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I'm a little lost. What does ETH provide society if it's just another system for allowing 51% of people to screw over the 49% that dissent?

by dcow 9y ago

epistasis 9y ago
It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, or 51% of stake if Ethereum ever switches to proof of stake. Ethereum runs by capitalistic power, not democratic power. I don't know if there's any alternative to that; any such system is going to have some means of enforcing truth and power, and means of gaining or losing it. Cryptocurrencies are not a way of escaping that fundamental fact. They shift where the power is. Having that alternative to current ledger and contract systems can be valuable to people in certain situations. Thinking that Ethereum or Bitcoin or any blockchain tech escapes these fundamental power relationships is exactly the type of inanity that makes the tech seem unserious. It's a hype train, it's not true, but there is still the potential for value.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  > It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, Cool, so in reality a lot less than 51% of people can screw over every else. Again, what is it that ETH provides society that's new and useful?
  - bigiain 9y ago
    And proof of stake is likely to be even worse. The people with the most money decide who gets richer and who doesn't. What could possibly go wrong?
    - jvdizz 9y ago
      Not quite. The richest actually do the work to keep the system running. They need to stake their claim to the system to validate everyone else's trx. If is in their best interest not to mess up, otherwise they lose their stake in the system.
      - jacobush 9y ago
        So those who benefit from cemented structures are incentivized to maintain status quo. Sounds like humanity, just a different set of masters.
        Fnoord 9y ago
        Sounds like the banking system, but now you can vote with your wallet to buy the cryptocoin of your preference. Pretty much akin to how you can vote for a politician, or vote with your money by buying a product or not buying a product. Not only do those who designed the cryptocoin plus early adapters (the former are the latter, but not necessarily vice versa) get more rich with thin air generated by electricity, they also get more powerful. No wonder these things rise up like mushrooms from the ground. Man, if I were into this, I'd just convince people 24/7 to get into these cryptocoins. Best way to get rich doing virtually nothing but some marketing. Right?
      - madeofpalk 9y ago
        Cool. So it’s a centralised system ran by the rich (which I don’t necessarily have a problem with). Again, what is it that ETH provides society that's new and useful?
        kbenson 9y ago
        What do most financial products provide to society that's new and useful? If you want to throw up your hands and declare this all a waste of time, feel free. You'll have lots of company, and for good reason, but setting some arbitrarily high goal such as "providing something new and useful to society" just makes it sound like you've got an axe to grind. There's plenty of things about Ethereum (and blockchain exchanges and how they are used and hyped) to criticize legitimately, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
        koheripbal 9y ago
        In reality, you would be very hard pressed to get 51% of all global wealth to agree on anything. Today, it is pockets of ~1% wealth screwing over their regional 0.00001% constituents. Ethereum forces a global authority :)
  - unsignedinteger 9y ago
    A decentralized computing network that can be used for anything essentially?
    - kevingadd 9y ago
      As long as "anything" is an algorithm expressible given Solidity's tremendous constraints And if you're just going to use ETH to pay for real compute hardware in the cloud so you can run real software, at that point why not just use BTC? Turing-completeness doesn't automatically make something useful.
      - unsignedinteger 9y ago
        > why not just use BTC? By the very nature of your argument if a Turing-complete blockchain isn't inherently worth something than a stack-based language which isn't Turing complete is certainly worthless. I feel like your arguing with me for the sake of arguing? What's your point ETH isn't perfect, so what, it's relatively new tech which is exploring an interesting problem. The fact it's valued X _may be_ a fair evaluation or even undervalued given it's impact. The upside being possibly a DAO controlled by an AI efficiently providing resources to humanity in a way human's can't given traditional power structures. Or maybe fiat isn't so bad and we don't want robot overlords so we scrap it all. At the end of the day who cares, as long as your smart about the money you've invested into to the ecosystem you won't be hurt by a Black Swan in the cryptosphere. I think anyone working on ETH up to Vitak would have the same sentiment.
