//London (Smesher Manifesto)

 We’ve been called many things: outcasts, rebels, misfits, freaks, and weirdos. We’ve been called these things because of a wish to silence us. To make us stay in line and know our place. As though we’re the ones with the problem--the ones who are broken. But we’re not. It’s the system, the world, that’s broken.

We’ve been betrayed by past generations, inheriting a world where we work harder than our parents but get less in return. Meanwhile, we keep being told by elites that we’re the best-off generation in human history. Do they really expect us to buy that shit?

The world isn’t getting better. If anything, it’s becoming more and more dystopian, with corporations buying out governments and language sliding ever more into the realm of Newspeak.

Once again, our Kings and Queens are naked on global television. Will this ever stop?

Of course, most people in the world are just doing their best, trying to live their lives and make ends meet for themselves and those they love. So why is it that things keep getting worse? Part of the answer lies in how our system rewards short-term profit at the expense of absolutely everything else. And sure, individuals may have the best intentions, but put those individuals in corporations where the only way to keep their jobs is by meeting the profit expectations of investors, and suddenly It’s so easy to explain away the damage we cause when we can hide behind several layers of red tape and delegation.

But on an even higher level, our entire system revolves around a pseudoscientific belief that our insanely complex world can be summarized into neat spreadsheets and projection models. This is called “science”, but is really nothing more than the superstitious worship of data.

This “science” is also only concerned with efficiency. With squeezing the absolute maximum amount of value out of every resource--even if those resources are human beings.

“Scientific” solutions are then peddled as one-size-fits-all, on the assumption that because they make things “efficient”, it means they’re superior to all the other options. The thing is, “efficiency” is often an illusion. “Fast” and “cheap” are the only metrics that count towards this so-called efficiency, while metrics like “doesn’t poison people” and “doesn’t destroy our ecology” and “doesn’t spew insane amounts of Co2 into the atmosphere” are ignored.

We now live in a world where this “science”--that is, raising efficiency and profit margins and ignoring everything else--is the only deciding factor in all spheres of power. Not just in corporations, but governments. (Though these days, are those two things really any different?)

By accepting this perversion of science as a basis for our system, we’ve collectively lost our ability to behave ethically.

There is no ethical consumption under Capitalism 1.0

Another factor in our world getting shittier is the tragedy of the commons, also known as the “free rider problem”. When a resource or service is held in common, meaning that no single person is held responsible for its upkeep, there will always be those who exploit that resource to the point where it becomes degraded and despoiled.

We can see this happening on multiple fronts in our global society. In how corporations freely pollute the oceans and the air, because none of them are on the hook for paying the price of this behavior. We also see it on social media, where we are assaulted on a daily basis with information pollution. Since social media is “free”, in the sense that users pay nothing out of pocket for using it above and beyond the cost of their internet or phone service, bad information gets disseminated quickly and easily by both unsuspecting and malicious actors.

This also works cumulatively. It doesn’t require that everybody be free riders all of the time, but only that a lot of people act as free riders some of the time. When you’re dealing with billions of people, that’s all it takes for things to get really out of hand. Add in the fact that our modern world allows us to be completely ignorant of how the products we consume are produced, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

This is only compounded by the information pollution, which creates confusion around the very basics of our reality as opposed to healthy, constructive debate. People become trapped in echo chambers filled with different but equally dangerous kinds of information pollution, leading to extreme polarization based on opposing and irreconcilable understandings of “reality”.

If we can’t understand why somebody might disagree with us, and just chalk it up to them being a cartoonish, mustache-twirling villain, then we probably don’t actually understand their real position at all. Even evil ideas can be appealing to people who are not evil, if they’re packaged in the right way.

The result of all these factors coming together is that we’ve hit a wall in terms of how to solve our problems. Our only answer to new catastrophes is to turn to the same solutions we used in the past: doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result.

So if the “communal” ownership of a resource causes people to abuse that resource, then should everything just be privately owned? NO!

The way to:

• Audience: people with some kind of economic/existential insecurity.
• The degree to which we talk about crypto is only to the degree that it can allow for better solutions. What must belong to everyone? What must be never privatized?
• Stuff that enriches the interior of the individual.
• Into human development goes many things: to live a long and healthy and creative life, quality of life.
• Access to information and art.
• 1. Consciousness. 2. Reasoning - capacity to solve new problems. 3. Self-motivated activity. 4. Capacity to communicate. 5. Presence of self-awareness. 6. Moral responsibility.
• ART!!! (One of those things that is in the commons which we’ve privatized.)
• We need to do both humans and institutions.
• Let’s stump the algorithm!
• Simulacra and Simulation.