I am there, and will offer a sneak peek for free (asked permission from the poster).
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Because that's the natural way - and that's how everything works anyway, even if you tried to distort it on some superficial level.
In "democracy", power is artificially and superficially re-distributed equally between all - well, not really, but to sell the idea, to keep masses peacefully going along - and this is even more important: whether deserved or not. Unconditional love is the coolest thing. Unconditional power is probably the worst of all things. That's like deciding that that from now on everyone can benchpress 100 pounds and not a pound more. Well, it's in some people's nature to press much more than that - AND THEY WILL. It's better to let them do it openly and naturally, so they don't have to do what's naturally anyway, but do it sneakily behind the scenes, while selling the weaker people the image that all power is distributed equally. When you go to the gym, and it's okay to openly lift as much as you want, you get people sharing secrets, inspiring each other to grow and give more - heck, even making music videos on how cool it is to be in this together:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3UUpta18w4Distributing power equally is so artificial that you need force to force it. And guess who end up using and owning that force? Of course the naturally more powerful (or power-hungry) ones. Except that now, besides power, they also have all the apparatus of force in their hands - of course, paid by all those "equal" people, or middle class. When the masses try to deny anyone from lifting more than 100lb, the big (or motivated) guys have to use force to keep others out of their own secret gyms. It's good to keep in mind, that to really go against nature, there's always some kind of war going on - and in war it's not always the best people who win. The war is not won by using even heavier (and even more expensive) force to make things even more unnatural, but actually letting the stream finally settle on the path of least resistance & most flow.
The more you try to equalize people, the more you end up separating them. The more atificiality you introduce to the system, the harder it is for people with less initial connections or shrewdness to ever make it up the ladder. And the cronier it gets. The more proggressive the tax system, the more reggressive it in actuality gets - because of course the people in power will make it so for themselves, while having to exert massive, otherwise unnecessary work to make it appear proggressive to the common folk - or, the average voter. And, in the progress introduce massive amounts of soul-crushing friction to the whole system, where it's no longer sufficient to serve your customer well, but you also need to become an expert in international law and all the silly complications in tax code, even though your time is valueble and you initially wanted to invest yourself in (improving) the service you actually cared about.
Let the powerful be powerful. The less there is need to resort to cronyism to attain power, the likelier you are to create culture of actual service and creative, attentive value sharing.
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I feel like I live in a society (Finland, to be exact), where you can go through your whole life without really ever touching this thing of wealth and power. You don't really negotiate your salary; the union does it for you. You know, those guys in the cabinets; the ones that are "qualified" to play these dangerous, difficult and awfully mysterious power games - so that me, the small person, don't have to; I can just go through my life minding my own business; go through the motions, not cause too much hassle.
Reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote:
"When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again."
What's left out in that quote, is that to Really Live in this world, you need to "get your hands dirty", and realize that there is this thing called power, and I'm going to be playing with it sooner rather than later. I'm going to be negotiating, strategically upping my position. It's not going to come by simply increasing my contribution and letting someone else handle the money matters. Steve Jobs himself tends to give you that impression (that he didin't really need to think about money), but even he was in fact a quite wonderful negotiator and quite a player in corporate power games.
It doesn't need to be like that. The more naturally power is distributed, the more you can just earn and deserve it, and the less you have to "play" for it, of know all the complications of law, and other distractive barriers the "heavy lifters" have had to raise to make it difficult for common people to enter their secret gym.
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It's clear, that even if all votes were equally distributed, you'd still feel like guys like Goat or rpietila are on a different position or status, than someone with less than one BTC in his paper wallet. So why not let the voting system reflect that which we already feel is natural anyway? Of course the ones with more at stake should have more votes.
But it goes deeper than that.
All my life I've sort of struggled, ever since the school system tried to make us all bench press that same 10lbs weight over and over again. Also there was this forum at one point, where I was probably the most influential contributor, and lots of very high class contributors came along to join ranks & have a ball together. And then there was this one homo ignoramus, who didn't even want nor seek to contribute, but rather talk against the whole topic of the forum (which was organic, fresh, real, high quality food by the way, along with holistic health). The owner of the forum maintained his opinion that "everyone needs to get an equal chance in this forum". Well, soon all the best contributors found better things to do with their valuable time, so the owner of the forum was left with... well, what you get from trying to artificially make "everyone's contribution equal", even when it clearly is everything but.
