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RE: Venezuela announced that it plans/hopes to launch a new cryptocurrency named “The Petro”.
Have you read Eden Medina’s book on cybernetic market socialism under Allende? This is some strange, neoliberal version of that 🤔? The title is Cybernetic Revolutionaries (pub MIT, I think).
I had never even heard of this book: seems fascinating!
I don't know if the petro reflects the idea of technological control over a society: though this could certainly end up in the same space. That's why #1 and #3 are specific concerns of mine.
It's equally feasible that Maduro heard that people were using cryptocurrencies to evade capital controls, and he figured that this would represent a way to achieve the same result without giving much more thought to the issue beyond that.
Additionally, given all the issues the Bolivar is undergoing, it seems inevitable that Venezuela will need to re-denominate in the near future. It's much better marketing to have that occur because you're the first nation in the world to adopt a cryptocurrency, instead of being needed due to massive hyperinflation.
I'm glad you've got the reference now! And you're correct—it isn't about "governing" via some kind of homeostatic network like under Allende w/ proyecto cybersyn. I was logging off last night, but after reading your post I wanted you to have that citation, and so I ended up being lazy in my comment. :)
What I meant is that if this does end up working with an actual blockchain beneath it—I agree with you that it's a digital currency as it's framed here—the cliché of neoliberal Latin American nations' tethering of their sovereignty to nationalized petrol in the neoliberal era will come to be kind of a piecemeal effort. Under Allende, the cybernetic model was conceived through a more "performative" branch of British cybernetics (vs. US-based cybernetics, led by Norbert Weiner; a few economists like Axel Leijonhufvud also tinkered in late 1960s–early 1970s w/ Keynesian cybernetics—squashed I would say by 1973 w/ the birth of Black-Scholes-style derivatives/speculation) with the technical aspect of the politics being spearhead by Stafford Beers (Andrew Pickering does an amazing job historicizing this distinction in The Cybernetic Brain). They were imagining the nation-state under market socialism as a homeostatic brain-like organism—from bread to pearls, the data center was "sensing" all commodities. It'll look so different in Venezuela if this actually becomes a thing.
I also can't but help think about the coup of Allende and the detrimental effects of neoliberal economics in the Americas; I'm suspect of this project, but god I wish Latin America could innovate conceptually and technically to get out from under the IMF et. al.
Oh god, I just looked at the actual comment again after replying—apologies for basically writing a blog post here on your feed! I'm just kinda thirsty for good exchange on the steem blockchain.
I spend most of my time reading academic papers --- in the weeds with math and data analytics --- and not much time for books.
I'm also one of those people who finds sitting around and debating an esoteric idea just fundamentally uninteresting. If the idea has merit, find a way to implement or test it. Can't figure that out? Let's have a discussion on that (and then you actually do the work, because otherwise you've just wasted my time). What is politely referred to as "practical".
I also recognize that there are important, human questions that can't be answered with this approach: that's where my work ends and the work of others begin.
I do look forward to having conversations in the future though! It's interesting to think of blockchain as perhaps leading to a 2nd wave of attempts at centrally planned economies...
I def forget sometimes that economists aren’t in a “book field.” I’m in American Studies, and economic intellectual history is one of my favorite things to learn about. nice meeting ya, doc!
Some are! I definitely don't want to leave you with the impression that all economists are the same as I am. Economics is a wonderfully strange field so it's always tricky to infer that you've met a stereotypical economist.
I'm definitely on the math/data/computational side of the spectrum, but Econ History or Econ Philosophy folks are solidly on the book side.
And it's the technical stuff with which I'm most unfamiliar—b/c, you know, I'm not an economist. ;) Anyhow, I'll definitely be posting along the intellectual history side a lot here, so—like a shy undergrad in office hours—might I ask for a follow? I'd love some additional accountability to the facts from you! Sort of a peer review, but peer-to-peer on the blockchain.
My apologies!! I honestly thought I followed you before I typed my response. Thanks for catching that. Now I will go back and check that everyone I intended to follow is, in fact, being followed.