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You say tomato I say removing the levers of power from world governments who have proven time and time again that they can't help but pull them to help themselv

You say tomato I say removing the levers of power from world governments who have proven time and time again that they can't help but pull them to help themselves

munificent 1y ago
> removing the levers of power from world governments A lever of power is never removed unless the act itself can no longer be performed. All you can do is take someone's hand off the lever and hope that whoever grabs it next is better than the last hand that had it. I find it very unlikely that wresting power away from government—which at least has some level of citizen participation—will end up with it in better hands. The most likely scenario is that some billionaire will end up owning it.
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  No, it's possible. Imagine, for example, that you are concerned about growing political control of the central bank in your country and you want to remove the ability of central banks to set an inflation rate for the currency you use. That's quite easily achieved if ownership of the currency system is distributed among all users of that currency.
  - munificent 1y ago
    > is distributed among all users of that currency. Right. What you propose is that you take government's hand off the lever and a million users will all equally get to gently rest their pinky on it and distribute the power equally. I have never seen anything in the history of the world or my understanding of sociology to indicate that such a power structure has any stability. If you give out power in a free-for-all, what tends to happen is: 1. All of the participants already have some unequal distribution of power going in. 2. Those who have more are able to use that to claim a little more of the new resource. 3. Once they do they, they are able to use the increased inequality to claim even more. 4. Go to 2. The natural tendency is towards increasing inequality. It takes a ton of work to build and maintain structures that encourage any level of egalitarianism.
    - idiotsecant 1y ago
      You're over abstracting a very simple thing. No user can, for example, change the inflationary rate of a decentralized cryptocurrency. It requires network consensus. The party making the change would need to control the vast majority of the consensus power, whether than is ASICs for pow or base currency for pos, at which point they have massive incentive to not do that on account of the loss of power destroying all their wealth would represent. Non-fiat currency is the most egalitarian system possible.
      - munificent 1y ago
        > It requires network consensus. No, it requires network control. Consensus among a large number of independent participants who agree on a change is one way to have that control. But another way is to have a minority of participants that control a disproportionately large fraction of mining decide what to do. The history of crypto shows that over time, miners tend to consolidate until eventually you have a small number of miners who significant leverage over the ledger. None of that should be surprising: economy of scale is economics 101 and certainly applies to miners who buy and run hardware in bulk. > Non-fiat currency is the most egalitarian system possible. Egalitarianism is a property of human behavior and social systems, not the hardware that humans may or may not be using as intended.
j2kun 1y ago
The frequency with which people involved in cryptocurrency "pull the levers themselves" has far outpaced government manipulation of currency.
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  Has it? You're not really providing much evidence of that. If it so far outpaces, it should be easy to give several examples.
  - yunwal 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitget-lawyer-letters-accounts-over-voxel-futures-manipulation https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitget-lawyer-letters-account... https://bitnewsbot.com/us-judge-unfreezes-57-6m-usdc-tied-to-libra-rug-pull-scandal/ https://bitnewsbot.com/us-judge-unfreezes-57-6m-usdc-tied-to... https://ambcrypto.com/avalanche-based-protocol-reportedly-rug-pulled-within-hours-of-launch/ https://ambcrypto.com/avalanche-based-protocol-reportedly-ru... https://cointelegraph.com/news/polymarket-trump-ukraine-bet-whale-governance-attack https://cointelegraph.com/news/polymarket-trump-ukraine-bet-... https://x.com/BinanceWallet/status/1904352541615554611 https://x.com/BinanceWallet/status/1904352541615554611 https://x.com/JMilei/status/1890606683291779195 https://x.com/JMilei/status/1890606683291779195 I could pretty much go on forever…
    - troupo 1y ago
      It's always funny to me how "we're decentralized ledgers running in lack of trust environments that don't need government regulation" always run to centralized trusted government institutions every time there's trouble.
      - paintbox 1y ago
        It's a push to bring international financial systems up to date, there is no need to reinvent judiciary and executive institutions in this step.

