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Blockchain tech and the whole "trustless economy" freak me out precisely because I think they can work... The things that emerge out of this and scale long-term

by nnq 9y ago

Blockchain tech and the whole "trustless economy" freak me out precisely because I think they can work... The things that emerge out of this and scale long-term can have some really scary consequences: (1) a working "trustless economy" makes trust and peace no longer be requirements for a functional global economy... this opens the door to all sorts of fucked up scenarios like financing (or betting on) wars, no longer working for peace because it's not always required to make your economic schemes work, no longer caring about keeping your countries economy at least somewhat functional because you can always "pull your money out" etc. (2) a "human-less economy" enabled by smart contracts - long before autonomous "un-owned" corporations run by AIs take over the world, they will be used for all sorts of shady things, money laundering, toxic waste disposal by buying it but never paying to store it etc. I can't even imagine the creativity of the conmen and criminals that will start to play with these possibilities. "Trustless" can work... just that it doesn't seem to lead to scenarios that increase the mid term survival changes of the human race :|

Geee 9y ago
You don't think people already bet on wars? Why is there wars? You think that Putin invades countries just for fun? Opening the bets for everyone should make a more peaceful world, because wars don't benefit the majority.
jMyles 9y ago
I think your concerns are very reasonable. However, I think that thinking them all the way through is cause for more optimism than you're applying. For example, > no longer working for peace because it's not always required to make your economic schemes work Is this really a possibility? Peace is always good for bounty. Everybody everywhere wants peace. Along with justice, freedom, and love, it is one of the most unifying characteristics of the human condition. It is precisely those middlemen whom blockchain tech might undermine that have seized upon these soft parts of human kind and turned perverted them. In a world without fiat currency, I am quite confident that there will be less money for bombs and cheap plastic nonsense. This has been a critique of fiat currency for thousands of years, and only now does humanity have a tool to visualize it. And it's not hard to imagine blockchain technology replacing currency and consumerism altogether. Of course this will take a massive social movement - advances in the technology alone are perhaps necessary, but certainly not sufficient. > a "human-less economy" enabled by smart contracts - long before autonomous "un-owned" corporations run by AIs take over the world, they will be used for all sorts of shady things, money laundering, toxic waste disposal by buying it but never paying to store it etc. But again, humanity has a deep desire for the verdant. The deprecation of "easy" money, global theft, and warfare-as-the-norm - these are continuing imperatives and are good prayers for our earth. And on long time scales, it seems that blockchain tech tends toward, rather than away from, these things.
- scribu 9y ago
  > And it's not hard to imagine blockchain technology replacing currency and consumerism altogether. It is for me. How exactly would blockchain replace consumerism? And replace it with what? > The deprecation of "easy" money, global theft, and warfare-as-the-norm - these are continuing imperatives and are good prayers for our earth. And on long time scales, it seems that blockchain tech tends toward, rather than away from, these things. Do you have any evidence for such a bold claim? Or at least a rational argument for why blockchain tech would lead to such outcomes?
  - jMyles 9y ago
    > It is for me. How exactly would blockchain replace consumerism? And replace it with what? Painting with broad strokes: easy money / inflationary currency policy promotes spending over saving, right? So, with a less inflationary currency (or ecosystem of currencies), people will be less incentivized to spend in such a frenzied manner. I'm not really introducing anything new here; this is the basic Austrian critique re: price signals in the environment. > What evidence do you have for such bold claims? Well, I hope we can take the former as read: obviously a cryptocurrency with a less inflationary policy will promote deprecation of each money. As for global theft: the main infrastructure for nation-state level economic predation is monetary policy, and then trade policy as a secondary matter. Monetary policy may (again, in this admittedly utopian world I'm describing) be wrested from the state by virtue of cryptocurrencies. And trade policy with smart contracts. As for deprecation of warfare-as-the-norm: This, at least to me, is the logical consequence of the first two. If there is less rampant easy-money-consumerism, and no state-level monetary or trade policies, then warfare will increasingly be viewed as a sink of power rather than a fount. Am I being very hopeful here? Yes, I am. But I am very hopeful. I think that in these troubled times it is a great visionary exercise to ask yourself: what are some of the best things you can imagine happening for humanity in the next 50 years?
    - scribu 9y ago
      Thank you for ellaborating. It seems like your argument is centered around inflation, which is a relatively new phenomenon. Regarding consumerism, perhaps you’re right that lack of inflation will reduce it. But what if, after a certain point, consumerism is the main driver of economic growth, the thing that enables all the really good stuff to develop, such as scientific development? Regarding warfare, before fiat currency, you could argue that some wars were waged in order to get access to gold and silver mines. But I hope you’ll agree that those were only a small minority. I’m excluding violence for the purpose of simply stealing gold and silver outright, because the equivalent can still happen in a blockchain world - just point a gun to someone’s head and tell them to transfer all their coins to your account.
ccmonnett 9y ago
I am rather optimistic about blockchain for the exact opposite reasons. I don't believe it is "trustless" but rather "distributed trust" or "decentralized trust". Depending on entities like banks to determine who could/should be trusted, e.g., for loans, has allowed systematic discrimination against marginalized parties like African-Americans to continue for centuries. Being able to push the determination of trust out to the entities closest to the interested parties - perhaps those in their community who have lent them money and had it paid back - could allow for those people to have the same opportunities as the 'mainstream'. There have been rumblings about Yelp reviews being manipulated for years. Small business reviews on blockchain don't allow for that kind of manipulation - and could be integrated with smart contracts that verify that only actual patrons of that business could leave reviews. My personal favorite is the idea of blockchain election systems. It's not that I don't trust the U.S. government _per se_, but Congress has shown astounding indifference to modernizing and securing our election systems on their own. I would vastly prefer a well-designed decentralized implementation over whatever they could implement, securely, centrally. PS I'm not saying these implementations are trivial or easy in any way, nor are we necessarily ready for them, especially for the general public. But I do feel that removing centralized arbiters of trust could leave us in a better place than where we started.
- scribu 9y ago
  I like your idea about “pushing trust to the edges”, as it were. Food for thought... > There have been rumblings about Yelp reviews being manipulated for years. Small business reviews on blockchain don't allow for that kind of manipulation How would a blockchain prevent a restaurant owner from paying, using some unrelated method, someone to post a good review for them?
ShorsHammer 9y ago
People bet on wars via the stockmarket and various financial instruments today. Many of the other negatives raised already exist and get more efficient through technology one way or the other. Evil will always exist, lessening it will always be necessary. Technology is nothing more than an agnostic onlooker.

