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Sometimes laws are not just and governments are not aligned with their people. Some examples: sci-hub is not legal in most jurisdictions despite its immense po
by Vetch 5y ago
Sometimes laws are not just and governments are not aligned with their people. Some examples:
sci-hub is not legal in most jurisdictions despite its immense positive benefits. Since being deplatformed, their primary means of receiving donations has been crypto.
Then there are the unplatformed (from a global transactions perspective), where the cruel realities of poverty, scams and fraud means the majority are punished as collateral damage for the actions of a minority. Poverty means a cost benefit calculus has deemed fine-grained distinctions are not worth it. I can understand the justifications but still feel it as deeply unfair.
When social media are used to highlight and organize protests of corruption, extra judicial killings and more, governments will ban social media and block the financial accounts of anti-corruption organizations. Coupled with being in countries where global transactions are already high friction, crypto provided real benefits.
A non-crypto example is having to use VPNs to access certain university websites because its administrators subscribe to a lazy service that has blanket banned IPs from certain countries.
Not unlike Tor, it's one of those things whose main use is by criminals in sane regimes but a high positive option in despotic or oppressive ones.
- captn3m0 5y agoThe unstated argument here is whether the extra-judicial quasi-ethical use-cases for crypto (donations for SciHub, payments for NSFW artists) are worth the current valuations in the space. I don’t think so. Most NFTs I’ve seen are not for art that would get booted off Patreon or DeviantArt. Is the additional complexity and weirdness and loss of legal protections worth the extra hassles that crypto brings even when existing payment workflows work well - I say no, but we’ll find out.
- Vetch 5y agoIs it worth the current violations? My personal opinion is no, but the price movements also don't make any sense to me. But I also feel I might value it more than you? As it depends on where you're coming from. There are parts of the world (like where I live) where there is no meaningful sense of legal protections or rule of law. Things hang together because people are in general, not that foolish or malicious. The added complexities, risk, instabilities can be more worth paying given for example, heavy inflation (for such people participation is not speculative as price stability is more important than rise) or friction in global financial transactions.
- unchocked 5y agoYou’re not wrong, you’re just missing the point. It’s that laws should be enforced by people, not by machines.
- Vetch 5y agoThe laws aren't enforced by machines, merely augmented or providing more options for the global disenfranchised (such as access to scientific material or easier access to global markets).