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The government encompasses all of those things, so I think when the author says "trust the government", it implies all of those things.

jolux 5y ago
Right, but the government is not just some unaccountable third party that sits between you and the rest of society. It is meant to embody the society, and, in a democracy, represent its interests effectively.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  The government, and all of its institutions, are indeed a third party. The government is not some representative of the collective will. Thomas Sowell provides his experience at the Department of Labor in 1960 as a poignant demonstration of the fallacy of that notion: https://youtu.be/v6PDpCnMvvw?t=38 https://youtu.be/v6PDpCnMvvw?t=38 Another example would be the latest $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill. It was 1,500 pages long and no legislator read even an appreciable fraction of it. There were provisions in it that the public was discovering a week before it was voted on, like one threatening to classify cryptocurrency nodes as brokers with KYC requirements for any transaction they processed. Apparently Treasury had worked behind the scenes to get this provision in the bill, to give DeFi the Patriot Act treatment: https://twitter.com/jswihart/status/1422785103386669058?s=20 https://twitter.com/jswihart/status/1422785103386669058?s=20
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nefitty 5y ago
    1500 pages to govern 330 million people. Was there ever a time in history when an individual understood all the laws of a country? The fact that the provision you mentioned was discovered is an argument FOR this system. The fourth and fifth estates need to play precisely this role, of parsing and communicating the actions of government and business. Living up to the unfortunate pun, cryptocurrencies make crypto-fascists giddy. No accountability. No transparency. No arbiters of justice. Every segment of society decouples from accountability to any other: individuals hide from governments, governments hide from the press, business hides from government... What exactly is the argument that you think would make that a worthwhile future to pursue?
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      One government should not be governing at such a micro-level for 330 million people. It's absurd and in practice becomes totally corrupt and undemocratic. >>The fact that the provision you mentioned was discovered is an argument FOR this system Being discovered a week before the vote meant that there was no time for all those affected to study its effects, let alone to negotiate an amendment for it, and furthermore, that it came within a hair's breadth of NOT being discovered. Other very worrying provisions were only discovered after the law's passing. >>Living up to the unfortunate pun, cryptocurrencies make crypto-fascists giddy. No accountability. No transparency. No arbiters of justice. Crypto systems are opt in. The government mandates are violently enforced on those who would prefer to opt out. This sophomoric socialist argument that private enterprise is fascist is totally shallow.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    The difficulty of parsing a 1500 page infrastructure bill isn't exactly reduceed by expressing each of its provisions and exceptions in a Turing complete programming language though...
    - immibis 5y ago
      True, but maybe we could run some analysis tools against it.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      Agreed
- errantmind 5y ago
  It represents the lowest common denominator of what everyone can agree on. Democracies have problems when that denominator gets really low, but are relatively great when it is high
  - jolux 5y ago
    Yeah. I’m not saying it’s perfect, there may actually be some limited use for blockchain technology, but casting it as an alternative to the modern liberal state beggars belief.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      I don't think many people are suggesting that the blockchain can replace all of the functions of the nation-state. I think the most common sentiment among blockchain advocates is actually closer to your views, of it having utiltiy in specific use-cases.
      - dools 5y ago
        This article is suggesting just that
- infogulch 5y ago
  Yes in theory. In practice, justice is expensive to procure even when you're in the right, and sometimes even then you can lose just by being out-monied. This leads to a more nuanced view of web3 and smart contracts: a way to acquire law-like order in business dealings at a vastly lower cost. Or put yet another way, if lawyers and the government got their act together and used technology to reduce the cost of their services (and actually passed on those savings) then smart contracts would never have been a thing.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    So like, if you don't deliver those shipping containers of hot sauce, I just click the "I was scammed" checkbox on my smart contract dashboard? Where exactly does the leverage of smart contracts come into play? The biggest reason libertarianism is a nonstarter is that it outright rejects the state monopoly on violence. Without a lone arbiter, societies fragment due to intragroup competition and violence. As a society fragments, the size of the monolithic projects it can engage in become smaller and smaller. International trade is already so fragile that a stuck tanker threatens swaths of the entire thing. Now picture how infinitely improbable a system like that is if there's no physical enforcement mechanisms backing contracts up.
    - _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
      I think you hit the nail on the head. In my experience, if both parties are happy payment isn't really a problem anyway. Trouble always comes up when there is disagreement e.g. buyer claims that the hot sauce is not spicy enough and the seller says it's exactly as spicy as ordered. Now what?
      - rdbell 5y ago
        You take the issue to a crypto court which controls the escrowed funds. If the crypto court makes an unfair ruling, you tell everyone to never trust their judgement. Now they’ve lost credibility and nobody will want to escrow funds with them in the future. Whichever court provides the most consistent fair rulings attains the best reputation and becomes the most utilized. By contrast, if government courts make an unfair ruling, they’re still going to be in business tomorrow and there’s nobody that can stop their monopoly on broken justice. Some people might argue that their western country has a fair justice system and that everyone should be glad to be subject to that system. That argument would be overly generous to even the most fair countries, and completely falls flat in the many countries where corruption is rampant.
pjc50 5y ago
I think this is kind of a misconception about how unitary the unitary state really is. Which is especially weird coming from America with its zillion decentralized police forces. The government is not necessarily a single entity that behaves with one purpose, that's what allows concepts like an independent judiciary to exist.

jolux 5y ago

Right, but the government is not just some unaccountable third party that sits between you and the rest of society. It is meant to embody the society, and, in a democracy, represent its interests effectively.

