3 ms·

Bitcoin has a landed wealth aristocracy just like land ownership has. It's not based on merit.

gruez 5y ago
>Bitcoin has a landed wealth aristocracy just like land ownership has. You're thinking of PoS. If you hold 1 bitcoin now, you'll still only have bitcoin 100 years from now. On the other hand, with land and PoS, you'll have the land/coin and the rent you were able to extract. >It's not based on merit. How is it not meritocratic? Literally anyone could mine. This is as opposed to getting land, which typically requires you to be politically connected, or buying it from someone who was politically connected.
- samsquire 5y ago
  My argument is that mining is not meritocratic. In the same way first ever land ownership is definitely not meritocratic. (See violence over land or enclosure acts stealing land from the commons) We need universal basic income to distribute wealth. Any new currency suffers from the landed wealth problem where a group of people is designated the aristocracy through landed wealth. That is, it's not democratic, universal or voted.
  - gruez 5y ago
    > My argument is that mining is not meritocratic. Mining wasn't even mentioned prior to this post. >In the same way first ever land ownership is definitely not meritocratic Seems like moving the goalposts? Obviously any sort of property rights isn't "meritocratic", but at the very least you can get your hands on fresh bitcoins without being friend with whoever staged a coup.
- casi18 5y ago
  Literally anyone... if they live in a country with the supply chains for asics/gpus in place... if they can afford the hardware and cost of electricity... PoW works to a certain scale, when we can mine on laptops and the number of users is low it is a great system. but at this point it is clearly operated by large organisations, and using an absurdly unnecessary amount of energy for the job. pos uses less energy, runs on cheaper hardware that is easy to manufacture and acquire (solar powered raspberry pis), easier to hide participation from governments, and you can mint gasless nfts and sell them to start earning tokens, so you dont have massive hardware costs up front. you can draw pictures and start receiving crypto, then use that as your stake in a validating pool. cheaper and easier for people to participate, less resource drain so better capital efficiency, harder to censor.

>Bitcoin has a landed wealth aristocracy just like land ownership has. You're thinking of PoS. If you hold 1 bitcoin now, you'll still only have bitcoin 100 years from now. On the other hand, with land and PoS, you'll have the land/coin and the rent you were able to extract. >It's not based on merit. How is it not meritocratic? Literally anyone could mine. This is as opposed to getting land, which typically requires you to be politically connected, or buying it from someone who was politically connected.

samsquire 5y ago
My argument is that mining is not meritocratic. In the same way first ever land ownership is definitely not meritocratic. (See violence over land or enclosure acts stealing land from the commons) We need universal basic income to distribute wealth. Any new currency suffers from the landed wealth problem where a group of people is designated the aristocracy through landed wealth. That is, it's not democratic, universal or voted.
- gruez 5y ago
  > My argument is that mining is not meritocratic. Mining wasn't even mentioned prior to this post. >In the same way first ever land ownership is definitely not meritocratic Seems like moving the goalposts? Obviously any sort of property rights isn't "meritocratic", but at the very least you can get your hands on fresh bitcoins without being friend with whoever staged a coup.
casi18 5y ago
Literally anyone... if they live in a country with the supply chains for asics/gpus in place... if they can afford the hardware and cost of electricity... PoW works to a certain scale, when we can mine on laptops and the number of users is low it is a great system. but at this point it is clearly operated by large organisations, and using an absurdly unnecessary amount of energy for the job. pos uses less energy, runs on cheaper hardware that is easy to manufacture and acquire (solar powered raspberry pis), easier to hide participation from governments, and you can mint gasless nfts and sell them to start earning tokens, so you dont have massive hardware costs up front. you can draw pictures and start receiving crypto, then use that as your stake in a validating pool. cheaper and easier for people to participate, less resource drain so better capital efficiency, harder to censor.