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>It occurs to me that much of what crypto-lovers want is actually radically undemocratic. It's just the latest iteration of the libertarian fallacy, embodied i

>It occurs to me that much of what crypto-lovers want is actually radically undemocratic. It's just the latest iteration of the libertarian fallacy, embodied in code - that a market can exist without a governing body to make sure it doesn't get sold.

bduerst 8y ago
Basically whenever you create a vacuum of power, it gets filled eventually by a few individual actors - i.e. Bitcoin miners being predominantly Chinese at this point.
- ric2b 8y ago
  And what exactly are they able to do? People love to talk about how many miners are in China without mentioning that they really can't do much, even if they get over 51%.
wpietri 8y ago
Exactly. I used to work for financial traders, so I got to see some highly effective markets up close. Those markets were heavily regulated. Not just by governments, who were from my perspective almost irrelevant, but by the exchanges themselves. I think markets are amazing, and have a lot of sympathy for the more thoughtful sort of libertarian and their concerns about state power. But there's what I think of as fundamentalist libertarians, who seem to worship an abstract idea of "market" that has very little to do with my real-life experience of markets, financial or otherwise.
mshron 8y ago
For anyone interested in this extremely important point (that markets need a lot more than just enforcing contracts to work), two book recommendations: * Rob Reich, _Saving Capitalism_ [1] * Steven K Vogel, _Marketcraft_ [2] What kinds of contracts can be enforced? How much personal liability people should have? Is bankruptcy allowed? and so on. All trade-offs between different groups, and there’s no one “free market” answer to any of them. [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227780/saving-capitalism-by-robert-b-reich/9780345806222/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227780/saving-capit... [2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/marketcraft-9780190699857 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/marketcraft-97801906...

bduerst 8y ago

Basically whenever you create a vacuum of power, it gets filled eventually by a few individual actors - i.e. Bitcoin miners being predominantly Chinese at this point.

ric2b 8y ago
And what exactly are they able to do? People love to talk about how many miners are in China without mentioning that they really can't do much, even if they get over 51%.

wpietri 8y ago

Exactly. I used to work for financial traders, so I got to see some highly effective markets up close. Those markets were heavily regulated. Not just by governments, who were from my perspective almost irrelevant, but by the exchanges themselves. I think markets are amazing, and have a lot of sympathy for the more thoughtful sort of libertarian and their concerns about state power. But there's what I think of as fundamentalist libertarians, who seem to worship an abstract idea of "market" that has very little to do with my real-life experience of markets, financial or otherwise.

mshron 8y ago

For anyone interested in this extremely important point (that markets need a lot more than just enforcing contracts to work), two book recommendations: * Rob Reich, _Saving Capitalism_ [1] * Steven K Vogel, _Marketcraft_ [2] What kinds of contracts can be enforced? How much personal liability people should have? Is bankruptcy allowed? and so on. All trade-offs between different groups, and there’s no one “free market” answer to any of them. [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227780/saving-capitalism-by-robert-b-reich/9780345806222/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227780/saving-capit... [2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/marketcraft-9780190699857 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/marketcraft-97801906...