Radical thoughts?

In this final (for now) episode in our series on blockchain, we move beyond the economic and legal analysis to consider whether this technology might inform and be part of a broader movement for political and social change.

We are joined by Glen Weyl, founder and Chairman of the RadicalxChange Foundation, Principal Researcher at Microsoft and Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

He is co-author with Eric Posner of the radical book, Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society, a blueprint for upending and replacing many of the institutions that underpin our current economic and political systems so as to create a fairer, more equal and more democratic society.

In a highly thought provoking discussion, co-hosted with Dr Thibault Schrepel (our guest on episodes 23 and 24), Glen explains some of the core ideas in his writing and relates them to his critique of the current state of the blockchain industry.

For Glen, the decentralised vision of blockchain falls far short of the reality. But he sees the vision as valuable nevertheless in inspiring us to think about how distributed data structures and mathematical technologies might be harnessed in re-imagining the type of society in which we want to live.

You can find out more about Glen and his work on his website. And here is the joint paper with Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum) referred to in the episode, Liberal Radicalism: A Flexible Design For Philanthropic Matching Funds.

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