapitalism, especially the version forming in the blockchain, ownership software, fintech, public goods world, is an interesting amalgamation of ambitious software development, innovative socialist principles, and free market capitalism, all tied into computers, codebases, smartphones, applications, and people who have been people throughout the test of time.

It’s also an immature philosophy in terms of its tenure and market participants, with the oldest among us in the mid-40s and the youngest among us in the mid-teens. In traditional capitalism things are age-gated, accreditation-gated, network-gated, and capital-gated. In crypto it’s anybody who has access to the internet and ability to earn.

I do not believe this to be an inherently bad thing. It does present new blends of character profiles however. For example, the socialist, or communist demographic, is paired alongside the free-market capitalists, and anarchists. Without a centralized government to dictate majority rights, this create an Interesting tension between allowing people to do whatever they want and trying to enforce behaviors via code.

If we examine memecoins, we see this tension play out anecdotally. Many who speak of the negative effects of such gambling or speculation are generally the same people persuaded to contradict themselves when wealth opportunities become obvious.

This highlights not only the diametrically opposed participants, ideas, and practices that this industry is trying to synthesize, but the conflict this version of technocapitalism creates within individual members internally.

Decentralized finance’s goal is to afford capitalist practices, via self-custody and management, to any individual on the planet with access to the internet. Promising them the option of their own security and viability to ascend socioeconomic ladders regardless of geolocation.

The rub of this reality becomes apparent when you realize that wealth creation is rarely a linear event, nor is it something that is based solely on meritocracy. Massive wealth generative events are often the byproduct of some form of asymmetry, whether information, network, capital, or insight.

It’s commonplace to view finance bros or Wall Street as just participating in the traditional economy when leveraging these asymmetries. Those successful are not viewed as ‘bad people’; at worst they are viewed as ‘nonessential’ (generally).

The insightful defi participant can see the similarities between tradfi and defi. Through this understanding it becomes clear that pejorative remarks on those who speculate, gamble, and take high-risk positions are more philosophical in nature.

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