Topic: Bitcoin trades the inequity of dynastic power for the inequity of early adoption - page 6. (Read 11076 times)

Perhaps you should consult an audiologist

Memcoin in specific proposed something like adding democratic processes into the coin itself. I think that would be the best way to improve the protocol. The next coin should probably include democracy and voting within the coin itself so that holders can somehow vote as a group.

Anyway I think the future is intelligent cryptocurrencies or smart currencies. These currencies would be able to adapt to our flaws and inflate or deflate or self destruct or decay etc. There is a lot of room for innovation once AI becomes smart enough.

According to game theory and mathematics some people always have the advantage in any competitive game. But there is the state of equillibrium. We can create an environment where all of our lives collectively get better even if the people at the top get the medicine and advances first. Honestly I don't care who gets it first just so long as the overall trajectory and trend is better. Our current trend is unsustainable and can't work.

Bitcoin is not going to last for 60 years. Capitalism probably wont last for 60 years. Once we get artificial intelligence, the singularity, and super intelligence, all this will be pointless. The only thing to invest in at that point would be better AI as humans wont even be required to work anymore.  But getting from point A to point B is the challenge and I think Bitcoin actually helps get us from point A to point B but it's not the final destination.

Read IJ Good's paper http://www.stat.vt.edu/tech_reports/2005/GoodTechReport.pdf

All this arguing about who will be the elite wont matter once we enter the age of ultraintelligent machines and I don't think that is 60 years away. I think Bitcoin and money itself is just a means to an end.

You know, it might just be my twins, but when I read that, I hear babies crying.

The rule is first come first served. The math of that rule produces fairness. Think about it like game theory, if you make it clear the first people who pick the gold up get to keep it then it's fair. If you don't discover it in time it's partly your own fault if you had the Internet and could have been researching cryptocurrencies. If you discovered it in time like me but thought it was a ponzi scheme or bound to fail like E-gold then what? And what if you just didn't rush to buy coins when they were cheap? I made those mistakes but I'm not complaining that I didn't do something that someone else was fortunate enough to do. And had I been fortunate I would hope that people would congratulate me not diss me and call me the 1% illuminati. I would probably be furious and very insulted by that notion.

Your arguments are divisive and bad for the community.

And yet they were still mined diligently by a small group. The reason for this is that doing so cost basically nothing and the potential upside was practically limitless. New entrants can expect the reverse, an increasingly steep downside in terms of hardware cost and a shrinking upside in terms of coins earned.

It's not like the oil barons of yesteryear were burying their money in a hole in the ground or anything. They were reinvesting. They were doing what they could to maintain the infrastructure that was keeping them wealthy - which included both the stuff that society needed, and the stuff that kept society down.

And sure, let's say for a moment that the guys who come out of this thing as billionaires are actually good people - better than the Rockefellers, better than Larry Ellison. Let's say Shamir User A was just shuffling their money around out of paranoia that the Men in Black would kick down their door and take it all.

That's an optimistic assumption, and it buys us, what? Sixty years? Eighty, if they're young and strong and get the expensive medicine early? Whoever they leave their money to, whether family or friends or foundations, we can't attest to their moral character.

If you say that some people will always have an advantage, then you have to accept the consequence of that creed: no matter how the advantage was initially created, there's no statistical reason to believe that the people who have the advantage a generation later will be good. If you want a Pareto-efficient wealth curve, there's a good argument for designing the system such that it tries to initially distribute the wealth no less lopsidedly than that - if you "trust nobody", you can't trust the new money to create that curve for you.

It's too late to do anything about it for Bitcoin - we've gotta live with the distribution we got. And maybe it won't be a problem. But for future cryptocurrencies, it's something we need to consider. And we need to watch out and be ready to refine the idea if it looks like the new boss is going to be the same as the old boss.

You also won't hear them complaining.

But therein lies the rub. I don't see any of the Bitcoin evangelists explaining that the 'rules' allowed a small group of early users to make a massive coin grab.

And nothing stops us from creating a better newer protocol if this protocol does produce corrupt EVIL elites who are as bad or worse than the current central power structure. The point is as long as there is social mobility at least musical chairs is better than to have the same group of people in power for a lifetime. It's like would you rather have a monarchy with all it's flaws of lifetime leadership or a Republic where leaders can change?

