Finding a Frontier
Without a frontier, it all becomes zero-sum.
When fighting over any scarce resource, if one group teams up and the other doesn’t, the first group tends to win. This is the fundamental reason humans tend to consolidate into two factions and fight each other over scarce resources until one faction wins. The winning team enjoys a brief honeymoon, after which it often divides into new left and right factions, and the battle begins again.
After the French Revolution, factions arose. After World War II, the once-allied US and USSR began the Cold War. After the Cold War, the victorious US broke into internal hyperpolarization. A strong leader might keep this from happening for a while, but the division of a victorious group into left and right factions is almost a law of societal physics.
Everything changes when a frontier opens up. A new realm of unoccupied space means resources are suddenly less scarce. An aggrieved group can choose flight rather than fight. The would-be revolutionary doesn’t have to try to overthrow the ruling class anymore. Those who don’t like the current order can leave for the frontier.
In the late 1800s, American historian Fredrick Jackson Turner gave an influential talk about the frontier as the driving force in American history. He said the frontier was crucial to the US in several ways: as a path for the ambitious to seek their fortunes, as a national aspiration (Manifest Destiny), and with bare land as a canvas for social experiments.
Closing the frontier took paths away from ambitious people because they couldn’t easily become founders on their own plots of land. They became union organizers, revolutionaries, or demagogues. Without the frontier, it all became zero-sum.
This pattern has occurred throughout history. Europe and North America had a period of greatness during an open frontier from 1492–1890 and a period of total war during the closing frontier from 1890–1991.
Technology is how civilizations unlock new frontiers. Columbus used new navigation techniques to find the new world because the Ottomans had blockaded the known route to India. The internet has actually been the frontier for the past few decades, and with crypto, that will likely continue.
People forget how completely non-obvious the entire digital revolution has been every step of the way.
1995: “WWW will fail.”
2002: “Google will fail.”
2007: “iPhone will fail.”
2013: “Facebook will fail.”
The peaceful reopening of the digital frontier could lead us again to a time of greatness. The American and Chinese establishments are trying to close that frontier. That would trap us into the same steel cage match we experienced in the 20th century.
With sufficient technology and wisdom, we can escape these political roadblocks. We can reopen not just a digital frontier, but a physical one: on remote pieces of land, on the sea, and eventually in space.
Today, there are four possibilities for the frontier: the land, the internet, the sea, and space. If we assess where we are right now, we learn that currently 7.7B people are on land, 3.2B on the internet, about 2–3M on the high seas, and fewer than 10 in space.
Creating frontiers is important. Frontiers give pioneers space to innovate without affecting those who don’t consent to the experiment.
