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Syncthing has reminded me how great computers can be if they are not made by corporations. It’s simple, predictable, sane, acts no-nonsense Most open source so

• pphysch 5y ago
  > cryptocurrency, which can enable a form of socialism When you twist "socialism" into some libertarian ideal of flat & free markets, you lose a lot of meaning. Public blockchains behave similar to free markets, and have the same oft-ignored flaws. Namely, you need to trust that the market/blockchain is not de facto ruled by a shadowy cartel. This is often a poor assumption, because power consolidates over time. You also need to trust that the underlying currencies and protocols are secure. This is easier to do than the former, but still a significant vulnerability.
  • EGreg 5y ago
    I like to use mainstream definitions that are in dictionaries, strip away all the rhetoric and focus only on substance, precise descriptive language and meaningful predictions: property X usually leads to outcome Y. Here is the first definition of Socialism from Google: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. Here is what Wikipedia says: Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership[1][2][3][4] of the means of production.[5][6][7][8] It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems.[9] Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative, or of equity.[10] While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism,[11] social ownership is the one common element. Sounds to me like this definition fits many Web3 crypto projects (like FileCoin etc) almost like a glove. Compare that to Web2 (basically all Big Tech companies) in which venture capitalists make early investments in shares (instead of tokens), prop up money-losing unit economics fo years, then dump the shares on the public in an IPO and Wall Street bigwigs who buy shares (instead of tokens) can thus force management to keep their backend source closed, their server farms centralized and extract rents forever, from users and advertisers etc. in order to satisfy wall street quarterly earnings goals. It is fashionable in the USA to associate Socialism with State Socialism — and impugn to Socialism all the famines etc. done by governments claiming to enforce it (like holodomor and China’s famines under Mao due to enforced collectivization) …while dissociating Capitalism from State Capitalism — neatly blaming it on “Corporatism” — and avoid having to answer for similar things done by governments to enforce it (like the various famines under the British Raj in India and Begal region, and the Irish Potato famine which was perpetuated primarily BECAUSE of government enforcing the private property rights of landlords even over the basic survival needs of peasant tenants). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) Both capitalism and socialism taken too far and using too much force to enforce the system can have bad consequences. But there are libertarian versions of both. Google “libertarian socialism” to find things like kibbutzim, moshavim, housing cooperatives, food cooperatives, as well as credit unions etc. These are all examples of socialism without the state. And many times they have far better outcomes than their capitalist counterparts (landlord-owned buildings, commercial banks etc.) Remember that socialism can be embedded in markets. But socialist organizations have no profit motive and no class warfare between landlords and tenants, shareholders and customers, because they are one and the same. So the organization tends to have some democratic governance mechanism (governance tokens, DAOs… are you starting to get it now?)