The following is a brief introduction to the topic:
Bitcoins will not replace the political system, but revolutionize it.
If hyperbitcoinization became a real thing, with Bitcoin as the core of the new currency system arising from the ruins left by the fiat system of today, then the state still would be the dominant force in international relations. The state would emerge from the ashes of previous systems, much like a Phoenix from its ashes.
Max Weber’s famous essay written over 100 years ago. “Economy and Society,” State will use legal coercion as its distinctive method of acting. It is because it has the essence of an internal monopolist. rex superiorem non recognoscentes externally.
Bitcoin will bring about new, diverse, and difficult-to-imagine transformations for the nation. The state will face many challenges, including changes to geographical reach, capabilities, ambitions, and resources. The state, despite the wishes of the anarcho-capitalists or the most ardent libertarians will still exist as a structure for society.
In a world hyperbitcoinized, the cooperative, voluntary and transactional aspects of human interactions will still be present, but they won’t be exclusive.
Some people will choose force as a way to express their views, just because they find it convenient and feasible. As animal-like beings, we are prone to violence. This will continue as long humans exist on the planet. As long as there is violence, efforts will be made to legitimize it, organize and regulate. It is therefore a ‘historical requirement’ that the state be a power-concentrator and regulator. The state can be imposed by force, whether it is a result of annexation, invasion or a social agreement amongst equals. “man is a wolf to man” In a situation where one group dominates another, it is called a state. Over time, this has changed from tribes to nation states to empires.
It will have a limited ability to manipulate currency and accumulate debts. It will have to shrink in size and scope and return to its core duties: regulating, adjudicating and ensuring safety and defense. It would be a state that is minimalist, like the minarchist-favored one, and based on consent. The state could resemble a tiny city-state, among others. Or it could be compact nation-states centered on religious, linguistic and ethnic identities.
The future path suggests that the global landscape will be reminiscent of historical political models such as ancient China and its pre-imperial state, sixth-century BC Greece, with its poleis or the American West in the 19th century. The world will be a safer place with less political violence, and this is due to a higher level of material prosperity, a greater abundance of goods and a decrease in predatory human tendencies driven by scarcity of resources.
The technological progress will facilitate and continue to facilitate the communication of prisoners as an alternative to war and a widespread trade.
Kant’s vision of perpetual peace is not realistic. Interstate war is likely to be rarer in a world like this, and will only be a resort as if it were utterly impossible. Some groups would use force to get their way, even if it meant causing war with their neighbors. This rare occurrence would likely lead to less bloodshed and resource consumption than it does today due to the diminished economic power and capacity of the newly formed state as well as prevailing interest in peaceful trade.
Diplomacy & Blockchain
The Bitcoin network comes into play again in this scenario, where there are many small sovereign countries, intensive trade and relative anarchy. There will be diplomatic activities and a blossoming of multilateral and bilateral alliances. Bitcoin layer one is the perfect place to archive and ratify agreements, treaties and other international documents.
In fact, commercial and diplomatic negotiations are very similar. One revolves around the bargaining of states over treaties and another revolves around contracting. Contracts cannot be signed without the trust of merchants. Similarly, treaties can’t be ratified in a world where there’s no trust. Trust is therefore essential not just in the private economy but in all political and diplomatic relations.
If the world is more decentralized than it is now, with every financial transaction based on “trust” in the Bitcoin chain or the higher abstractions of it, where security and inviolability will be ensured by the biggest network of computer ever, then it makes sense that newly-formed states would choose this as the location to store legally binding relations. How?
One could rely on the ordinal theory of Bitcoin to develop a dedicated standard for digital signatures originating from wallets/pubkeys belonging to sovereign states and build from this an ‘official’ protocol for the ratification, registration, and amendment of international treaties on the layer 1 of Bitcoin that is universally recognized through a consensus criterion by the network nodes and as a customary law among sovereign states.
Why the Bitcoin Layer 1 specifically?
The Bitcoin native blockchain, in addition to having a symbolic value of being the foundation for the next international currency system, offers many advantages to international treaties as it is able to be used as a recording platform. This includes its intrinsic characteristics, such as transparency and traceability (monitorability), unchangeability, ordinality, (the timestamp to determine a date for every transaction), and neutrality (as it is a public good, usable by everyone, not owned by anyone and not susceptible to influence).
The increase in fees could have an added benefit. It would be more valuable to give weight to the agreements made between parties, and what’s recorded there, than it is today (similar to positional products).
Consider the ability to create a tree structure of “smart-treaties” on higher layers of Bitcoin based on transactions (events) that occur on the main Blockchain or other layers. This tool’s flexibility can be used to expand current diplomatic agreements’ options and functions. The expansion of these treaties can be highly interactive and detailed, making them more effective in a fragmented international political system.
Conclusions
Conclusion: Using Bitcoin blockchain for archiving and inscribing international agreements and treaties could have many advantages, including immutability and neutrality. It would also be cost-effective and offer programmability. This technology has the potential to revolutionize international agreement management, updating, monitoring, and writing, while ensuring more security, trust, and transparency among all parties. The improvements will, in turn promote cooperative behaviors, as taught by game theory, and therefore reduce the risks of interstate wars, maximising the benefits to all parties of the future system of international relations.
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com
