Embrace Decentralized Systems. Fear Centralized Ones. Know The Difference.

It’s Our Own Fault. All of it. Corruption. FTX. Voting systems. If a System has been Corrupted, it’s time to bust out the antidote: TRANSPARENCY and DECENTRALIZATION

The number one most important factor for determining quality of life on Earth is this: What kind of system do you live under?

Think about it. If you tell us what kind of systems you live under - from systems of government, medicine, family, infrastructure, education, religion, community and more - chances are we can predict what kind of life you have.

That’s why at The Rationalist we relentlessly ask that we all zoom out our lenses, forget about the hot button issues that divide us all, and come together on this one issue: Let’s fix the systems that govern over our lives so we can then work on the individual problems better.

It is vital to remember this one simple rule: The more decentralized and transparent a system is, the harder it is to corrupt.

If you have read more than a handful of our articles, then you know that we are especially fond of transparent-decentralized systems because we believe in the power of groups of highly aligned people working and collaborating together for the same goal. On the flipside, we also have a healthy fear for the corruption that centralized power lures to itself and the danger that poses to the members of the system.

For most of time, humans lived in a world where the power was consolidated into the hands of a few kings. Then a few hundred years ago that shifted into more decentralized/democratic systems and the power was spread out. As a result, overall things started to improve immensely for quality of life. The more decentralized the system was, the more it seemed to improve. But in the last 50 and especially the last 20 years all the power has begun being consolidated again. So it’s important to examine what that truth means to us right now. What are the results of living under this re-centralization of power?

Remember…. results matter most.

The results right now are this: People with powerful centralized agendas have us on the brink of war. No institution seems trustworthy. Our government is corrupted. People don’t trust the media. People don’t trust the voting systems. People don’t trust medicine, or science, or academia or even language (what is a woman?). Right now we live in a world where people sit in laboratories making viruses more dangerous even though most of us agree that is a horrible idea. Right now we exist in a reality that despite technology evolving at such an amazing pace this century, all the people of Earth are getting sicker and sicker. That shouldn’t be happening in an aware society living under a good system. Technology should be helping us understand more, and live longer, happier lives. Something isn’t right. Something is obviously very corrupted.

The answer to all of it lies in the systems we allow to govern over our lives.

There are only two kinds of systems: effective and ineffective. Our current system seems to be losing efficacy at an alarming rate. So we need to have a sense of urgency, and do something about it.

Centralized power is always alluring to those who want to wield it. Like the ring in Lord of The Rings, profiteers and tyrants alike salivate over controlling centralized power. One ring to rule them all. The most effective way to curb this problem is with decentralization.

Think about it from the perspective of someone who is trying to hack, game or corrupt a system. In a decentralized one the hacker will only get the information of one person - one node of the system - if they are successful. In this scenario they will work extremely hard to get very little reward. But in a centralized system they will often get a massive cache of thousands of different people’s data. The risk is often the same but the reward for attacking the centralized system is greater. Thus, much more tempting.

We should be actively stopping corruption by continuously making our systems better. When was the last time this happened? We should be constantly asking ourselves: do these systems still hold accountable and dishonor people who attempt to corrupt them?

As people, we need to harness, amplify, and keep the power spread out over all of society with well crafted systems. We need to make sure all systems that govern over us are not corrupted or corruptible at mass scaling. To do that we need to use transparency to expose where the corruption points occur, and then fix them.

As an important caveat, there is one thing to pay attention to that gets kind of tricky. Often there are multiple systems working together. Some centralized, some decentralized, and some a fusion of the two systems. In any case, the system with the final say over the other ones hold all the power. Picture that hand-over-hand game you play with a baseball bat to see who bats first… the last hand on top wins. Now picture that with systems. If a centralized system controls a decentralized one - the centralized system has control of everything. If a decentralized system controls a centralized one, then it has the control.

To understand this better let’s use government as an example. The centralized businesses in America were supposed to be kept in check by the centralized entity of government. Government was supposed to act as a referee between business and people, and people and each other, and for a while it did that safely. This was only safe because the decentralized power of the people working together en masse voting had the final say. So the controlling system for a long time was the decentralized voters.

But is that still the case?

If the systems of voting are corrupted, then that would mean that the whole system is corrupted. Why? Because the people with the final hand on the bat here would now be the centralized ones who were corrupting the system, and no longer the decentralized voters.

At The Rationalist we believe that the best problems to solve are the root problems, the ones deep under other ones. In this case, that problem appears to be the trust that has eroded within the systems.

