Topic: Consensus-based society with provable trust-free voting (Read 11173 times)

Philosophically, that's know as a "vacuous truth" -- "true, but pointlessly so".

yes thats true. but its a bit like saying there is no distinction between a computer programer and a electronic engineer since all computer programs are executed by hardware.

I checked that other thread.  You vomited quite a lot of woo woo on that thread!

Everything is in a sense physics, people's thoughts, emotions and therefore relationship are no exceptions, it's all about vibrations and resonance. If you check out my other thread, you will know what I mean

that is presicely what was proposed "I have explained the mechanizm several times already. It's called physics."

so than you do not believe that actors in a free market would behave in the manner that was described? If you are saying that it would happen in any form of society than surely a free market society would fall into the category of any from of society...

if there was such evidence than sure fine. His claim however was not that it provided a suitable analogy but that the science of physics applies to the field of economics. A claim that you very vocally supported.

That was not proposed.


The discussion is not about "free market", but the consensus of an organized society.


His hypothesis are valid because there is empirical validity for the models he used as example.

ill say what i said to the other guy in case you dont read it.

Economics isnt physics and physics isnt economics. You cant base assumptions on the premise that they are. Just because there happens to be a physical law that happens to correlate to the way that you think (incorrectly but thats neither here nor there) a free market economy would behave doesnt demonstrate in any way that your hypothesys about how a free market economy would behave is sound.

"No, there is a big difference. There is no incentive for you to swallow razor blades whatsoever, your survival doesn't depend on your swallowing of blades, quite the opposite actually - you are more likely to survive if you don't swallow them"

the point i was making was that mechanisms specifically deigned to stop things from happening arnt the only factor in determining whether or not something happens, a point which i still believe the previous post effectively conveyed. never qualifying by saying "there are incentives for capitalists to collude and these are the incentives", you asserted "without mechanisms specifically designed to prevent it, nothing will prevent it" what else am i to conclude from this other than you believed the only thing that could stop something from happening is a mechanism specifically designed to prevent it.

"It's called physics. You probably know that charged particles are attracted to each other to form neutral ensembles."

C'mon guy i know you are smarter than this. Economics isnt physics and physics isnt economics. You cant base assumptions on the premise that they are. Just because there happens to be a physical law that happens to correlate to the way that you think (incorrectly but thats neither here nor there) a free market economy would behave doesn't demonstrate in any way that your hypotheses about how a free market economy would behave is sound.

"The same way specialized companies on the market would tend to form unions (or sign special trade agreements) so that together they become more self-sustainable"

Companies on the market form trade agreements not for the purpose of creating a self sufficient unit, they do it to avoid taxes lol. They would rather keep things simple and use money but the state complicates things as usual.

"Being self-sustainable is a more stable state than being specialized and depend on market conditions and demand for your services to survive."

i hate to sound like a liberal here but what the hell. I see capitalists is being far more interested in profit than self sustainability, which are two ideas that are mutually exclusive since the wealth of our modern economy is a direct product of the level of specialization in the division of labor that we have achieved.

"People participating in a self-sustainable clusters can relax their fears of not surviving and express themselves more creatively, contributing to science, technology and entertainment"

Ok but since it isnt in the interest of any person other than the person who is relaxing with out fear of surviving for any person to be relaxing with out fear of surviving we should expect the natural state of things to reflect the interest of the super-majority. Admittedly this claim makes the state by definition an anomaly. Even i must admit that religion does strange things to people. But religion has presumably been around since the dawn of time and i believe there is good reason to believe that a society free from it would likely not re-adopt it. If you wonder what religion i speak of its statism which will likely be the very last one in the world to go if we do happen to ever overcome religion.

"Thus forming of self-sustainable clusters is a natural and life-supporting phenomenon and everybody should strive to achieve this status. But until individuals themselves become self-sustainable, these clusters would consist of multiple individuals or even multiple sub-clusters. And the way these clusters operate doesn't depend on how you call them, but rather on how they are structured, hence the topic of this thread."