If Bitcoin really does produce bad leadership then the next time it will be refined by scientific method. This is better than what we can say about most of society where the rules aren't even fair (different rules for different people) and where it's impossible or difficult to change anything or fix what is broken because changing the code in government is harder than changing it in Bitcoin. The US government can't even pass a budget to pay for itself without having a Civil War between it's elites.

Yup. If you don't like those rules, there are plenty of other games in town.

See it is your fault not mine! :-)

A smart man once wrote:

"If there is something that will make Bitcoin succeed, it is growth of utility - greater quantity and variety of goods and services offered for BTC. If there is something that will make Bitcoin fail, it is the culture of naive fools and conmen, the former convinced that BTC is a magic box that will turn them into millionaires, and the latter arriving by the busload to devour them."

I never said that. I said the problem with the initial distribution of a fixed set of coins was:

"Because to potential new adopters, after that point Bitcoin is going to look like a new a 21,000,000 coin currency with a 10,500,000 coin pre-generation that went to the creator and his "friends". Certainly people will stop caring about Bitcoin long before they show up on our doorsteps with signs saying,

"We are the 99.9932%!""
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/at-what-point-does-bitcoin-become-protestable-48521

LuckyBits, Please keep us straight! :-)

Okay let me explain. If you're part of a community that makes people rich, when that community comes under attack by people from other communities then the rich people from the community that you're part of can invest in the infrastructure or initiatives to protect that community. We all rely on the Internet so we'd all protect that, and we'd all protect Bitcoin since we all rely on that. If you're an early adopter and Bitcoin made you rich then you'd be wise to protect whatever fluke in the system or cheat code you found which allowed you to hack your way to getting rich. The only responsibility you would have is to keep the door open or perhaps open new doors so the successor to Bitcoin can be even better.

Google for instance has given great support to Open Source projects. What makes you think the Bitcoin Billionaires wont fund stuff or invest in stuff which is in the interest of Bitcoin or a free Internet? A free Internet benefits Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

I do agree with one thing you said, some of it is a human problem. Nepotism is a human problem and family currency or family elitism is a human problem. Not everyone involved with Bitcoin has that problem though.

I also went on about the underground railroad. Race has nothing to do with it anymore, it's class at this point. So the actual argument I'm making is that certain families always had a head start, it does not matter if you're black or something else, if you aren't from a royal or noble or blue blood family then some other family has had a head start historically speaking and still probably has the social connections and property head start.

Instead of fighting with all those families that had a head start, or fighting with individuals who have more, it's better to pull them onto the side of promoting liberty. They can have more, they can keep their wealth, I just would like for them to invest a certain percentage of it so that society can progress and new generations of people can be socially mobile and generate wealth. Some people are always going to be lucky in any system.

How does Bitcoin solve this, though? If your early-adoptorship gives you more money than you will reasonably spend on yourself in your lifetime, then your children inherit it - they gain the initial advantage according to family.

Seems to me that the initial redistribution of a new economic system doesn't change anything about dynasties in the long run. That's a human problem, not a protocol problem.

I think I may have misattributed my post. But my argument remains the same. I do think miners have too much power and are becoming a bit too elite, but I think there is a such thing as a responsible elite. Meaning even if they are elite they are still part of the community and weren't elite prior to Bitcoin. The point here is that if the miners being elite strengthens Bitcoin then it's +1 but if it hurts Bitcoin then it's -1.

I agree with him that the exchanges need to be decentralized. I don't agree that early adopters are a problem or that inequality by itself is a problem. I think inequality can be a problem depending on how extreme it is and depending on who is at the top. If the top is responsible then they'll invest in people on the bottom and inequality has social mobility. If we look at the current top which is irresponsible then social mobility is limited.

I'm for promoting social mobility but to do that we have to allow people to start at the bottom and get to the top even if it means by luck of being early adopters just so long as we agree on the rules of the game and don't change the rules for any player. The problem with the current system (not Bitcoin) is that we have different rules for different players according to family. Bitcoin actually helps solve this problem but introduces the early adopter issue, but I think having early adopters is better than family currency.

I think the above comment was in response to your questionable "how are you different from a black person who wants reparations for slavery because white persons had a head start" analogy, not some wider insinuation about capital being enslavement.

Right. But in that post he was quoting Red, not you.

I'm taking notes about what might make initial distribution more or less "fair", but I'd rather not be a party to that hatchet fight myself.