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Thank you very much for your answer, it is very inspiring and it is refreshing to see someone who believes in a new world order as a potential end game for the blockchain rather than an easy way to make a quick buck.It has been a while since I have seen someone mention the cypherpunk movement.
Depending on how you define "new world order" I agree.
Cypherpunks basically believe that through certain mechanisms and coding, the people
can be protected from institutions that have slowly become corrupted or malicious to
those that they originally represented or led. When fully established, many things that
we consider today to be normal, like privacy and certain rights, will be seen as suspicious,
not important, and if performed, worthy of imprisonment or torture. As technology
improves and evolves over time, it is inevitable that those improvements will be used
against the people to the point in which they will become no different than watched slaves
who shortly become guilty until proven innocent. At that time, humans will only exist to
perpetuate that future totalitarian system and their controller's power. Those humans will
never again have the ability to overthrow them and institute a free and fair government/
society. The belief of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness will be a pipe dream.
Cypherpunks, IMO, are the last group of freedom fighters who have the capability
and means to prevent that potential future oppression from actualizing. They are the
final safety valve that releases from time to time to counter balance and prevent that
potential future. Bitcoin, in this light, is much bigger than just a financial instrument.
It is a form of redemption that the world will not fully understand until it is actually
needed. For example, in Venezuela, Bitcoin's true need and use has manifested
in our modern day. So, Bitcoin is already changing things and creating a better
tomorrow.
I have trouble understanding your point on leaving the miners behind by modifying the POW system. How would that go? This is for me the biggest vulnerability of bitcoin, a government taking over as it grows and challenge their supremacy and control over not only the currency system but the whole governance.
What can we do when we reach this point?
Simply, if the Miners reach a point where they have become fully corrupted or
compromised, the community can decide to change the Proof of Work algorithm
so that those entities can no longer directly influence the system. In this case, a
new PoW algo will be selected that is ASIC resistant and likely rotated with other
algos so that centralization of mining power becomes harder to perform in short
time frames. It will not be perfect, but it is highly acceptable over a Bitcoin blockchain
that is regulated, mandates blacklisting of certain coins, ID registering and tagging of
addresses, and any other restrictive or oppressive aspects you can dream up.
This will be performed by a hardfork, where the new protocol/chain will have this
new PoW algo. If governments take control of mining facilities, which is not far
fetched and very likely, especially in countries such as China, we will just flip them the
bird and leave them on the old chain with the old protocol. If Miners do not resists
governmental attempts at control or directly regulating their block work, and choose
to play ball with them, they have chosen their side and we no longer are bound to
preserve their financial investments. In fact, we will proudly brick those investments.
When Satoshi created decentralized mining with the dream of 1 CPU = 1 Vote, he
assumed that potential governmental attack vector was covered since it disbursed
the liabilities over the whole world and through hundreds to thousands of decentralized
individuals. Since that did not develop as he desired (centralization happened faster than
he thought possible), if Miners willingly (or unwillingly) become compromised today, we
just adapt and move forward without those compromised systems. We will then
participate on a free chain like today. If it happens again over time, we will just hardfork
again. The governments can keep trying to regulate ortake control, but ultimately it will
always be futile. As Bitcoin is designed, it must continually evade all forms of capture,
whether from internal parties or external ones.