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The internet will kill most every institution that predated it. Citizen journalism killed media. Netflix/YouTube killed Hollywood. Blockchains will replace 51%

The internet will kill most every institution that predated it. Citizen journalism killed media. Netflix/YouTube killed Hollywood. Blockchains will replace 51% democracy with 100% democracy. Dying inherited institutions are grasping to stay relevant with appeals to authoritarianism. Free speech is now a hinderance and a liability to their existence. As their relevance dwindles, tyranny becomes their only tool.

ineedasername 5y ago
Can you expand on that 100% democracy part? It doesn't seem like any system would allow 100% of the people to all be governed by their preferred set of rules when at least some of those rules would always conflict with ones that others want to live with.
- Overton-Window 5y ago
  You have three ways to vote: 1. With your ballot: very small chance of changing policies (1 vote) 2. With your wallet: small chance of changing policies (n votes through political donations) 3. With your feet: guaranteed chance of changing policies The internet facilities 100% democracy as it simplifies voting with your feet (remote work, social networks), allowing likeminded individuals to congregate and influence policy. Blockchain furthers this, unlocking the ability to have a referendum on every issue, which maximises consent.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Thanks for a thoughtful response! I agree more referendums would get to a better level of participatory democracy. Though on any specific issue it could still be a 51% win with 49% going away angry. I'm not sure how blockchains makes more frequent referendums easier. Maybe harder to game the system? Apart from that it seems like a platform for regular referendums could be built without blockchains. It's still relative early days on that tech though, and amidst "Blockchain" being attached to anything anyone wants to hype, I have ended up being a bit skeptical of claims they can fit a given purpose until it goes beyond the conceptual stage.
    - Overton-Window 5y ago
      Math is more trustworthy than the state. One of the few things both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is the state of the Bitcoin ledger. Political representation becomes obsolete with blockchains that can facilitate a referendum on every issue without the need for centralised trust.
      - midev 5y ago
        Math is not magical and the blockchain doesn't solve any of these problems. Let's look at the risks and see how the blockchain does nothing: 1. Vote machines change votes - Great, the blockchain would allow people to verify their vote! Well, the software that sums up all blockchain votes could still miscount them, regardless of what the blockchain contains. Ok! So we can audit the results! Great, we can already do that with paper ballots. 2. Dead people voting - Again, same as the audit before. We see a John Smith voted on the blockchain. We can look up John Smith based on a paper ballot, just as we can with the blockchain. 3. Illegals voting - The same process used for identifying voters and giving out private keys can be used for verifying voters But what about risks you have introduced? 1. By making everything electronic, you've shifted the risk from local elections, to state actors. Signing keys are not magic. If a country found a solution to the factorization problem, or solving discrete logarithms, the scheme would collapse and they could forge massive amounts of votes. 2. Getting 300m people to manage cryptographic keys is impossible. Keys will be stolen, just as bitcoin wallets are. Now you need to deal with revocation of votes, and other controls that nobody has yet invented. tldr: blockchains are dumb
      - midev 5y ago
        Second reply > Political representation becomes obsolete with blockchains that can facilitate a referendum on every issue without the need for centralised trust The choice of representative democracy was not because of the difficulty of counting votes. The founding fathers very clearly rejected what you're proposing. It's because most people are grossly ignorant about most things, and their opinion shouldn't be counted. If you can't pass a high school math class, I honestly don't care about your opinion on climate change. The blockchain solves none of that.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    > Blockchain furthers this, unlocking the ability to have a referendum on every issue, which maximises consent. If you mean an open ballot: hard no! It’s much too easy to coerce, bribe or intimidate voters.
- intended 5y ago
  Arrows theorem?
ryan_lane 5y ago
None of this is accurate. Craigslist killed newspapers (it took their ad revenue). Citizen journalism hasn't replaced that; buzzfeed-style sites did. Hollywood is thriving. Netflix is also thriving. If Netflix is killing anything, it's cable providers. Blockchains have produced nothing of worth, especially if you consider anything outside of cryptocurrency (but let's be real, cryptocurrency is also worthless)
- Overton-Window 5y ago
  > Craigslist killed newspapers (it took their ad revenue) Citizen journalism hasn't replaced that; buzzfeed-style sites did. Craigslist killed classified ads (in the US). Twitter and Substack replaced investigative pieces, leaving legacy media companies reduced to peddling outrage for clicks. > Hollywood is thriving. The Golden Globes are over. Last year's Emmys saw the lowest viewership of any Emmy ceremony in the Television Academy’s history[1]. COVID killed the cinema[2]. AI is diminishing any production advantages that remain. > Blockchains have produced nothing of worth, especially if you consider anything outside of cryptocurrency (but let's be real, cryptocurrency is also worthless) That's demonstrably untrue given Bitcoin has a market cap larger than all but 20 countries[3]. Blockchains allow, for the first time in history, humans to coordinate at scale without human intermediaries. Only dead weight bureaucrats, machiavellian statists, and the innumerate who have been sold lies from the former would argue that blockchains are worthless. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/21/emmys-2020-primetime-awards-show-ratings-drop-to-all-time-low.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/21/emmys-2020-primetime-awards-... [2] https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekly/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekly/ [3] https://fiatmarketcap.com/Country https://fiatmarketcap.com/Country
deleted 5y ago
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ineedasername 5y ago

Can you expand on that 100% democracy part? It doesn't seem like any system would allow 100% of the people to all be governed by their preferred set of rules when at least some of those rules would always conflict with ones that others want to live with.

