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Whether Bitcoin was designed as a scam, I'm not too interested. Whether Bitcoin today operates as a scam, I'm not too interested. The fraudulent nature and qu

by Frondo 12y ago

Whether Bitcoin was designed as a scam, I'm not too interested. Whether Bitcoin today operates as a scam, I'm not too interested. The fraudulent nature and qualities often discussed don't interested me too much. There is a deeper issue I've raised, that I've never seen satisfactorily addressed, with Bitcoin: It has economic assumptions baked into it (deflationary, fixed size of money pool, etc). These assumptions, like all economic assumptions built into a currency, will guide and govern people's behavior and use of it. That means that bitcoin is a human-invented system that, if it came into any widespread adoption, would play a role in suggesting or controlling people's behavior, just like any currency. The difference is, the people whose behavior would be controlled have no say in changing those economic assumptions. The people who could potentially live in a bitcoin-infused world have no voice in how it operates. Bitcoin, in effect, takes a degree of agency from the people, and this is especially problematic if it became widespread enough that you'd be compelled to use it. Why does that matter? Because people have a right to democratic institutions. People have a right to vote on or have a say in matters that govern their lives. Bitcoin, as it exists now, takes that away from people. And, to bring up a couple of things people have said to be me here before, the fact that Bitcoin can be changed (i.e. by writing new code and persuading 100% of the community to adopt it) does not make it democratic. Setting the barrier to democratic participation at "learn to code, or pay someone to code, and then change everyone over all at once to your new software" means that that isn't really a democratic system at all. And to bring up the point that currency shouldn't be democratically decided, well, no. People have a right to govern their affairs and live in a society responsive to their needs. Moving in the direction of taking some of that agency away is moving in the wrong direction. I'm not opposed to digital currency in general, but I am opposed to one that operates in a way that I have no democratic recourse if I don't like how it runs.

vijayboyapati 12y ago
It should be pointed out that US operated as a democratic republic for over a century on the gold standard - which bitcoins shares a lot of properties with, except that bitcoin can be transmitted at distance easily, whereas gold cannot.
- bduerst 12y ago
  The gold standard was dropped by all major currencies in the 20th century because it was deflationary, and now most major currencies can be transmitted at distance. Bitcoin on the other hand has a set supply and supply schedule, making it deflationary and inadequate as a currency.
  - vijayboyapati 12y ago
    This is one of the great economics canards of the 20th century. The gold standard was dropped because western nations accumulated too much war debt during the Great War (world war I) and weren't able to inflate it away under a gold standard. That's not the fault of the gold standard but of the war and the governments that refused to acknowledge their insolvency. The 19th century saw perhaps the greatest rise of living standards in history and it was all achieved on a gold standard, which greatly facilitated world trade. As Keynes wrote, in The Economic Consequences of the Peace: "The various currencies, which were all maintained on a stable basis in relation to gold and to one another, facilitated the easy flow of capital and of trade to an extent the full value of which we only realize now, when we are deprived of its advantages. Over this great area there was an almost absolute security of property and of person."
    - parasubvert 12y ago
      That's a creative interpretation of history. Keynes was one of the great advocates for dropping the gold standard, calling it a barbarous relic - as his biographer Skidelsky says, "useful as a constitutional monarch but disastrous as a despot". The various central bankers clinging to gold - against all evidence - caused the great depression's deflationary spiral.
    - bduerst 12y ago
      Okay, sure, that's fine that you believe in a different interpretation on history for the global drop of the gold standard. I really don't care - but the point still stands that Bitcoin is still almost a century behind other currencies because it is deflationary.
joshu 12y ago
I don't disagree, but some thoughts occur to me: 1) the design of a currency might require paradoxical decisions - that is, popular choices for how they should work could lead to them being worse for people in the large 2) the democratic decision process might be satisfied by people choosing to adopt this currency or not
- Frondo 12y ago
  Yes, agreed, with a clarification-- If the people chose to adopt a digital currency, that choice should be something that's also revisited periodically. Either directly (i.e. a citizens' initiative to change its inflationary/deflationary policy) or by way of our elected officials (i.e. "Vote for me, my stand on digital currency is X!"), it should be possible for the people to decide a new course of action every so often. After a few years of living in a digital currency-enabled world, we'd have a sense of whether we wanted to keep the policy the same, change it, roll it back entirely, whatever. If it's something we could vote on, then great, democratic principles intact.