        kevingadd 9y ago
        "that can be used for anything essentially" is a pretty wild claim to make if you can't actually back it up with useful algorithms to run on the network. This doesn't mean it's useless (you can probably run interesting contracts and stuff on the network), but stop trying to make Ethereum into something it's not.
        unsignedinteger 9y ago
  - jancsika 9y ago
    Here's an easy one: the ability to receive a payment for a service without relying on a third party to deliver that payment. New: state-level actor(s) cannot stop an organization from receiving payment merely by forcing your third-party payment processor to freeze funds/stop payments. Example: sci-hub. If they were receiving payments through Mastercard/Visa it would have almost certainly been frozen long ago. However, since they (apparently) get funded by receiving Bitcoin, they continue to operate. In the meantime, grad students and professors get the convenience of using sci-hub's interface to easily retrieve journal articles. Even if sci-hub eventually gets taken down completely (or a researcher finds a catastrophic bug in all cryptocurrencies), the total time during which sci-hub served documents funded by Bitcoins was a benefit to society. ETH allows fancier transaction scripts than Bitcoin, but the same argument holds-- a state level actor cannot just stop the contract from being executed simply by putting pressure on a third party. Based on this article, I'd say there is value in ETH just as there is value in writing a complex, multi-threaded application in a memory-unsafe language. It's a bad idea, but for some special cases it may be better than doing nothing at all.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      > a state level actor cannot just stop the contract from being executed simply by putting pressure on a third party. They just haven't gotten around to it yet. The decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies increases the number of entities that need to be pressured, but doesn't make state-level actors completely powerless.
      - Zpalmtree 9y ago
        This is why some cryptocurrency communities like monero push for people to use smaller mining pools so the miners are more decentralized.
        dullgiulio 9y ago
        So we need some guidance. Oh that's what governments are for, definitely not a private company, which is not accountable by voters (with a wide voters base; if the voter base is not wide, made it so, don't discard democracy.) Finally, there are a lot of good reasons why in democracy we vote per-head and not per-share. It's a big thing, but that is also being dismissed by cryptocurrencies.
  - AroundTheBlock_ 9y ago
    Actually, 51% of miners can't cause a hard fork (which TheDAO was).
Iv 9y ago
A system where it is not 0.1% of the people who are allowed to screw over 99.9% of the others? You argue for purity of a principle. Very few people actually care about such a notion. The majority has more practical concerns. The fact that a theft that would have made the whole currency seem insecure has been reversed was seen as a proof of solidity by many users.
- kevingadd 9y ago
  What implicitly stops 0.1% of people from controlling 51% of the network? You realize how much of global fiat wealth is currently in the hands of the 0.1%, right? The current system at least theoretically has democratic (or otherwise) control over who the 0.1% in power are. In a system like BTC or ETH it's just 'who has the most compute?' or in proof of stake, 'who's the richest?'
  - wan23 9y ago
    If any group controlled >50% of the network and also was willing to use that power in a way that would diminish trust in that same network then they'd very quickly end up with 100% of something worthless.
    - kevingadd 9y ago
      This seems to imply that everyone else's stake in the network would become worthless too, though. What stops a particularly motivated billionaire from buying 51% compute for a month or so to destroy a cryptocurrency for good? They waste that money but any competitor of theirs (in business, etc) who had wealth tied up in that currency can kiss it goodbye. If a business was built around that currency it's dead now. The 'diminish trust in the network' threat really only discourages an existing good actor (invested in the network) from turning into a bad actor. If I've been mining a cryptocurrency for years and I decide I want to move on to mining something else, what stops me from using 51% to destroy the currency before I move on to mining something else? If I moved my currency holdings out (or have been liquidating them regularly, as any sensible miner might), what's to lose?
    - 9y ago

I'm a little lost. What does ETH provide society if it's just another system for allowing 51% of people to screw over the 49% that dissent?

