Technocapitalism Is a Trojan Horse for Culture, Capital, & Conversations We’ve Been Having Since Recorded History
Initial scoping of crpyto-centric free-marketism
This was written in October, 2024.
Technocapitalism, especially the version forming in the blockchain, ownership software, fintech, public goods world, is an interesting amalgamation of ambitious software development, innovative socialist principles, and free market capitalism, all tied into computers, codebases, smartphones, applications, and people who have been people throughout the test of time.
It’s also an immature philosophy in terms of its tenure and market participants, with the oldest among us in the mid-40s and the youngest among us in the mid-teens. In traditional capitalism things are age-gated, accreditation-gated, network-gated, and capital-gated. In crypto it’s anybody who has access to the internet and ability to earn.
I do not believe this to be an inherently bad thing. It does present new blends of character profiles however. For example, the socialist, or communist demographic, is paired alongside the free-market capitalists, and anarchists. Without a centralized government to dictate majority rights, this create an Interesting tension between allowing people to do whatever they want and trying to enforce behaviors via code.
If we examine memecoins, we see this tension play out anecdotally. Many who speak of the negative effects of such gambling or speculation are generally the same people persuaded to contradict themselves when wealth opportunities become obvious.
This highlights not only the diametrically opposed participants, ideas, and practices that this industry is trying to synthesize, but the conflict this version of technocapitalism creates within individual members internally.
Decentralized finance’s goal is to afford capitalist practices, via self-custody and management, to any individual on the planet with access to the internet. Promising them the option of their own security and viability to ascend socioeconomic ladders regardless of geolocation.
The rub of this reality becomes apparent when you realize that wealth creation is rarely a linear event, nor is it something that is based solely on meritocracy. Massive wealth generative events are often the byproduct of some form of asymmetry, whether information, network, capital, or insight.
It’s commonplace to view finance bros or Wall Street as just participating in the traditional economy when leveraging these asymmetries. Those successful are not viewed as ‘bad people’; at worst they are viewed as ‘nonessential’ (generally).
The insightful defi participant can see the similarities between tradfi and defi. Through this understanding it becomes clear that pejorative remarks on those who speculate, gamble, and take high-risk positions are more philosophical in nature.
For a capitalist or anarchist, generating asymmetric wealth opportunities is simply playing by the same rules in a different sandbox. To a socialist or communist, it requires much more consideration and different choice-sets.
It’s important to remember, that due to decentralized efforts, the public goods, public domain folks that tend to lean more toward the latter, can not wholly avoid building alongside their ideological counterparties.
If you look at Vitalik’s wallet and the persistent pattern of airdropping memecoins to him for exposure, you see a microcosm of what I am trying to articulate.
This reality (vitalik nuking charts and donating the money to public goods) is something born of our version of technocapitalism. In no other system would opposite members of ideologies:
give a counterparty free money **to the tune of millions **
take the free money and use it for their own moral code
All this leads to the point of this paper. Technocapitalism may be less about trad-capitalism/acc and more a hybridization of various nation state ideologies at global scale.
Though the current goal in crypto is largely to enable free market agency, it’s also tied into idealistic notions that are directly opposed to capitalism. For instance, if you were to look at something like nounsDAO or Opepen, or Higher, you see ‘socialist’ networks that incubate ‘capitalist’ behaviors. These examples, which I’ve dubbed hypercultures, allow themselves, and unrelated actors, to speculate and financialize the representations of their value systems (via tokens).
While traditional finance has a less expansive version of this with publicly traded stocks or commodities, the internet and crypto at large accelerate ethic, asset, and community generation with little regulation to guide or obstruct it.
As such, we see novel instantiations of the internet, and expressions of human value systems and moral curiosities that have previously never been seen. Group chats buying coffee shops, or raising $50M in a treasury is new. Art projects allowing anyone in the world to contribute and become a canonical piece of a multimillion dollar brand is new. ‘Subreddits’ airdropping ‘stock shares’ to the tune of millions and funding member startups in weeks' time is new…
The Internet is not a nation, but a universe. This seems a more appropriate articulation of technocapitalism. Although nation-states have figured out varying political structures that fit their populace, they all have to bring them to the internet on-level grounds, intellectually.
It is not only a battle of the best ideal, it is a battle of the newest and most forward-thinking ideal. Less restrained by nation-state bylaws, this version of technocapitalism is enforced via consensus, and like Jack Butcher says often, “consensus is temporary.”
technical and unusual