CryptoPunk 5y ago
The government, and all of its institutions, are indeed a third party. The government is not some representative of the collective will. Thomas Sowell provides his experience at the Department of Labor in 1960 as a poignant demonstration of the fallacy of that notion: https://youtu.be/v6PDpCnMvvw?t=38 https://youtu.be/v6PDpCnMvvw?t=38 Another example would be the latest $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill. It was 1,500 pages long and no legislator read even an appreciable fraction of it. There were provisions in it that the public was discovering a week before it was voted on, like one threatening to classify cryptocurrency nodes as brokers with KYC requirements for any transaction they processed. Apparently Treasury had worked behind the scenes to get this provision in the bill, to give DeFi the Patriot Act treatment: https://twitter.com/jswihart/status/1422785103386669058?s=20 https://twitter.com/jswihart/status/1422785103386669058?s=20
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nefitty 5y ago
  1500 pages to govern 330 million people. Was there ever a time in history when an individual understood all the laws of a country? The fact that the provision you mentioned was discovered is an argument FOR this system. The fourth and fifth estates need to play precisely this role, of parsing and communicating the actions of government and business. Living up to the unfortunate pun, cryptocurrencies make crypto-fascists giddy. No accountability. No transparency. No arbiters of justice. Every segment of society decouples from accountability to any other: individuals hide from governments, governments hide from the press, business hides from government... What exactly is the argument that you think would make that a worthwhile future to pursue?
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    One government should not be governing at such a micro-level for 330 million people. It's absurd and in practice becomes totally corrupt and undemocratic. >>The fact that the provision you mentioned was discovered is an argument FOR this system Being discovered a week before the vote meant that there was no time for all those affected to study its effects, let alone to negotiate an amendment for it, and furthermore, that it came within a hair's breadth of NOT being discovered. Other very worrying provisions were only discovered after the law's passing. >>Living up to the unfortunate pun, cryptocurrencies make crypto-fascists giddy. No accountability. No transparency. No arbiters of justice. Crypto systems are opt in. The government mandates are violently enforced on those who would prefer to opt out. This sophomoric socialist argument that private enterprise is fascist is totally shallow.
- notahacker 5y ago
  The difficulty of parsing a 1500 page infrastructure bill isn't exactly reduceed by expressing each of its provisions and exceptions in a Turing complete programming language though...
  - immibis 5y ago
    True, but maybe we could run some analysis tools against it.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    Agreed
errantmind 5y ago
It represents the lowest common denominator of what everyone can agree on. Democracies have problems when that denominator gets really low, but are relatively great when it is high
- jolux 5y ago
  Yeah. I’m not saying it’s perfect, there may actually be some limited use for blockchain technology, but casting it as an alternative to the modern liberal state beggars belief.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    I don't think many people are suggesting that the blockchain can replace all of the functions of the nation-state. I think the most common sentiment among blockchain advocates is actually closer to your views, of it having utiltiy in specific use-cases.
    - dools 5y ago
      This article is suggesting just that
infogulch 5y ago
Yes in theory. In practice, justice is expensive to procure even when you're in the right, and sometimes even then you can lose just by being out-monied. This leads to a more nuanced view of web3 and smart contracts: a way to acquire law-like order in business dealings at a vastly lower cost. Or put yet another way, if lawyers and the government got their act together and used technology to reduce the cost of their services (and actually passed on those savings) then smart contracts would never have been a thing.
- nefitty 5y ago
  So like, if you don't deliver those shipping containers of hot sauce, I just click the "I was scammed" checkbox on my smart contract dashboard? Where exactly does the leverage of smart contracts come into play? The biggest reason libertarianism is a nonstarter is that it outright rejects the state monopoly on violence. Without a lone arbiter, societies fragment due to intragroup competition and violence. As a society fragments, the size of the monolithic projects it can engage in become smaller and smaller. International trade is already so fragile that a stuck tanker threatens swaths of the entire thing. Now picture how infinitely improbable a system like that is if there's no physical enforcement mechanisms backing contracts up.
  - _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
    I think you hit the nail on the head. In my experience, if both parties are happy payment isn't really a problem anyway. Trouble always comes up when there is disagreement e.g. buyer claims that the hot sauce is not spicy enough and the seller says it's exactly as spicy as ordered. Now what?
    - rdbell 5y ago
      You take the issue to a crypto court which controls the escrowed funds. If the crypto court makes an unfair ruling, you tell everyone to never trust their judgement. Now they’ve lost credibility and nobody will want to escrow funds with them in the future. Whichever court provides the most consistent fair rulings attains the best reputation and becomes the most utilized. By contrast, if government courts make an unfair ruling, they’re still going to be in business tomorrow and there’s nobody that can stop their monopoly on broken justice. Some people might argue that their western country has a fair justice system and that everyone should be glad to be subject to that system. That argument would be overly generous to even the most fair countries, and completely falls flat in the many countries where corruption is rampant.

pjc50 5y ago

I think this is kind of a misconception about how unitary the unitary state really is. Which is especially weird coming from America with its zillion decentralized police forces. The government is not necessarily a single entity that behaves with one purpose, that's what allows concepts like an independent judiciary to exist.