by dcow 9y ago

I'm a little lost. What does ETH provide society if it's just another system for allowing 51% of people to screw over the 49% that dissent?

epistasis 9y ago

It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, or 51% of stake if Ethereum ever switches to proof of stake. Ethereum runs by capitalistic power, not democratic power. I don't know if there's any alternative to that; any such system is going to have some means of enforcing truth and power, and means of gaining or losing it. Cryptocurrencies are not a way of escaping that fundamental fact. They shift where the power is. Having that alternative to current ledger and contract systems can be valuable to people in certain situations. Thinking that Ethereum or Bitcoin or any blockchain tech escapes these fundamental power relationships is exactly the type of inanity that makes the tech seem unserious. It's a hype train, it's not true, but there is still the potential for value.

madeofpalk 9y ago
> It's not 51% of people, it's 51% of computing power, Cool, so in reality a lot less than 51% of people can screw over every else. Again, what is it that ETH provides society that's new and useful?
- bigiain 9y ago
  And proof of stake is likely to be even worse. The people with the most money decide who gets richer and who doesn't. What could possibly go wrong?
  - jvdizz 9y ago
    Not quite. The richest actually do the work to keep the system running. They need to stake their claim to the system to validate everyone else's trx. If is in their best interest not to mess up, otherwise they lose their stake in the system.
    - jacobush 9y ago
      So those who benefit from cemented structures are incentivized to maintain status quo. Sounds like humanity, just a different set of masters.
      - Fnoord 9y ago
        Sounds like the banking system, but now you can vote with your wallet to buy the cryptocoin of your preference. Pretty much akin to how you can vote for a politician, or vote with your money by buying a product or not buying a product. Not only do those who designed the cryptocoin plus early adapters (the former are the latter, but not necessarily vice versa) get more rich with thin air generated by electricity, they also get more powerful. No wonder these things rise up like mushrooms from the ground. Man, if I were into this, I'd just convince people 24/7 to get into these cryptocoins. Best way to get rich doing virtually nothing but some marketing. Right?
    - madeofpalk 9y ago
      Cool. So it’s a centralised system ran by the rich (which I don’t necessarily have a problem with). Again, what is it that ETH provides society that's new and useful?
      - kbenson 9y ago
        What do most financial products provide to society that's new and useful? If you want to throw up your hands and declare this all a waste of time, feel free. You'll have lots of company, and for good reason, but setting some arbitrarily high goal such as "providing something new and useful to society" just makes it sound like you've got an axe to grind. There's plenty of things about Ethereum (and blockchain exchanges and how they are used and hyped) to criticize legitimately, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
      - koheripbal 9y ago
        In reality, you would be very hard pressed to get 51% of all global wealth to agree on anything. Today, it is pockets of ~1% wealth screwing over their regional 0.00001% constituents. Ethereum forces a global authority :)
- unsignedinteger 9y ago
  A decentralized computing network that can be used for anything essentially?
  - kevingadd 9y ago
    As long as "anything" is an algorithm expressible given Solidity's tremendous constraints And if you're just going to use ETH to pay for real compute hardware in the cloud so you can run real software, at that point why not just use BTC? Turing-completeness doesn't automatically make something useful.
    - unsignedinteger 9y ago
      > why not just use BTC? By the very nature of your argument if a Turing-complete blockchain isn't inherently worth something than a stack-based language which isn't Turing complete is certainly worthless. I feel like your arguing with me for the sake of arguing? What's your point ETH isn't perfect, so what, it's relatively new tech which is exploring an interesting problem. The fact it's valued X _may be_ a fair evaluation or even undervalued given it's impact. The upside being possibly a DAO controlled by an AI efficiently providing resources to humanity in a way human's can't given traditional power structures. Or maybe fiat isn't so bad and we don't want robot overlords so we scrap it all. At the end of the day who cares, as long as your smart about the money you've invested into to the ecosystem you won't be hurt by a Black Swan in the cryptosphere. I think anyone working on ETH up to Vitak would have the same sentiment.
      - kevingadd 9y ago
        "that can be used for anything essentially" is a pretty wild claim to make if you can't actually back it up with useful algorithms to run on the network. This doesn't mean it's useless (you can probably run interesting contracts and stuff on the network), but stop trying to make Ethereum into something it's not.
        unsignedinteger 9y ago
- jancsika 9y ago
  Here's an easy one: the ability to receive a payment for a service without relying on a third party to deliver that payment. New: state-level actor(s) cannot stop an organization from receiving payment merely by forcing your third-party payment processor to freeze funds/stop payments. Example: sci-hub. If they were receiving payments through Mastercard/Visa it would have almost certainly been frozen long ago. However, since they (apparently) get funded by receiving Bitcoin, they continue to operate. In the meantime, grad students and professors get the convenience of using sci-hub's interface to easily retrieve journal articles. Even if sci-hub eventually gets taken down completely (or a researcher finds a catastrophic bug in all cryptocurrencies), the total time during which sci-hub served documents funded by Bitcoins was a benefit to society. ETH allows fancier transaction scripts than Bitcoin, but the same argument holds-- a state level actor cannot just stop the contract from being executed simply by putting pressure on a third party. Based on this article, I'd say there is value in ETH just as there is value in writing a complex, multi-threaded application in a memory-unsafe language. It's a bad idea, but for some special cases it may be better than doing nothing at all.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    > a state level actor cannot just stop the contract from being executed simply by putting pressure on a third party. They just haven't gotten around to it yet. The decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies increases the number of entities that need to be pressured, but doesn't make state-level actors completely powerless.
    - Zpalmtree 9y ago
      This is why some cryptocurrency communities like monero push for people to use smaller mining pools so the miners are more decentralized.
      - dullgiulio 9y ago
        So we need some guidance. Oh that's what governments are for, definitely not a private company, which is not accountable by voters (with a wide voters base; if the voter base is not wide, made it so, don't discard democracy.) Finally, there are a lot of good reasons why in democracy we vote per-head and not per-share. It's a big thing, but that is also being dismissed by cryptocurrencies.
- AroundTheBlock_ 9y ago
  Actually, 51% of miners can't cause a hard fork (which TheDAO was).

