3 ms·

> So, at no point did you consider that you were wrong in your base assumption and government does in fact work? Of course, many dozens of thousands of times t

> So, at no point did you consider that you were wrong in your base assumption and government does in fact work? Of course, many dozens of thousands of times throughout my life, desperately wished for that to be the case. Unfortunately there is no evidence for this and immense amounts of evidence for the contrary. > Because it looks like you examined anarchistic alternatives to government, found them all worse than government I didn't say I found them worse than government at all, I said the first hand experience was very useful for seeing directly why government is as broken as it is, because all the same "incentive of last resort" mechanisms are typically in play in blockchains. It still turns out to be much better so far if measured by deadweight economic loss for economic coordination between a given transaction volume. This is also why I said I would not be too surprised if it just becomes the next iteration of government. People who think that the government is desirable and its political structures are useful, parliamentary democracy, voting, departments that run projects and are accountable to elected officials, all of that kind of thing. You could clone it with a blockchain much more reliably and with much more auditability than you have with the multi-century old variations thereof running on some variant of "trust me" that we have currently. Thus you could at least say "Yeah sure this is bad, but at least we can prove that everybody is following the rules on all elections, transactions, etc, and we have all the signed blocks to prove that from genesis" rather than the current trust-free alternative of an endless propaganda machine spinning whatever it wants people to believe at any given point in time with zero proof whatsoever.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
I believe audits and transparency are amongst the tools that can and do improve 'government' / 'democracy'. I can see ways that crypto (in it's old generic sense) can help but I don't particularly see any way that blockchain tech can help though?
- etherael 4y ago
  Probably much the same way you can see that crypto in its old generic sense could do these things, with the additional security of the applications running on a blockchain, and the assurances about transaction integrity, censorship resistance, availability etc. You can have a cryptographically secure platform for whatever governance platform you like, but if it's running on a traditional centralised server infrastructure within a political jurisdiction, it's completely vulnerable to tampering of government agencies within that political jurisdiction. This is a well acknowledged issue referred to as "data sovereignty" with the limitation that the way to ensure it's handled is to pick a reliable jurisdiction. If we acknowledge that no jurisdiction is reliable, however, blockchains are the only choice.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    That seems a bit of an unwarranted leap and very hand-wavy. Why would blockchain be better than a decentralized, non-blockchain tech, hosted in multiple jurisdictions for transaction integrity, censorship resistance, availability and so on? And why is a blockchain a better alternative? If the blockchain assumptions fall (51% control) then it's game over. Even the founding fathers were a step ahead of that and trying to prevent tyranny of the majority (probably code for "the rich staying rich", but that makes it an even better analogy) It all feels a bit like wishful thinking to me.
    - etherael 4y ago
      No matter where FAANG host their infrastructure, if a particular set of states want to tamper with, censor, or surveil that infrastructure, they will be able to do it. The legal structures and the ability to identify ultimate beneficiaries guarantees this for pretty much any legal corporate structure organised under a state. The only chance this has of not being true is a blockchain, the ultimate beneficiaries can't be identified, the infrastructure is not linked to a particular legal structure. There is no guarantee the state can identify the appropriate necks to apply the appropriate boots to. If an organisational unit is to exist that will destroy the state, at the moment the only candidate for its infrastructure is blockchain.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        It was you that claimed blockchain could improve the state, now you've switched to only blockchain can destroy it? And replace it with "an organisational unit" which is apparently, not a state/government/democracy? None of this sounds like a good idea, even in theory.
        etherael 4y ago
        Monarchy was an improvement on despotism, maybe constitutional republics were an improvement on democracy, etc etc etc. The organisational units could be considered destroyed, or they could be considered reconstituted, the point is that the functions handled by the OUs in question went to another ostensibly more efficient instance thereof. This is much easier if the new OU does not rely on its underlying infrastructure from the old OU. Things should improve somewhat is a pretty hard ask for something that doesn't sound like a good idea, letalone in theory. Of course, it's an open question as to what the end result of all of this will actually be, and maybe it will indeed be the worst catastrophic case of making the largest cause of non natural death in the past century even worse, but you'll excuse me if I find that hard to believe and think clearing that particular hurdle ought to be pretty easy, especially because this would be a non violent form of revolution, and the only competition is war. In a world of weapons of mass destruction that's a horrendous problem space to be working with.
arcticbull 4y ago
> Of course, many dozens of thousands of times throughout my life, desperately wished for that to be the case. Unfortunately there is no evidence for this and immense amounts of evidence for the contrary. I think the fact that 7 billion people live overwhelmingly under a multi-hundred-year improving standard of living [1], leveraging low-friction global trade, commerce and communication in among the most peaceful period in human history [2] is a pretty clear indication that government does in fact work. Is it perfect? No, nobody will say that. But of course the solution to problems in any overwhelmingly complex system with a long track record is not re-invention but continued optimization. [3] Takes a long time to turn a big boat, and anyone promising you otherwise is selling you a crock. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief [2] https://towardsdatascience.com/has-global-violence-declined-a-look-at-the-data-5af708f47fba https://towardsdatascience.com/has-global-violence-declined-... [3] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
- etherael 4y ago
  Nothing that is the largest cause of unnatural death in the last century should be considered as "working". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority#:~:text=The%20Problem%20of%20Political%20Authority%3A%20An%20Examination%20of%20the%20Right,Huemer%20released%20in%20January%202013 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Aut.... Blockchain based systems over the duration of their existence by contrast have killed nowhere near as many no matter how you scale it, and although I believe the system to be rife with fraud and inefficiency, the amount of capital growth that has taken place is breathtaking pretty much any way you look at it. I believe the state as a structure needs to die and blockchains so far look like the obvious sword. Nothing else has even come close.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    It’s the largest preventer of death lol. Citation needed there. People will always die. Government minimizes this to the best of our abilities. How many do not die each year because of government? As in software testing we don’t often measure the impact of our work in terms of things that don’t happen because our system exists. It is far easier to count instead the failures. But this misses the whole point. Count the deaths that don’t happen. Meanwhile bitcoins thirst for coal kills thousands per year and achieves literally nothing. Blockchains can only represent true state of things wholly representable on chain, which is why only currencies actually work. As soon as you try and ledger things off chain reality gets in the way and reality supersedes the chain.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

