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>Like money, but every bit of democratic control and negotiability is removed. My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic

>Like money, but every bit of democratic control and negotiability is removed. My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. More democratic than all previously existing currencies, even. (Whether those ideas are feasible or those goals are being achieved is another matter.) I'm not sure where Yarvin stands on cryptocurrencies. He's indeed very anti-democracy and pro-monarchy, but that's exactly why I think the attempted connection doesn't work. I don't think it's fair or accurate to tie him or his ideology to the general concept of cryptocurrencies or their advocates. I'd wager the vast majority of advocates probably strongly disagree with him on most things. I think they would largely consider themselves democracy maximalists, even. Also, no need to add "fun fact"; Yarvin's involvement is by far the most well-known thing about this odd project. If you ask anyone what Urbit is, their answer is very likely either going to be "what?" or "that inscrutable thing that neo-reactionary blogger made". It usually takes up about 95%+ of any Urbit discussion anywhere online. >An immutable publication record and undeniable cryptographic identity is another idea which is dystopic to me. Why? Also, there are some cryptocurrencies that don't have either of those things. And for the ones that do, "cryptographic identity" just means "a public key", like a PGP key; not necessarily your real personal information. >In more benign form you find it in IPFS etc. Why the need for the equivocative qualifier? What's potentially unethical about the core idea of IPFS or those general categories of ideas? (Perhaps beyond the sorts of illicit activities any sort of decentralized technology, like Tor, can enable.) I'm not a big cryptocurrency supporter and recognize ~99.9% of it is Ponzi schemes and other varying degrees of hot air - and there are certainly a lot of highly pessimistic ideas I disagree with that are common among the community (e.g. that central banks are malevolent or that the US dollar is likely to collapse in the not-too-distant future) - but it's unfortunate how these things seem to always reduce to two radical poles that are pretty much equivalently ideologically closed-minded. (I'm certainly pulling a https://xkcd.com/774/ https://xkcd.com/774/, with zero qualms. I 100% agree with the character on the left, in this context.)

captainmuon 5y ago
> My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. More democratic than all previously existing currencies, even. What I mean is, imagine 20 people come together in a little society. They use something like Bitcoin as their currency, and one of them has far more wealth than the others combined. They cannot decide by majority vote how to use the wealth democratically. If the one doesn't play along, they can only resort to violence to get his coin. (You could argue that this property of crypto serves to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, but IRL minorites rarely have crypto riches. And usually the way you'd protect the minority would be by law or constitution.) Because crypto is not "credit" in a book, but a proven mathematical algorithm, there is no room for negotiation, discussion, redistribution. I wonder if you could make a cryptocurrency from the opposite principle - everything is up to negotiation, and you could have crypto councils or parliaments which can reallocate resources as neccessary? > Also, no need to add "fun fact"; Yarvin's involvement is by far the most well-known thing about this odd project I didn't know until very recently. This piece of information made everything else about Urbit fall into place and make sense for me. It wasn't mentioned here so I thought it was useful to bring up. > What's potentially unethical about the core idea of IPFS or those general categories of ideas? Unethical? I don't know. But I don't want to live in a world where we use crypography this way. People are getting into hot water due to stupid stuff they said 10 years ago on Twitter. Imagine how bad this will be when everything is stored immutably in a blockchain or journal. Social mores change, and society might become more error-friendly again. Or in a few years we might be back to Richelieu: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Likewise, I just don't want to use a net ruled by Urbit "dukes" and "earls". It just comes down to this: Certain uses of technology, especially from people with a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist agenda, give me the creeps. I hope I'm not alone with that fear. A quote from Terminator comes to mind: > That Terminator is out there. It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with. It doesn't feel pity of remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop. Ever.
