I have been listening to the Pragmatic Programmer, and I was reminded of Conway's Law, basically that a system is a reflection of it's culture. As a system (software or not) becomes mainstream, it becomes a reflection of that system. Taking Bitcoin as an example, the system itself is not bad (there may be weaknesses, but overall seems like a decent system based on what we have seen so far), but the pen put around it by Fincen and the Federales makes it pointless. Also looking at Tor and other systems, they are often compromised or have other issues.

Expanding on this, I would say at least since Luther and Gutenberg, it seems like subsystems have not been able to break the main paradigm. As for libertarianism, I think it is wonderful in most it's forms. However, it seems like whatever paradigm we have, we will eventually revert to the mean within history within our epoch. This means we are not likely going back to the feudal systems or Kings, but we still have issues with collectivism. How do we transcend the democratic age to the systems age, where we don't rely on man controlling man (or woman) but instead as self correcting systems and anti fragile systems?