Sorry guy but a lot of us arnt interested in the poverty that would result from self sustainability. Thats cool if you are, i respect your right to legitimately acquire a little plot of land and never make contact with another human soul ever again. Or joining a little group and doing that with the group. Or w/e as long as you guys arnt hurting anyone, rock on! Its also cool for you to direct all of your wealth towards creating mechanisms for personal sustainability while still being very socially active. Just understand that some other people would rather have fancy play-stations and satellite tv then a personal hydroelectric power system. You preference for self sustainability isnt objectively superior to other peoples preferences.

Thanks for support and your interest in this topic!

I do really appreciate your analogy relating economy to physics. It sounds very accurate and based on coherent definitions.

Few users will never understand your proposal since they cannot cope with scientific laws (e.g. Law of Gravity). If you tell them that gravity represents the natural human tendency to form central governments (or central leadership), they will subvert the core definitions of physics only to support their delusional ideology.

Your proposal is quite reasonable and could offer to a democratic society an efficient method to develop or to change norms. I agree with your premise that the Bitcoin protocol offers an unique trust-free model to an organized society reach a consensus over any subject discussed.

No, there is a big difference.
There is no incentive for you to swallow razor blades whatsoever, your survival doesn't depend on your swallowing of blades, quite the opposite actually - you are more likely to survive if you don't swallow them


I have explained the mechanizm several times already. It's called physics.
You probably know that charged particles are attracted to each other to form neutral ensembles.
The same way specialized companies on the market would tend to form unions (or sign special trade agreements) so that together they become more self-sustainable. Being self-sustainable is a more stable state than being specialized and depend on market conditions and demand for your services to survive.

So there is an incentive to collude, because it improves your chances of survival. People participating in a self-sustainable clusters can relax their fears of not surviving and express themselves more creatively, contributing to science, technology and entertainment. The same way self-sustainable clusters of gravity called stars give off light and heat to those who decided to stay outside, so that they don't freeze to death fighting in the dark alone.

Thus forming of self-sustainable clusters is a natural and life-supporting phenomenon and everybody should strive to achieve this status. But until individuals themselves become self-sustainable, these clusters would consist of multiple individuals or even multiple sub-clusters. And the way these clusters operate doesn't depend on how you call them, but rather on how they are structured, hence the topic of this thread.



Yes exactly, I firmly believe that consensus groups would work best if they start small, with family being the smallest example. But they can be formed along different lines of specialization as well, think of a consensus group of core architects in the company. This way it will be a consensus sub-group within a larger consensus group. Also, if people in the group don't seem to contribute much, they can be voted out by the rest of the group.


I have already explained how "capitalists collude" mechanizm works and the fact that it works today only supports the point. Also please understand that small company on the market, small state, bigger state or multinational mega-corporation are all examples of evolution of the same centrally-managed cluster of power. Yes you can blame governments for being an easy target for capitalists to take over and thus contributing to the situation at hand, but remember that we haven't had a government "by the book" for almost a hundred years now. So you're really barking at the wrong tree. If you watched Man In Black first movie, the situation can be best described as "we have a Bug in town and it's wearing an Edgar... err Government suit"

I'm not defending the idea of government here, because it failed long ago and it is one of the examples of a centrally-managed cluster and those beasts are known to mutate rapidly and grow out of proportion. You can continue putting different labels on these monsters, but the way they work only depends on how they are structured, so let's concentrate on that part more. I'm open to discuss other structures as well, but I'm more sympathetic to an idea of voluntary consensus groups because now they can be supported with technology and may prove to be more stable than previously thought.

PS:
By the way, I will be traveling soon and won't have access to the Internet for quite some time (about 3 weeks). So you guys may continue to keep this thread alive on your own if there is still anything to discuss.

Exactly. This whole "capitalists collude" is just a made-up victim complex fantasy that losers use to explain away the fact that they can't contribute much value to society, thus they get shitty wages.  Whenever there's collusion to depress wages in our modern world, it's always, without exception collusion involving the government.

