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My view is that the most promising direction for making government and large companies less horrible are things like blockchains, smart contracts, digital auton

by ilaksh 5y ago

My view is that the most promising direction for making government and large companies less horrible are things like blockchains, smart contracts, digital autonomous organizations, and more generally shared protocols. What I envision is that somehow the de facto rules of society could operate a bit like using a decentralized software package registry. Or perhaps even explicitly that. The biggest challenge in my mind is that humans are, in fact, animals, with strong instincts that push towards hierarchies. This creates conflict with the ideals of protocol-based free society. But whatever form of hierarchy or authority we are stuck with, deploying these distributed protocols and tools will aid both those in power and the common man. Because ultimately most of the activity of regulation or market-making (and monopolization) is about solving logistical problems. And the leading edge for scaling logistics are decentralized technologies. One more fantasy. Maybe the problems we have with government are due to monopoly. If we had a way to vote with our feet for better rules, such as using protocols that are more effective or fair.. but ultimately authority is enforced by killing. What if somehow we could just collectively get together and ban killing (execution of dissidents or mass killing i.e. warfare) as a way of resolving conflicts over control? Lol. Of course, that might only make it easier for those without morals to take over. But just to keep hope alive for the human species, we should consider how our developing technologies might inform questions like that.

moksly 5y ago
The reason why distributed trust is never going to work is because authority doesn’t exist without the threat of violence. We’ve done a lot of interesting things in terms of POCs in the public sector over the last decade, and we’ve yet to find a way for blockchain to have a real world impact. In countries with high amount of trust in the public sector and low levels of corruption, it’s a burdensome, inefficient and expensive way to handle trust. In countries with high corruption and no trust, the smart contract doesn’t change the fact that a bunch of people with guns can still just take your land and nobody is going to come after them. It’s sort of similar with money. The only real appliance or Bitcoin and crypto currencies is for criminal enterprises to move and exchange money. The thing about that is that these organisations have as much of an authority or violence as some nation states. Considering Bitcoin can’t control where you use it, or how you turn it into real money, it’s really got not authority.

by ilaksh 5y ago

moksly 5y ago

The reason why distributed trust is never going to work is because authority doesn’t exist without the threat of violence. We’ve done a lot of interesting things in terms of POCs in the public sector over the last decade, and we’ve yet to find a way for blockchain to have a real world impact. In countries with high amount of trust in the public sector and low levels of corruption, it’s a burdensome, inefficient and expensive way to handle trust. In countries with high corruption and no trust, the smart contract doesn’t change the fact that a bunch of people with guns can still just take your land and nobody is going to come after them. It’s sort of similar with money. The only real appliance or Bitcoin and crypto currencies is for criminal enterprises to move and exchange money. The thing about that is that these organisations have as much of an authority or violence as some nation states. Considering Bitcoin can’t control where you use it, or how you turn it into real money, it’s really got not authority.