Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet
&gt; In its early days, there was a lot of talk about the “natural laws of the Internet” and how it would empower the masses, upend traditional power blocks, and spread freedom throughout the world. The international nature of the Internet made a mockery of national laws. Anonymity was easy. Censorship was impossible. Police were clueless about cybercrime. And bigger changes were inevitable. Digital cash would undermine national sovereignty. Citizen journalism would undermine the media, corporate PR, and political parties. Easy copying would destroy the traditional movie and music industries. Web marketing would allow even the smallest companies to compete against corporate giants. It really would be a new world order.<p>Reading it written like this, I think I understand why it was that the Internet as it was <i>couldn&#x27;t</i> last: it was, effectively, a state of nature.  The Internet was a great frontier, where folks were finally freed of the constraints of the old order.<p>The problem is that the old order itself was formed out of the chaos of an older frontier still — and that frontier was populated by folks escaping an even older order, and so on back to the dawn of man.<p>The state of nature is inherently unstable, because people will band together to use violence and&#x2F;or the threat of violence against those who violate their mores, whether those mores are going to church on Sundays in the Middle Ages (as various heretics discovered) or not giving to conservative charities (as Brendan Eich discovered).  Some people want a frontier (generally, those who are relatively weak in the current order and wish to escape its establishment) but, once they have established a sphere of power for themselves, they defend it and become the new establishment.<p>If only there were a way to ensure a permanent frontier, where dissenters and freethinkers (and, yes, criminals) can escape and form their own orders, until their own dissenters and freethinkers escape away again.<p>I don&#x27;t think most people want that, though.  We saw it with the collapse of Ethereum&#x27;s DAO.  We see it every time someone says, &#x27;there ought to be a law.&#x27;  We see it every time a government forces someone to do something he would rather not do.  People want safety; they want security; they want conformity; they want power over others.