Topic: DECENTRALIZED crypto currency (including Bitcoin) is a delusion (any solutions?) - page 4. (Read 91159 times)

Currently it seem bitcoin is stuck in this situation where no good decision can be made because the way that power on the network works with pow doesnt encourage this.

And there is still need to make good decision for it to keep going forward. Or it will keep stuck with greedy idiots wanting to cheat each other. And hash based pow is unable to solve this.

The example of how dao solved the hack show this.

Consciousness of consequences of bad and good action on other is necessary to have any viable society/economy.

The argument with pleasure seeking can be that there is no higher pleasure that seeing someone else perfecting himself

It's what predatory economy fail to integrate in their schema

Even amazon ceo made good article on how  100% selfish motivation never improve economy. Because having more poor underdeveloped people never bring economic growth. Having more educated and competent persons does. And free market often tend to skip this. And you can say he is not a socialist.

That is very simple to answer, even though philosophers through the ages didn't like the answer, and tried to obfuscate the question.

An economic system is good, if it is good for me (if it brings me happiness, and if it avoids my suffering).
An economic system is bad, if it is bad for me.

Good (ethical good) is what is good for me.  Bad (ethical bad) is what is bad for me.  There's nothing else. 

Of course YOUR good and MY good are not in agreement ; so we have to play a power game.  We might find an agreement where I understand that if I want too much of my good, inflicting too much bad on you, will motivate you to do bad things to me ; and vice versa.  Your ability to do bad things to me, my ability to do bad things to you, is the collateral we put up to find a mutually beneficial agreement.

I think it is the fundamental property of conscious beings, because conscious beings experience joy (good) and suffering (bad), so they optimize their actions for maximal good and minimal bad.

Society (as a whole) is not a conscious being.  So there's no such thing as "good for society" and if ever there were, society will have to decide for itself, against me (and against you).

But all that is good.  What is not good, is that he got into power.  Stalin was right as a citizen.  But the problem was that there was power for him to take, and as a citizen who understood government, he used its power to the full extend.  What was bad was not Stalin, but the fact that there was power.

It's not so much about after he got in power, but how his personal history drove him paranoiac and sociopathic, wanting to hide from the previous government, with the revolutionary mindset and culture of underground and secrecy, with collusion with crime.

The thing is the crteria upon which you will determine if an economic system or philosophy is good or not.

The pareton criteria seem to make sense to me, that at some point you need to see if the economic decision have a positive impact on society or not.

For the people who end up at the bottom of the food chain in the free market, there are many examples where free market actually worsen situation of some people, because of predatory mind set in grained in free market culture.

And this tendency of predatory free market to increase inequality always bring it to a point it's only benefitial to top 1%. And leave the bottom 60% without any developpement or resources.

And it's the point where people are looking for other solution than rigged game organized by financial predators.

After can say there is no room for the 60% of non predator, but it's the point where the whole food chain collapse.

Stalin is a typical form of government, when you look through history and through different governments.  However, he wasn't smart enough to optimize extortion from its people, and overplayed his hand.   Take 5000 years of "government" and think of what they brought the people, and what they took from the people.  Don't forget warfare, it is an important aspect of government.
(and don't think our "democracies" are different, they are simply smarter in optimizing extortion: they replaced violence and brutality by propaganda and politically correct media and "education").

Im not into social activism

For me i would be perfectly fine with having way to have proven identity on the network, and the system to be more legal friendly and have more connection with civil status and government. Optionally of course. But having a system where peer trust can be established, without necessarily having to rely all the time on 100% trustlessness, decentralized fongible node/users. Doesnt look too utopic to get there.

And I still think the model of relying 100% on colluding reward and decision power with pow and currency emission will never be good way for the network to evolve in good direction.

Im not necessarily against government by principle, and I avoid all form of indoctrination


The concept of party activism

https://youtu.be/7r_YxQLzaWc

You can try all night to stop the noise

https://youtu.be/GiMl_6EsVcg

But the idea that losers must be eliminated in a competitive system is not necessarily a bad one, if they cannot be put to good use.  I consider life as a system that emerged as a competitive game to evolve towards something that will become a self-powerful system, ,that is, a self-concious universe, or will go down without reaching this final goal.  I consider humanity to be a transitional species that allows life to "switch gear" and to go from the random Darwinian algorithm to self-constructing intelligence (machines).  There's no room for "poor humans" in this transitional species, that is only here for the transition to self-designing machines, who will bring competition, improvement, warfare, joy and suffering to higher levels than was possible with biological systems.

