Economy 3.0 is even more dependent upon an empire-like power than investment and commerce in less network-dependent economies of the past. And it has nothing to do with physical manifestations of power or resources. It has to do with who is capable of making and enforcing rules because Economy 3.0, as you have described, is even more dependent rules and norms than less networked economies are.
I completely disagree.
Economy 3.0 is what makes empires impossible: the Internet interprets hegemons as damage and routes around them.
A would be hegemon may be able to dominate any one or any half dozen nations, but cannot dominate more than a few of the nodes all of the time.
Interactive partnership-based protocols are key to Economy 3.0: these agreements - eg international trade agreements cofigured around transaction repositories - will act like a form of legal XML linking disparate jurisdictions and legal entities together, rather than disparate hardware and software.
Law is Code.
We are seeing the end of one way, statutory or judge-made protocols - 'contrats de mandat' as the French have it - and a transition to 'contrats de societe'. These are the same sort of two way protocols you find in Japan, and elsewhere in the East, and also the consensual approach of Islamic jurisprudence, which many think underpinned the Napoleonic code.
A hegemon would simply find themselves excluded from participation at worst, or participating on inferior terms, at best. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
The point of a hegemony-resistant architecture is to make sure that wannabe hegemons can't exclude other actors without imperilling the core function of the system. Mutually assured destruction works, most of the time.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Historically, there's never been any such thing. At best, relative stability is maintained by cripplingly expensive wars until the economy implodes and the wars are no longer affordable.
Ethically and practically, mutually beneficial relationships are vastly more productive and stable for everyone except the psychotic predator class who would rather cover themselves with scraps and baubles than allow a peace dividend to grow the world economy.
It's self-styled 'realists' who are the biggest brake on progress and innovation.
Not everyone wants to remain a stupid rat chasing other stupid rats for scraps around a barrel. Some of us have more interesting plans.
