5 ms·
For people with skin in the game (read: all of us) -- it pays to be students of history. There is a rich tapestry of prior art available for us to study that ca
by notpachet 5y ago
For people with skin in the game (read: all of us) -- it pays to be students of history. There is a rich tapestry of prior art available for us to study that can help us define the appropriate relationship between the public, with the government as our agent, and aggregations of capital as expressed through crypto. In particular I recommend reading about the early federal efforts to safeguard the public interest from rampant capitalistic excesses in the form of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, and its immediate fruits (the Sherman Act, etc).
Those efforts were largely focused on antitrust regulation, which is a different problem than the sorts of blue-sky securities problems that are more common in today's crypto space. But the reason I'm recommending reading about the earlier antitrust stuff, as opposed to the securities regulations that began to emerge a few decades later (which is more superficially topical), is that it marked the beginning of a phase transition in how the American public viewed the relationship between government and business. I think we're in the early part of another such phase transition today. Without the antitrust regulations that preceded them, subsequent securities regulations would likely have had a much steeper hill to climb in the court of public opinion.
Obviously we aren't going to be able to just copy+paste yesterday's regulations onto every newly emerging trend. But I think we can definitely draw lessons from how earlier types of regulations emerged and the ways that the government's relationship with capital interests was adjusted over time.
There were also downsides to the new regulations (like the coopting of the definition of "trust" to include unions as a means of curtailing the power of labor). Those are valuable lessons, too.
I say this as someone who is relatively pessimistic about the value that these new crypto constructs are going to be able to provide over the long term, but I'd make the same argument to crypto optimists, as well.
Apologies to the non-US folks; other countries have their own regulatory histories, some of which were well ahead of the times compared to America. But I'm less familiar with those.
- toolz 5y agoThese kinds of recommendations and thoughts are extremely important moving forward. I do not believe the agency of government will be able to keep up with the speed of progress and it will become increasingly important for us to take lessons learned throughout history and apply them at an individual level. I'm very biased towards crypto as I see the increasing failures of government action leading to massive wealth inequality. If you have any specific resources you'd recommend on reading up on the commerce clause I'd be interested in reading up on them. My bias is unlikely to reveal anything favorable of the for that act, as I'm already quite averse to the overreach the government has taken with that policy used as its launching point.
- ShamelessC 5y agoWealth inequality is traditionally exacerbated by lack of government regulation. Further, I don't actually see cryptocurrencies actively trying to attack the problem of wealth inequality. Rather, they are staunch proponents of free markets which, left unchecked, result in massive wealth inequality. Food for thought.
- losteric 5y agoNone of these "cryptocurrencies" address inequality. One can draw parallels between generational wealth in our present system, and the wealth of early adopters in both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake systems. If anything, the attraction seems to be gambling on getting in early in hopes of profiting from these flaws.
- toolz 5y agoMost crypto addresses inequality directly by giving everyone the same access as anyone else. No dark pools, no naked shorts, public ledgers are commonplace, no brokerage license required to participate directly, the list goes on and on. Equality is not equity, in case there was any confusion (maybe there wasn't) but crypto has incredibly strong claims to equality in money.
- rainonmoon 5y agoExcept that massive swaths of people disenfranchised by the conventional systems of economics are also shut out of crypto by its byzantine entry requirements. Yes, people with massive amounts of disposable income interested in trading but with no ability to competitively trade against private firms can find a home in crypto, sure. That has nothing to do with the wealth inequality faced by someone who, say, has to work six days a week at minimum wage to support a family and doesn't have the time or energy to figure out how to benefit from this stuff.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
- tata71 5y agoSomeone looking to compare the cryptocurrency space to history may do better comparing it to currencies that existed under the US State Dollar system.