The political system of the future is already here

 

An alien observer would quickly come to an interesting observation upon descending on our blue pale dot as Carl Sagan once romantically described. It would be quite evident that a specific species on this planet developed a system of digital networking where all members are able to freely associate with each other. Examining further into the depths of the evolution of this system, the alien explorer would be fascinated in the ways we managed to evolve it through our primitive systems of governance. We leaped from coercive and jungle-like political systems based on violence, numbers and geographical locations, to a spontaneous order where the entire species voluntarily takes part. We call it the Internet and it evolves beyond our wildest expectations.

 

For the most part of our history we worked on the grounds of ethno-socialism. Specific geographical areas with a group of people came up with restrictive systems, governed by military and civil law. This benefited the inhabitants of a particular area by discriminating or worse exploiting the ones outside of a given jurisdiction. Many erroneously call our system capitalistic misinterpreting it with corporatism. The deference between the two is that capitalism embraces markets through free association while corporatism on the hand demands control of the markets through centralized political systems that antagonize violently with each other.

 

One would say that the Internet is not a political system but merely a tool. This would be a perfectly reasonable assumption considering how many different uses this technology can have. It would be pointless to enumerate all operations since each individual utilizes this digital network in a unique and rather creative way. Nonetheless, probably the most underrated realization of the Internet would be the ways it makes politics redundant. The dynamic and spontaneous nature the Internet simply makes all political systems outdated. It does so by initially uniting all under a common network and thereafter continues reducing their sacred values to the smallest minority on earth – the individual. This very power of the individual is what makes the Internet the political system of tomorrow – or rather the system that makes politics themselves obsolete.

 

 

In this system we utilize and create our personal capital whether this is intellectual, social or financial. With no central control, rules emerge much like quantum particles via myriads of unique anarchic interactions. Like Eric Schmitt, Google CEO pointed out; “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had”. In anarchy all systems are allowed because it embraces all other systems. This is also the case with the Internet were political affiliations become irrelevant. Whether one is a communist, a fascist, a socialist or something in between, all end up interacting under social networks, net currencies and web portals without one imposing on another.

 

Under this digital dome we are all integral parts that give meaning and purpose to each other. Free association under private institutions such as Facebook, E-bay, Apple or the grocery store next door it’s what makes the internet so powerful. Each of us has private rules of operation and each of us is allowed to be part of other groups at the same time. The meaning of chaos becomes absurd when billions of individuals give rise to spontaneous systems that nobody really planed. There is no central power, nor an all-powerful entity of governance. There is no coercion upon each other since the power resides with the individuals’ choice. One can rise as easily as one can fall. In literature this combination of capitalism and anarchy is called anarcho-capitalism and it is here to shape the entire course of our history.

 

Kyriakos Papaspyrou