Paradoxes of Decentralization

Discourse Society
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The Imperative of Decentralization of Power

As many of us have noticed over the last years, the centralization of power has caused a serious deterioration of human rights and the rule of law. Corruption and the abuse of power seem to be nearly inevitable consequences of centralized power, so the question becomes imperative how to decentralize it.

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Conventional checks and balances tried to reign in the abuse of political power. Apparently, this has proven to be insufficient to secure human rights and civil liberties in the face of systemic corruption and regulatory capture. What hasn’t been considered sufficiently is financial, monetary, economic, and media power. Those were the blind spots of humanities previous attempts to prevent tyranny.

What we need is a more comprehensive approach to decentralize power. One that realizes that money is power.

Decentralization of Wealth through a Progressive Wealth Tax

But how can economic inequality be actually reduced, if economic systems have a natural tendency towards centralization? A rather simple case in point why that should be the case is the Yard Sale Model, see:

Thomas Piketty has provided an answer to that in his book “Capital in the 21st century”. That answer is a global progressive property tax. Implicit in that demand is to actually figure out what the rich possess (which is more or less a great mystery in our current world order). Otherwise they wouldn’t be taxed properly. Therefore, the omission of truthful declaration of personal wealth would amount to tax evasion.

Now the obvious practical problem is: How can such a taxation scheme be implemented in a way that doesn’t require a global political leviathan that would represent a potentially even greater centralization of power? A paradox!

The Negative Reputation System Solution

The only solution I currently see is some kind of global negative reputation system. People in violation of the global tax system would accumulate negative reputation, which in turn would hamper their business activity.

If you think that this approach is too soft, then consider the extreme form of such a system: The worst offenders end up on some kind of blacklist and suddenly disappear or commit suicide. Someone is apparently making that happen. Making it happen requires a certain amount of effort, which is measured in money. That money happens to go to those who make things happen in the form of bounties. That bounty is financed by the wealth tax.

Such a regime might be effective, but obviously it wouldn’t sit well with the initial objective of maintaining human rights and the rule of law. Another paradox!

Free Competition of Systems

Ok, so we don’t want to go quite so far as to enforce the reduction of economic equality through terrorism - at the very least not officially (what groups of radicals might consider doing may be out of our control). You might notice that a system which takes the necessity to reduce inequality seriously is in danger of degenerating towards that terror regime, if it isn’t effective enough. That should serve as strong incentive to make it sufficiently effective.

A likely scenario is that most countries eventually agree on such a system (given that the people eventually realize its necessity and decide to make it happen), but there are some countries left which act as tax havens. I call the first countries the Progressive Wealth Tax (“Prowet”) countries, and the second the Counter Wealth Tax (“Counterwet”) countries. Those Counterwet tax havens would then be sanctioned for harboring people with overwhelmingly negative reputations. If those tax havens ignore those sanctions and trade with each other, they would constitute an alternative system in which inequality can run rampant.

Would that be so terrible? Well, if we believe in the free competition of systems, that would be acceptable. If human rights and the rule of law are such great ideas, they should win in the long run over systems that are based on other values.

If people maintain the liberty to vote with their feet, in the end few might be willing to stay in corrupt countries. The problem is that many of those might not have the economic means to escape, but those wannabe refugees might get loans enabling them to actually flee (granting such loans would probably be a great business, because such refugees are probably very motivated to support the “civilized” world).

In the grand scheme of things such a political system might work. But would it grant too much power to the majority and to media which shape the will of the majority? Apparently yes. So, here’s our third paradox!

Necessary Transparency

What would stop the vast majority of people from voting for ever increasing and excessive progressive taxes on the rich? What would stop the media from falsely reporting on people allegedly possessing way more wealth than officially known?

This demonstrates the need for trustworthy institutions assessing the wealth of property owners. To be trustworthy, they need to be quite transparent. This would also make the amount of wealth possessed by property owners transparent. Isn’t that a problem for privacy? Yes, it is. Here we have our fourth paradox!

I don’t see a good solution for that last paradox. Perhaps wealth transparency is the price we need to pay for an end to ever increasing wealth inequality.

Transitioning to the Establishment of the Progressive Wealth Tax System

Anyway, I have been optimistic about the prospects of this new world order based on a progressive wealth tax. A big unsolved question is: How do we get there?

If the Prowet and the Counterwet countries are in a situation of competition the whole time, what is the competitive advantage of the Prowet countries, especially if initially almost all wealthy persons would prefer to operate in Counterwet countries?

