I can think of something more powerful than code. All the hardware that enables code to do anything. Code lives in an ivory tower. It's pretty easy to build

I can think of something more powerful than code. All the hardware that enables code to do anything. Code lives in an ivory tower. It's pretty easy to build something productive in that kind of environment, but then thinking that your productivity in an ivory tower will be matched in the real world is just ignorant. To demonstrate this property, consider iTunes, probably one of the most key pieces of software today, responsible for distribution of many types of media across the globe while paying authors instantly, at a small cost of freedom for both parties. Now write that code on pamphlets and drop it from a plane over Africa. Pay close attention to what happens. If you look close enough you'll notice not a god damn thing happens that is not related to the physical medium being re-appropriated for productive uses. They won't reverse engineer the code, they won't abstract away the key business principles and build a new prosperous Africa, they won't learn how to program either. You see, Africa has no need for a digital distribution system with DRM. They don't even have a network capable of carrying it's data to 99% of the population. Even if you set one up and gave away iCrap to every African, you'd never recoup the astronomical costs selling copies of bits. The thing SV needs to realize is they are not the first coders and they are already surrounded by code, at the level of societies, religions and governments. These coders are much better because they've been dealing with inconsistent platforms for hundreds of years without the benefit of virtualization layers or government-enforced standard protocols. Sure, you can generate the same kind of code that runs governments and religions from a computer, but you're forgetting the fact that that computer exists inside the system of government. As soon as you remove the government, your hardware gets stolen by people with better hardware, your software gets stolen by people with better software, and your communications data gets mined by deep packet inspection, extracting value just like an invisible tax or inflation. That last one was a joke, you need government for that.