Then it would be done on lots of little micro levels, or not done at all. If there aren't enough people who want to contribute to a project, then "society" doesn't want that project done.

Probably workable with some sizable portion of the population have decent financial situations... I think the issue is that it wouldn't work on the macro scale. There would simply be too many people who weren't able or inclined to contribute. It's called socialism. Works well in the micro where everyone's equally invested (like blood related) but fails miserably in the macro.

That's like saying that since people could theoretically swallow razor blades and since there is no mechanism specifically designed to prevent them from swallowing razor blades so nothing will prevent them from swallowing razor blades. Some things just dont require mechanisms to prevent them from happening. you first need to demonstrate why we might expect that this WOULD naturally occur before it can be assumed that we need systems to prevent it.

Why might we expect capitalists to collude in a free market? Do you expect that capitalists would benefit from colluding with other capitalists? to what end? They couldnt collude to hold down workers wages because then those workers would be bid away by other capitalists. They couldnt collude to artificially raise their prices because even if they had every existing widget maker in the economy religiously adherent to the scheme new widget makers would enter the market since it would be easy for them to undercut the artificially inflated prices.

Ok, lowering the frequency in my previous post caused much better interference with this medium of exchange, very good! I'm hitting the spot!

When talking about centrally-managed structure, be it a company or a state, it's not as much about bowing down (even though that too) as it is about simplicity for top tiers of each pyramid to collude and come up with secret agendas that the rest of the personnel won't even be aware of. It's about transparency of decision making.

Yes, you can change companies, but if CEOs of a few dozen major businesses are secretly working in tandem, it won't matter which of these companies you join. You will always contribute to the same agenda without even knowing about it. Ever heard of the Bilderberg Group? I'm not saying free market will always lead to this situation, but without mechanizms specifically designed to prevent it, nothing will prevent it and what we see today is an example. Please don't tell me that we don't have a free market today because of the states. The states as we know them are long gone, but those in charge like to keep a holographic illusion of it to detract the majority's attention from where it needs to be. Watch couple of these, they are precious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojmOESqVeak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

So, let's consider two cases where people form clusters of power in a different way and see what's worst that can happen in either case. I'm not considering best-case scenario here, because as I've already mentioned any kind of structure would tend to work when introduced and operated by people with high morals.

1) In the first case, where voting procedure is clumsy and not very transparent, people would tend to vote rarely (if at all) and delegate most of the decision making to a single person or a group of persons they think they trust. This leads to a formation of centrally-managed clusters of power in which power continues to accumulate in the center over time until it reaches a threshold that causes complete disconnect in its decision making process from the rest of the participants. That's what we have today.

2) With easy-to-use provable voting system, some people might still choose to opt out due to their lack of understanding of technology or based on their emotional experience with the word democracy that has been heavily misused for that particular purpose of causing disgust and utter rejection. So they will continue to form or participate in a centrally-managed clusters. However statistically there will be those who will decide to take advantage of the new technology and build clusters where power cannot be accumulated in a single point, but may continue to grow in a distributed fashion. It is much harder for two clusters of this kind to collude or come up with any secret agenda whatsoever, because of the transparency of the decision making process. As clusters of new kind grow in size and power they will eventually reach the point where they will be able to compete with the centrally-managed ones. Since participants of this new system don't have to bow down to any other participants, but instead only follow commonly-agreed rules, those who are still inhabiting centrally-managed clusters might become incentivized to flip sides. Please pay attention that roughly half of the population of some consensus-based clusters may be women and by allowing them to influence the definition of ethical behavior might greatly contribute to a peaceful resolution of many conflicts. Individuals might still remain profit-driven while staying within the confines of an ethical behavior. By the way, is it ethical to force an ethical behavior?