- meowface 5y ago
  >Likewise, I just don't want to use a net ruled by Urbit "dukes" and "earls". >It just comes down to this: Certain uses of technology, especially from people with a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist agenda, give me the creeps. I strongly agree with the former and largely agree with the latter. At the same time, I think there are enough interesting aspects of some cryptocurrency technology that it'd be a mistake to write off the whole field. The different cryptocurrencies have different communities; they're not all anarcho-capitalist. (And, again, I don't think they line up with Yarvin's weird anti-democratic hierarchy and caste ideas at all. I think they're the polar opposite. I think him, his project, and his ideology are completely separate from cryptocurrencies and most other decentralized projects.) >What I mean is, imagine 20 people come together in a little society. They use something like Bitcoin as their currency, and one of them has far more wealth than the others combined. They cannot decide by majority vote how to use the wealth democratically. Isn't this the case for just about anything, though? If there's a society of 20 people and one person holds the majority of the wealth in the form of cash or diamonds in a vault in their house, and they refuse to share any of it, what's the difference? Your options are exactly the same whether it's cash or gems or a cryptocurrency: you can threaten or assault them and force them to hand over the cash/gems/private keys; you can expel them; you can try to impose sanctions and penalties; you can just grumble about it and continue trying to ask nicely, etc. > And usually the way you'd protect the minority would be by law or constitution. Right. Ideally in this society of 20, all 20 people would be protected by the same laws so that you couldn't just extort someone through violence. Or perhaps the law instates taxes or something, in which case the person would have the option of either paying the taxes or no longer living there. It's the same whether it's cash or Bitcoin or seashells. >Because crypto is not "credit" in a book, but a proven mathematical algorithm, there is no room for negotiation, discussion, redistribution. But this isn't how things currently work pretty much anywhere. Credit is a big part of the economy, but it's not the entirety of the economy. The IRS can't remotely wave a magic wand and subtract numbers from your virtual money balance and add it to theirs. They can tell you to pay them and have law enforcement arrest you if you refuse - just like what might happen if in the society of 20 a wealthy person refuses to pay taxes. If any government or powerful entity had the ability to arbitrarily manipulate anyone's digital money balances at will, don't you think that'd be even more dangerous for democracy than just about any other system? Thankfully, the world doesn't work this way, and hopefully never will. >I wonder if you could make a cryptocurrency from the opposite principle - everything is up to negotiation, and you could have crypto councils or parliaments which can reallocate resources as neccessary? There are many Ethereum-based organizations and apps that work exactly in this manner. The currency (ether) operates like cash as well as computational "fuel". The protocol supports smart contracts that allows cash to be automatically redistributed, transferred, donated, destroyed, etc. based on the logic of the smart contract. If this society of 20 entered into a smart contract that caused wealth to be equally split among the rest once it reaches a certain percentage, this would serve the purpose you desire better than anything you can do with standard cash. Or you could enter a smart contract that relies on voting instead of automation; e.g. some redistribution occurs if 2/3 of the smart contract signees vote for it. Disputes, adjudication, negotiation, and pretty much all other form of social coordination are possible with smart contracts. That's one example of how certain cryptocurrencies can help create more democratic and more fair systems, and are already doing so. (It doesn't necessarily have to be Ethereum; many other cryptocurrencies also use smart contracts. Ethereum is just the most-used smart contract protocol, at the moment.) In my opinion, most of the value and interest of cryptocurrencies lies within this new smart contract-based way of managing coordination and addressing certain coordination problems in ways that were much less feasible in the past. The "money" part is just a tiny piece of it. Ethereum projects you might want to look into: - https://kleros.io https://kleros.io - https://gitcoin.co https://gitcoin.co - https://www.molochdao.com https://www.molochdao.com (Politically, I've found that, on average, the Bitcoin community tends more towards center-libertarianism or right-libertarianism, and the Ethereum community tends more towards left-libertarianism / a fusion of social democracy and libertarianism. Obviously these are crude, sweeping generalizations, though.) >People are getting into hot water due to stupid stuff they said 10 years ago on Twitter. Imagine how bad this will be when everything is stored immutably in a blockchain or journal I think this is kind of orthogonal to cryptocurrencies. But, personally, I also think this is kind of looking at it the wrong way. The war is already lost, technologically. It's like saying "imagine how bad things will be if every teenager had a device that could let them watch porn at any time", or "imagine if people could determine your interests based on what websites you visit or social media actions you take". The technology is already here and isn't going away. It's now a policy and sociological problem rather than a technological one. If you post something online, there's always a risk it's going to be retained somewhere, and that risk will continue to increase, regardless of IPFS, cryptography, cryptocurrencies, decentralization, peer-to-peer networks, etc. It's a matter of being aware of that risk, and of trying to build a society that's less judgmental and more charitable, as well as perhaps associating with people and organizations that one aligns with and being okay with cutting ties to others. Of course I and many others agree that a world like Richelieu's would be bad, but the answer isn't to go after technology that adds additional availability and integrity guarantees; especially when the technology probably won't be involved with any of the big platforms (since they'll want to retain their centralization).
