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Is there any crossover in a Venn diagram of "government is so bad you need crypto" and "government is good enough that they won't shut off the internet to contr

Is there any crossover in a Venn diagram of "government is so bad you need crypto" and "government is good enough that they won't shut off the internet to control the people"? If there isn't then crypto isn't very useful in those places.

notpushkin 4y ago
It is hard to shut off the Internet (or at least should be, if it is properly decentralized). Point in case: Russia. Government has been trying to block everything they don't like for some ten years now I think. Controlling all the uplinks from the country is just not feasible (although they're working on buying everything out I believe), so it was in fact easier for them to make all the ISPs install some blocking equipment themselves, which works pretty poorly. Many times they were successful, but they couldn't shut Telegram down for example. When TLS ECH is finally adopted it's basically game over for them.
- miohtama 4y ago
  If you shut down Internet, your economy suffers. Even China cannot block Github, because it would harm their economy too much. Chinese developers need to access Github (PyPi, NPM), or they are not productive. The global software industry is built on the top of Western science that relies of on freedom of information. Thus, they need to let free information to flow against the authorianship will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    That's interesting! I thought China developers had npm / PyPI etc. mirrored so that they don't have to deal with the slowed worldwide versions. UPD: that said, I agree that the Chinese Firewall is about as far as you can shut off the Internet in a modern country (at least without turning into another North Korea).
philippejara 4y ago
Most governments that are so bad you need crypto are not that bad because of repression necessarily, but because of corruption or incompetence. Corruption or incompetence doesn't care enought to "shut down the internet" and if they do odds are a bad job will be done of it.
cypress66 4y ago
Yes. Argentina is an example.

notpushkin 4y ago

It is hard to shut off the Internet (or at least should be, if it is properly decentralized). Point in case: Russia. Government has been trying to block everything they don't like for some ten years now I think. Controlling all the uplinks from the country is just not feasible (although they're working on buying everything out I believe), so it was in fact easier for them to make all the ISPs install some blocking equipment themselves, which works pretty poorly. Many times they were successful, but they couldn't shut Telegram down for example. When TLS ECH is finally adopted it's basically game over for them.

miohtama 4y ago
If you shut down Internet, your economy suffers. Even China cannot block Github, because it would harm their economy too much. Chinese developers need to access Github (PyPi, NPM), or they are not productive. The global software industry is built on the top of Western science that relies of on freedom of information. Thus, they need to let free information to flow against the authorianship will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub#China
- notpushkin 4y ago
  That's interesting! I thought China developers had npm / PyPI etc. mirrored so that they don't have to deal with the slowed worldwide versions. UPD: that said, I agree that the Chinese Firewall is about as far as you can shut off the Internet in a modern country (at least without turning into another North Korea).

philippejara 4y ago

Most governments that are so bad you need crypto are not that bad because of repression necessarily, but because of corruption or incompetence. Corruption or incompetence doesn't care enought to "shut down the internet" and if they do odds are a bad job will be done of it.

cypress66 4y ago

Yes. Argentina is an example.