by Tom Luongo
What is The Wire?
Why is it so important?
Who controls it?
Answer those three questions and you can answer a number of problems plaguing our world today.
The Wire is simply a metaphor for the transmission of information. The Wiretakes many forms. And if you aren’t sure whether something is The Wirejust ask if you have control over it or not.
The Internet? The Wire.
Electricity? The Wire
Roads? The Wire.
Media? The Wire.
Money? The Wire.
In short, The Wire is the main conduit through which we communicate with each other. Money? Really? Yes, really. What are prices if not information about what we are willing to part with our money in exchange for?
Without The Wire modern society fails. So, government can’t shut it down but neither can it allow unconstrained access to it.
Electricity, commerce, communications, everything, goes over The Wire.
This isn’t a radical concept but like all important ideas, once it is presented to you you can’t unsee it.
But, identifying The Wire isn’t the important thing. What’s important is knowing who controls The Wire and what they are willing to do to maintain that control.
If you look at all of the things listed above you will see massive government intervention into these markets. They need control of them to maintain the illusion they have control over you.
They sell you on the idea that speech, speed, education, commerce, defense, information, etc. all need to have sensible limits placed on them. But do they really or is this just yet another example of some jackass talking his book?
Look around you today and tell me what all the fighting is about. Geopolitics, domestic policy, censorship, money, advertising, ideologies, etc. They are all about the existential threat posed by a loss of control of The Wire.
In fact, everything I talk about here at Gold Goats ‘n Guns is about this very subject. Who has control and are they or are they not losing it?
The Wire is the primary means of control over our society.
Those who seek to accumulate power can only see things in terms of controlling The Wire. And it is why nothing ever seems to get fixed. Every time technology breaks down their artificial control over a major market — food, energy, communications, transport — we see them shift their focus to rein it in, control it, neuter it and make it work for them rather than you.
Election systems could be fixed in nearly no time with open source voting encoded on a blockchain. Results would be tallied nearly instantly and a true accounting of who voted for whom/what could be had.
But, if that system was put in place then there wouldn’t be the opportunity for someone to cheat to maintain control. Because never forget the main reason to control The Wire.
Stealing.
The only reason someone needs control over the information you receive is to deceive you with the intention of committing fraud.
And fraud is stealing.
But, since Communists don’t believe you have a property right in your own person, there is ultimately no stealing, and they’re more than happy to tell you all about this from their end of The Wire they access through their iPhone.
The Internet is the greatest invention of all time because it gave the world a solution to The Wire. No one owned it, ultimately. It gave everyone a cheap, reliable communications platform which has revolutionized (not always in a good way) the way humans coordinate their activities.
It is creating new businesses and technologies today faster than we humans can integrate the last ones into our daily routines. It has accelerated the elimination of poverty through more efficient supply chain management making goods and services arrive faster and cheaper than ever before.
All of that time we used to spend in places like libraries, DMV’s and supermarket we now spend at home screaming at each other about how bad we all have it.
And what have the Scions of Control done everything in their power to do? Control it. Bind it down. Make it worse. Criminalize the use of it in unapproved ways.
And now, via Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter, limit your access to the parts of it where it is easiest and most effective for you to commit the sin of criticizing them.
Because if you want to know who controls The Wire just look to whom you are not allowed to criticize.
The EU is trying to make memes illegal by forcing attribution to the original work, solving a problem no one wanted solved, except them. Net neutrality? Another solution in search of a problem.
The global monetary system modernized on the back of the Internet is also at risk of its excesses collapsing in on itself. Because with this obsessive need to control The Wire comes the malinvestment of capital in enterprises which support this need for control — surveillance, military, banking, legal services, insurance.
It over-emphasizes bureaucracy to slow growth and hamper innovation. Entrepreneurs gravitate towards those markets supported by and subsidized by government control.
It crowds out investment in the productive portion of the society, the one most efficiently funded through pooled community savings. Control of The Wire is so acute among the global elite we manage our economy based on the completely backwards notion known as the paradox of thrift.
In the second half of my discussion with The Daily Coin Rory and I discuss the slowly unfolding sovereign debt crisis and where inflation and deflation meet.
To me this is where cryptocurrencies point towards our finally breaking control over The Wire and their potential role in solving institutional confidence lost that creates such a crisis.
One of my basic theses is problems are not solved through government edict, but rather created by it in the first place.
Therefore the solutions to our problems is human innovation working in spite of our governing overlords rather than in concert with them.
If our money is inadequate and corrupt then the solution to it is better technology in money.
Cryptocurrencies represent a sea change in the way monetary units are produced and their value maintained. As such it’s time to rethink The Wire and anyone’s desire for control over it.
Once that idea sweeps through the public consciousness only then will we be looking at a better possible world.