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Governments already exist. To try and upend them by replacing their system of personhood and currency is in effect the tech-bro version of a mutiny. It may seem

Governments already exist. To try and upend them by replacing their system of personhood and currency is in effect the tech-bro version of a mutiny. It may seem ridiculous but that's precisely what crypto is. An attempt to replace central banks and governments. Tech companies have grown very powerful, and they see an opportunity to create a world-wide "private government" and they're going for it. This won't be the last attempt. Governments will eventually wake up. Or if not. That's it for them.

oh_sigh 3y ago
Governments exist, and the current standard of identity verification is a laminated piece of paper with a picture on it. If you're giving away free money you might want to have a standard slightly higher than that.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  The laminated "paper" has microchip in it in most places and codes which can be checked against a central database. It's a good enough standard. In fact better than crypto-chaos.
- fatfingerd 3y ago
  Sure, but maybe that payment power is going to have a lot of side effects that are worse than limiting/filtering gifts through potentially corrupt governments that can also prevent other situations. For example, the resource curse implies there will be great reasons for companies to risk gifts of small amounts of money to lots of people in a country about to vote on whether to protect collective assets from corporate theft.. All the weird action committees of US corruption haven't even had the logistics to directly bribe voters of a low population state to piss in the pot. Should they get iris wallet addresses for everyone correlated to scan locations? Is anything the US would do about this beyond the capabilities of Kenya?
pookha 3y ago
LOL. "Sam Altman" is not trying to upend governments. It's the opposite. Him and his ilk are trying to interface with governments in such a way that they can use the legal violence of a government to streamline the integration of their systems (schemes) into the public's life. Sam Altman wants to use the same play book that pharmaceutical and defense industry's use (regulatory crony capitalist capture). This is not "tech bro" mutiny this is -- probably -- the first of many crony capitlist (BlackRock\Ratheon\Etc\Etc) attempts at duplicitous digital currency.
px43 3y ago
Neat, so are all world governments going to band together and implement UBI? Do you really think that waiting for all world governments to come together and figure this out is the right move here? I admire the optimism (I think of myself as a pretty optimistic person too), but you've got to realize that there are reasonable people on this planet who think that waiting for governments to fix this is probably not going to turn out well. Some of those people are actually doing something about it, which is what we see here. Maybe Worldcoin works out, maybe it doesn't, but in my personal opinion, it's definitely an experiment worth running.
- jabradoodle 3y ago
  Look at the track record of the people involved, at the track record of crypto, do you think they are really going to give anyone money because of ethics?
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  There won't be UBI. There's work and death. And if AI truly replaces us, it's the latter. I'm not trying to be cynical I'm simply being blunt about how systems work. You and your environment have to "click together" so you live. In the wild, this means mostly surviving cold, hot, stay dry, find things to eat, and not be eaten. In society, however, it means being useful to the system somehow, so you get access to other useful things the system makes, like air conditioners, housing, and food, ways to get around etc. If you're not useful to the system, the system may pretend it cares for you, but it doesn't really care for you. This is not up to the morality of the people in charge. It's up to the system. The system elects the people and tells them what to care about. The system is quite resilient. It can withstand certain amounts of welfare, corruption, crime, and so on. But only certain amounts. If you cross those certain amounts, what happened in 2020 with COVID handouts, and the subsequent doubling of prices of food, and so on, happens infinitely and suddenly money is worthless paper. Like Zimbabwe. So if you have somewhere else to run where they're not as stupid as Zimbabwe, you can be useful in that new place and live. If you have nowhere to run, as with a global UBI, you die. Of course, people won't just lay down and die, they'll just have a revolution like the Bolsheviks did, and speak about how everything will belong to everyone, and of course resources will concentrate to those on top again, instead. With AI however, the overall trend would be you don't need the masses as much, so you don't need to placate most of them. They stop being useful. So revolution after revolution, new people will sit on top and promise it'll be different this time, in a smaller and smaller population.
Hizonner 3y ago
Um, "personhood" and currency aren't anything like the main functions of a government. If you had everything Worldcoin wants to do, it still wouldn't replace any governments.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  Try and think what else the government has. Police, military? All those are second order effects. Think how the government controls those institutions. Money & the ability to spend it as a person or an organization. If you control people's legal existence in your own monetary system without alternatives, means all the government has will become yours. This is how the USD works by the way (in systems like the petro-dollar), and why so many are trying to replace it. It's not easy. But they'll keep trying. And when they succeed, the American hegemony is over. In Mexico there's technically a government. But really there are the vast networks of drug cartels. They have their own military, they control politicians, they choose who is and who isn't. It all started by them making a ton of money. The rest followed. If you control the money and who can spend it, you control the economy. If you control the economy, you control everything.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    Money is also a second order effect. It stems from human tax base (after we mostly eliminated direct government capital ownership when we did away with monarchies). And human tax base ultimately stems from... the ability to count. Which is the identity question. People. Assets. Productivity. Profit. A government which lacks the ability to count cannot have a stable tax base, which increases stability risk and therefore decreases the value of their money.