by nnq 9y ago

Geee 9y ago

You don't think people already bet on wars? Why is there wars? You think that Putin invades countries just for fun? Opening the bets for everyone should make a more peaceful world, because wars don't benefit the majority.

jMyles 9y ago

I think your concerns are very reasonable. However, I think that thinking them all the way through is cause for more optimism than you're applying. For example, > no longer working for peace because it's not always required to make your economic schemes work Is this really a possibility? Peace is always good for bounty. Everybody everywhere wants peace. Along with justice, freedom, and love, it is one of the most unifying characteristics of the human condition. It is precisely those middlemen whom blockchain tech might undermine that have seized upon these soft parts of human kind and turned perverted them. In a world without fiat currency, I am quite confident that there will be less money for bombs and cheap plastic nonsense. This has been a critique of fiat currency for thousands of years, and only now does humanity have a tool to visualize it. And it's not hard to imagine blockchain technology replacing currency and consumerism altogether. Of course this will take a massive social movement - advances in the technology alone are perhaps necessary, but certainly not sufficient. > a "human-less economy" enabled by smart contracts - long before autonomous "un-owned" corporations run by AIs take over the world, they will be used for all sorts of shady things, money laundering, toxic waste disposal by buying it but never paying to store it etc. But again, humanity has a deep desire for the verdant. The deprecation of "easy" money, global theft, and warfare-as-the-norm - these are continuing imperatives and are good prayers for our earth. And on long time scales, it seems that blockchain tech tends toward, rather than away from, these things.

