Transitioning from Decentralized Feudalism to Centralized Nation-States to Distributed Network Nations

Contextual Quote

"Those who appeal to God as their leviathan, for example, say “God will smite you” for wrong behavior; statists, on the other hand, pass laws and regulations; while networkers write code and build apps."

- Galtproj [1]

Discussion

1.

Galtproj:

"In feudal Europe (1000AD to 1500AD), power was organized locally and at a small scale. Numerous hereditary fief holders held significant sway over military, political, legal and tax policy. In this regard, the feudal world was somewhat decentralized. The Church, on the other hand, operated at large scale and across borders. The Church influenced policy, collected revenue streams from across Europe and, on occasion, raised multinational armies. God, via the Catholic Church, became the first European leviathan.

In 1517 Martin Luther, fed up with the corruption of the church, posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the Church door. He condemned church practices such as the sale of “indulgences” as counter to God’s law. In doing so, he kicked off the Protestant Reformation. At the same time new technologies, such as gunpowder and canons, significantly impacted the organization of power. Guns allowed foot soldiers with relatively little training to defeat knights in battle. Canons turned castles, the defensive masterpiece of the feudal period, into death traps. In order to effectively deploy guns and canons, however, societies needed to operate at a larger scale. Feudal society, operating at a small scale, rapidly lost military relevance. Thus, the beginning of the 16th century marked the collapse of the feudal period, along with the erasure of the foundations of power that the God leviathan depended upon.

As new power imperatives emerged, the Church’s influence waned while that of the nation state grew. Military effectiveness now required large, expensive armies supported by industrial scale production. It further relied upon large centralized kingdoms/empires to tax and conscript soldiers from large population pools. Bigger societies proved effective at developing manufacturing supply chains needed to sustain industrial era armies. The resulting “Nation States” became the new leviathan.

Like the Catholic Church of the late feudal period, the nation State leviathan of the early 21st century is devolving into corruption and incompetence. "

(https://x20s.com/part-ii-on-leviathans-god-state-network/)

Source

This is an excerpt from a summary of Balaji Srivanasan's book, The Network State.