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Talk TLDR

Individualists & Collectivists do not agree on much - especially not how to organize society.

These differences are amplified by nation-state era (coercive collectivism).

Web3 can bridge this divide (non-coercive collectivism).

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Individualism stresses individual goals and the rights of the individual person.

Focuses on group goals, what is best for the collective group, and interpersonal relationships

INDIVIDUALISM

COLLECTIVISM

Autonomy

Independence

Self-sufficiency

Uniqueness

Privacy

Emphasizes:

Group and social cooperation

Doing what’s best for society

Families & communities

Sharing

Emphasizes:

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These two groups often disagree with each other.

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	Individualist Definition of...	Collectivist Definition of...
...Individualist	Individualism is about mutualism and voluntary cooperation.	Individualism stresses individual goals and the rights of the individual person.
... Collectivist	Collectivism is generally about forced or coercive cooperation.	Collectivism focuses on group goals, what is best for the collective group, and interpersonal relationships

Cares about individual sovereignty & avoiding coercion.

Cares about group good.

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Individualist Critiques of Collectivism

First Principles Argument:

Taxation is theft

Proponents of this position see taxation

as a violation of the non-aggression principle.

Under this view, government transgresses property rights by enforcing compulsory tax collection, regardless of what the amount may be.

This right to collect tax is enforced via “threat of violence” & their monopoly on force.

Consequentialist Take:

Taxation creates corruption

The government is likely to blunder anything it administers, so try to remove as much from government as possible.

Any government bureaucracy is likely to be corrupt; doling out favors to family & friends.

Regulatory capture - bought by lobbyists. And industry insiders get to write the laws that govern them, killing competition. (Insurance lobbying for the ACA)

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Collectivist Criticism

of Individualism

Consequentialist Take

If we don’t fund public goods, we have no public goods.

Public goods make up 90% of value derived in society.

We sometimes take public goods for granted.

Wouldn’t you pay 25% to have a 1000% better world?

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What’s at odds is the ability to fund public goods.

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List of public goods

fresh air / herd immunity / open source / public roads / flood control systems / street lighting / open space / lighthouses / parks / journalism / information goods / privacy / public beaches / public television / knowledge

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List of public goods

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Are individualist concerns like government coercion more urgent than collectivist concerns like climate change?

In a way, these disagreements boil down to a zero sum game:

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INDIVIDUALIST

Sovereignty Rules Everything Around me.

COLLECTIVIST

Wants to focus on group goals

OPPORTUNITY

OPPORTUNITY - a healthy balance between autonomy and interdependence.

Room for you as an individual within the context of the larger non-coercive community/collective.

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Excludable

Non-Excludable

Rivalrous

Non-Rivalrous

Private Goods

Food, clothes, cars and other customer goods

Common Goods

Fish, timber, coal

Club Goods

Cinemas, private parks, satellite tv

Public Goods

Open source software, herd immunity

Private Goods - Fundable by business models

Common Goods - Fundable by business models

Club Goods - Fundable by business models

Public Goods - Fundable by

Web 3

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DAOs = Unbundled Governance of Public Goods

Governance

Rights

Public

Good

Scarce

Token

Radicle

Gitcoin Grants

Ethereum Name Service

The Graph

Climate

$RAD

$GTC

$ENS

$GRT

$KLIMA

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Wen non-coercive

public goods funding ?

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Web3 creates non-coercive markets for public goods.

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Arweave

ENS

Liquality

Ethereum

AAVE

Radicle

Common Stack

Commons

Axie

Polygon

Swarm

Gitcoin

Filecoin

Uniswap

3Box

Bankless

Sushi

Giveth

MetaCartel

Decentraland

DoingGud

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We can fund public goods at scale by stacking Impact DAOS.

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The World

Crypto

Gitcoin Grants, Retro PGs, Radicle, + other ImpactDAOs.

Software

Nations

The Big Idea

1. Build a parallel opt-in system for digital native public goods.

2. Which could then support a transition to non digital public goods.

3. We can transcend the old divisions once we transcend needing coercive nation states for public goods.

4. We can get a head start by building cultural inter-op between individualists & collectivists NOW.

The Public Goods “Stack”

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Web3 funding can scale public goods funding globally.

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What if we could take these models mainstream?

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Markets to Fund Individual

Public Goods

Information Age (Web3+)

Industrial Age

Coercive

Non-Coercive

Taxation To Fund

All Public Goods

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What if we could transcend our individualist/collectivist divide + build new mainstream public goods funding institutions together?

fin

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Web3 funds public goods but follows age-old principles

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Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles

for Managing A Commons

Clearly defined boundaries

Congruence between appropriation and provision

Collective choice arrangements

Monitoring

Graduated

sanctions

Conflict resolution mechanisms

Minimal recognition of rights to organize

Nested

enterprises

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Public Good

Administration Problems

Free Rider Problem

Administration can be high overhead.

Governments are not efficient vehicles to administer public goods.

Governments are coercive.

Anytime you’ve got a pot of money, you could have the capacity for corruption.

If you give people the choice, people will often free ride.

If enough people free ride, the whole system collapses due to lack of support.

This is called a Coordination Failure, a Multi-Polar trap.

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Assorted patterns & tensions on the Individualism/Collectivism Spectrum

Cooperation - behaviour in which individuals work together to solve common problems.

Solidarity - the capacity of a group to work together to solve common problems.

Groupthink - the view of the group suppresses the view of the individual.

Conformity - conforming to the expectations of the group.

Harmony - when tension is suppressed in favor of a feel good environment.

Norms - unspoken rules & expectations of culture.

Social Safety Net - services offered by a collective to provide quality of life.

Public Goods - goods that are non-excludable/non-rivalrous & available to all members of a group.

Capitalism - an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

Communism - an extreme form of collectivism where the government takes control of the economy.

Belonging - the sense of being part of something larger than yourself (if you want to go with a psychological bent)