If we ignore the hot button issue of “stolen elections” for a second, and just honestly and scientifically examine the current American trust in the voting system, how does it score? Trust is low. When you have elected officials in 2016 saying that the system is rigged when Trump won, then now again the opposite in 2020 and 2022 when Biden and the left win, that says something.

Add to that the obvious fact that money in politics controls politicians, and sways elections, and it is clear that trust in the entire system is failing. Most people now believe that it is no longer the decentralized voters in control. It is the centralized corporations and the people colluding to corrupt our systems who are.

What we need to repair first is trust. Good decentralized systems require trust. It is an absolute.

Another good example is look at what just happened in the crypto currency realm. Crypto itself - if correctly decentralized (like Bitcoin is) - is very very very hard to corrupt. While nothing is impossible, Bitcoin has never been successfully hacked or counterfeited (at least to our knowledge at the time of this writing). But, as we all know recently a centralized entity - an exchange - got control of the decentralized currencies (using individual decentralized keys) and corrupted the system. The control went back to the centralized people at FTX and their cronies. How? They took advantage of the trust (there’s that word again) traders had given them.

This should be a lesson to all of us: Always fight to have the last hand on the bat. We the people - the decentralized entity - need to be the final say in all systems. And if our systems of voting or control are corrupted we can’t wait for centralized entities to come help us fix them. We need to work together and build new systems that will reassure trust, and those systems need to be built by us - open sourced - not by centralized government.

Imagine a new paradigm- making our own new systems that plug into the current ones that will give us better decentralized control in the end - like we have talked about so many times before such as here, here, here, and here (and a bunch more).

Don’t lose faith in voting. Don’t lose faith in Bitcoin. Both can have their trust reestablished by understanding and improving the systems they are in.

The confidence that is being questioned in the DeFi crypto-world right now isn’t crypto’s fault. This was our own fault for putting the trust in the wrong type of system - a centralized exchange. Had we all kept our own keys, or used a decentralized and transparent exchange, none of this would have happened.

As for voting, there is absolutely no excuse not to have transparent, open sourced, and difficult to corrupt systems in place.

At The Rationalist, we emphatically still believe that Bitcoin (and all decentralization) is the future. We own it not just as an investment, but also as a protest to centralized systems having the last say over our lives. The last hand on the bat should always belong to the people.

Also to note, FTX (the crypto-exchange that went bankrupt) wasn’t the top hand on the bat there. The US Government was. But isn’t that just another centralized entity that has been obviously corrupted? The government will likely swoop in now trying to “rescue” crypto. But in reality they’ll have a bunch of legislation that will attempt to control the decentralized currencies. However, we don’t believe they will be able to stop this, especially if everyone takes self custody of their tokens.

Anyone who has read the book The Starfish and The Spider (that we often recommend such as here) knows that if decentralized entities are prepared to fight back then they only get stronger when attacked. Think about what happened when the US government tried to shut down Napster back in the day and new, more-decentralized platforms popped up everywhere.

This is why we are so fascinated with what is happening in the crypto-world right now. The best and brightest minds on this planet (in our opinion) such as Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan are here in this realm. If these types of people wake up to the kind of organized systematic decentralized counter-attack we need as humans, then we are VERY optimistic for the future of humanity. Sure it looks ugly right now. As a society we are a big fat prickly caterpillar eating everything in our path. But we have entered a cocoon. And on the other side is a butterfly of human super-collaboration in a way never seen before, using technology to harness the power of highly aligned groups of people on the same mission.

For now, here are some examples of power that when wielded by a small centralized group of people becomes dangerous, and when spread out becomes beautiful for society.

At the Rationalist we like to think of ourselves as a Society of Problem Solvers, and if you are with us then think about this:

So the next step for humans is to develop new and better ways to organize ourselves in decentralized systems as “SUPER COLLABORATORS.” Technology has the answer, and we have some interesting ideas on how-to coming up in future articles!

Thank you for reading!

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As always the entire purpose of The Rationalist is to connect with other solutions-minded people like yourself! We strive to be a Society of Problem Solvers, and if you align with that we want you to join us. For 4 billion years on this planet there were only single-celled organisms. Then one day they somehow learned to work together and make complex multi-celled creatures like you and me. Right now we are like those single-celled organisms. Our next evolution is finding how to work together, better. Decentralized.

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About the author:
Josh R. Ketry - Strategy and Systems Director & Consultant - is an advocate for freedom, human growth, and human potential. A Brazilian Jiu Jitsu blackbelt and Academy owner. Growth Mindset student (for life). Entrepreneur. Writer. Long-time carnivore diet practitioner for autoimmune issues. Thank you for letting me write for The Rationalist Think Tank!