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I totally agree with you in practical terms, but what you're really saying is that you prefer the governance offered by Paypal and the credit card networks to t

by CamTin 8y ago

I totally agree with you in practical terms, but what you're really saying is that you prefer the governance offered by Paypal and the credit card networks to the governance provided by the government: IOW, it wouldn't even occur to you (or most sane people) to file a claim in court over a $25 Atari cart you tried to buy online. In the society these courts are designed to serve (peasant agricultural economies), the courts were where these issues were hashed out, and a fair bit of the "state-iness" of the state derived from its ability to solve these kinds of problems for people. Increasingly, this kind of justice is inaccessible to ordinary people except through "customer support" mechanisms at institutions like Amazon or Paypal or by tweeting at their CEOs. One of the very real problems that cryptocurrency enthusiasts are concerned about (but IMO totally failing to actually solve) is that it seems like a really bad idea to leave such basic functions of state in the hands of difficult-or-impossible-to-regulate transnational enterprises. When will these players realize that they've got more "state-iness" than most actual states, and how will they use it?

mantas 8y ago
You won't need a claim either. Chargeback is easy. So in CryptoWorld, people should go to court and try get their money back from anonymous seller? That'd be a field day for scammers.
- CamTin 8y ago
  Right, this is why its totally unworkable as a solution to the problem of transnational corporations wielding too much power, and a totally crypto-ized global economy would probably just make that worse. It solves other problems fairly well (paying ransoms to anonymous cybercriminals, as an example), but also doesn't even try to solve the problem that ordinary people can't afford (or figure out how) to have small commercial disputes adjudicated by actual courts anymore, which is (IMO) the one of the reasons these corporations hold so much power. In the neoliberal world order, government exists to ease the flow of international capital ("These regulations make it hard for us to scale our sales beyond the {US,China,Germany}. Please Mr. President, we need common-sense solutions!"). It has jettisoned its role of solving real problems for ordinary people ("Lord Fontleroy, Biff's dog killed two of my pigs.") as it once did.
- ric2b 8y ago
  If you need the extra safety you pay for the service of an intermediary, like PayPal or eBay or (in cryptoland) Purse.io. If you don't need the extra safety, you don't.
  - mantas 8y ago
    Many people take extra safety for granted though. Wether it's chargeback or at least knowing who you pay to pursue further legal actions. Let me rephrase consumer safety in crypto. Food safety regulations is kinda cool and we feel safe eating out. Now crypto food comes. It's cheaper, but seller now follows it's own understanding of food safety. Or not.
spookthesunset 8y ago
> When will these players realize that they've got more "state-iness" than most actual states, and how will they use it? In the brave new decentralized "free market" crypto world you are even more fucked if you have a problem. Who do you appeal to? Who decides if your edge case is worthy of rolling back the all mighty blockchain. The DAO folk got the "hack" stuff rolled back so the "thief" no longer had their money. But what about you and your Atari that never arrived? You think the top of the crypto pyramid is gonna roll back the blockchain for you? It can literally become mob rule! And sure, you can say "build a better smart contract", but I would say that is impossible because then you have to encode every edge case you can imagine and all the ones you can't imagine. And worse, you still need that smart contract to interface with things outside the "trusted" sandbox the smart contract lives in (i.e. meatspace)--which means you need to trust not only whatever is providing that interface but everything beyond it. Governments exist for a reason. One of those reasons is to be where the buck stops. A society that scales to billions of people needs somebody to say "this is right / this is wrong". It needs a final authority on conflict resolution. Smart contracts are seriously one of the stupidest things to come out of the crypto space. It really highlights how some engineers think "I am good with computer stuff, so therefore I am also good at economics, government, politics, finance, monetary policy, contract law, etc". The whole idea is really arrogant.
- ric2b 8y ago
  > In the brave new decentralized "free market" crypto world you are even more fucked if you have a problem. Who do you appeal to? Simple, if you need the extra safety you pay for the service of an intermediary, like PayPal or eBay or (in cryptoland) Purse.io. If you don't need the extra safety, you don't. Escrows can be even better with Bitcoin because of multi-signature transactions, the escrow can hold the payment without holding your money, so all they can do is approve the payment or not, they can't change the destination. Rolling back the blockchain is like going to the government to reverse your $50 transaction, it doesn't make sense.

by CamTin 8y ago

mantas 8y ago

You won't need a claim either. Chargeback is easy. So in CryptoWorld, people should go to court and try get their money back from anonymous seller? That'd be a field day for scammers.

CamTin 8y ago
Right, this is why its totally unworkable as a solution to the problem of transnational corporations wielding too much power, and a totally crypto-ized global economy would probably just make that worse. It solves other problems fairly well (paying ransoms to anonymous cybercriminals, as an example), but also doesn't even try to solve the problem that ordinary people can't afford (or figure out how) to have small commercial disputes adjudicated by actual courts anymore, which is (IMO) the one of the reasons these corporations hold so much power. In the neoliberal world order, government exists to ease the flow of international capital ("These regulations make it hard for us to scale our sales beyond the {US,China,Germany}. Please Mr. President, we need common-sense solutions!"). It has jettisoned its role of solving real problems for ordinary people ("Lord Fontleroy, Biff's dog killed two of my pigs.") as it once did.
ric2b 8y ago
If you need the extra safety you pay for the service of an intermediary, like PayPal or eBay or (in cryptoland) Purse.io. If you don't need the extra safety, you don't.
- mantas 8y ago
  Many people take extra safety for granted though. Wether it's chargeback or at least knowing who you pay to pursue further legal actions. Let me rephrase consumer safety in crypto. Food safety regulations is kinda cool and we feel safe eating out. Now crypto food comes. It's cheaper, but seller now follows it's own understanding of food safety. Or not.

spookthesunset 8y ago

> When will these players realize that they've got more "state-iness" than most actual states, and how will they use it? In the brave new decentralized "free market" crypto world you are even more fucked if you have a problem. Who do you appeal to? Who decides if your edge case is worthy of rolling back the all mighty blockchain. The DAO folk got the "hack" stuff rolled back so the "thief" no longer had their money. But what about you and your Atari that never arrived? You think the top of the crypto pyramid is gonna roll back the blockchain for you? It can literally become mob rule! And sure, you can say "build a better smart contract", but I would say that is impossible because then you have to encode every edge case you can imagine and all the ones you can't imagine. And worse, you still need that smart contract to interface with things outside the "trusted" sandbox the smart contract lives in (i.e. meatspace)--which means you need to trust not only whatever is providing that interface but everything beyond it. Governments exist for a reason. One of those reasons is to be where the buck stops. A society that scales to billions of people needs somebody to say "this is right / this is wrong". It needs a final authority on conflict resolution. Smart contracts are seriously one of the stupidest things to come out of the crypto space. It really highlights how some engineers think "I am good with computer stuff, so therefore I am also good at economics, government, politics, finance, monetary policy, contract law, etc". The whole idea is really arrogant.

ric2b 8y ago
> In the brave new decentralized "free market" crypto world you are even more fucked if you have a problem. Who do you appeal to? Simple, if you need the extra safety you pay for the service of an intermediary, like PayPal or eBay or (in cryptoland) Purse.io. If you don't need the extra safety, you don't. Escrows can be even better with Bitcoin because of multi-signature transactions, the escrow can hold the payment without holding your money, so all they can do is approve the payment or not, they can't change the destination. Rolling back the blockchain is like going to the government to reverse your $50 transaction, it doesn't make sense.