Overton-Window 5y ago
You have three ways to vote: 1. With your ballot: very small chance of changing policies (1 vote) 2. With your wallet: small chance of changing policies (n votes through political donations) 3. With your feet: guaranteed chance of changing policies The internet facilities 100% democracy as it simplifies voting with your feet (remote work, social networks), allowing likeminded individuals to congregate and influence policy. Blockchain furthers this, unlocking the ability to have a referendum on every issue, which maximises consent.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Thanks for a thoughtful response! I agree more referendums would get to a better level of participatory democracy. Though on any specific issue it could still be a 51% win with 49% going away angry. I'm not sure how blockchains makes more frequent referendums easier. Maybe harder to game the system? Apart from that it seems like a platform for regular referendums could be built without blockchains. It's still relative early days on that tech though, and amidst "Blockchain" being attached to anything anyone wants to hype, I have ended up being a bit skeptical of claims they can fit a given purpose until it goes beyond the conceptual stage.
  - Overton-Window 5y ago
    Math is more trustworthy than the state. One of the few things both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is the state of the Bitcoin ledger. Political representation becomes obsolete with blockchains that can facilitate a referendum on every issue without the need for centralised trust.
    - midev 5y ago
      Math is not magical and the blockchain doesn't solve any of these problems. Let's look at the risks and see how the blockchain does nothing: 1. Vote machines change votes - Great, the blockchain would allow people to verify their vote! Well, the software that sums up all blockchain votes could still miscount them, regardless of what the blockchain contains. Ok! So we can audit the results! Great, we can already do that with paper ballots. 2. Dead people voting - Again, same as the audit before. We see a John Smith voted on the blockchain. We can look up John Smith based on a paper ballot, just as we can with the blockchain. 3. Illegals voting - The same process used for identifying voters and giving out private keys can be used for verifying voters But what about risks you have introduced? 1. By making everything electronic, you've shifted the risk from local elections, to state actors. Signing keys are not magic. If a country found a solution to the factorization problem, or solving discrete logarithms, the scheme would collapse and they could forge massive amounts of votes. 2. Getting 300m people to manage cryptographic keys is impossible. Keys will be stolen, just as bitcoin wallets are. Now you need to deal with revocation of votes, and other controls that nobody has yet invented. tldr: blockchains are dumb
    - midev 5y ago
      Second reply > Political representation becomes obsolete with blockchains that can facilitate a referendum on every issue without the need for centralised trust The choice of representative democracy was not because of the difficulty of counting votes. The founding fathers very clearly rejected what you're proposing. It's because most people are grossly ignorant about most things, and their opinion shouldn't be counted. If you can't pass a high school math class, I honestly don't care about your opinion on climate change. The blockchain solves none of that.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  > Blockchain furthers this, unlocking the ability to have a referendum on every issue, which maximises consent. If you mean an open ballot: hard no! It’s much too easy to coerce, bribe or intimidate voters.
intended 5y ago
Arrows theorem?

ryan_lane 5y ago

None of this is accurate. Craigslist killed newspapers (it took their ad revenue). Citizen journalism hasn't replaced that; buzzfeed-style sites did. Hollywood is thriving. Netflix is also thriving. If Netflix is killing anything, it's cable providers. Blockchains have produced nothing of worth, especially if you consider anything outside of cryptocurrency (but let's be real, cryptocurrency is also worthless)

Overton-Window 5y ago
> Craigslist killed newspapers (it took their ad revenue) Citizen journalism hasn't replaced that; buzzfeed-style sites did. Craigslist killed classified ads (in the US). Twitter and Substack replaced investigative pieces, leaving legacy media companies reduced to peddling outrage for clicks. > Hollywood is thriving. The Golden Globes are over. Last year's Emmys saw the lowest viewership of any Emmy ceremony in the Television Academy’s history[1]. COVID killed the cinema[2]. AI is diminishing any production advantages that remain. > Blockchains have produced nothing of worth, especially if you consider anything outside of cryptocurrency (but let's be real, cryptocurrency is also worthless) That's demonstrably untrue given Bitcoin has a market cap larger than all but 20 countries[3]. Blockchains allow, for the first time in history, humans to coordinate at scale without human intermediaries. Only dead weight bureaucrats, machiavellian statists, and the innumerate who have been sold lies from the former would argue that blockchains are worthless. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/21/emmys-2020-primetime-awards-show-ratings-drop-to-all-time-low.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/21/emmys-2020-primetime-awards-... [2] https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekly/ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekly/ [3] https://fiatmarketcap.com/Country https://fiatmarketcap.com/Country

deleted 5y ago

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