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Hi, I'm the author of the book. I believe decentralization in theory could work. But our current situation is so chaotic that there's no clear solution. Howeve

Hi, I'm the author of the book. I believe decentralization in theory could work. But our current situation is so chaotic that there's no clear solution. However, the key here is to understand the full picture. In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from social credit systems and the establishment of a new economic model based on social behavior. Now, I know this is too complex to explain in a paragraph, but that's why we have books.

naringas 7y ago
I think there's also a cultural shift underway. > a new economic model based on social behavior. this reminds me of China's social credit scores. It seems to me that this is (in a way) automatic-money. Imagine if instead of having to manage your own balance your "wallet" does it for you. One just shows up at the store and they tell you what you get. No "visible" transaction takes place.
- borjamoya 7y ago
  Right, and the shift gets even deeper. Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that money comes from barter. It turns out there's no single evidence that this ever happened in history! (David Graeber has a phenomenal book call Debt that explains all of this.) Now, the shift we're seeing is that social credit system--or as I call them Social Debt Systems--are going to be "the new money." Lots of people talk about the data economy and the fact that we need a way to put a dollar value on information. And what we're seeing with social credit systems is that that value is not 'on' information. It's 'in' information. And that's creating a new economic logic we're not able even to conceive yet
  - whocanevenremem 7y ago
    I'm not sure they are separable, certainly paper money (and pre-money forms such as hansatsu) are created by issuing a debt, but they were created for the very pragmatic need of bartering without carrying a bunch of gold or rice around.
    - borjamoya 7y ago
      That's what common sense says. But there's no proof that that ever happened. I recommend you to check out Graeber's book. Or you can read my whole explanation in the fourth section of Data Dictatorships.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > money was invented to keep track of debt I think you're conflating two different usages of the term "money". Wikipedia calls them "money of account" and "money of exchange". Money of account appears to be older, and was, as you say, invented to keep track of debts. But when economics textbooks talk about money being invented to solve the double coincidence of wants problem, which is the main limitation of barter, they are talking about money of exchange. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money
    - borjamoya 7y ago
      That's the history of coinage, which came after debt. Debt is older though. It goes back 5,000 years--at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
      - pdonis 7y ago
        > That's the history of coinage "Money of exchange" is, yes. And as I said, that is what economists are talking about when they talk about money replacing barter because it solves the double coincidence of wants problem. Money replacing barter has nothing to do with debt.
excalibur 7y ago
> Liberal democracy is going to die. Data is becoming the raw materialization of power, and this is making dictatorships more efficient than ever before. Why not make the data public? If data is power, you criminalize the hoarding of data, and require it to be shared openly with all. We would still be headed toward a surveillance state, which comes with a high risk of authoritarianism, but at least we would have a shot at keeping it democratic.
- borjamoya 7y ago
  The thing is that data by itself is useless. You need the right infrastructure to make it work. Data without context is not information. But the point here is that there's data that shouldn't be collected in the first place. And that data, especially biometric data, is what allows data autocrats hack human beings. And you don't need a lot of data to hack a human being. Just enough to know someone better than that person knows himself or herself.
  - naringas 7y ago
    > But the point here is that there's data that shouldn't be collected in the first place I just don't think that's feasible. The cat cannot be put back in the box (so to speak). I think the solution goes more in line with open transparency. Yet individual privacy is really important. The only way through, I think, is to guarantee individual privacy but enforce institutional transparency.
    - borjamoya 7y ago
      The problem of this way of thinking is that it makes “okay” to collect data that is not necessary for the app in order to work. It's not feasible because there's a huge economic logic behind that data collection. While the truth is that most services (even innovation) would still work with a few data points. I mean, Google Maps doesn’t need to collect all the data it collects, but it sells us the benefit with an imminent long-tail of problems.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
mistermann 7y ago
> In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from social credit systems and the establishment of a new economic model based on social behavior. I'm glad to see you chimed in here with this additional detail, because after reading the overview: > There’s currently a geopolitical arms race taking place to merge biotech and infotech to hack humankind. Technological disruption is creating an unprecedented realm of opportunities for authoritarian regimes to flourish. ...I got the impression that you thought the main issue with mass data collection was somehow to provide an advantage in biological engineering, when the most obvious advantage seems to me to be analysis of human behavior such that it can understood (to the best of our current but ever improving capabilities) and shaped in various ways. Some of the shaping techniques may be considered (by Westerners) to be nefarious I imagine, but I see no reason why such shaping has to be nefarious, but rather if done properly, may very well be in a way that can be overwhelmingly aggregate net positive to those being shaped. I've been thinking about how in the long term an authoritarian China with a fully modern technological surveillance state coupled with wise leadership and a (correspondingly) supportive citizenship might have a massive advantage over traditional democracies. The typical thinking on the matter seems to be roughly: because all historic authoritarian states eventually collapsed while democracies tended to flourish, then therefore a completely risk-free assumption can be made that this pattern will persist into the future, always and everywhere, without exception, and therefore there is absolutely no need to consider the possibility that this historic pattern may not materialize. To me, this seems like very dangerous thinking based on extremely poor logic. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the matter, and whether this is a theme you touch upon in your book.
- borjamoya 7y ago
  The thing is that you can't make a point in two paragraphs. You can state something, but it leaves room for all sorts of interpretations. I cover all these points in the book. But just to be clear this isn't just about China as the bad guy--the US is in the same direction. I agree on your point about that in the past democracies ended up winning. But today we're seeing that the technological disruption is killing the very essence that makes democratic society democratic. The fact is that liberal democracies have to evolve or Data Dictatorships are going to take over.