The great advantage of the Prowet countries is that they can be more meritocratic. The progressive wealth tax would enable a severe reduction of other forms of state income, including income taxes, sales taxes, and tariffs. Free trade and entrepreneurship could flourish in the Prowet countries.

The Flight from the Progressive Wealth Tax

But even if the economy will boom in the Prowet countries, wouldn’t the incentive situation be such that those becoming rich in the Prowet countries will sooner or later move to the Counterwet countries, once they feel the burden of the progressive wealth tax too strongly? Well, some will certainly decide to do just that, but others might feel uneasy about never being able to step foot again on a Prowet country without being incarcerated for tax evasion while normal people are free to travel wherever they want. Furthermore, they would need to live with the risk of being confined to a decreasing number of safe spaces, if more countries join the Prowet bloc.

The Flight towards the Progressive Wealth Tax Countries

On the other hand, the Prowet countries will be very attractive for regular people, if they pay out a large fraction of the wealth tax as universal basic income. The deal would just seem to good to be true for them: Get money for free and pay virtually no taxes. The Counterwet countries would quickly get serious problems through the ensuing population drain, and might need to resort to preventing them from escaping the Counterwet bloc. And that would prove that the Counterwet countries are not able to win in a fair competition between the two systems, which would be the start of their downfall.

There is also another key way in which Prowet countries can create incentives for the rich to join them: They would declare their tax system to be in force globally. It doesn’t matter where you live, you need to pay the wealth tax. If you want to enter a Prowet country, you need to pay the wealth tax you are due, plus some extra for late payment (much preferable to incarcerate people for tax evasion). The longer the wealthy refrain from paying that tax, the more they will have to pay to be allowed to make business with Prowet countries.

These incentives might not prove to be strong enough. In that case, the world risks drowning in chaos (again). This is of course only the starting point of a long discussion. I don’t claim to have all the answers. I just wanted to point out the paradoxes inherent in a march to effective decentralization.

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The current international business model is late stage capitalism with additions of Orwellian mass surveillance, decreasing internet freedom, and draconian censorship against people like Julian Assange. Mass surveillance is a human right violation. Journalism is being increasingly illegal everywhere now. Making journalism illegal makes free speech illegal. American, Russian, Chinese, and Islamic propagandas are getting accepted more than journalism or compassion. I sense economic warfare getting worse, increasing human rights violations, World War 3, and Earth becoming increasingly unlivable for life in general. I sense things going downhill from here. Centralization of power has been going to wealthy men who are cut-throat since thousands of years. Not women. Nothing has changed this thousand-year-long cycle of power. It’s why female poverty has been an issue for thousands of years. It’s why compassionate people get disempowered while cut-throat men continue making power used for extorting wealth. Capitalism was invented by men to extort wealth. Keeping people like Julian Assange silent allows these cut-throat men to continue extorting their wealth and power through war crimes. Mass surveillance is a weapon that these cut-throat men use to have a caste system for extorting their wealth by pre-determining people’s lives based on online activities. These cut-throat men are making people become dehumanized drones without enough privacy, wealth, free speech, and other things to have significant power. Late stage capitalism, war crimes, and attacks on human rights prove that. N.A.T.O. countries are having the rise of fascist police and mass surveillance attack activists against war crimes Julian Assange exposed. N.A.T.O. countries are not defending democracy and human rights. They are defending these billionaire oligarchs who keep people like Julian Assange imprisoned for exposing war crimes. These billionaires have corporate lawyers bullying activists who want to get rid of war crimes and replace the unsustainable big oil industry with sustainable things. So, these corporate lawyers are hired thugs getting paid to continue attacking human rights and a sustainable business model. I’m just letting you know how difficult it is to remove this centralization of power controlled by male tyrants who have so much money and power.

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Difficult? Definitely. Necessary? Probably.

If this scenario is going to fly, it needs strong support both from the people and a group of billionaires pushing for this solution as alternative to the likely revolts and uprisings, if things continue as they stand today. Of course there are those billionaires who plan of preventing or crushing revolts with propaganda, surveillance, as well as soft, police, and military power. The latter are currently apparently the majority of billionaires, but soon may be obliterated by the current global anti-corruption campaign.

Things will get much better once the campaign will have reached its main objectives, but we need a sustainable solution, in order not go get into the same problems some decades into the future.