Iv 9y ago

A system where it is not 0.1% of the people who are allowed to screw over 99.9% of the others? You argue for purity of a principle. Very few people actually care about such a notion. The majority has more practical concerns. The fact that a theft that would have made the whole currency seem insecure has been reversed was seen as a proof of solidity by many users.

kevingadd 9y ago
What implicitly stops 0.1% of people from controlling 51% of the network? You realize how much of global fiat wealth is currently in the hands of the 0.1%, right? The current system at least theoretically has democratic (or otherwise) control over who the 0.1% in power are. In a system like BTC or ETH it's just 'who has the most compute?' or in proof of stake, 'who's the richest?'
- wan23 9y ago
  If any group controlled >50% of the network and also was willing to use that power in a way that would diminish trust in that same network then they'd very quickly end up with 100% of something worthless.
  - kevingadd 9y ago
    This seems to imply that everyone else's stake in the network would become worthless too, though. What stops a particularly motivated billionaire from buying 51% compute for a month or so to destroy a cryptocurrency for good? They waste that money but any competitor of theirs (in business, etc) who had wealth tied up in that currency can kiss it goodbye. If a business was built around that currency it's dead now. The 'diminish trust in the network' threat really only discourages an existing good actor (invested in the network) from turning into a bad actor. If I've been mining a cryptocurrency for years and I decide I want to move on to mining something else, what stops me from using 51% to destroy the currency before I move on to mining something else? If I moved my currency holdings out (or have been liquidating them regularly, as any sensible miner might), what's to lose?
  - 9y ago