Does blockchain providing "trustless" cooperation lead us in the wrong direction?

In August of this year, the global political and economic progress movement organization RadicalxChange sponsored the event "Plurality Taipei," inviting Taiwan's Digital Minister Audrey Tang and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin to discuss social and political issues, introducing many new concepts to the Taiwan community. What is Plurality, the multiverse?

RadicalxChange CEO Matt Prewitt's recent article on new political communities "Secret Societies, Network States, Burning Man, ZUZALU, and More: Thoughts on New Political Communities" has sparked widespread discussion. It explains contemporary social group issues and proposes the possibility of using blockchain as a "new community" experiment.

Below is the translated version by members of the Taiwan web3 for all reading club Mashbean, Frank Hu, Tai-Jung Yang, Vivian Chen, Liying Wang, Chao-Ming Teng, Beatrice Liao, Jiahe Lin, Gimmy Chang, and others.

Introduction by Co-Translator Huang Douni

The article "The Secret Society" was written by Matt Prewitt on 8/22, emphasizing "trustlessness" in the crypto community and reexamining a community that could change the world, exploring where its cohesion comes from. Prewitt analyzes the ways in which significant alternative communities and social movements have operated throughout history, and proposes speculative "community technologies" to support the future development of communities. Matt Prewitt is the President of RadicalxChange Foundation, a former antitrust and consumer class action attorney, former federal appellate law clerk, and currently a writer and blockchain industry consultant.

Reflections on New Political Communities: The Secret Society, Internet Nations, Burning Man, ZUZALU, etc.

Sociologist Georg Simmel wrote a fascinating paper in 1906 titled "The Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies." This article is quite difficult to read, with long and dense sentences, and its English translation retains the flavor of classical academic German.

If you read it carefully, you will join a small group, sharing Simmel's extraordinary insights into the role of secrecy in social relationships, from friendship and marriage to the nation. Simmel's readers are mostly strangers to each other, but if anyone is reading this article, I invite them to email me. Meaningful relationships may emerge, as Simmel said, shared knowledge among friends, though not widely known, solidifies many of the strongest social connections.

In addition to sharing private knowledge, strong communities often involve shared destinies, commitments, or mutual obligations. Commitments, obligations, and destinies can seem elusive and difficult to quantify, but they are indeed related, such as unsecured trust and the cost of separation. We should pay more attention to such indicators, and we will discuss more about them.

Lately, a wave of new community initiatives has been thriving and drawing attention, such as Zuzalu, Internet Nations, and communities intentionally built by Ezra Klein's friends. These passionate movements can be traced back to the 20th century before the appearance of Burning Man, such as the back-to-the-land movement, and even earlier, the secret sects and cults of the 19th century. How should we view these new attempts? Do they have the conditions for success? If successful, will they benefit the world?

Let's start with some basic classifications. Most new movements, like their predecessors, are difficult to categorize politically. They are all some form of adjusted liberalism, with some leaning conservative, and others striving for progressive liberalism. I found that "new community" advocates can be roughly divided into three categories, although they often mix and may not always agree with each other.

Affinity-Communitarians with Shared Values

In the 1960s and 70s, the back-to-nature movement, tired of certain aspects of mainstream society, such as capitalism and militarism, sought to live in smaller communities with people more like themselves. Their descendants are still numerous today. Their passion is unrelated to left or right: communities with shared values can move towards primitive, traditional, tribal, conservative, or progressive and liberal. This is reasonable because isolation can lead people back to traditional values (whether real or imagined), and of course, can also foster new progressive or bold social structures. These communities have specific values and thrive outside mainstream society.

What could go wrong with this?

The legitimacy of these communities depends entirely on the values they believe in. They find it difficult to maintain unity, often failing due to internal politics: one possibility is becoming dogmatic and authoritarian, while another is division and disharmony. Additionally, when they formally confront the outside world, they are often easily overwhelmed by external forces.

Individualist-Escapers

These people are usually libertarians, anarchists, and underground bunker-building billionaires who want to break free from dependence and transcend social obligations. In this category, we see people trying to escape the mainstream society, but not necessarily creating particularly organized or definable new societies.

What could go wrong with this?

Only when the original society is no longer worth living in do people have a good reason to escape reality. Escape plans often quietly fail because they overlook the importance of community and society, ending up with half the result. However, they can also succeed quietly, as they seem to not represent the entire community movement, so they are not noticed at first, eventually easing the collective oppression of the community positively; or passively, weakening the cultural constraints that dominate society.

Responsible Experimenters

Over the years, many responsible experimenters—such as practical back-to-nature advocates, (Israeli) kibbutzim, Tolstoyan farmers, etc.—have successfully demonstrated that new societies can form on a moderate scale. Some of the best have also successfully established mutually beneficial relationships with the outside world. The challenge we face now is how to understand this responsible cooperative spirit and bring it into the digital age. We have reasons to be hopeful: because Zuzalu gathers a diverse group of thinkers to explore new social forms—not just naive escapists. Additionally, in the intellectual sphere, even those who openly claim to be liberals are now advocating for a limited, globally independent economic model. RadicalxChange is working hard to develop new monetary, property, and democratic systems to support the success of these movements.

What could go wrong with this?

Responsible experimentation is always a narrow path, easily hitting walls on both sides. How to establish a foothold in a global monoculture without falling into dogmatism, exclusivity, or individualistic escape? It is difficult to achieve both success and goodness at the same time. I believe that being responsible means recognizing this and prioritizing noble projects that achieve only small successes rather than grand successes that are wildly off course (see: Facebook, Alternative for Germany AfD).

In this short essay, I will explore the concept of new communities.

First: How are new communities related to the concept of social progress?

Second: Is it possible to deliberately build new communities like building bridges and software, or can they only emerge accidentally and/or historically? If the former, how can this be achieved? How can they operate effectively, flexibly, and maintain responsible relationships with the rest of the world?

Next, I will propose some specific solutions based on my analysis.

Social Progress

The concept of "social progress" holds a strange and somewhat marginalized position in knowledge culture. The adjective "social" is like a hint, indicating that we are not talking about a unified "progress," that is, progress in science, technology, or material aspects. In the absence of a consensus on the standards of measurement, we do not know what constitutes "social progress," so caution is warranted when using this term. While we can always easily recognize technological progress (or pornography), we may not necessarily perceive social progress. However, this does not mean that social progress does not exist; it is just difficult to achieve consensus, much like art or religion. Nevertheless, without social progress, all other forms of progress will ultimately fail or regress.

Philosopher and practical advocate Daniel Schmachtenberger has observed that when asked about the earliest "technologies" in history, most people would mention three: stone tools, fire, and language. These significant milestones represent the three basic elements that early humans mastered: matter, energy, and information. However, we can also propose a fourth most primitive element, the ancient Greek "techne," which refers to the storytelling and wisdom tradition that appeared early in human civilization, closely related to religion and art.

These technologies are crucial for the development of human cooperation. Perhaps even without narratives, language could still convey simple instructions and basic practical descriptions. However, listeners and speakers often need to share common morals, laws, or a sense of sanctity to understand each other's true intentions and interpret them correctly. Stories, art, and the wisdom tradition and religion that they merge into create expanded social cohesion, shared values, and allow us to explore more diverse possibilities and a cooperative "us" (Note 1).

I digressed a bit, but the main point is simple: the driving factors of social cohesion, such as culture,