Replying to Avatar Globe99

"Make raids costly" -- In "The Art of Not Being Governed" historian James C. Scott describes the context of medieval Southeast Asia, where the topology created a division between "Hulu" -- mountain people -- and "Hilir" -- valley people.

Governments could control the hilir people because they were tied down to wet rice agriculture, thus were a fixed target for taxation and control. In contrast, "hulu" people were nomadic and lived at higher elevations, thus making raids costly in terms of time, manpower, energy, etc.

Encrypted comms, Bitcoin, etc -- these are "hulu" tech. They raise the costs for State intervention, potentially on a mass scale.

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Stacking Functions 9mo ago

Man I love that author! 'Seeing Like a State' changed my world paradigm on a dime. Being "illegible" to the state has been one of our mantras since

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