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Right. I think it's a good explanation. I am very hopeful about Ethereum 2.0. But as the article says, it seems that if it really starts to have high transact

by ilaksh 6y ago

Right. I think it's a good explanation. I am very hopeful about Ethereum 2.0. But as the article says, it seems that if it really starts to have high transaction rates that make it compete as real money or even see things like distributed autonomous organizations take off, governments will probably protect their turf. Here are a couple of fantasy scenarios. First, maybe government will just not be able to effectively ban Ethereum, despite trying. And a new era of decentralization and effective and fair international cooperation flourishes. Or two, maybe instead of WWIII, countries decide to work together to create a new international system, based on a shared currency built on Ethereum and tied to a comprehensive decentralized resource tracking system (possibly bringing in other distributed protocols). Designed to ensure food, housing, sustainability, and security security for the global populace and cut back on runaway inequality. It will be a new type of economics, more sophisticated and based on sustainable practices rather than infinite growth. Well I did say they were fantasies.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Designed to ensure food, housing, sustainability, and security security for the global populace and cut back on runaway inequality Why do you think a deflationary currency built on staking assets would reduce inequality?
- ilaksh 6y ago
  It's a starting point that provides much more capability than something like a traditional currency. The potentially deflationary aspects can be changed with source code modifications if necessary. But I did mention other decentralized technologies. What I was proposing was a massive social-technological engineering task rather than a complete solution. But it seems obvious that the economic tools we are working with are severely outdated and insufficient.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    This is trying to back into post-scarcity socialism with a technical tool based on ownership. That seems challenging.
    - ilaksh 6y ago
      It's really about having a more nuanced understanding of these systems. Money is one of the earliest technologies. It is also one of the most successful because of its ability to allocate power and resources in a way that facilitates both cooperation and hierarchy. But its form is quite dated. It needs to become a high technology. Some of the "socialistic" ideals (such as food and housing security) are nearly undeniable, if you have moved on from Social Darwinism (which many have not unfortunately). But socialists have traditionally failed to appreciate the great success of money, the necessity of evolution and freedom, and robustness of dynamic networks over centralized systems. We have technologies that are sophisticated enough that we can have dynamic evolving systems but still have housing security and limit inequality while remaining sustainable. But we aren't going to be able to do that with old-fashioned traditional money or by banning money or some central control system. To accomplish our goals we need to make society into a high-technology by integrating our innovations properly.
      - throw99c 6y ago
        About the form of money being quite dated: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hate... "And now here we are in a world of high information technology — and people think it’s smart, nay cutting-edge, to create a sort of virtual currency whose creation requires wasting real resources in a way Adam Smith considered foolish and outmoded in 1776." Whatever the high-tech economic mechanism will be, bitcoin doesn't seem likely to be it.
        ilaksh 6y ago
        Right. I wasn't recommending Bitcoin. I was talking about things more along the lines of Ethereum. Ethereum is what happens when you keep evolving the idea of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is what happens when you freeze the idea. But I will say that despite the wastefulness and other flaws of Bitcoin, at least it uses math to verify the ledger, rather than relying on authority and private entities to distribute points without any real verification. Money is just a points system used to distribute control over resources. The main advantage of cryptocurrency is that it uses math to verify that people are not cheating in their points distribution.

by ilaksh 6y ago

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> Designed to ensure food, housing, sustainability, and security security for the global populace and cut back on runaway inequality Why do you think a deflationary currency built on staking assets would reduce inequality?

ilaksh 6y ago
It's a starting point that provides much more capability than something like a traditional currency. The potentially deflationary aspects can be changed with source code modifications if necessary. But I did mention other decentralized technologies. What I was proposing was a massive social-technological engineering task rather than a complete solution. But it seems obvious that the economic tools we are working with are severely outdated and insufficient.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  This is trying to back into post-scarcity socialism with a technical tool based on ownership. That seems challenging.
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    It's really about having a more nuanced understanding of these systems. Money is one of the earliest technologies. It is also one of the most successful because of its ability to allocate power and resources in a way that facilitates both cooperation and hierarchy. But its form is quite dated. It needs to become a high technology. Some of the "socialistic" ideals (such as food and housing security) are nearly undeniable, if you have moved on from Social Darwinism (which many have not unfortunately). But socialists have traditionally failed to appreciate the great success of money, the necessity of evolution and freedom, and robustness of dynamic networks over centralized systems. We have technologies that are sophisticated enough that we can have dynamic evolving systems but still have housing security and limit inequality while remaining sustainable. But we aren't going to be able to do that with old-fashioned traditional money or by banning money or some central control system. To accomplish our goals we need to make society into a high-technology by integrating our innovations properly.
    - throw99c 6y ago
      About the form of money being quite dated: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hate... "And now here we are in a world of high information technology — and people think it’s smart, nay cutting-edge, to create a sort of virtual currency whose creation requires wasting real resources in a way Adam Smith considered foolish and outmoded in 1776." Whatever the high-tech economic mechanism will be, bitcoin doesn't seem likely to be it.
      - ilaksh 6y ago
        Right. I wasn't recommending Bitcoin. I was talking about things more along the lines of Ethereum. Ethereum is what happens when you keep evolving the idea of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is what happens when you freeze the idea. But I will say that despite the wastefulness and other flaws of Bitcoin, at least it uses math to verify the ledger, rather than relying on authority and private entities to distribute points without any real verification. Money is just a points system used to distribute control over resources. The main advantage of cryptocurrency is that it uses math to verify that people are not cheating in their points distribution.