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> We believe that privacy strengthens social ties and social institutions, protects societies against their enemies, and helps societies to be more peaceful and

• Karunamon 11y ago
  That's... actually a really interesting idea, but you have to consider who you're building the system for - governments, or normal everyday people? There is a principle, that I think has basically been proven at this point, if not academically: A: In any non-optional system used by n people, the bad actors using that system are < n/2 (read: not a majority) B: It is impossible to prevent bad actors from misusing any system. C: Trying too hard means the system necessarily damages good actors. Therefore: D: Any system that punishes bad participants more than it helps non-bad participants is degenerate. Bitcoin can be seen as a rejection of a system suffering from C. For perfectly legitimate businesses and people, sending money is an unmitigated pain in the ass, substantial bites taken by middlemen, arbitrary negative action (c.f. civil forfeiture, paypal freezes) and so on. Bitcoin solves almost all of those problems, but makes lives easier for the bad actors too (but not enough that it substantially increases corruption in the world - bad actors gonna bad act) Now, if your hypothetical system is strictly opt-in, perhaps with social pressure for politicians and such to use it, then I'd have no trouble with it. Were it to become the de facto currency, on the other hand, the problems we have with government overreach and data mining just become a lot worse. If we accept B as true, then it makes more sense to design for the case of innocent, law abiding people first, out of fear of harming them due to C. Put another way, I'm a lot more worried about government misusing things under color of law, than I am worried about government corruption. At least regular people can oppose the second one in good faith, while the first one always comes with the "it's legal, so?" baggage.
  • natrius 11y ago
    It's strictly opt-in, but you won't be able to buy anything if everyone else requires auditable money and you don't want to opt-in. The more people who adopt it, the less tenable it is to stay out. Governments are people. People who use this system nefariously can be sanctioned by refusing to accept money they've touched. We're so afraid of governments misusing their power because our checks and balances have failed miserably, but it's not so bad that anyone wants to use the ultimate fallback of revolution. Merit capitalism is a check that the people control directly. People don't need to revolt to reclaim power anymore.
    • Karunamon 11y ago
      You're going to have to convince people that adopting this tool is better for them than what they have now for it to stand a chance of adoption. From a purely selfish standpoint, I would not want to use this system, because I don't want advertisers, insurance companies, malcontents, stalkers, debt collectors, busybodies, three-letter-agencies, data brokers, or any other random with an internet connection to know that I spent money at a hypothetical STD clinic or received money for participating in a scientific study. This plan introduces a huge number of of unknown unknowns, where right now, we've got a pretty good idea of how widespread the corruption is, the forms it generally takes, and what, if anything, we can do about it. And since past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, I can look backwards to see how behavioral data is abused right now, and say with complete certainty that it would be abused more under this system. No thanks.
      • natrius 11y ago
        I agree that conservatism has virtues. Change does introduce unknown unknowns. I think there's a good strategy for handling them: when people do undesirable things, sanction them. Change is inevitable. Zcash is here, so regulation is dead. Conservatism isn't an option: we have to choose how to adapt to change. I think merit capitalism is the right choice. Thanks for your questions! Good talk.
• cromwellian 11y ago
  I think this is an extremely important discussion to have. Democracy requires some form of transparency applied to government. Ideally, private citizens have maximum privacy to avoid abuses from corrupt government, or fellow citizens, but government itself should not have maximum privacy. I'd argue it should have maximum transparency. However, an unbeatable and untraceable cryptographic money scheme effectively would make bribery of power brokers undetectable, or at the very least, untraceable to it's source. What we gain in personal privacy, we will trade off for increased government corruption, and it is corruption and its abuses I'd argue are a greater danger than government snooping. If you look at many nations that are struggling, even those with ample revenues, the failure to improve the standard of living can often be traced to corruption and just blatant theft and embezzling. Government or large organizational snooping is a serious problem in countries without adequate protection of individuals and where discrimination goes unpunished. If I live in North Korea, I want maximum privacy. The threat model in OECD countries is different. While having say, the government of Sweden read my emails is disconcerting, the repercussions and threat from that are far smaller. The world is full of corruption and cronyism at all levels, both in government, and in large organizations. To what extent are we increasing their power to harm by assuming that maximum privacy effectively disarms their power against us? This is a truism accepted in the cypherpunks movement that's never really been tested, and it is deeply intertwined with libertarian thinking, that cryptoanarchy or laissez-faire regulation, imposed by technology, leads to a situation where big power brokers can do less damage. But we've also seen that when such organizations are opaque and unwatched, they often become more dangerous.
• AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  > Everything about our society will be decided by the people with the most money if people accept anonymous currencies. Democracy isn't possible when you can't hope to detect when influence is being purchased. Traceable currency doesn't solve that problem. People don't have to use literal money to buy influence. The politician does what you want and you make sure their kid gets into the right college. Or you hire their son in law at $250K/year. Or you run advertising that isn't officially part of their campaign but helps them stay in office. Or refrain from running critical advertising. The problem is not proving that each transaction took place. It's proving that one was a quid pro quo for another. Which the currency tells you nothing about. > If I know someone is buying influence and I want to reject their power to do so, I can stop accepting any money they've used in that way. And if you're one person or ten people then nothing happens. But if you have a sufficiently powerful coalition with an organizational structure capable of causing the coalition to act in unison then you become the tyranny of the majority and it is the minority who needs protecting from you.