You say tomato I say removing the levers of power from world governments who have proven time and time again that they can't help but pull them to help themselves

munificent 1y ago

> removing the levers of power from world governments A lever of power is never removed unless the act itself can no longer be performed. All you can do is take someone's hand off the lever and hope that whoever grabs it next is better than the last hand that had it. I find it very unlikely that wresting power away from government—which at least has some level of citizen participation—will end up with it in better hands. The most likely scenario is that some billionaire will end up owning it.

idiotsecant 1y ago
No, it's possible. Imagine, for example, that you are concerned about growing political control of the central bank in your country and you want to remove the ability of central banks to set an inflation rate for the currency you use. That's quite easily achieved if ownership of the currency system is distributed among all users of that currency.
- munificent 1y ago
  > is distributed among all users of that currency. Right. What you propose is that you take government's hand off the lever and a million users will all equally get to gently rest their pinky on it and distribute the power equally. I have never seen anything in the history of the world or my understanding of sociology to indicate that such a power structure has any stability. If you give out power in a free-for-all, what tends to happen is: 1. All of the participants already have some unequal distribution of power going in. 2. Those who have more are able to use that to claim a little more of the new resource. 3. Once they do they, they are able to use the increased inequality to claim even more. 4. Go to 2. The natural tendency is towards increasing inequality. It takes a ton of work to build and maintain structures that encourage any level of egalitarianism.
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    You're over abstracting a very simple thing. No user can, for example, change the inflationary rate of a decentralized cryptocurrency. It requires network consensus. The party making the change would need to control the vast majority of the consensus power, whether than is ASICs for pow or base currency for pos, at which point they have massive incentive to not do that on account of the loss of power destroying all their wealth would represent. Non-fiat currency is the most egalitarian system possible.
    - munificent 1y ago
      > It requires network consensus. No, it requires network control. Consensus among a large number of independent participants who agree on a change is one way to have that control. But another way is to have a minority of participants that control a disproportionately large fraction of mining decide what to do. The history of crypto shows that over time, miners tend to consolidate until eventually you have a small number of miners who significant leverage over the ledger. None of that should be surprising: economy of scale is economics 101 and certainly applies to miners who buy and run hardware in bulk. > Non-fiat currency is the most egalitarian system possible. Egalitarianism is a property of human behavior and social systems, not the hardware that humans may or may not be using as intended.

j2kun 1y ago

The frequency with which people involved in cryptocurrency "pull the levers themselves" has far outpaced government manipulation of currency.

idiotsecant 1y ago
Has it? You're not really providing much evidence of that. If it so far outpaces, it should be easy to give several examples.
- yunwal 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitget-lawyer-letters-accounts-over-voxel-futures-manipulation https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitget-lawyer-letters-account... https://bitnewsbot.com/us-judge-unfreezes-57-6m-usdc-tied-to-libra-rug-pull-scandal/ https://bitnewsbot.com/us-judge-unfreezes-57-6m-usdc-tied-to... https://ambcrypto.com/avalanche-based-protocol-reportedly-rug-pulled-within-hours-of-launch/ https://ambcrypto.com/avalanche-based-protocol-reportedly-ru... https://cointelegraph.com/news/polymarket-trump-ukraine-bet-whale-governance-attack https://cointelegraph.com/news/polymarket-trump-ukraine-bet-... https://x.com/BinanceWallet/status/1904352541615554611 https://x.com/BinanceWallet/status/1904352541615554611 https://x.com/JMilei/status/1890606683291779195 https://x.com/JMilei/status/1890606683291779195 I could pretty much go on forever…
  - troupo 1y ago
    It's always funny to me how "we're decentralized ledgers running in lack of trust environments that don't need government regulation" always run to centralized trusted government institutions every time there's trouble.
    - paintbox 1y ago
      It's a push to bring international financial systems up to date, there is no need to reinvent judiciary and executive institutions in this step.