  - joshu 12y ago
    Yes, excellent point.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jackpirate 12y ago
It seems like the "right" way to solve this problem is to just design a currency with whatever monetary policy you like baked in. Then the people get to choose their monetary policy based on which currency they support. A government could endorse a particular currency as the official currency, thereby giving it the same capacity to regulate monetary policy governments currently enjoy.
todd_whitehead 12y ago
The democratic recourse is that you stop using it. You can opt-in and opt-out; there is no institution coercing you into using it. Why should we expect that 99/100 people have anything insightful to say about currency? Even the person who is college-educated and took maybe 1 or 2 economics classes is way out of depth talking about it. There are maybe a "handful" of people who could give a meaningful evaluation of bitcoin or some alternative currency... similarly the requirement that someone be code-literate and have algorithmic "chops" to change bitcoin is good -- you don't want a person who doesn't even know what a distributed system is trying to make changes to something they don't understand because they read an article on huffington post about it and decided it was "problematic" because it didn't fall quite in line with something they believed rather strongly but without good reason to be true.
- Frondo 12y ago
  Actually, I do want everyone to have a say in their government, even if it's as simple as voting for a politician who listens to those policy experts and makes decisions. I'm not saying, "everything must be direct democracy." I'm saying, "people have a right to access political power." I've never been ok with "you're too stupid to know how this works, I'll take away your ability to decide," even though there are lots of things where I'd consider myself better-informed about stuff than the typical dumb idiot on the street. (Yeah, even those typical dumb idiots, I want them to have a say in how society is structured too. That's how strongly I believe in democracy as a human right.) Right now, bitcoin is totally a choice, and one very, very few people are making. If bitcoin ever spread beyond this very fringe state, to where people would be compelled to use it for whatever reason, that's where it's important that those people have a say in how it's designed and how it operates.
  - ende 12y ago
    I empathize with your concerns for civic engagement, and I encourage you to read some of the other comments responding to your original point as I believe you will find an idea there very much in tune with your democratic ideals: namely that bitcoin is not the only digital currency and that in a hypothetical future of widespread adoption these currencies would compete for a share of the total transactional manifestation of value. It doesn't necessarily make sense to alter an existing digital currency as democratic control takes place through popular selection of currencies based on their ruling mechanics. This offers much more democratic control of our currencies (emphasis on plurality) than any illusion that central banking falls under any shred of democratic influence.
ende 12y ago
Do you think the central banking based currencies offer any democratic control? You'd be kidding yourself if you thought so. Central banking centralizes control of a currency under the influence and in the interests of the economic elite. Distributed currencies like bitcoin deny that control to a centralized authority. That alone makes it more democratic. It is important to note that it is not bitcoin itself that is revolutionary, but all the distributed currencies that follow it. It is the evolutionary modification and adoption of those currencies that is democratic, through the emergence of a competetive market of currencies all based on different ideas.
- Frondo 12y ago
  Of course we can decide how the central bank works in the U.S.--we vote for new politicians whose views on money more closely align with our own. They install new administrators, who set policy that more closely aligns with our views. Do we vote on central banking policies directly? No, of course not. Does that mean nothing ever changes? No, of course not. I'm not sure who, if Mitt Romney had won, he'd have named as Fed chair, but I suspect it wouldn't have been Janet Yellen. (Just like, had McCain won in 2008, we sure wouldn't have anything like the Affordable Care Act--which, flawed as it is, is a big improvement over the old status quo.) That's how democratic access to money policy works; we vote, power realigns in accordance with our votes, and a few years down the road, we do it again.