naringas 7y ago

I think there's also a cultural shift underway. > a new economic model based on social behavior. this reminds me of China's social credit scores. It seems to me that this is (in a way) automatic-money. Imagine if instead of having to manage your own balance your "wallet" does it for you. One just shows up at the store and they tell you what you get. No "visible" transaction takes place.

borjamoya 7y ago
Right, and the shift gets even deeper. Few people know this but money was invented to keep track of debt. In fact, what most economic textbooks say is that money comes from barter. It turns out there's no single evidence that this ever happened in history! (David Graeber has a phenomenal book call Debt that explains all of this.) Now, the shift we're seeing is that social credit system--or as I call them Social Debt Systems--are going to be "the new money." Lots of people talk about the data economy and the fact that we need a way to put a dollar value on information. And what we're seeing with social credit systems is that that value is not 'on' information. It's 'in' information. And that's creating a new economic logic we're not able even to conceive yet
- whocanevenremem 7y ago
  I'm not sure they are separable, certainly paper money (and pre-money forms such as hansatsu) are created by issuing a debt, but they were created for the very pragmatic need of bartering without carrying a bunch of gold or rice around.
  - borjamoya 7y ago
    That's what common sense says. But there's no proof that that ever happened. I recommend you to check out Graeber's book. Or you can read my whole explanation in the fourth section of Data Dictatorships.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > money was invented to keep track of debt I think you're conflating two different usages of the term "money". Wikipedia calls them "money of account" and "money of exchange". Money of account appears to be older, and was, as you say, invented to keep track of debts. But when economics textbooks talk about money being invented to solve the double coincidence of wants problem, which is the main limitation of barter, they are talking about money of exchange. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money
  - borjamoya 7y ago
    That's the history of coinage, which came after debt. Debt is older though. It goes back 5,000 years--at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > That's the history of coinage "Money of exchange" is, yes. And as I said, that is what economists are talking about when they talk about money replacing barter because it solves the double coincidence of wants problem. Money replacing barter has nothing to do with debt.

excalibur 7y ago

> Liberal democracy is going to die. Data is becoming the raw materialization of power, and this is making dictatorships more efficient than ever before. Why not make the data public? If data is power, you criminalize the hoarding of data, and require it to be shared openly with all. We would still be headed toward a surveillance state, which comes with a high risk of authoritarianism, but at least we would have a shot at keeping it democratic.

borjamoya 7y ago
The thing is that data by itself is useless. You need the right infrastructure to make it work. Data without context is not information. But the point here is that there's data that shouldn't be collected in the first place. And that data, especially biometric data, is what allows data autocrats hack human beings. And you don't need a lot of data to hack a human being. Just enough to know someone better than that person knows himself or herself.
- naringas 7y ago
  > But the point here is that there's data that shouldn't be collected in the first place I just don't think that's feasible. The cat cannot be put back in the box (so to speak). I think the solution goes more in line with open transparency. Yet individual privacy is really important. The only way through, I think, is to guarantee individual privacy but enforce institutional transparency.
  - borjamoya 7y ago
    The problem of this way of thinking is that it makes “okay” to collect data that is not necessary for the app in order to work. It's not feasible because there's a huge economic logic behind that data collection. While the truth is that most services (even innovation) would still work with a few data points. I mean, Google Maps doesn’t need to collect all the data it collects, but it sells us the benefit with an imminent long-tail of problems.
bilbo0s 7y ago

mistermann 7y ago

> In the book I argue that there's a big shift going on--not only an economical shift, but also geopolitical and social. And this is going to be a surprise for a lot of people, but this shift is coming from social credit systems and the establishment of a new economic model based on social behavior. I'm glad to see you chimed in here with this additional detail, because after reading the overview: > There’s currently a geopolitical arms race taking place to merge biotech and infotech to hack humankind. Technological disruption is creating an unprecedented realm of opportunities for authoritarian regimes to flourish. ...I got the impression that you thought the main issue with mass data collection was somehow to provide an advantage in biological engineering, when the most obvious advantage seems to me to be analysis of human behavior such that it can understood (to the best of our current but ever improving capabilities) and shaped in various ways. Some of the shaping techniques may be considered (by Westerners) to be nefarious I imagine, but I see no reason why such shaping has to be nefarious, but rather if done properly, may very well be in a way that can be overwhelmingly aggregate net positive to those being shaped. I've been thinking about how in the long term an authoritarian China with a fully modern technological surveillance state coupled with wise leadership and a (correspondingly) supportive citizenship might have a massive advantage over traditional democracies. The typical thinking on the matter seems to be roughly: because all historic authoritarian states eventually collapsed while democracies tended to flourish, then therefore a completely risk-free assumption can be made that this pattern will persist into the future, always and everywhere, without exception, and therefore there is absolutely no need to consider the possibility that this historic pattern may not materialize. To me, this seems like very dangerous thinking based on extremely poor logic. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the matter, and whether this is a theme you touch upon in your book.

borjamoya 7y ago
The thing is that you can't make a point in two paragraphs. You can state something, but it leaves room for all sorts of interpretations. I cover all these points in the book. But just to be clear this isn't just about China as the bad guy--the US is in the same direction. I agree on your point about that in the past democracies ended up winning. But today we're seeing that the technological disruption is killing the very essence that makes democratic society democratic. The fact is that liberal democracies have to evolve or Data Dictatorships are going to take over.