AFFIRMATIVE:
Liberating Ourselves
by Starting
Something New
MAX BORDERS
ON OCTOBER 13, 2008, the heads of America’s largest banks sat
around a table with then–Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
The bankers were there to accept what would become the larg-
est financial bailout in history. Take it or else, Paulson said of
the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
The bankers complied.
The bailouts prompted a handful of cypherpunks to speed
up work on a great technological experiment. Innovators like
Nick Szabo, Wei Dai, and Hal Finney had already been playing
around with ideas to challenge the existing monetary system.
But on October 31, 2008, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto
published “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”
That white paper was like universal acid poured over the
gears of a great machine. The advent of the distributed ledger
jolted many of us from our dogmas: If something as apparently
core to state sovereignty as a working monetary system might
be provided through a decentralized technological means, the
world suddenly looked like a different place.
Up to that point, advocates of human freedom had pursued
change largely through persuasion and advocacy. If you wanted
to liberate people, you had to cry your teardrop in the swirling
ocean of public opinion every election cycle and pray the tide
would turn. If you wanted to change the law, you had to get your
brilliant white paper into the hands of a congressman (who had
probably just used those same hands to take a dirty campaign
contribution).
Politics. Policy. Punditry. That’s more or less the sum of
“voice” as a strategy.
Both progressives and conservative populists are currently
engaged in political trench warfare, which risks becoming less
metaphorical as the tribes become more hostile. Such hostility
is an inevitable byproduct of the voice theory of political change,
but something better is coming: the end of politics as we know it.ECONOMIST ALBERT O. Hirschman in his 1970 treatise Voice, Exit,
and Loyalty explained that there are three ways to respond
to any human system, be it a product, an organization, or a
political regime. Voice — express yourself to persuade others
to change the system. Exit — leave the system, joining another
system or starting something new. Loyalty — stick by the sys-
tem, even if it’s less than ideal.
The 19th century was in many respects the era of loyalty (God
and country). The 20th century was the era of voice (ballots over
bullets). But the 21st century will be the age of exit (governance
by choice).
One of the basic tests of “good” law is whether people actu-
ally want to follow it. In fact, the better the laws, the more likely
people are to try to migrate to that legal system. And vice versa—
just ask Venezuelans. The easier exit becomes, the less it matters
what any theorist thinks is justice, much less “social justice.”
We’re entering an era of radical social experimentation carried
out on far smaller scales than the revolutions of the past. And yet
successes will be scalable to the level of humanity.
Right now a million software developers are creating new
social operating systems using distributed ledgers, smart con-
tracts, and cryptocurrencies. Users will either adopt these sys-
tems or not. And if they do, they’re as good as law. Coders will
thus generate whole new regimes, which users can simply opt
out of if they aren’t satisfied. Can you say that about politics?
When it comes to the voice strategy, most people still labor
under a men-as-angels theory of government: If we could just get
the right people in power...
But when it comes to exit, “Lawmakers could be saints, devils
or monkeys on typewriters — doesn’t matter,” writes philoso-
pher and venture capitalist Michael Gibson. “The opt out-opt
in system lets only good laws survive. Bad laws are driven out of
production. Bad laws can only inflict harm and destroy wealth
up to the cost to opt out of them. We can underthrow the state
one contract at a time.”
The case for exit, then, is based not on a Pollyanna fantasyREASON 41PROPOSITION:
For Political
Change, Choose
Exit Not Voice