Why I bring the sociopathic thing is because psychological profile of people who are into crypto to avoid government monitoring or censorship, with a sort of revolutionary mind set is not always that good.

Not to make another godwin point, but it's kinda like stalin, building underground network to avoid government oppression, with all the secret and code and stuff, but in the end it turn them paranoiac and sociopathic, not good psychology to build healthy society

Government can have positive role in economy. The pb with free market is it tend to leave poor and under developped area poor and under developped. Can say it's also in their philosophy to invest in developping infrastructure etc but for some reason they never do. Probably because investor are too focused on short term profits.

Modi in India can be good example of how government can have positive role in economic developpement and growth.

This is why I claim that the burden of decentralized trustless systems is so big, that it only pays in those circumstances where the paranoia is justified: in unregulated finance, in illegal/criminal affairs, and other such endeavour, but will not go mainstream.  There's, indeed, no point.  This is the niche for crypto.  It can be a big niche.  But not mainstream.  That's silly.  Too much burden.  It is like going to buy bread with a tank.  Too much overhead, too much hassle.  Unless you're in a war zone.

In normal society, we hold one-another by fear of the consequences of being openly dishonest, even if we would like to be dishonest all the time, we're forced, in the same way, into honesty most of the time, unless we are in power - being in power is exactly what allows you to be dishonest without consequences, which is why power is wanted by most dishonest people, who get into power.  But even there, they cannot be as dishonest as they would like and are afraid of the consequences of their dishonesty (to a lesser extend than normal people, but nevertheless).

I only wanted to point out that the illusion that 51% of the nodes are "honest" and "willing guardians of the protocol" (of course including the emission model and the 21 million coins) is, well, totally deluded, and if you give the people the *technical means* to cheat, of course they will !  So the REAL reason that they *behaved* honestly was not that they had an intimate desire to be honest, but that they were *not capable to cheat profitably*.

Illustrating the thesis that what keeps "honesty in place" is the impossibility or the lack of advantage to cheat, not the "will to be honest".  Honest behaviour is hence an emergent property from the rules of the system that makes that individually one wouldn't know how to be dishonest in an efficient way, not because "people are honest".
I think this is the case at large, in society, too, with honesty and "moral behaviour".  It is the fact of not knowing how to be dishonest and immoral in a profitable way for most, that keeps them honest and morally correct.  Not because of some intimate desire, but by the intelligent realisation that dishonest or immoral behaviour is most of the time, not profitable in the web of relationships.  Government being about the only place (with its monopoly) where you have not these properties, and hence the place to be if you want to be immoral and dishonest.

BTW, the system would keep on working perfectly, because this is just like "bitcoin with somewhat larger block reward and tail emission".   If one single click in the mem pool is accepted randomly in every block (you'd need a protection so that miners don't systematically take THEIR click), then you just get higher block rewards, that's all.  But of course, the monetary belief in bitcoin would crumble, because the ILLUSION that it was a fair distribution to "honest people" (Miners) and now an *arbitrary* distribution to "cheaters" would break down.  While as a system, nothing really changed. 

Uh.  Government has only one reason of existence, and that IS selfishness.  Since the first kings.  What has evolved, is the way in which government convinces people that they are useful.  The social lie is its cornerstone.  There's no reason to be in government if it is not to be selfish.  It is the violence monopolist that maximizes the profit it can take from that monopoly.  Sometimes, however, you have idiots in power that don't estimate correctly the maximal burden a government can put on its people, and then you get revolutions or invasions.
Ideally, a government squeezes out maximally its population without destroying the illusion of its necessity or its unavoidability, which is what keeps it in place.
The ideal government is like the capable farmer that maximizes the profit he can take from his cattle (the governed people).  And yes, for that, you don't have to be too mean with your cattle before slaughter, on the contrary, you have to "care" about it.

I take it your definition of communism is then "that what lets land and life die"

Communism is normally defined as: "all production of value has to be done by a central authority" ; well, normally, it is limited to "all means of production (capital and land), and all income obtained by that means of production, have to belong to a central authority, who will remunerate labour in an egalitarian way so that labourers can buy said production".

