diff --git a/docs/wtf-is-metagame/in-search-of-commons-that-scale.md b/docs/wtf-is-metagame/in-search-of-commons-that-scale.md index c2333bb6..16cebd76 100644 --- a/docs/wtf-is-metagame/in-search-of-commons-that-scale.md +++ b/docs/wtf-is-metagame/in-search-of-commons-that-scale.md @@ -19,10 +19,7 @@ The competitiveness of the markets gradually killed _Good Hearted_ and _Well Int - Not to mention what all of this “_optimized for one metric_” thing is doing to the planet; a never ending, ever growing extraction of natural resources driven by greed & planned obsolescence. - -As Vinay Gupta beautifully puts it: - -> “We’re in a time when the inability of the markets to sensibly price the externalities is literally destroying the world.” +> *“We’re in a time when the inability of the markets to sensibly price the externalities is literally destroying the world.”* - Vinay Gupta At the time, uneducated and barely out of puberty — I thought the answer was to burn it all down and start from scratch. @@ -39,7 +36,7 @@ My journey went from unfounded conspiracy theories to established truths, from _ - How to do better. -And although I was leaning closer to the “_free markets_” side of the argument, I was still certain that the conclusion “just pursue self interest” and “markets should be free” — is just not the way to go about… +And although I was now leaning to the “_free markets_” side of the argument, I was still certain that the conclusion “just pursue self interest” and “markets should rein free” — is just not the way to go about organizing societies. ![](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f57b836-96f7-4efc-93b9-333b7d4300ec_554x671.png) @@ -53,12 +50,10 @@ His thinking went something like: Later popularized by the _Zeitgeist_ documentaries, _Venus Project_ aimed at presenting to the world a viable alternative to the current “money-based” economic systems. -In theory, it all sounded very nice — except the “_how to actually get there_” part was non-existent. Not to mention the illustrations of his Utopia made me anxious; would anyone actually want to live in a city that looks like this? +In theory, it all sounded very nice — except the “_how to actually get there_” part was non-existent. Not to mention the illustrations of his Utopia made me anxious; would anyone even want to live in a city that looks like this? 😬 ![](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2f1044a9-7975-4628-b91c-e35ad644af36_672x378.jpeg) -Maybe, but somehow doubt it… - So I turned my attention back to reality. There actually already exist places that operate on principles presented by *Jacques*  - and they look nothing like what he imagined. In modernity, they like to tag themselves “off the grid”, “self-sustainable” or “eco-villages” — but they’re nothing new, really. There are probably countless villages operating on similar principles — without using _modern labels_. @@ -73,17 +68,19 @@ Then I found Ethereum, and it blew my mind. ![](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf3f527c-0a0c-4d28-aca2-04ebf456e56d_498x280.gif) My mind was immediately 100% occupied by it. -The possibilities of this single, decentralized, programmable ledger seemed endless. +The possibilities of this decentralized, programmable ledger seemed endless. -From identity to governance and work/reward distribution systems — anything seemed possible. Uber without the Uber, Airbnb without the Airbnb, companies without bosses, states without the bureaucratic elite..? +From identity to governance and work/reward distribution systems — anything seemed possible. Uber without the Uber, Airbnb without the Airbnb, companies without bosses, states without the bureaucratic elites..? Decentralized autonomous organizations, they called them. Instead of companies _outsourcing_ work to free-lancer — DAOs would simply be _sourcing_ it and distributing the stakes of the organization, to the people building it. +Decentralized organizations building & running common resources. + > All of society could run peer to peer — just like it used to. -Here's this [in-depth piece by Jeff](https://medium.com/commonsstack/automating-ostrom-for-effective-dao-management-cfe7a7aea138) of Commons Stack, going through "Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles for Managing A Commons" with the help of a blockchain. +Here's this in-depth piece by Jeff of Commons Stack, going through ["Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles for Managing A Commons" with the help of a blockchain.](https://medium.com/commonsstack/automating-ostrom-for-effective-dao-management-cfe7a7aea138) -Of course reality is still far from the ideal we imagined it to be in 2015, but we're slowly getting there. +Of course, reality is still far from the ideal we imagined it to be in 2015, but we're slowly getting there. ## The Fuel ![](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc1c68f6-976e-4d79-9793-a894178d7f3b_800x565.jpeg) @@ -91,21 +88,9 @@ Tokenized organizations being crowdfunded; in theory results in a perfect alignm Make the investors & users into a single type of shareholder, and you should at least be able to get rid of the profit-extraction tension coming from traditional investors. No more planned obsolescence and making things only as good as they need to be to sell. -## MetaGame. - -It is a commonly owned platform for the community of DAOs and freelancers, to coordinate in building of a better/more equitable future. - -You may think of it as an assembly line for disruptive ideas: - -- Inside the **MetaGame**, projects don’t _outsource_—they simply _source_. - - -Except it’s bigger than this “_decentralized factory_” narrative, and definitely bigger than this whole _DeFi_ narrative — it’s about defying the status quo by building a whole new world, a layer atop of the old one. - -What most of us actually hang around the block(chain) for, I believe, is an opportunity at re-imagining, redefining and rebuilding of all the institutions and software infrastructure the humanity needs to thrive. - -- And for that, we need a better sandbox. - ## Spaceship Earth — A Pale Blue Dot ![](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fee4a3cfc-7be3-4ca3-a19b-6ef68e824aec_672x372.jpeg) +> "*Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.* - Carl Sagan" + +It's time to stop treating the Earth as a pool for maximum resource extraction, leading to the collapse ecosystem collapse, and start treating it as our common home. Take the meta view, and see Earth as a speck of dust, a pale blue dot in a vast universe - and stop shitting where you eat.