Predictions for the next 30-40 years and why they are difficult to make. How networks make the nation-state model obsolete. The future of politics is not left vs. right, it's land vs. cloud. The networked vs. the landlocked.
Transcript
[ANDREAS] Go ahead. [AUDIENCE] Thirty, forty, or fifty years in the future... What are your dreams or visions? Will some [major] price change happen?
Will nation states [do something]? [ANDREAS] I try to not make predictions in Bitcoin exceeding thirty or forty days into the future. The best way to be correct is to not make predictions. The future is very harsh when it comes to predictions.
The worst part is, if you make a really stupid prediction, you will go down in history books... as the guy who said, "The world will only ever need one computer," or the guy who said, "Electricity is a fad." "It will disappear as soon as we dismantle the Eiffel Tower." Wrong on two counts in the history books. I can't do a prediction out to thirty or forty years. I do know that the nation-state, as a system of organization, is being severely threatened by network- centric organization on a global scale.
Today, of the ten largest populations in the world, four of them are nation states... and six of them are internet applications. Facebook is the most populous concentration of human beings on the planet. Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat, etc.
Somewhere [on the list] is China and India. The United States is in seventh place. The world has already changed. Whether that will affect nation states, we will see.
Balaji Srinivasan, the CEO of 21 Inc., once told me that the future of politics will not be left versus right. It will be 'land' versus 'cloud.' Most of the world still lives on land, but some of us now live in the cloud. Land wants to keep us tied up and tax us based on where we live, but we don't live in any specific place. We travel by air all over the world.
This will be the dominant battle of the future: the global community of the networked versus the landlocked feudalistic past. But we [must wait and] see.