I'm talking about something entirely different.  There is no central authority, but if you want a clean street, you should start cleaning in front of your house *because we're not going to outsource cleaning*.  The only thing that is needed is that stake holders run a node on an old PC.  If you're not willing to put in *that* effort in order to save the system, well you can take the risk that your neighbour will do it for you ; but you shouldn't complain that your system dies.

There's nothing wrong with such a system dying, that's my whole point.  A token doesn't have to keep value.  It needs to have sufficient value between the moment I obtain it against a sale of goods/services and the moment of spending to obtain goods/services.   Then the token helped me create economic value by exchanging goods and services.  If a week after that, the token has no value any more, I don't care.  Token systems are ideally like Kleenex.  While you use them, they are valuable ; afterwards, you throw them away.  Of course, it would be useful that the Kleenex lasts a while, because it takes time for it to acquire some acquaintance in the circles where it can/will be used as intermediate asset.  And a good token system will last long.

And the value of your tokens dies. Substitute land or life for token and you've proved I was correct that it is communism.


People do this because of the economics of the system. We can't fix that by focusing on morals (because morals can be manipulated as @dinofelis and others have pointed out). We can only fix it (if at all) by embracing a holistic economic model change. I posit the gift culture coming in the post-scarcity knowledge age. See what I wrote about a deflationary currency and follow the links in that post as well. I don't think you are really getting it. I feel I write and people don't really get it.

We can't fight with social justice activism (that is the mistake of the younger generation). My strong suggestion is to stop that (although you can do whatever you want of course). It makes you a pawn. Its okay to share that music as a motivation (or even at a rally just for the celebration or a party), but we have to actually accomplish a change in the economic model. If we just march on the street shouting morals, then we will be manipulated and defeated. Don't get me wrong. I love that song. I am all for a symbolic activism as a form of celebration or party but only if we know we are winning because of our economic model, not because of our activism. I don't like to lose.  

Politics can be self seeking too government is not garantee of absence of self seeking behavior.

The main point is there cannot be healthy economy without benevolence. Trading is about producing valuable goods or service, and require good amount of knowledge of what kind of work or production will be valued, or useful to improve someone life.

It's not that much a question of government even if armatya sen make good point in showing how government are still the best way to avoid the biggest pb in case of crash in free market that can leave millions people without resources.

If the economy is only about cheating other and making profits on other, without any counter party, it's ponzi economy.

The equation for this is like inner monarchy = outter anarchy, inner anarchy = outter monarchy.

The more people are able of self discipline and consciousness of consequences on others , the less there is need for external government

If people are unable of self discipline and just act as greedy pleasure seeking beast, the more there is need for government to avoid the world becoming too much cut throat.

Mon eye is all about consciousness of how human mind assign highest value to something. It can never be a selfish game or it become purposeless.

But government never really manage to reach the "tao point" where the best king is the one who does nothing and watch his kingdom prosperate.


Never forget henry Ford was close friend of hitler. Doesnt need to dig very far to see how hypocrite this whole theory is.

This is flat-out false, or at the very least, highly debatable. There was major government intervention that caused the financial crisis:

1. Government-sanctioned organizations fannie and freddie mae encouraged a housing bubble, with those policies beginning in the 1970s.
2. tax incentives by the US government led to home-buying (eg, home interest deduction, etc)
3. There has been a long series of government bailouts for decades, including hedge funds. This has created the (true) notion that if a major player fails, they are going to be bailed out by the government, therefore there is no point in limiting risk. I guarantee that if the govt did not step in for the past 30 years and allowed banks and corporations to fail, then there would be much better risk management today.
4. The public has assimilated the idea that they are going to be protected in the case of a loss. So the public expects that their money is safe no matter what they do, and this influences their buying decisions, into risky assets. Eg, take FDIC insurance. It makes all banks equal to the consumer. This is not the case in other countries, where ppl make careful decisions on which bank to put their money in.

The question is more how long the system will keep functiuning if everyone click this button. It cannot work for too long if everyone is 100% selfish motivated with no other motivation than making selfish profit. It just fall down after a while like a ponzi schemes.