scribu 9y ago
> And it's not hard to imagine blockchain technology replacing currency and consumerism altogether. It is for me. How exactly would blockchain replace consumerism? And replace it with what? > The deprecation of "easy" money, global theft, and warfare-as-the-norm - these are continuing imperatives and are good prayers for our earth. And on long time scales, it seems that blockchain tech tends toward, rather than away from, these things. Do you have any evidence for such a bold claim? Or at least a rational argument for why blockchain tech would lead to such outcomes?
- jMyles 9y ago
  > It is for me. How exactly would blockchain replace consumerism? And replace it with what? Painting with broad strokes: easy money / inflationary currency policy promotes spending over saving, right? So, with a less inflationary currency (or ecosystem of currencies), people will be less incentivized to spend in such a frenzied manner. I'm not really introducing anything new here; this is the basic Austrian critique re: price signals in the environment. > What evidence do you have for such bold claims? Well, I hope we can take the former as read: obviously a cryptocurrency with a less inflationary policy will promote deprecation of each money. As for global theft: the main infrastructure for nation-state level economic predation is monetary policy, and then trade policy as a secondary matter. Monetary policy may (again, in this admittedly utopian world I'm describing) be wrested from the state by virtue of cryptocurrencies. And trade policy with smart contracts. As for deprecation of warfare-as-the-norm: This, at least to me, is the logical consequence of the first two. If there is less rampant easy-money-consumerism, and no state-level monetary or trade policies, then warfare will increasingly be viewed as a sink of power rather than a fount. Am I being very hopeful here? Yes, I am. But I am very hopeful. I think that in these troubled times it is a great visionary exercise to ask yourself: what are some of the best things you can imagine happening for humanity in the next 50 years?
  - scribu 9y ago
    Thank you for ellaborating. It seems like your argument is centered around inflation, which is a relatively new phenomenon. Regarding consumerism, perhaps you’re right that lack of inflation will reduce it. But what if, after a certain point, consumerism is the main driver of economic growth, the thing that enables all the really good stuff to develop, such as scientific development? Regarding warfare, before fiat currency, you could argue that some wars were waged in order to get access to gold and silver mines. But I hope you’ll agree that those were only a small minority. I’m excluding violence for the purpose of simply stealing gold and silver outright, because the equivalent can still happen in a blockchain world - just point a gun to someone’s head and tell them to transfer all their coins to your account.

ccmonnett 9y ago

I am rather optimistic about blockchain for the exact opposite reasons. I don't believe it is "trustless" but rather "distributed trust" or "decentralized trust". Depending on entities like banks to determine who could/should be trusted, e.g., for loans, has allowed systematic discrimination against marginalized parties like African-Americans to continue for centuries. Being able to push the determination of trust out to the entities closest to the interested parties - perhaps those in their community who have lent them money and had it paid back - could allow for those people to have the same opportunities as the 'mainstream'. There have been rumblings about Yelp reviews being manipulated for years. Small business reviews on blockchain don't allow for that kind of manipulation - and could be integrated with smart contracts that verify that only actual patrons of that business could leave reviews. My personal favorite is the idea of blockchain election systems. It's not that I don't trust the U.S. government _per se_, but Congress has shown astounding indifference to modernizing and securing our election systems on their own. I would vastly prefer a well-designed decentralized implementation over whatever they could implement, securely, centrally. PS I'm not saying these implementations are trivial or easy in any way, nor are we necessarily ready for them, especially for the general public. But I do feel that removing centralized arbiters of trust could leave us in a better place than where we started.

scribu 9y ago
I like your idea about “pushing trust to the edges”, as it were. Food for thought... > There have been rumblings about Yelp reviews being manipulated for years. Small business reviews on blockchain don't allow for that kind of manipulation How would a blockchain prevent a restaurant owner from paying, using some unrelated method, someone to post a good review for them?

ShorsHammer 9y ago

People bet on wars via the stockmarket and various financial instruments today. Many of the other negatives raised already exist and get more efficient through technology one way or the other. Evil will always exist, lessening it will always be necessary. Technology is nothing more than an agnostic onlooker.