from Hacker News

The End of Power

by pelle on 4/14/13, 9:05 PM with 27 comments

• by vonskippy on 4/14/13, 10:52 PM

  When a small fraction of one percent controls well over 2/3 of the world's assets - explain how the "current power brokers/structure" is ending.

  This article is nothing but pie in the sky fantasy.

• by parasubvert on 4/15/13, 2:14 AM

  I think the author is correctly pointing out that the nature of power bases are shifting, but otherwise I think this article is mostly a bunch of wild stabs in the dark.

  That said, these sorts of articles do resonate with an idea that's been growing in my head the past few years, that the dominant base & form of power is changing as technology has progressed, and the old power base is ramping up its efforts to fight this trend.

  In that vein, a philosophy book that really hit home for me on the nature of power in today's IP-connected world was __Protocol__ - How Control Exists after Decentralization, by Alexander Galloway. Now, this sort of read may not be everyone's thing, and as with most philosophy books in the French tradition (think Deleuze & Guattari) , it often tries too hard.... but it's a provocative way of looking at how Internet protocol architecture and its resulting conflict patterns are starting to bleed into real world politics -- e.g. the control that others have over you by remaining connected vs. the power of being disconnected; "exploits" as the new dominant form of resistance against the power of protocols to control, etc. I'm not doing it justice here, but may be a good read if you're at all interested in postmodern philosophy (other than to laugh at, or justify the first two Matrix movies... which admittedly, is mostly what the discipline is good for).

• by adventured on 4/15/13, 12:18 AM

  I disagree with the core premise. There's nothing fundamentally new about what's going on. Authority is not being undermined more than it was in the past. Technology may be speeding up the process, and enabling easier communication however.

  The Christians effectively toppled (or consumed from within) the Roman empire, starting from an exceptionally small base.

  Starting from a small group in each country, Communists took over Russia and China - the world's largest countries by land mass and population - and they did it exceptionally quickly considering.

  Other examples: Simon Bolivar, Fidel Castro, the Founding Fathers, Khmer Rouge, Saddam Hussein, 1979 Iranian revolution, the Taliban. And those are just a few examples from the last couple hundred years. History is littered with a gazillion more, small and large, of varying ideologies. None of which needed smart phones or the Internet.

  These types of things have always happened throughout history.

• by msutherl on 4/14/13, 11:01 PM

  I find it interesting that many of the claims to progress cite percentage deltas, but presumably those statistics don't factor in population growth. Could it be, for instance, that just as many people are in extreme poverty as in the 70's, but that there are simply more well-off people now?

• by rodrigoavie on 4/14/13, 11:17 PM

  I agree with the three "revolutions" described in the article. I really believe they are happening and actually believe we can expect them to continue happening.

  Its just that the numbers are to good to be believed. I may be biased tho.

  Anyway, I sure hope the article is 100% correct.