wpietri 5y ago
> My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. Do they? They don't seem to be succeeding very well. Bitcoin mining is certainly very concentrated. And a lot the nominal cryptowhatever projects are effectively more centralized than that. Which of them do you see as democratic?
- meowface 5y ago
  I think the point I was trying to convey is best expressed in the paragraph and not the isolated sentence: >My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. More democratic than all previously existing currencies, even. (Whether those ideas are feasible or those goals are being achieved is another matter.) I also discussed it a bit in my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27270693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27270693
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Skimming that long comment, I still don't see any evidence for your claim. My best guess is you mean a different word than "democratic".
    - meowface 5y ago
      It depends what layer you're considering and what properties you want. At the base layer, the core idea is that the community opts into the protocol and ideally has some say into future protocol changes. In terms of network consensus, democracy indeed isn't universal in terms of network users, since in PoW the huge mining pools have disproportionate votes, and in PoS the huge staking pools and whales have disproportionate votes. However, the "voting" in this case is just "which blockchain is the valid one". Unless a group of powerful entities collude to 51% attack the network, this doesn't actually confer any direct influence over anything. (Though for PoW, miners do have some influence over what transaction fees people will have to pay.) In terms of systems built on top of the core network - especially if smart contracts are supported - you can create lots of interesting democratic governance systems. You can basically make whatever you want. So, is network consensus democratic? Not really. Then it's kind of a question of if it's more or less democratic than, say, money in the United States. One could make an argument it's way more democratic, since two single organizations control money issuance: the central bank and the treasury. (One partial counter-argument is that the Federal Reserve is - as the name implies - federated regionally through 12 sub-organizations. One could potentially say that it still effectively operates as one entity, though.) Or that it's way less democratic, since at least everyone in the country can vote for the president, and the president appoints the central bank governors and the treasury secretary. >Skimming that long comment, I still don't see any evidence for your claim. The claim: >My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. More democratic than all previously existing currencies, even. (Whether those ideas are feasible or those goals are being achieved is another matter.) My only claim is that they intend to be democratic. At least Bitcoin did. I don't think that's too hard to support; Satoshi initially intended for everyone to be able to mine. I think he had a pretty democratic vision. The implied emphasis in that paragraph was on "Whether those ideas are feasible or those goals are being achieved is another matter."

captainmuon 5y ago

> My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. More democratic than all previously existing currencies, even. What I mean is, imagine 20 people come together in a little society. They use something like Bitcoin as their currency, and one of them has far more wealth than the others combined. They cannot decide by majority vote how to use the wealth democratically. If the one doesn't play along, they can only resort to violence to get his coin. (You could argue that this property of crypto serves to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, but IRL minorites rarely have crypto riches. And usually the way you'd protect the minority would be by law or constitution.) Because crypto is not "credit" in a book, but a proven mathematical algorithm, there is no room for negotiation, discussion, redistribution. I wonder if you could make a cryptocurrency from the opposite principle - everything is up to negotiation, and you could have crypto councils or parliaments which can reallocate resources as neccessary? > Also, no need to add "fun fact"; Yarvin's involvement is by far the most well-known thing about this odd project I didn't know until very recently. This piece of information made everything else about Urbit fall into place and make sense for me. It wasn't mentioned here so I thought it was useful to bring up. > What's potentially unethical about the core idea of IPFS or those general categories of ideas? Unethical? I don't know. But I don't want to live in a world where we use crypography this way. People are getting into hot water due to stupid stuff they said 10 years ago on Twitter. Imagine how bad this will be when everything is stored immutably in a blockchain or journal. Social mores change, and society might become more error-friendly again. Or in a few years we might be back to Richelieu: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Likewise, I just don't want to use a net ruled by Urbit "dukes" and "earls". It just comes down to this: Certain uses of technology, especially from people with a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist agenda, give me the creeps. I hope I'm not alone with that fear. A quote from Terminator comes to mind: > That Terminator is out there. It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with. It doesn't feel pity of remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop. Ever.