  - rjett 12y ago
    "That's how democratic access to money policy works; we vote, power realigns in accordance with our votes, and a few years down the road, we do it again." And therein lies a problem. Under a system like this, policy is geared towards affecting the short term in order to affect the next election cycle and no heed is given to how things play out in the long run.
    - Frondo 12y ago
      I think the economy is something we can revisit every couple of years, to see, do we still like the direction it's going? Should we keep the old people in, vote for new people? Maybe 4 years is too short a time to revisit the question. Maybe too long. I don't know if 4 years is the best length of time, but it doesn't make sense to make it too long a period of time; we've got to have a chance to change course every so often.
staunch 12y ago
> Setting the barrier to democratic participation at "learn to code..." means that that isn't really a democratic system at all. As opposed to paying for 8 years of law school and getting elected using the money of special interests? Setting the bar at knowledge freely available to anyone is about as good as you can do. In practice, it only takes a handful of programmers to provide value for billions and stave off corruption. See: Linux
- Frondo 12y ago
  In which municipality do you need to attend 8 years of law school to vote? Where I live (Oregon, USA), they mail us ballots every year or two, and we vote on things. You don't need to own property or have a car, you still get to vote on stuff. For example, last year we decided to legalize cannabis in our state. I'm quite sure the millions of people who voted for that didn't spend 8 years in law school.
  - jMyles 12y ago
    The case to be made isn't that the barrier to voting is sufficiently low, but that voting substantially matters at all. There are plenty of political scientists who think that, as a mechanism for changing power structures, voting is ineffective and poorly conceived.
    - Frondo 12y ago
      I have friends who are involved in Washington State's exploding cannabis industry. There is a lot of money flowing now, a lot of new jobs being created, an absolutely breathtaking number of new businesses forming and doing trade. Whole new organizations and power structures are forming, because people voted to make this OK. The same thing's going to happen in Oregon, when our legalization starts rolling along. Watching an industry move from mostly-black-market (excepting the medical marijuana scene) to exploding with life and all on the level--as one example--it makes it tough for me to accept that voting does not substantially matter. (The other example I bring up is the Affordable Care Act. I can now buy insurance out of pocket that caps my annual expenses at around $6000. Huge improvement over the old status quo for me and other independent professionals. I'm pretty sure that, had McCain won in 2008, that we wouldn't have anything like McCainCare. Another place where voting has lead to policy that has improved structures of power and trade.)
jMyles 12y ago
Your point is sound and your articulation of it quite thoughtful. However, you have glossed over a dramatic presumption: that everyone believes that voting is a desirable mechanism for effective democratic change. It happens that the matter before us - the process by which state-sanctioned currency is created and distributed - is a wonderful example of the failure of voting to create policy which is in line with the civic polity of the voters in question. Very, very few people believe that the current configuration of the federal reserve is just, yet over 40 million people voted for the current US President. Thus, there is obviously a chasm between the beliefs of the voters and the outcome of their democratic exercise. One of the most important (in fact to me, the most important) critiques made by the open source collaboration model is that, in some cases, a seemingly more chaotic system of decision-making can (but of course doesn't have to) result in a power dynamic more consistent with the underlying politics of the constituency. Bitcoin, while obviously flawed in many ways, and blockchain technology generally, are formulations of this critique. They say, "here's a different imperfect way of making decisions about the operations of power structures." In this way, it makes more sense to judge them on how they apply the desires of a constituency to the power structure, not merely the matter of whether or not they facilitate one particular mechanism for doing so (ie, voting). By my assessment, Bitcoin is actually somewhat less horrible than USD when judged this way. Future cryptocurrencies may emerge which are not at all horrible.
