Blockchains allow for the immutable encoding of Capitalism.
We are already seeing a vast number of "traditional" finance applications being written on the blockchain. Applications that reinforce the Capitalist mode of production, in a way that is impossible to ever get rid of.
What are these "applications"?
DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations)
DAOs are "smart contracts" (code that exists on the blockchain) that encode an organisation wherein there are voting/participation mechanisms. Members can make proposals to execute some series of transactions, members vote, (upon the proposal passing) the transactions get executed.
Why is this bad?
Two reasons.
The first reason: The sheer majority of DAOs that have been created are traditional private ownership organisations. Your power in the organisation is directly proportional to how wealthy you are. Yes, any run-of-the-mill person can hop on and become a member, but this does not differ from traditional publicly-traded corporations in any way whatsoever. I can become a part-owner of Google if I want, but because I am not rich, I will always be out-powered by the mega-rich. Don't let anyone trick you into thinking these DAOs "help the little guy" by providing lower barriers to entry, more transparency, etc. While they do provide more transparency, I would argue that makes little difference to the fact that these organisations in no way empower anyone other than the rich.
The second reason: While DAOs provide more transparency in regards to what the DAO is doing, it provides the polar opposite regarding who is doing it.
How do I exile a corrupt businessman when their only identity is ihateminorities.eth?
Gone are the days when we were able to hold individual rulers accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Lending and Borrowing
This is probably one of the only areas that I see a non-negligible benefit for ordinary people (kind of). Decentralised lending and borrowing protocols allow you to freely lend your money in a way that doesn't allow you to get ripped off by a big bank. For example, I can put my USD into app.aave.com and get far more interest than any bank would ever give me.
Obviously this only matters if I'm privileged enough to actually be able to save up USD.
It obviously means nothing for most people.
Perpetual Swaps
Gambling for rich people. A good way to lose your life savings if you aren't already buffered with a lot of wealth.
Synthetic assets
Ways to "invest" in to stocks/cryptos/etc without actually owning it. Not much to say here.
Prediction markets
Decentralised betting platforms are still betting platforms. They still allow the average joe to get addicted and lose all their money.
Remember, once the majority of the financial world switches to using blockchain technologies, it will never be possible to get rid of it. Blockchains are "immutable".
Is there any reason why I should not be scared of this?
Provide me with any way you could stop, get rid of, or end this immutable & permanent hardcoding of Capitalism, and I will explain why it is impossible.
You can totally destroy it. Just persecute anyone who runs a bitcoin miner (aka the thing that processes transactions). Which as far as I know is as simple as just tracking internet traffic using the bitcoin network protocol. At some point, the system has so few bitcoin miners that it becomes unusable. Also, stop people from converting bitcoin into currency. I don't think it's really that much harder to dismantle than any other banking system.
First of all thank you for providing actual real examples as a rebuttal to my claim. Honestly, I appreciate it!
If you can achieve this for everywhere on the planet, this would completely work.
Despite how illegal it is to buy hard drugs online, you can still do it with relative ease and risklessness if you know what you're doing.
I just don't see how it is feasible to eliminate this completely.
It obviously begs the question of if we ban it at the legal level, is that not sufficient? In the context of traditional finance, yes, of course it is. For blockchains? I don't think so. The use-cases that DeFi provides (which if you are not aware of, please lmk) means that there will always be demand for it. On top it being technologically infeasible to stop anyone from accessing/running blockchains.
I do believe that it might be possible to achieve all of this if blockchains are banned in enough countries that it becomes less desirable to the extent that nobody wants to use them. But I believe that achieving this would be an astronomical task.