meowface 5y ago
>Likewise, I just don't want to use a net ruled by Urbit "dukes" and "earls". >It just comes down to this: Certain uses of technology, especially from people with a libertarian or anarcho-capitalist agenda, give me the creeps. I strongly agree with the former and largely agree with the latter. At the same time, I think there are enough interesting aspects of some cryptocurrency technology that it'd be a mistake to write off the whole field. The different cryptocurrencies have different communities; they're not all anarcho-capitalist. (And, again, I don't think they line up with Yarvin's weird anti-democratic hierarchy and caste ideas at all. I think they're the polar opposite. I think him, his project, and his ideology are completely separate from cryptocurrencies and most other decentralized projects.) >What I mean is, imagine 20 people come together in a little society. They use something like Bitcoin as their currency, and one of them has far more wealth than the others combined. They cannot decide by majority vote how to use the wealth democratically. Isn't this the case for just about anything, though? If there's a society of 20 people and one person holds the majority of the wealth in the form of cash or diamonds in a vault in their house, and they refuse to share any of it, what's the difference? Your options are exactly the same whether it's cash or gems or a cryptocurrency: you can threaten or assault them and force them to hand over the cash/gems/private keys; you can expel them; you can try to impose sanctions and penalties; you can just grumble about it and continue trying to ask nicely, etc. > And usually the way you'd protect the minority would be by law or constitution. Right. Ideally in this society of 20, all 20 people would be protected by the same laws so that you couldn't just extort someone through violence. Or perhaps the law instates taxes or something, in which case the person would have the option of either paying the taxes or no longer living there. It's the same whether it's cash or Bitcoin or seashells. >Because crypto is not "credit" in a book, but a proven mathematical algorithm, there is no room for negotiation, discussion, redistribution. But this isn't how things currently work pretty much anywhere. Credit is a big part of the economy, but it's not the entirety of the economy. The IRS can't remotely wave a magic wand and subtract numbers from your virtual money balance and add it to theirs. They can tell you to pay them and have law enforcement arrest you if you refuse - just like what might happen if in the society of 20 a wealthy person refuses to pay taxes. If any government or powerful entity had the ability to arbitrarily manipulate anyone's digital money balances at will, don't you think that'd be even more dangerous for democracy than just about any other system? Thankfully, the world doesn't work this way, and hopefully never will. >I wonder if you could make a cryptocurrency from the opposite principle - everything is up to negotiation, and you could have crypto councils or parliaments which can reallocate resources as neccessary? There are many Ethereum-based organizations and apps that work exactly in this manner. The currency (ether) operates like cash as well as computational "fuel". The protocol supports smart contracts that allows cash to be automatically redistributed, transferred, donated, destroyed, etc. based on the logic of the smart contract. If this society of 20 entered into a smart contract that caused wealth to be equally split among the rest once it reaches a certain percentage, this would serve the purpose you desire better than anything you can do with standard cash. Or you could enter a smart contract that relies on voting instead of automation; e.g. some redistribution occurs if 2/3 of the smart contract signees vote for it. Disputes, adjudication, negotiation, and pretty much all other form of social coordination are possible with smart contracts. That's one example of how certain cryptocurrencies can help create more democratic and more fair systems, and are already doing so. (It doesn't necessarily have to be Ethereum; many other cryptocurrencies also use smart contracts. Ethereum is just the most-used smart contract protocol, at the moment.) In my opinion, most of the value and interest of cryptocurrencies lies within this new smart contract-based way of managing coordination and addressing certain coordination problems in ways that were much less feasible in the past. The "money" part is just a tiny piece of it. Ethereum projects you might want to look into: - https://kleros.io https://kleros.io - https://gitcoin.co https://gitcoin.co - https://www.molochdao.com https://www.molochdao.com (Politically, I've found that, on average, the Bitcoin community tends more towards center-libertarianism or right-libertarianism, and the Ethereum community tends more towards left-libertarianism / a fusion of social democracy and libertarianism. Obviously these are crude, sweeping generalizations, though.) >People are getting into hot water due to stupid stuff they said 10 years ago on Twitter. Imagine how bad this will be when everything is stored immutably in a blockchain or journal I think this is kind of orthogonal to cryptocurrencies. But, personally, I also think this is kind of looking at it the wrong way. The war is already lost, technologically. It's like saying "imagine how bad things will be if every teenager had a device that could let them watch porn at any time", or "imagine if people could determine your interests based on what websites you visit or social media actions you take". The technology is already here and isn't going away. It's now a policy and sociological problem rather than a technological one. If you post something online, there's always a risk it's going to be retained somewhere, and that risk will continue to increase, regardless of IPFS, cryptography, cryptocurrencies, decentralization, peer-to-peer networks, etc. It's a matter of being aware of that risk, and of trying to build a society that's less judgmental and more charitable, as well as perhaps associating with people and organizations that one aligns with and being okay with cutting ties to others. Of course I and many others agree that a world like Richelieu's would be bad, but the answer isn't to go after technology that adds additional availability and integrity guarantees; especially when the technology probably won't be involved with any of the big platforms (since they'll want to retain their centralization).

wpietri 5y ago

> My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. Do they? They don't seem to be succeeding very well. Bitcoin mining is certainly very concentrated. And a lot the nominal cryptowhatever projects are effectively more centralized than that. Which of them do you see as democratic?

meowface 5y ago
I think the point I was trying to convey is best expressed in the paragraph and not the isolated sentence: >My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. More democratic than all previously existing currencies, even. (Whether those ideas are feasible or those goals are being achieved is another matter.) I also discussed it a bit in my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27270693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27270693
- wpietri 5y ago
  Skimming that long comment, I still don't see any evidence for your claim. My best guess is you mean a different word than "democratic".
  - meowface 5y ago
    It depends what layer you're considering and what properties you want. At the base layer, the core idea is that the community opts into the protocol and ideally has some say into future protocol changes. In terms of network consensus, democracy indeed isn't universal in terms of network users, since in PoW the huge mining pools have disproportionate votes, and in PoS the huge staking pools and whales have disproportionate votes. However, the "voting" in this case is just "which blockchain is the valid one". Unless a group of powerful entities collude to 51% attack the network, this doesn't actually confer any direct influence over anything. (Though for PoW, miners do have some influence over what transaction fees people will have to pay.) In terms of systems built on top of the core network - especially if smart contracts are supported - you can create lots of interesting democratic governance systems. You can basically make whatever you want. So, is network consensus democratic? Not really. Then it's kind of a question of if it's more or less democratic than, say, money in the United States. One could make an argument it's way more democratic, since two single organizations control money issuance: the central bank and the treasury. (One partial counter-argument is that the Federal Reserve is - as the name implies - federated regionally through 12 sub-organizations. One could potentially say that it still effectively operates as one entity, though.) Or that it's way less democratic, since at least everyone in the country can vote for the president, and the president appoints the central bank governors and the treasury secretary. >Skimming that long comment, I still don't see any evidence for your claim. The claim: >My understanding is that most cryptocurrencies intend to be extremely democratic. More democratic than all previously existing currencies, even. (Whether those ideas are feasible or those goals are being achieved is another matter.) My only claim is that they intend to be democratic. At least Bitcoin did. I don't think that's too hard to support; Satoshi initially intended for everyone to be able to mine. I think he had a pretty democratic vision. The implied emphasis in that paragraph was on "Whether those ideas are feasible or those goals are being achieved is another matter."