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The analogy to holding bankers' keys in bitcoin is holding 51% of mining power, and not a percentage less. Just having a lot of bitcoin gives you the ability to

by Torgo 13y ago

The analogy to holding bankers' keys in bitcoin is holding 51% of mining power, and not a percentage less. Just having a lot of bitcoin gives you the ability to affect the price of the currency, but again this is directly proportional to how much you hold, not because of an artificial power like legal authority to take advantage of fractional reserve, or being a member of the Fed.

mpyne 13y ago
> not because of an artificial power like legal authority This is like saying "natural" foods are inherently better (or alternately, that processed foods are inherently worse). There's nothing inherently wrong with "artificial" power as it may very well be superior to the idea that shit will just "naturally happen" and whatever will be, will be. Militaries since the dawn of history adopted artificial power early, not because warriors around the world somehow converged on the same artificial Kool-Aid, but because organized armies were much more effective in combat. This is not to say that "command & control" is always inherently better (and indeed modern armies tend to practice German-style "centralized planning, decentralized execution"). Likewise the free market is a fairly widely-acknowledged success story as opposed to a planned economy. The point is rather that "no artificial power" is not a selling point or way of winning an argument on its own. On its own, it's nothing more than a suggested policy option, like saying Ethernet is better than Wifi or that CLI arguments should start with / instead of -. The effectiveness of such policies can only be determined in light of all the evidence of each case in question.
- Torgo 13y ago
  Well yeah, I am just saying that "bankers keys" are like having administrator access. It's built into the system, it's not hacking. But you can still abuse it. "bankers keys" don't have an analogy in bitcoin because there's no defined administrator role, your power is proportional to your holdings. Well, there is a soft administrator power, which is, being a primary developer on it.

by Torgo 13y ago

mpyne 13y ago

> not because of an artificial power like legal authority This is like saying "natural" foods are inherently better (or alternately, that processed foods are inherently worse). There's nothing inherently wrong with "artificial" power as it may very well be superior to the idea that shit will just "naturally happen" and whatever will be, will be. Militaries since the dawn of history adopted artificial power early, not because warriors around the world somehow converged on the same artificial Kool-Aid, but because organized armies were much more effective in combat. This is not to say that "command & control" is always inherently better (and indeed modern armies tend to practice German-style "centralized planning, decentralized execution"). Likewise the free market is a fairly widely-acknowledged success story as opposed to a planned economy. The point is rather that "no artificial power" is not a selling point or way of winning an argument on its own. On its own, it's nothing more than a suggested policy option, like saying Ethernet is better than Wifi or that CLI arguments should start with / instead of -. The effectiveness of such policies can only be determined in light of all the evidence of each case in question.

Torgo 13y ago
Well yeah, I am just saying that "bankers keys" are like having administrator access. It's built into the system, it's not hacking. But you can still abuse it. "bankers keys" don't have an analogy in bitcoin because there's no defined administrator role, your power is proportional to your holdings. Well, there is a soft administrator power, which is, being a primary developer on it.