3) Regarding the "third option", where each individual doing what and as they see fit, cooperating or competing as they choose, I can say this - it can only be stable when every individual is a self-sustainable cluster of power himself/herself. The fact that you are so attracted to this idea means that the reality where this is manifested in fact exists. It implies the level of technological advancement which allows any individual to have necessary amount of energy to grow food (or to be not dependent on food via genetic manipulations) in conjunction with availability of devices capable to produce strong energy shields so that individuals can protect themselves from each other (or alternatively achieve the level of morality that would prevent them from attacking each other to begin with). So this is all coming, but we are not there yet. If we don't use stepping stones that become available to us as we go, the Universe will see no point in providing us with more information and technologies than the ones that are already available to us.

Opening your comment by putting words in my mouth, or asking me "have you stopped beating your wife yet" types of questions, does not exactly constitute an incentive to address your questions.  It makes me think "well, it's unlikely that this person will actually process whatever I say, so why bother".

As yourself why that is. What entity has allowed them to do that?

You know, it's funny. I don't see ADT shooting it's customers, nor Brinks. Private companies on the free market don't get ahead by shooting their customers. Violent monopolies sometimes have to to keep their monopoly.

Yes. Each individual doing what and as they see fit, cooperating or competing as they choose. Though I wouldn't call it a "middle ground," more like a "third option."

First of all most people dont bow to their bosses. The only people we have to "bow down to" are agents of the state. I can tell my boss to go fuck himself and never have to see him again any moment of any day i feel like. Of course doing so may mean that i have to take a slightly worse job but its worth it to me for the freedom it gives me (like for example the freedom to utilize his capital in order to increase my productivity), freedom i absolutely do not have in my relationship with the state.

so down to brass tax, do you or do you not support the imposition of a monopoly on the legitimized use of violence with in a geographical region (a state). if you do than tell me how peoples relationship with such an institution would not necessitate "bowing down" at least in some metaphorical sense (which i believe is the sense you used it in originally)

If you do not support such an institution that what specifically is your disagreement with anarcho-capitalists? If you just want some other sort of voluntary system, like for example you want to homestead your own little community and have everyone who lives there agree to literally actually sign a real physical social contract or else leave the group i dont think any of us would have a problem with that.

P.S. dont give me any bs about how its the capitalists fault that people have to work inorder to survive

So you'd rather bow down to your boss while working in a "peaceful" and "non-aggressive" company on a "free" market, than working in collaboration with like-minded people in a consensus-based system striving to achieve self-sustainability and therefore being not dependent on market conditions?

Don't you see that big businesses of today control the market and make rules? The trick is that they call it "democracy" so that people like you would be utterly opposed to it and never even look that way again.
Please understand that the last time we had real government and democracy was when we used gold and silver as money. The problem is that technology at the time wasn't good enough to keep the structure sustainable, so it was taken over. Today everything is private, money is the property of a private bank and the thing that you call government is a private TV show to keep the rest of you entertained and utterly oblivious of what is really going on. So if you would like to call what we have today a "democracy" and you are so utterly opposed to it, I would applaud your ignorance. This is where name calling approach leads you guys, you play with those nice words and labels, while the reality about how things actually work slips away. The free market ruled by private companies is no longer a wet dream it is a reality of today, welcome!

Would you go pay to one of those triple-letter agencies for your protection if they were private defense companies that you guys are all dreaming about? And who would you pay to protect yourself from those agencies?

Maybe I'm missing something, but is there a middle ground between centrally-managed pyramid-structured profit-driven cluster of power and the one where people listen to each other's opinions first before rushing to take any action, which is what consensus-based system proposes?

You can't argue with gravity and prevent clusters of power from forming, the only thing you can attempt to change is how those clusters are structured, so that they don't turn themselves into a tyrannical black holes eating everything around for breakfast.

So is there a middle ground?

EDIT: If you find yourself offended by the sharp-edged sentences that I used above, please understand that I needed to express myself within those frequency bands that are most representative on this forum, so that they can form a constructive interference in a way that you will be able to perceive the ideas and we can have an argument. You can look at that as a reflection to gauge where you're at on the frequency spectrum.