I believe audits and transparency are amongst the tools that can and do improve 'government' / 'democracy'. I can see ways that crypto (in it's old generic sense) can help but I don't particularly see any way that blockchain tech can help though?

etherael 4y ago
Probably much the same way you can see that crypto in its old generic sense could do these things, with the additional security of the applications running on a blockchain, and the assurances about transaction integrity, censorship resistance, availability etc. You can have a cryptographically secure platform for whatever governance platform you like, but if it's running on a traditional centralised server infrastructure within a political jurisdiction, it's completely vulnerable to tampering of government agencies within that political jurisdiction. This is a well acknowledged issue referred to as "data sovereignty" with the limitation that the way to ensure it's handled is to pick a reliable jurisdiction. If we acknowledge that no jurisdiction is reliable, however, blockchains are the only choice.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  That seems a bit of an unwarranted leap and very hand-wavy. Why would blockchain be better than a decentralized, non-blockchain tech, hosted in multiple jurisdictions for transaction integrity, censorship resistance, availability and so on? And why is a blockchain a better alternative? If the blockchain assumptions fall (51% control) then it's game over. Even the founding fathers were a step ahead of that and trying to prevent tyranny of the majority (probably code for "the rich staying rich", but that makes it an even better analogy) It all feels a bit like wishful thinking to me.
  - etherael 4y ago
    No matter where FAANG host their infrastructure, if a particular set of states want to tamper with, censor, or surveil that infrastructure, they will be able to do it. The legal structures and the ability to identify ultimate beneficiaries guarantees this for pretty much any legal corporate structure organised under a state. The only chance this has of not being true is a blockchain, the ultimate beneficiaries can't be identified, the infrastructure is not linked to a particular legal structure. There is no guarantee the state can identify the appropriate necks to apply the appropriate boots to. If an organisational unit is to exist that will destroy the state, at the moment the only candidate for its infrastructure is blockchain.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      It was you that claimed blockchain could improve the state, now you've switched to only blockchain can destroy it? And replace it with "an organisational unit" which is apparently, not a state/government/democracy? None of this sounds like a good idea, even in theory.
      - etherael 4y ago
        Monarchy was an improvement on despotism, maybe constitutional republics were an improvement on democracy, etc etc etc. The organisational units could be considered destroyed, or they could be considered reconstituted, the point is that the functions handled by the OUs in question went to another ostensibly more efficient instance thereof. This is much easier if the new OU does not rely on its underlying infrastructure from the old OU. Things should improve somewhat is a pretty hard ask for something that doesn't sound like a good idea, letalone in theory. Of course, it's an open question as to what the end result of all of this will actually be, and maybe it will indeed be the worst catastrophic case of making the largest cause of non natural death in the past century even worse, but you'll excuse me if I find that hard to believe and think clearing that particular hurdle ought to be pretty easy, especially because this would be a non violent form of revolution, and the only competition is war. In a world of weapons of mass destruction that's a horrendous problem space to be working with.

arcticbull 4y ago

> Of course, many dozens of thousands of times throughout my life, desperately wished for that to be the case. Unfortunately there is no evidence for this and immense amounts of evidence for the contrary. I think the fact that 7 billion people live overwhelmingly under a multi-hundred-year improving standard of living [1], leveraging low-friction global trade, commerce and communication in among the most peaceful period in human history [2] is a pretty clear indication that government does in fact work. Is it perfect? No, nobody will say that. But of course the solution to problems in any overwhelmingly complex system with a long track record is not re-invention but continued optimization. [3] Takes a long time to turn a big boat, and anyone promising you otherwise is selling you a crock. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief [2] https://towardsdatascience.com/has-global-violence-declined-a-look-at-the-data-5af708f47fba https://towardsdatascience.com/has-global-violence-declined-... [3] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

etherael 4y ago
Nothing that is the largest cause of unnatural death in the last century should be considered as "working". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Authority#:~:text=The%20Problem%20of%20Political%20Authority%3A%20An%20Examination%20of%20the%20Right,Huemer%20released%20in%20January%202013 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Political_Aut.... Blockchain based systems over the duration of their existence by contrast have killed nowhere near as many no matter how you scale it, and although I believe the system to be rife with fraud and inefficiency, the amount of capital growth that has taken place is breathtaking pretty much any way you look at it. I believe the state as a structure needs to die and blockchains so far look like the obvious sword. Nothing else has even come close.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  It’s the largest preventer of death lol. Citation needed there. People will always die. Government minimizes this to the best of our abilities. How many do not die each year because of government? As in software testing we don’t often measure the impact of our work in terms of things that don’t happen because our system exists. It is far easier to count instead the failures. But this misses the whole point. Count the deaths that don’t happen. Meanwhile bitcoins thirst for coal kills thousands per year and achieves literally nothing. Blockchains can only represent true state of things wholly representable on chain, which is why only currencies actually work. As soon as you try and ledger things off chain reality gets in the way and reality supersedes the chain.