On Living in the Lie

In The Power of the Powerless, the Czech writer and former president Václav Havel told a simple story.

A vegetable shop manager places a sign in his window that reads:
“Workers of the world, unite.”

He does not believe it.
He does not even think about it.

He puts the slogan there because everyone else does. Because the system expects it. Because removing it would invite trouble. The sign is not persuasion. It is ritual. It maintains the appearance that everyone believes, even though most do not.

It is difficult not to notice how similar this looks to certain institutional rituals in the Internet governance world.

Registry meetings are held.
Votes are taken.
Statements are issued.

Inside those rooms, a relatively small circle speaks as if it represents the entire global Internet community. Yet outside those rooms, the networks that actually operate the Internet have already moved on.

The ritual continues.
The belief does not.

A small institutional circle repeats the language of legitimacy to one another, believing they still govern a world that no longer depends on them. It becomes a closed loop—a bubble maintained by procedures, conferences, and declarations, even as the underlying reality shifts elsewhere.

The system survives not because it is true, but because everyone participates in the performance.

At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, this story was cited again by Mark Carney. His point was simple: when institutions continue repeating narratives that no longer reflect reality, they are not preserving order.

They are living inside a lie.

The story is not limited to politics.

Every aging system eventually reaches the same moment: when the ritual continues, but the belief has already vanished.

The Internet registry structure has reached that point.

For years the same slogans have been repeated:

“Stewardship.”
“Community governance.”
“Protection of the global resource.”

Like the vegetable shop’s sign, these words have become ritual rather than explanation. They are displayed to maintain the appearance of legitimacy.

But reality has already moved elsewhere.

Ask a simple question.

When major infrastructure companies spend billions of dollars acquiring IPv4 addresses, do they believe those addresses “belong to the community”?

When operators buy them, lease them, manage them as balance-sheet assets, and depend on them for the continuity of their networks—do they treat them as communal tokens administered by benevolent stewards?

Or do they treat them as private property?

The answer is obvious.

Markets reveal belief far more honestly than speeches.

Capital does not deploy itself based on ideology.
It deploys based on ownership and enforceability.

For decades, the operator community has already behaved as if IPv4 addresses are property.

Networks buy them.
Networks lease them.
Networks defend them.
Networks record them as assets.

The economic reality has been settled for years.

The only place where the old narrative still circulates is within a relatively small institutional and cultural circle around the registry system itself. Inside that circle, the ritual continues. Inside that circle, the slogans remain in the window.

Outside it, everyone understands the truth.

Companies do not openly challenge the story for many reasons. Some do so out of political caution. Some out of institutional habit. Some simply because there was no immediate need to confront it directly.

But disbelief has long been widespread.

Operators act according to the market, not according to the slogans.

That is why the confrontation we see today was inevitable.

The registry system depended on an illusion of untouchable authority. It survived because people assumed the structure could never be seriously tested.

But systems built on narrative rather than constraint face a fatal moment.

The moment when they bleed.

In mythology, gods cannot bleed. The moment a god bleeds, everyone understands it is not a god at all.

The registry order depended on the same illusion of invulnerability.

Once it was tested—once legal scrutiny, capital markets, and operational reality collided with its internal contradictions—the illusion ended.

The system bled.

And once a system bleeds, the outcome is irreversible.

It does not matter how many communiqués are issued.
It does not matter how many procedural victories are announced.
It does not matter how often the old slogans are repeated.

The ritual can continue.

But belief cannot return.

Because the operator community has already moved on.

The networks that actually run the Internet understand where the future lies. The economic layer already behaves according to property rights and market allocation.

The registry system itself understands this as well.

That is why its behavior increasingly resembles that of every declining institutional order in history: tightening rules, defending narratives, escalating rhetoric, and fortifying authority.

Not because victory is possible.

But because it is the final instinct of institutions facing structural inevitability.

They are not fighting to win.

They are fighting their last stroke.

Collapse in such systems does not arrive through dramatic overthrow.

It arrives through quiet migration.

People stop believing.
People stop depending.
People begin building something else.

The vegetable shop manager eventually understands that the slogan in the window never protected the system. It only postponed the moment when people recognized the truth.

The same moment has now arrived.

No matter how carefully it is hidden, the bleeding has already occurred.

And when a god bleeds, the story is already over.