A more decentralizes world can keep the markets free much more effectively than a centralized one, which nearly inevitably degenerates into a planned kleptocracy, like the one we are observing right now.

You can clearly see that billionaires are not invincible, since authoritarian governments like China can make them disappear quite effectively. But that’s not a world I want to live in. People should be free to act freely under certain rules without having to be afraid to get disappeared by fanatics, terrorists, secret services, or tyrants.

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I would say government figures from China have turned totalitarian. They banned V.P.N.s, have dehumanizing social credit scores, got child slavery, created pressure cooker worker conditions, and attack thinking outside the box when it goes against China’s leaders’ agenda. Which is why refugees escaped China’s Orwellian country.

Refugees are escaping America, China, Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Japan, Thailand, and other places that these totalitarian elites have terrorized.

Some Europeans are having higher standard of living because other countries have attacks on human rights that cause sweatshops, child slavery, much more poverty, etc. Europeans buy their phones, computers, and clothes from countries experiencing war crimes against human rights. N.A.T.O. is the American war crime organization that helps make sure there are countries with sweatshops, child slavery, more poverty than before, mass surveillance, indoctrination institutions disguised as schools, etc. N.A.T.O. is the planned kleptocracy that billionaire oligarchs use to extort their wealth through war crimes. It’s why Edward Snowden went to a non-N.A.T.O. country like Russia for escaping America’s totalitarian mass surveillance program. C.I.A. agents would have captured him if he went to a N.A.T.O. country.

Europeans are basically at the mercy of America’s oligarchs. America has more economic and military superpower than Europe. America has allies from Saudi Arabia and Israel who all will keep doing war crimes while complicit Europeans do nothing to stop them. All of these events are why poverty, mental illnesses, lower I.Q.s, suicide attempts, committed suicides, decreasing willingness to have children, an energy crisis, environmentally unsustainable businesses, human rights attacks, demoralization, and other things exist. Meanwhile, oligarch-owned media companies do their best to distract, gaslight, and corrupt people.

More females are doing self-deprecating jobs when making ends meet and conforming to this Orwellian agenda from increasing wealth inequality while billionaire males fund war crimes. This will cause children being surrounded by abusive and neglecting parents who sell their souls to evil corporations. Sure, there are more females being politicians now than centuries ago. But the point is that females are getting less paid and having insignificant power compared to these billionaire males who fund war crimes. Men have weaponized technologies and political systems to extort their powerful wealth for a millennia while women stay mostly disempowered. It’s been that way for thousands of years. I have a hard time taking feminism seriously when exclusively wealthy men from America, China, Russia, Ukraine, Saudi Arbaia, Israel, the U.K., and other places continue attacking human rights for extorting their wealth. Mass surveillance, mandatory conscription, wage slavery, child slavery, banning V.P.N.s, social credit scores, replacing cash with digital money, female poverty, and other things do not represent freedom. They represent male-dominated elites extorting their wealth and power by creating an Orwellian caste system.

This is not a world I want to live in. The world I was born into was much better than this one now. During my childhood, there were more mom and pop shops where workers got fairer employment benefits without mass surveillance in their workplaces. This was when humans could actually reach their potential better. But now, that is no longer the case. Instead, workers are dehumanized with inflation, recession, an energy crisis, mass surveillance, censorship, evil corporations acquiring businesses that cause layoffs, etc. to keep people disempowered rather than reaching their potential. Right now, there are less skilled workers than ever before. All of the highly skilled people from older generations are dying. Which is why high quality workers get replaced by idiocracy when people do not understand high level mathematics, engineering, computer science, political systems, etc. Instead, younger generations are dumber and less skilled than older ones when technology replaces human workers while billionaire men extort wealth through war crimes. This is basically late stage capitalism where things go downhill from here. It’s the real reason why art, music, movies, games, and other things are less innovative before late stage capitalism got worse.

