Advocate for the Elondrop and help America get to the promised land that Martin Luther King Jr. intuited, but did not have the political support to reach.
Now that Balaji has established the mechanism for global freedom and prosperity, it’s important to explain the historical significance of the Elondrop.
The Elondrop is what Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK Jr.) wanted but couldn’t have. It’s the reason he was in Memphis the day he was assassinated. MLK Jr. - and the sanitation workers he was scheduled to march with - could not go global in the way that Elon has the ability to.
The campaign that Balaji says Elon must continue, is version 2.0 of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Poor People’s Campaign.”
King believed addressing poverty was the next chapter in the struggle for genuine equality. That’s what the “Poor People’s Campaign” was all about.
The campaign for economic prosperity held by King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) did not succeed to the scale that Twittercoin could, because Web3 technology did not exist.
This fact is the reason why King’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) was so low during his lifetime. A coin will help Elon align the interests of Twitter’s users, says Balaji. In the same way that Twitter is full of quarreling accounts that are not aligned in their desires; America in the final year of King’s life was highly polarized. The MLKdrop might have saved him.
If we place the respect on the legacy of MLK Jr. that we claim to, then we should do everything in our power to not only ensure that the Elondrop takes place, but we should document the steps taken; tools used; reasons for why the drop should take place, and why it was successful.
We should also advocate for the Elondrop. It will and should be the first of many airdrops of its kind.
The sheer size of a release of a coin for Twitter would be the physiological experience necessary to shake the world out of its slumber. It will do for freedom and prosperity what the sensation of envisioning a railroad did for Einstein.
In turn, it will allow us to dream of new possibilities to create wealth. It will be the regime change that Nipsey Hussle advocated for, and foreshadowed at the end of the song “That’s How I Knew.”
In MLK Jr.’s final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” when he stated that “as a people, we will get to the Promised Land” he was speaking from the global perspective that Balaji advocates Elon to have. That perspective was dependent upon King’s willingness to avoid segregating his moral concerns. [1]
The promised land was, quite literally, freedom and prosperity.
Web3 is the promised land.
It should not be surprising that Elon is standing in front of the same watershed moment that MLK Jr. was when he decided to go global. The ink was dry. [2]
MLK Jr. knew the Civil Rights Act was not enough. He had to speak out against the Vietnam war.
Racism was only one of the three evils that contributed to the political, and moral isolation of the United States that King spoke about. [3]
Poverty was another one of those evils.
We fail to realize not just the reason MLK Jr. did not cross the chasm to practical freedom and prosperity, but the conditions that made him a target. It was not just the openness of the balcony at his hotel in Memphis that put him in the scope of an assassin. The reason he flew to Memphis was the contributing factor.
He was in Memphis to march with sanitation workers. These sanitation workers earned wages so low that many were on welfare and hundreds relied on food stamps to feed their families.
What MLK Jr. did in speaking about the war in Vietnam was not unlike what Balaji mentioned Benjamin Franklin did to garner support for the American Revolution. It is the same thing that Elon Musk must do.
Establish a worldwide constituency.
Most Americans - including Black Americans - disliked MLK Jr. in the last year of his life. They wanted him to focus on race. I believe I know why.
The reason he was disliked is that there was no mechanism to align the interests of the citizens of the United States he was attempting to bring to the promised land. MLK Jr. was forced to only speak about issues of freedom and prosperity because the technology that is available to Elon did not exist during the civil rights movement.
250,000 people attended the March on Washington. MLK Jr. may have spoken about his dream that white people and Black people would hold hands, but do not forget that the “March on Washington” is an abbreviation for “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”
If Web3 technology existed, MLK Jr. could have announced the MLKdrop. The market cap of a CivilRightsCoin is almost impossible to fathom.
The significance of the need for digital property rights in the context of civil rights is highlighted when you consider the fact that MLK Jr.’s family doesn’t own the physical copy of his “I Have A Dream” speech from that day.
I would like to underscore what Balaji calls the ethical imperative of internationalization - going global. In his essay he writes:
“Granting individuals true digital property rights over their accounts turns them from serfs at the mercy of American corporate feudalists into self-sovereign actors in their own right. That's not only more just, but more profitable for both parties, because serfs can't invest in their land but free people can. Given just how much time and energy is spent by millions of people on these digital plots of land, this may be an unlock on par with Deng's reforms.”
When he said this I couldn’t help but think of Nipsey Hussle and Iddris Sandu’s comments about Hip Hop culture’s level on the Kardashev scale. Iddris was interviewed on the radio by Big Boi and he spoke about Deng’s reforms, although he did not mention it specifically:
“Let’s think of hip hop culture as a civilization. . . We not even a type 1 civilization yet. We haven’t even harnessed the power of culture, hip hop culture hasn’t fully reached its peak yet. How do i know this? We the gardeners that plant the seed, we grow the tree and cultivate it, but we don’t get the fruits.”
What Iddris and Nipsey were speaking about was the same transition that Balaji discussed. The graduation from serfs into self-sovereign actors, where we collectively unlock the value of the digital plots that we tend to. [4]
I have more to say on this, but for now:
We should all be for the Elondrop. It’s what Nipsey wanted. It’s what MLK Jr. wanted.
It’s the path to the promised land.
[1] “…there are people who are confused about the war and they say to me and anybody who speaks out against it, “You shouldn’t be speaking out. You’re a civil rights leader, and the two issues should not be joined together.” Well … the two issues are tied together. And I’m going to keep them together. Oh my friends, it’s good for us to fight for integrated lunch counters, and for integrated schools. And I’m going to continue to do that. But wouldn’t it be absurd to be talking about integrated schools without being concerned about the survival of a world in which to be integrated …” - MLK Jr.
[2] This link shows that Elon’s bid was signed. We must not forget that the Civil Rights bill was signed before MLK Jr. was assassinated. He was not killed for civil rights. MLK Jr. was killed for speaking up against the Vietnam war and economic inequality. He was advocating for the same political and economic empowerment that Elon could actually pull off.
[3] “We have left ourselves as a nation morally and politically isolated in the world…” - Martin Luther King Jr.