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It is the ray of light which exposes the ideological con taking place: trust between machines isnt trust in an economic sense. Centralisation of power has nothi

It is the ray of light which exposes the ideological con taking place: trust between machines isnt trust in an economic sense. Centralisation of power has nothing to do with computer network decentralisation. The scam here is, at first, ideological. There's a techbro-libertarian wordplay taking place which must be exposed. The blockchain has nothing to offer "trust", "contracts", "rights", "rewards". Nothing. And much worse than this, it makes all of the existing problems with these "in western society" worse. What every single major "crypto" project exposes is the radical disconnect between building functioning social economic institutions and programming "on the chain". ie., what their collapse shows is that the emporer has no clothes. When this sinks in, that all we were ever talking about is a stupid append-only log, *then*, hopefully everything else falls away. As in, the homeopathic vial was only ever water, all along.

mechanical_bear 4y ago
I think you should get a basic understanding of the technology if you are going to comment on it.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Ah! I really don't get the idea of a distributed immutable append-only log which is reproduced on all clients and whose integrity is cryptographically guaranteed by recomputing hashes on each append. Nor do I understand anything at all about systems of power, accountability, the political intuitions of the state and the economy. I've no idea how central banks regulate the supply of money; i'm totally at a loss as to how trust in the ability for people to keep their promises is the guarantor of the value of money. I'm bamboozled by financial risk, and have no idea how productive economic systems create value by taking bets on economically productive activity. Rather, I'm a rube. I've been told that when you plug computers together and copy-paste cryptographic ledgers then we can get rid of The Fed. So that's what I choose to believe.
  - mechanical_bear 4y ago
    Well, in the end, at least you admit it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - mjburgess 4y ago
      You realise, I'm being sarcastic... I was playing the part of a crypto-advocate who doesnt know any of those things, and so thinks that a database is going to solve questions about the design of political and economic institutions. It's a genuinely profoundly misinformed view, exploited by scammers. It's so egregiously misformed it's popularity is incomprehensible. It's a lot like those on the far-left who think all world problems can be solved by taxing a few billionaires. An ideological fantasy.
      - mechanical_bear 4y ago
        Yes…and you do realize that I was being sarcastic in turn? Sheesh. You are not doing yourself any favors.

mechanical_bear 4y ago

I think you should get a basic understanding of the technology if you are going to comment on it.

mjburgess 4y ago
Ah! I really don't get the idea of a distributed immutable append-only log which is reproduced on all clients and whose integrity is cryptographically guaranteed by recomputing hashes on each append. Nor do I understand anything at all about systems of power, accountability, the political intuitions of the state and the economy. I've no idea how central banks regulate the supply of money; i'm totally at a loss as to how trust in the ability for people to keep their promises is the guarantor of the value of money. I'm bamboozled by financial risk, and have no idea how productive economic systems create value by taking bets on economically productive activity. Rather, I'm a rube. I've been told that when you plug computers together and copy-paste cryptographic ledgers then we can get rid of The Fed. So that's what I choose to believe.
- mechanical_bear 4y ago
  Well, in the end, at least you admit it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    You realise, I'm being sarcastic... I was playing the part of a crypto-advocate who doesnt know any of those things, and so thinks that a database is going to solve questions about the design of political and economic institutions. It's a genuinely profoundly misinformed view, exploited by scammers. It's so egregiously misformed it's popularity is incomprehensible. It's a lot like those on the far-left who think all world problems can be solved by taxing a few billionaires. An ideological fantasy.
    - mechanical_bear 4y ago
      Yes…and you do realize that I was being sarcastic in turn? Sheesh. You are not doing yourself any favors.