Thread · 7 tweets · 13 Feb 2022

"History shows that inequality is essentially ideological and political, not economic or technological." Somehow I'd missed this @PikettyLeMonde essay when it came out - it's good. (ht @anabmap) noemamag.com/long-live-part…

"First of all, no valid environmental policy can be carried out if it is not part of a global socialist project based on the reduction of inequalities, the permanent circulation of power and property and the redefinition of economic indicators."

"When you own nothing, you have to accept everything" This is also the dynamic that any reform of tech must address. If the web is indeed "for everyone," then all of its necessary infrastructure must be under collective governance.

Conversely, when someone claims to build a system for everyone but in which they control the infrastructure, that's just totalitarian populism. When a tech company claims to "democratise access" to something, it's often this.

The creation of meaningful transnational institutions that complement rather than remove local sovereignty is also dear to my heart. We need much, much greater institutional capacity, particularly at transnational scales. Not just to manage tech, but that's a place to start.

The sci-fi trope of the UN running the world is naive. It comes from the false idea that only a world government is legitimate in world-scale affairs. Which comes from the false idea that elections make democracy. If only it were that simple to build a democratic system...

It's possible instead to create overlapping, stakeholder-operated, domain-specific institutions that are legitimate at global scales. Everything points to the idea that this kind of scale-free polycentricity is what we need to distribute control, and in that empower flourishing.