What is behind what we can't do ourselves?

I like looking around the house for photographs that give me a bit of a different perspective of the mundane bits of my life that go unnoticed. Here is one I took a couple days go:

It is a macro shot of the horizontal blinds while the sun sets on the other side. See? Boring. But also interesting.

People had to design this blind and the mechanisms involved, the machine that created the twine, the cutter for the aluminium slot and of course, all the machinery along the supply chain from the mine to my living room. How many people do you think were involved, what was the value of all the machinery used? All of this lays behind this single shot and without it, the shot would not be possible.

How reliant are our lives on others as even the simplest of items we take for granted are impossible to make as individuals and often these days, without international resources and assistance.

At some point, every part of the supply chain of f this horizontal blind is going to be recorded on a Blockchain and, every factor of each step involved will be calculable to the most minute details. Are you ready to have a rating of environmental impact placed on every single product? What about the distribution of income paid to workers at each stage of manufacture?

At some point, this is going to be the reality we may have as the chains will be scrapable and cross-referenced to show precisely where resources go and perhaps more importantly, where they don't. There are going to be economic sinkholes where vast amounts of value disappear, I predict. Will you consume differently once the supply chains become more transparent, will you still buy clothing brands knowing that abusive child labor went into their production? Animal cruelty?

Many will not change at all of course but, what if our own consumption was also under this kind of scrutiny - would social pressure force our behavioural change? Would you change under social pressure? Do you now?

Most likely you do already through various trends and advertising pushes where one starts to take on the conformity of the group in some way. Would it be better this way for humanity or, is it better to have the freedom based on ignorance of information, even though it is leading to our own suffering? Stay blind or become transparent.

One of the biggest questions Blockchains are going to raise are the level of transparency we are willing to participate in. While transparency is often a burden on is now as it is used against us by various levels of authority, if near everything becomes transparent, does the authority lose power to the group or, does the group become the authority we then bend the knee to?

It is something to think about considering very few people on earth are able to live truly independent and without reliance on anyone for anything. Does freedom mean giving up privacy completely and having nothing left to protect? After all, of we have something we must protect, we aren't free because of the "must" part.

Just a couple thoughts from bed. I have a 5am wake-up and I am not good at sleeping early (it is midnight) but I should try to get some sleep so I can make it to the train in the morning.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
_{(posted from phone and a bed)}