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Here is an example of why this centralization of power gets harder to remove. I deleted many social media accounts. More social media platforms have become a mob of toxic users. People can use many excuses for trolling and spamming. But it’s really the online world becoming a sociopath haven considering tech companies are mostly monopolized by wealthy white sociopaths who support war crimes. The same wealthy white sociopaths who distract people with corporate virtue signalling like diversity for example. It’s all corporate virtue signalling while children are dying from TikTok challenges, wars, poverty, homelessness, an engergy crisis, etc. while these wealthy white sociopaths are billionaires or millionaires. These wealthy white sociopaths are stealing money from people disguised as inflation. They like to do that in America because its billionaire sociopaths deregulated America’s economic policies. All of this deregulation helps billionaire sociopaths wreak havoc on most Americans by stealing their money disguised as inflation, recession, layoffs, etc. It’s a reason why I don’t want children of my own. Even if I had a child, they would never be allowed on social media platforms until the age of 18. These social media platforms are controlled by vile predators who should be imprisoned for doing psychological harassment disguised as advertising, supporting war crimes that attack human rights while killing children, etc. These social media platforms are controlled by people who have behavior of high school bullies that don’t mind killing children for profit. But they have enough wealth and power to keep bullying others and killing children. That’s how evil this centralization of power has become.

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Many children will never know the meaning of ethics deeply when this world has been controlled by child killers, rapists, con artists, and political clowns for thousands of years. Children were killed and women were raped during the creation of countries. I’m tired of people justfiying these countries that were created by the rape of women and death of children. It’s not compassion. Countries continue to exist because compassion is less important than profit, power, and sex to these rulers. They do their political theatre to try and make countries look important. But they are not inherently important for us to survive as a specie. They only make things more difficult for people who are poor, disabled, and nonwhite females because of classism, ableism, and sexism that are all systemic. All of these countries have a bunch of philanthropic virtue signalling about people who are poor, disabled, and nonwhite females. But they have systemic classism, ableism, and sexism regardless. It’s because countries are economically monopolized by billionaire oligarchs who are white males. Julian Assange is imprisoned because of these billionaire oligarchs. Children are dying in wars because of these billionaire oligarchs. Women are getting impoverished, poorly educated, unskilled, raped, and killed because of these billionaire oligarchs who have demoralized countries through late stage capitalism. Female journalists are especially getting tortured, raped, and killed when they expose war crimes that these billionaire oligarchs cause. I am only letting you know why I don’t want to have children of my own when horrible people have had centralized power for thousands of years and used their countries to justify their horrifying acts. I see no reason to have children except for mere reproduction or pathetic hope for humanity on a planet with life that is literally dying because of powerful people killing others while the sun is evaporating Earth’s water supply. So, life has an expiration date on Earth either way.

This is my hell when I’m painfully awake to how people are treated by powerful elites through centralized power. Once you start removing countries and create a political system where people lose their power based on their actions rather than have to play stupid mental gymnastics depending on where they live, there will be real progress away from evil centralization of power. But these countries are a way these horrible people get away with their horrible acts. Saudi Arabian rulers get away with raping female minors, killing homosexuals, and killing atheists because of Sharia law. Billionaire oligarchs get away with blackmailing people into poverty through inflation, layoffs, mass surveillance, etc. from America’s deregulated economic policies. Canada’s rulers get away with oppressing miners overseas to extort wealth. Latin American rulers get away with funding drug cartels that turn people into impoverished druggies who lack quality education and skills. Which is why Latin American countries are not developed. Europe elites get away with banning websites to brainwash Europeans with a political echo chamber. Asia’s rulers get away with banning V.P.N.s, sweatshops, child slavery, attacking journalists, and other things. Saudi Arabian rulers have an alliance with Canada and the U.S. It’s the reason why no woman rules in any of those countries. They’re all countries controlled by mostly men who have cut-throat methods in keeping their wealth and power. Saudi Arabia’s rulers treat women horribly. Females usually suffer from poverty, insignificant power, rape, forced marriage, Islamic fearmongers who kill atheists due to Sharia law, and other things in Saudi Arabia more than other countries. So, these cut-throat men are going to oppress females while mainstream media lies about diversity at the same time.

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Thank you for pointing out some of the things that go wrong under the current geopolitical system. What’s your proposal for actually fixing those?

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Women are escaping Saudi Arabia that is allied to America for avoiding rapists and pedophiles. Saudi Arabia is an absolute nightmare for female journalists who care about women’s rights. Culture is being used to keep females sexually abused and diagnosed with stockholm syndrome in Saudi Arabia. Some women avoid Saudi Arabia and America because those countries are both controlled by cut-throat men who care about profit more than rights. Child marriage is legalized in some American states. It makes impoverished minors vulnerable to wealthy pedophiles, especially religious ones who are grooming children with creepy scriptures. Evil N.A.T.O. corporations are abusing women and children by keeping these predatory men in power while mainstream media virtue signals about charity. You have to fight against C.N.N., B.B.C., A.B.C., M.S.N.B.C., FOX News, the big fossil fuel industry, religious institutions, billionaire oligarchs, intelligence agents, and others by imprisoning them. That way women and children are safe no matter where they live in instead of becoming refugees.

