The best way to describe Blockchain technology is that it is Capitalism's response to the Internet.
To begin with: what is Capitalism? At its most basic form, it is a way to regulate and manage scarcity. There is only so much of a particular product, be it food, energy, or precious metals, and the balance between supply and demand dictates that product's cost to the consumer.
Unfortunately for the Capitalists, the reason for their system's existence has also become the reason for its failure, for products which have no scarcity have no value in Capitalism. And the list of such products grows by the year.
For instance: a piece of software occupies a small, bordering upon infinitesimal, amount of disk space on a hard drive. It can be copied any number of times over the Internet. There is no scarcity, hence no value outside of that artificially created by the enforcement by copyrights. And without value, there is no incentive for a Capitalist to create it.
And that is a major problem for Capitalism, for humankind is fast approaching the day when 3D Printing, as well as other forms of replication, will allow the consumer to completely bypass the market altogether, incurring no cost for the products they materialize out of thin air.
That is where the invention of the Blockchain makes its debut. By simultaneously storing data redundantly upon countless millions of computers, copyright enforcement becomes much more simple.
First, software usage can be made wholly dependent upon having first installed the Blockchain back-end on a user's computer. Second, scarcity can then be simulated by the prerequisite of the user first purchasing that software's proprietary rights before they can use it. And finally, all of it can be permanently tracked and recorded in a database that for all intents and purposes is counterfeit-proof.
The end result is an Internet in which intellectual property rights can create and enforce the illusion of scarcity, allowing Capitalism to control and regulate access to the digital market.
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