If i can't acquire native tokens except by willingly submitting to a centrally issued extortion scheme, then it's a permissioned ledger.
Say hello to Bitcoin mining pools...
I agree with Fuserleer that Bitcoin is gradually losing its decentralized attribute because of the economics of mining, as the economies-of-scale increase and the block reward decreases.
Monero is ostensibly more decentralized because it is early stage and hasn't yet scaled to great economies-of-scale in mining, e.g. there is no ASIC available yet afaik.
However I don't know how eMunie plans to obtain a more wide and competitive distribution than proof-of-work. And is that topic really appropriate in a thread about me.
I've stated why I no longer like ICOs. I'll leave it at that.
That's the funny part about it. When people complain that others are able to acquire coins at a better marginal cost, they're essentially saying they don't like free market systems. Ironically, the first sign you have a free market is that cartels and monopolies form. Economy of scale is just something you have to deal with and the only other option is to remove the private sector monopoly power and hand it to the government instead. Private sector cartels/monopolies tend to have a finite lifespan, while government based monopolies tend to be immortal, less accountable, and less efficient until the entire system collapses. So everything in both governance and finance comes down to picking the lesser evil of those two.
These are constructed systems. It is almost certainly possible to construct systems that have stronger or weaker economies of scale, or those with smaller or larger natural limits, just as such variety exists in natural systems.
So I agree with both of you in that economies of scale and cartels are part of a freer market but not all such such markets will behave the same.
By that definition, the term "free market" is no different than "everything". So obviously that can't be correct, because government manipulation, monopoly, and oligarchy would be included in everything.
As I've explained two times already in other threads recently (Monero Speculation thread about botnets, and IOHK Waves disclaimer thread about asymmetric information of the altcoin speculation market making it centralized to reliance on "expert" hypsters), my definition of "free market" is a decentralized market. This is why botnets are a free market with competition and an opportunity cost of doing just one thing (i.e. attacking Monero).
Sorry I disagree with you both of you, because you provided a vacuous definition of "free market".
Free markets have the attribute of having many decentralized decision makers, thus they anneal to fitness, i.e. they are anti-fragile. Top-down markets have the attribute of overshooting on vested interest decisions and thus are fragile.
The act of fornication (i.e. reproduction) is a free market. There is no economy-of-scale in fornication. It is always an individual decision.