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The N.A.T.O. war crime organization makes people not safe anywhere when journalists, whistleblowers, diplomats, and activists are being kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned, and/or assassinated by America’s intelligence agents. This is all to make sure most people are in the dark for political echo chamber while billionaire oligarchs attack rights and international laws for extorting wealth. These powerful people need to be imprisoned forever. There needs to be measures made that prevent tyrants from being replaced by other ones. N.A.T.O. needs to be banned. All countries need to be replaced by global peace when Earth is becoming increasingly unlivable. If humans actually care about their own specie survival, environmentally unsustainable war and ridiculous countries would end. Our focus would be to leave Earth when it gets destroyed by the sun many years from now. We would be focusing on improving schools, infrastructure, eco-friendly technologies, people’s health, and other things instead of what humans do now to avoid our specie extinction. So far, I see the human specie being doomed if people do not act now. I see people being corrupted by this centralization of power that has been ruining almost everything for profit. I do not see most people having significant power. I see them as hamsters in cages on hamster wheels working to keep this cycle of late stage capitalism going where billionaires have significant power that make their unsustainable business model. When human leeches only care about making ends meet and profit rather than sustainability, humans have a destructive relationship with Earth. Humans have been doing more harm than good after the more egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies became replaced by elites extorting wealth and power through religion, agriculture, monarchy, industrialization, oligarchy, mass surveillance, censorship, etc. I see humans getting worse for thousands of years when greed, modern knowledge, hate, and fear combined from powerful elites are dangerous. Not the other way around. Powerful elites control what children are allowed to hear, read, watch, feel, think, and say considering this centralization of power. So, I see fewer people not selling their souls to this late stage capitalism that creates a clown world from hell.

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I attest to this centralized power corrupting people and turning them into clowns from hell. That’s why I have no friends. Most people are looking for entertainment, sex, power, beauty, easy topics to talk about, music, money, sports, foods, and drinks. But I got tired of those things. On top of that, I don’t like people’s countries, mass surveillance, replacement of cash with digital spying, social credit scores, monarchy, oligarchy, religion, and other stuff. I don’t care about being pretty or handsome. I don’t like the beauty industry and how it represents late stage capitalism. So, I have mostly nothing in common with most people. I don’t even trust people in general. People have betrayed me, hid truths from me, misdiagnosed me, gaslighted me, tried to sexually exploit me in a coldhearted way unsuccessfully, rejected me, and so many other things when this world’s system has been rewarding coldhearted behavior for thousands of years while mainstream media lies. So, I know how worse people have become for thousands of years. It’s why some of their kids have committed suicides, especially to escape the mafia. Once you’re born into the mafia, it’s hard to seek refuge away from its more powerful leaders when their henchmen can hunt you down. Mass surveillance, gag orders, political coups, the military-industrial complex, central bank cartels, hacking, charisma, and other things are how the mafia henchmen hunt people down. But they keep most people docile, weak, stupid, and distracted with food, alcohol, drugs, television, video games, music, hatemongering mainstream media, an energy crisis, inflation, buying things impulsively, etc. So, mafia henchmen don’t have to worry about most people rebelling. Which is why I have no friends and trust no one when most humans have been genetically programmed for thousands of years to benefit these corrupt mafia overlords in power who extort wealth since egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies became unpopular. I struggle to trust anyone knowing journalists are kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, raped, assassinated, brainwashed, and other things while billionaire mafia overlords live in luxury after war crimes when mainstream media represents evil corporate propaganda. I can’t be easily distracted by other things when knowing people are suffering. I’m pissed off instead of docile.

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I wonder what measures you are thinking about that go beyond mere decentralization of power.

What I think is needed, is mostly a new mindset. The mindset that centralized powers cannot be trusted, so power need to be decentralized. And that this is as obvious as breathing.

Centralization has been a natural tendency, because it’s easy and “solves” many coordination problems, but the results are rarely “good”. And even if they are good initially, the centralized institutions will become corrupted sooner or later.

The problem with decentralization is that it’s complicated, even though the results might be pretty good. It’s basically the same problem that true democracy suffers from, which is not too surprising, since democracy is merely one special form of decentralization.

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