oh_sigh 3y ago

Governments exist, and the current standard of identity verification is a laminated piece of paper with a picture on it. If you're giving away free money you might want to have a standard slightly higher than that.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
The laminated "paper" has microchip in it in most places and codes which can be checked against a central database. It's a good enough standard. In fact better than crypto-chaos.
fatfingerd 3y ago
Sure, but maybe that payment power is going to have a lot of side effects that are worse than limiting/filtering gifts through potentially corrupt governments that can also prevent other situations. For example, the resource curse implies there will be great reasons for companies to risk gifts of small amounts of money to lots of people in a country about to vote on whether to protect collective assets from corporate theft.. All the weird action committees of US corruption haven't even had the logistics to directly bribe voters of a low population state to piss in the pot. Should they get iris wallet addresses for everyone correlated to scan locations? Is anything the US would do about this beyond the capabilities of Kenya?

pookha 3y ago

LOL. "Sam Altman" is not trying to upend governments. It's the opposite. Him and his ilk are trying to interface with governments in such a way that they can use the legal violence of a government to streamline the integration of their systems (schemes) into the public's life. Sam Altman wants to use the same play book that pharmaceutical and defense industry's use (regulatory crony capitalist capture). This is not "tech bro" mutiny this is -- probably -- the first of many crony capitlist (BlackRock\Ratheon\Etc\Etc) attempts at duplicitous digital currency.

px43 3y ago

Neat, so are all world governments going to band together and implement UBI? Do you really think that waiting for all world governments to come together and figure this out is the right move here? I admire the optimism (I think of myself as a pretty optimistic person too), but you've got to realize that there are reasonable people on this planet who think that waiting for governments to fix this is probably not going to turn out well. Some of those people are actually doing something about it, which is what we see here. Maybe Worldcoin works out, maybe it doesn't, but in my personal opinion, it's definitely an experiment worth running.

jabradoodle 3y ago
Look at the track record of the people involved, at the track record of crypto, do you think they are really going to give anyone money because of ethics?
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
There won't be UBI. There's work and death. And if AI truly replaces us, it's the latter. I'm not trying to be cynical I'm simply being blunt about how systems work. You and your environment have to "click together" so you live. In the wild, this means mostly surviving cold, hot, stay dry, find things to eat, and not be eaten. In society, however, it means being useful to the system somehow, so you get access to other useful things the system makes, like air conditioners, housing, and food, ways to get around etc. If you're not useful to the system, the system may pretend it cares for you, but it doesn't really care for you. This is not up to the morality of the people in charge. It's up to the system. The system elects the people and tells them what to care about. The system is quite resilient. It can withstand certain amounts of welfare, corruption, crime, and so on. But only certain amounts. If you cross those certain amounts, what happened in 2020 with COVID handouts, and the subsequent doubling of prices of food, and so on, happens infinitely and suddenly money is worthless paper. Like Zimbabwe. So if you have somewhere else to run where they're not as stupid as Zimbabwe, you can be useful in that new place and live. If you have nowhere to run, as with a global UBI, you die. Of course, people won't just lay down and die, they'll just have a revolution like the Bolsheviks did, and speak about how everything will belong to everyone, and of course resources will concentrate to those on top again, instead. With AI however, the overall trend would be you don't need the masses as much, so you don't need to placate most of them. They stop being useful. So revolution after revolution, new people will sit on top and promise it'll be different this time, in a smaller and smaller population.

Hizonner 3y ago

Um, "personhood" and currency aren't anything like the main functions of a government. If you had everything Worldcoin wants to do, it still wouldn't replace any governments.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
Try and think what else the government has. Police, military? All those are second order effects. Think how the government controls those institutions. Money & the ability to spend it as a person or an organization. If you control people's legal existence in your own monetary system without alternatives, means all the government has will become yours. This is how the USD works by the way (in systems like the petro-dollar), and why so many are trying to replace it. It's not easy. But they'll keep trying. And when they succeed, the American hegemony is over. In Mexico there's technically a government. But really there are the vast networks of drug cartels. They have their own military, they control politicians, they choose who is and who isn't. It all started by them making a ton of money. The rest followed. If you control the money and who can spend it, you control the economy. If you control the economy, you control everything.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  Money is also a second order effect. It stems from human tax base (after we mostly eliminated direct government capital ownership when we did away with monarchies). And human tax base ultimately stems from... the ability to count. Which is the identity question. People. Assets. Productivity. Profit. A government which lacks the ability to count cannot have a stable tax base, which increases stability risk and therefore decreases the value of their money.