Values, Axial Currencies, and Computational Axiology: Digital Currencies Can Do More than Buy Stuff

Abstract

11-12 thousand years ago, early humans lived in small communities with no discernible hierarchy. The result of the 'agrarian revolution' resulted in communities growing on such a scale that mechanisms of self-organisation-e.g. for monitoring, keeping order, and ensuring a 'satisfactory' allocation of resources-were no longer efficient or effective. However, the concurrent 'cognitive' revolution resulted in the faculty of imagination, in particular, the imagination of rules, to solve such problems [1]. However, agriculture created dependency (for example, on the success of a particular crop), dependency created the conditions for crisis, and crisis created the opportunity for power (i.e. it was simply more efficient for a small group to impose order and distribute resources using the imagined rules). The passing of crisis did not result in the relinquishing of this power: indeed, once acquired and although abstract, it became as much an object of desire, accumulation and retention as any physical resource.

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