The new generation of crypto-anarchists differs significantly from their predecessors. This difference is evident in their approach: while the cypherpunks of the 1990s sought a Meta Solution, the new wave acknowledges the values of their forerunners but adopts strategies rooted in independence and systematicity.
The Meta Solution approach starts with cryptography as its foundation. It seeks a pivotal, highly leveraged solution branching into data privacy, communication freedom, and monetary liberty. The goal is to infiltrate existing society, injecting a super Trojan horse that silently shifts social paradigms.
The paradigm shift process of this Meta Solution involves expert groups providing powerful, trustless neutral technology to society. Due to its openness and network effects, it would be adopted by all social strata. The political nature of the technology would then permeate society as the network expands, with its embedded political characteristics redefining the entire social structure.
We can refer to the anarchists among the previous generation of cypherpunks as metaist cypherpunks. Why did metaism fail?
The metaism of cypherpunks is a variant of technological determinism. This view has been substantiated by inventions like the printing press, gunpowder, steam engine, steel furnace, automobiles and oil, and information technology. Technological revolutions reshape entire societies, transforming production relations. However, over the past three decades, cypherpunk technology has met a fate different from these earlier technological revolutions.
The government-corporate duopoly is ruled by bureaucrats. These are not the officials of feudal society, but a vast, intricate rational system – the pinnacle incarnation of modern technological rationality. The bureaucratic systems of governments and giant corporations co-opt all technologies beneficial to themselves to reinforce their power, and do not resist being transformed by technology.
This is the context in which the technological determinism of the Meta Solution attempts to define a new society.
However, the cypherpunk technology stack and ideology are fundamentally opposed to the government-corporate duopoly. The management requirements of the bureaucratic system demand observability, which enables control, which in turn allows the exercise of power to manage society. Faced with this type of technology, they astutely sensed the incompatibility with their system, extracted elements beneficial to themselves, while preemptively neutralizing the political virus within.
The result is that the cypherpunks' Meta Solution was precisely targeted and deconstructed by the bureaucratic system.
The prerequisite for metaism to be effective is to rapidly expand throughout society before the existing power groups become aware, creating new interest groups that demand systemic change. However, when it comes to incompatible competition involving power systems, the bureaucratic system is not as sluggish, stupid, arrogant, or ineffectively contentious as portrayed in post-utopian fiction. On the contrary, it is highly sensitive, efficient, possessing strong foresight and proactivity, uniting to preemptively eliminate all threats.
The cypherpunks' Meta Solution lacks the ability to compete with the bureaucratic system, the soul of modern society. Crypto-anarchists might cynically say: "Nothing good can grow in a bad society." The evidence from reality shows that the failure of the metaist strategy is a competitive failure. It's not a story of evil triumphing over justice, nor of conservatism suppressing innovation. It's simply that it couldn't overcome contemporary civilization.
