🎂 Reflections upon turning 40 🎂
Two years ago, the pandemic began and I withdrew from society.
I was just getting back from the World Economic Forum in Davos, and Chiara and I guessed correctly that the novel coronavirus would escape Wuhan and infect the world. Our family stocked up on essentials, pulled our kids out of school before the lockdowns started and I voluntarily abandoned my activist career—no more public speaking, no more essays, no more social media.
Our family acted from the beginning as if the pandemic would last years, if not decades. We made the radical decision to respond differently to Covid than anyone we knew. We adapted to the possibility of a worst case scenario pandemic reality. And we’ve been living that way since: maintaining a vigilance against exposure despite the pressure to relax, conform, unmask.
This reorientation required a remaking of my self.
Since the age of 13, I had focused entirely on activism, protest and social movements. Being an activist—doing activism and having opinions on activism—was integral to how I saw myself and how I wanted to be seen. It was also how I saw the world. Before the pandemic I was the co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, the author of The End of Protest, the founder of Activist Graduate School, etc. That identity peaked with my trip to Davos and Extinction Rebellion and teaching activism at Princeton. But it wasn’t me anymore.
One year ago, I accelerated the process of creating a new self: I accepted an offer to work on cryptocurrencies doing due diligence and research on new projects. Crypto has been a passion of mine for a decade, but activism had pushed it into the background. (The activist scene is largely opposed to crypto, as I learned when I released Sparkle, an activist cryptocurrency.) Now the opportunity to dive deep into the fringe ushered in a new me.
Working in crypto, instead of activism, meant that there was no longer the incentive for me to speak publicly. Before the pandemic, I had to work hard to stay culturally relevant in order to earn invitations to give talks about protest. I had to push my ideas so that others could have opinions about them. I had to subject myself to the risk of being “canceled.” But now it was different.
Profits in crypto result from information asymmetry: when you know something others don’t. It was now better for me to keep knowledge private than to share.
Information asymmetry plays out in many different ways in crypto. The earliest users of a new crypto project are often more heavily rewarded than later users. (Airdrops to early adopters can be worth tens of thousands of dollars.) And the more technically knowledgeable users are often more heavily rewarded than less technically sophisticated users.
This struck home for me, for example, when the ConstitutionDAO failed to win the auction for the U.S. Constitution. I was amazed to read some journalists claiming people were losing their money. The truth was far different: while less sophisticated users rushed to get a refund, technically savvy users made a 400% profit by selling their tokens on a decentralized exchange instead of refunding through the smart contract. (Those who don’t understand how crypto works will have trouble deciphering the previous sentence.)
It is like there are two truths about crypto: the narratives spread by the mainstream and the knowledges held by the insiders.
And because there is a disincentive for insiders to rewrite the mainstream narrative, the divide continues to grow wider.
Once I began to recognize the presence of information asymmetry in crypto I started to see it elsewhere in society as well.
The scientists studying Covid, for example, keep uncovering disturbing facts about the long term consequences of “mild” infections—from brain damage to T cell apoptosis and long term long damage. Meanwhile, the mainstream encourages unmasking and Covid prevention is at risk of being defunded.
Or consider the war in Ukraine: the information Americans are allowed to access about the war is vastly different from what Russians receive. Americans can’t watch RT and Russians can’t watch the BBC, etc. And the removal of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and many other cross-border information flows, means that the information asymmetry will only continue to grow.
The trouble with the increasing information asymmetry is that the actions of the knowers become unintelligible to the ignorant.
So while some, like our family, continue to make extraordinary efforts to avoid Covid exposure, prepare for the imminent World War and plan for surviving catastrophic climate change, most others are thrown blindly into disaster.
What is to be done?
That’s a question my previous self would always ask at this point in an essay.
Well, in the “before times” I would probably be creating campaigns to wake people up. I’d be spreading my take on current events and hoping for a viral hit that shook people. Maybe I’d be launching a campaign like Balloon19, a movement to establish Covid-free multi-family communities.
In other words, my activist self would see information asymmetry as a social problem that could be confronted through social activism. I’d be trying to close the information gap. It’s a noble and good effort and I applaud those who are trying to do it.
My new self, however, reacts differently.
Micah White
March 16, 2022
In the “before times” I would probably be creating campaigns to wake people up. Maybe I’d be launching a campaign like Balloon19, a movement to establish Covid-free multi-family communities, inspired by the below comic:
Really nice to follow your thinking...but then what next? What happens in the collapse?