In my life experience, I've noticed huge differences in people't energy levels and how they live their lives. The most impressive contributors are often the biggest eaners - and they usually end up re-investing a ton, in what they originally cared about. Making it better, making it bigger, perhaps adding diversity as well, depth; heck they even take steps to increase the value of social capital in the whole industry, and basically make everyone happier. Anyone could be more like that, but perhaps they haven't read their Napoleon Hill yet, perhaps because they were busy reading sociology of gender studies (which they didin't even care about in the first place, but thought that was okay, not too bad at least). It's wrong to say that the guy living hundreds of times bigger, having a network worth 10 000 times more, and making ridiculous contributions, while garnering masterful experience and ridiculous insigth to the matter, should have equal vote to the guy who was reading sociology and didn't even care about that - and probably cares even less about the subject matter at hand.
Usually - not 100%, but usually - the people who care deeply and personally about subject matter A, have more knowledge, experience, relevant networks, personal investment, social investment - and also financial investment in A. At least they should, and it would be very natural for them to.
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Now comes the interesting part.
I'm that guy with <1000mBTC on my name. And even for me it's preferable to live in a "society" where power is distributed naturally rather than equalized artificially. First, it gives me clear incentives, to serve more, earn better, step my value up. It creates culture where my friends have similar incentives, so it's exponentially more fun for each of us to walk the walk, make our journey upwards - not by doing bad the bad, evil, sneaky or in best case irrelevant things you often need to do in a forcefully artificial system to rise up, but just simply improve my communication, courage, wisdom, experience, skill; serve the market, use my network and treat them well. Secondly, even when my voting power is ridiculously low, I have much better chances to influence things, and do it in intelligent manner. I don't have to sink my self worth to convince the masses, when I can see who has the power, and I can be sure it's their own money that's at stake, so there aren't any sneaky conflicts of interest complicating things. All I need to do is talk sense, or present my argument, to the guy(s) who have lots at stake in this - and I can be quite sure that they are the ones who actually care (because it's their property, not public land), and they either know and understand this stuff very well, or at least have the incentives to make otherwise sure that their decisions are of high quality, for example by hiring some knowledgeable people who have demonstrated their love and deep caring for this thing (plus perhaps ability to make good decisions).
Ultimately it's about (finally) creating world without politics. What is politics? It's really the art of re-grabbing the power that was artificially (and forcefully) re-distributed, and then vandalize one's own integrity in all the complicated mess that follows. When you erase the ultimate reason to have any conflicts of interest in the first place, you pretty much get rid of (the need for) politics, or any other forms of bad behavior. FINALLY the best argument wins, not the sneakiest or most evil, or populist - or the one bought with other people's money. The highest uncommon denominator finally beats the lowest common - by 10 000 to one, in the case of me and rpietila for example. Like Steve Jobs would say, "that's how it should be." Come to think about it, that is the natural, and right way of things.
There are things that I have cared about more, and invested more of myself in, than Risto. And in those things I naturally have more say than him. If a superfood distributor wants to know what strains of enzymes to use in his newest product, of course he'll ask me. That's the natural, correct and intelligent way of things. The "democratic" way would be to have an equal vote between me and Risto, where Risto's vote would be equal to mine. But he doesn't know crap about enzyme strains or how and where they were produced and what the practical implications of all that are... so why on earth should Lasse from Rawmance Ltd even care about Risto's opinion? Well, in "democracy", you kind of have to. Let's not be that silly in this community. I'm better of off by having Risto have more power than me when it comes to decisions concerning matters of Bitcoin. Plus, I know who to talk to, in case I happen to think I have a better idea - and best of all, even in that case I don't have to worry about politics, or winning over every average person who might not even care let alone understand that much, or might have most his stakes & attention invested somewhere else. That's all good, natural - and in every imaginable sense most effective way to advance things. Who would you ask, who's opinion do you trust most (in matter A)? It kinda makes sense to let that person have an equal share of votes - not equal to the number of his fingers or hands, but his ability and will to benefit us all.
This is written by a newbie of 0 posts before this one. We aim to make it a quality place with meaningful discussion, and are happy to see this forum cater to other needs.
