New Rules

New Rules

Using safety arguments disingenuously to control disruptive innovation.

Evolutionary changes come with new rules that supersede the old rules and profoundly impact our daily lives. How we react to these rules is what matters. For many, change, especially exponential change, is terrifying. By clinging to the old ways, we hope to maintain some of the comforts those ways bring instead of accepting and embracing the reality that the only thing constant in the universe is change.

The old saying “hindsight is 20 20” highlights the dynamic that it is easy to see truth and reality in the context of history. To understand how new rules change culture and reality, let’s go way back to 1400 AD. If you wanted to know something, you would seek out a person who could afford books or a clergy member. These were people who had access to books and manuscripts that contained knowledge. The rule was “ Knowledge Scarcity”, The rich and the church were the keepers of knowledge because they controlled access to books.

Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with movable type and changed the rules about knowledge.

When books became widely available, the rule changed because information books and knowledge became widely available. The rule was. “Knowledge Abundance”. The church pushed back against this change because it challenged their monopoly on power derived from books. At the same time, another knock-on effect has become known as the Age of Enlightenment — a renaissance of knowledge innovation and profound changes in daily life.

So for conservative Church leadership grounded in stability, permanence, and singular authority, the world turning upside down through exponential technology fueled change penetrating every parish had to feel apocalyptically disorienting and terrifying. It was like the end of a thousand year empire built on the monopoly of truth coming down around them at blistering speed. The unyielding force of exponentials spared nothing.

This brief history is an oversimplified explanation of hundreds of years of change to make a point about new rules. When they are introduced, the change is inevitable, regardless of how holders of the old rule protect their monopoly. The church feared that the control of knowledge would fall into the hands of someone who would lead the world in the wrong direction. They could not comprehend that the information explosion would result in the Age of Enlightenment. They projected the understanding of their present onto the technology of the future and came up with a false rule. “ Knowledge needs to be controlled. “

The speed at which the church was stripped of its monopoly was beyond their comprehension; after being the last word in most matters, new ideas challenged orthodoxy in every part of the world.

Exponential Technology Changes

New technology tends to bring profound changes: the internet, smartphones, automobiles, steam power, and, most recently, blockchain. The internet was an order of magnitude expansion on the printing press. With the introduction of smartphones now, everyone could access an ever-expanding amount of information. These technologies made it more challenging for dictators (monopolies of power) to deceive the populace with lies. This is precisely why the internet is controlled or prohibited in countries like China and North Korea.

As with the Catholic Church of 1450 AD, these monopolies will also fall. The leaders of these countries cannot conceive of a world without their control. Even if they could, they are too insecure in their power to let evolution happen. Chinese citizens regularly find a way around the great firewall of China. people in North Korea, while they don’t know what the world outside Korea is like, they know anything is better than the lives they are living.

Back to 2024

Now, let’s look at the present day and drill down on one of the most fundamental technological changes that just occurred in the last 15 years: money. By combining several existing technologies, somebody developed a digital form of money. They also released it to the world in a way that allowed it to grow into something that could challenge the existing orthodoxy of money. What happened next is a pattern we have seen throughout history: technology introduces new rules, and exponential change overwhelms the existing controllers of monopolies.

The “New Rules” introduced by Bitcoin bring with them the possibility of an exponential explosion in the technology of money. From sea shells to coins to paper and now digital coins, banks and governments are not so stupid that they cannot see the writing on the wall. So they try what the church did hundreds of years ago: spin a narrative and promote PR that any change in their monopolistic power is evil, sinful, and should be avoided at any cost.

Another Red Flag Act

Digital Asset Sanctions Compliance Enhancement Act is the latest in a long stream of bullshit legislation. Identical to the Locomotives on Highways Act of 1865 in the United Kingdom. Formally referred to as “An Act for regulating the use of Automobiles on Highways.”

• Passed by the UK Parliament in 1861 and went into effect in 1865
• Required automobiles traveling on public roads to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag to warn horse carriages
• Set speed limit for road locomotives/automobiles to 2 mph in cities/towns and four mph in rural areas
• Unfounded claims justified this act, declaring it would prevent uncontrolled road use and improve safety
• But seen mainly by historians as an attempt by established interests to restrain the growth of early automotive technology

So, in essence, the “Red Flag Act,” as it was informally known, was one of the earliest automotive regulatory laws that claimed to promote safety. However, its incredibly restrictive provisions significantly stifled the development of British motor transport compared to continental Europe.

The law was thus more about protecting the horse carriage industry by placing speed/usage limits on the emerging technology of motor vehicles. It illustrates a classic example of using safety arguments to prevent disruptive innovations.

People who use critical thinking to question the changes that technology inevitably brings rather than follow the lemmings over the cliff lead lives of freedom and enlightenment. These folks only require an open mind and access to the facts. Eventually, everyone will come around, but the thinkers and questioners will be the first to reap the benefits of technological changes.