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Let me see if I can explain this better. 500 years ago was 1517. This is just a bit into the Age of Discovery. We hadn't even managed to sail all the way aroun

Let me see if I can explain this better. 500 years ago was 1517. This is just a bit into the Age of Discovery. We hadn't even managed to sail all the way around the world yet (that wouldn't come until 1522). The Enlightenment was still a couple centuries away. Feudalism was still a thing, plagues still routinely struck. Absolute monarchs reigned over lands. Most people still lived on subsistence agriculture and would starve is there was a bad harvest. People routinely died of things that we don't even think about because of modern medicine. Now, compare that to the world we live in now, where satellites and cables beam information around the world in milliseconds and childhood deaths from diseases are much rarer now. I could be in China in less than a day if I wanted to. And I'm not likely to starve this winter and I never had smallpox as a child. Blockchains MAY someday be important. But it is the height of tech arrogance, not to mention a gross lack of awareness of history, to put a yet largely unproven technology that most of the human population has not even heard of on the same level as vaccinations. A LOT has happened in 500 years, and it is WAY too early to be making those kinds of pronouncements. (As a side note, two of the most underrated inventions of, let's say the last 100 years or so: the pallet and the ISO container. Both of these are so crucial to the modern economy that they blend into the background.)

Alex3917 9y ago
> it is the height of tech arrogance, not to mention a gross lack of awareness of history, to put a yet largely unproven technology that most of the human population has not even heard of on the same level as vaccinations I said 'economically important'. The couple years they add to our life expectancy is great, but vaccines weren't really associated with an enormous transfer of wealth on the same level as, say, the railroads or the age of sail. (And wouldn't have even if Salk had patented the polio vaccine.)
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  > Weren't really associated with an enormous transfer of wealth on the same level as, say, the railroads or the age of sail. How do you predict wealth will transfer differently under blockchains than with usual state backed currencies. Not the literal (you don't need a bank), but societal? If block chains were to completely replace US currency, but society used them exactly the same, then they wouldn't be a transformative tech. They'd need to change society economically to do that. How do you see it doing that?
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    I'll blog about this in the next few months, I'm going to wait until the hype dies down first though because I don't want to encourage other folks to make bad life decisions, and also so I can buy what I want to hold until the next cycle. What I would say though is that blockchain has nothing to do with currency, that's just a red herring out there to trick people into not seeing its transformative potential. It's about reaching consensus and being able to make decisions at a society-wide level. I blogged about the implications of this is a little in 2006, before any of this was even invented: http://www.alexkrupp.com/fourwebs.html http://www.alexkrupp.com/fourwebs.html
    - pascalxus 9y ago
      > It's about reaching consensus and being able to make decisions at a society-wide level. If this was really true, I could see how important that would be. Having better ways to govern ourselves, and putting 35% of GDP to better use than it currently is being used, would have tremendous impact. But, the Government and the majority will never in a million years allow this to happen and thus none of this "consensus" will ever matter (because it occurs outside the scope of our operating government). The real key to achieving what your alluding too is a massive political innovation which I don't see how bitcoin can bring about.
- peckrob 9y ago
  Vaccines are one of the major reasons we have so many people now (along with germ theory, hand washing, modern medication, etc). The billions of people who lived through childhood, who otherwise might have died, to buy our hardware and use our apps would probably beg to differ. :)
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    Fair enough. I guess my thinking was that that's not really an arbitrage opportunity in the same way that buying tea in China and selling it in the UK is.

Alex3917 9y ago

> it is the height of tech arrogance, not to mention a gross lack of awareness of history, to put a yet largely unproven technology that most of the human population has not even heard of on the same level as vaccinations I said 'economically important'. The couple years they add to our life expectancy is great, but vaccines weren't really associated with an enormous transfer of wealth on the same level as, say, the railroads or the age of sail. (And wouldn't have even if Salk had patented the polio vaccine.)

BoiledCabbage 9y ago
> Weren't really associated with an enormous transfer of wealth on the same level as, say, the railroads or the age of sail. How do you predict wealth will transfer differently under blockchains than with usual state backed currencies. Not the literal (you don't need a bank), but societal? If block chains were to completely replace US currency, but society used them exactly the same, then they wouldn't be a transformative tech. They'd need to change society economically to do that. How do you see it doing that?
- Alex3917 9y ago
  I'll blog about this in the next few months, I'm going to wait until the hype dies down first though because I don't want to encourage other folks to make bad life decisions, and also so I can buy what I want to hold until the next cycle. What I would say though is that blockchain has nothing to do with currency, that's just a red herring out there to trick people into not seeing its transformative potential. It's about reaching consensus and being able to make decisions at a society-wide level. I blogged about the implications of this is a little in 2006, before any of this was even invented: http://www.alexkrupp.com/fourwebs.html http://www.alexkrupp.com/fourwebs.html
  - pascalxus 9y ago
    > It's about reaching consensus and being able to make decisions at a society-wide level. If this was really true, I could see how important that would be. Having better ways to govern ourselves, and putting 35% of GDP to better use than it currently is being used, would have tremendous impact. But, the Government and the majority will never in a million years allow this to happen and thus none of this "consensus" will ever matter (because it occurs outside the scope of our operating government). The real key to achieving what your alluding too is a massive political innovation which I don't see how bitcoin can bring about.
peckrob 9y ago
Vaccines are one of the major reasons we have so many people now (along with germ theory, hand washing, modern medication, etc). The billions of people who lived through childhood, who otherwise might have died, to buy our hardware and use our apps would probably beg to differ. :)
- Alex3917 9y ago
  Fair enough. I guess my thinking was that that's not really an arbitrage opportunity in the same way that buying tea in China and selling it in the UK is.