- parasubvert 12y ago
  "Very, very few people believe that the current configuration of the federal reserve is just..." (Critation needed). From my vantage point, very very few people - mostly cranks and charlatans - are against fractional reserve banking or the Federal reserve.
  - jMyles 12y ago
    I surmise that you have defined "crank" and "charlatan" to mean anyone who, regardless of their study on the matter, is opposed either generally to fractional reserve (and central-) banking or specifically to the current federal reserve.
kang 12y ago
Exactly the opposite. Once you have a government you don't have the 'right to recall' and that govt sets the rate of inflation for the period it is in power. If you are against it, in a true democracy you'd influence people to vote it. Then you wait for the election day and hope you've succeeded in persuading enough people and then you hope the govt actually does what it promised. Whereas in cryptoeconomy, once you decide you don't like the terms of this currency, you get a new currency made for free(call me if no programmer would give you 10 minutes of their time) and then you go on persuading people. You don't wait for any day and people vote on the spot whether they'd use it or not and then you don't even care if the elected govt does what it promised. Pure democracy. Current America (and India where I live) is oligarchy with the power lying with the elite few. To get really extreme I'd go suicide in front of the Indian parliament tonight if it simply bans people with criminal backgrounds to participate in elections. Guess what, many people have and nothing changed. You can hold my this comment as a written promise.
adrianmacneil 12y ago
I absolutely agree with your point when considering bitcoin as a currency / store of value. It's important to realize that bitcoin is two things: - A decentralized payment network - A store of value Whether it has merit as a store of value has yet to be seen, but bitcoin has already proven itself as an innovative payment network. For this purpose I believe your argument is less important - the underlying invention of the blockchain can now be duplicated in other competing networks (altcoins, sidechains) if bitcoin itself does not prove satisfactory. In future I believe bitcoin governance will look more similar to how the internet is governed today. For now, I think we have established that an unaccountable foundation is not the best structure.
nickodell 12y ago
I agree. A system that requires a 100% approval rate is unworkable. However: Here in Colorado, we have legal(ish) marijuana. However, there is a federal law that says that banks can't deal with these businesses. The result of this is lots of armed robbery. This doesn't seem very responsive to the needs of people in Colorado.
clamprecht 12y ago
The laws of physics and mathematics aren't democratic, and that is a strength.
panic 12y ago
In some way this reflects a general trend in modern society where we give up human agency to the arbitrary rules of computer systems. See e.g. http://www.oualline.com/practical.programmer/bully.html http://www.oualline.com/practical.programmer/bully.html
moe 12y ago
The difference is, the people whose behavior would be controlled have no say in changing those economic assumptions. Isn't it exactly the other way round? For Bitcoin I can at least inspect and understand the economic assumptions, by looking at the source-code or having someone I trust explain it to me. What are the economic assumptions for the USD? Who can I ask and how do I know they won't lie to me? Also in terms of democratic recourse I find "learn to code or pay someone" a much lower barrier than "get rich enough to bribe influential politicians".
- Frondo 12y ago
  Well, if you can find someone you trust to explain Bitcoin to you, I'd imagine you can find someone you trust to explain US fiscal policy to you. As for democratic resource, I don't see how there is any comparison possible between "learn (or pay someone) to code, and then persuade every money-holder to accept your code" and "receive your ballot in the mail, cast your vote for the politician whose money policy you like". One looks like a frictionless spherical cow, the other looks like an imperfect but still workable democratic process.
  - moe 12y ago
    if you can find someone you trust to explain Bitcoin to you, I'd imagine you can find someone you trust to explain US fiscal policy to you That seems very optimistic to me. The fiscal policy in Bitcoin boils down to a few small chunks of logic; block rewards, difficulty settings, transaction fees. Those are relatively easy to explain even to a non-techie. And the resulting policy is definitive. It doesn't quietly change. All changes are broadcasted to everybody, and anyone who cares can stay up-to-date. The US fiscal policy is not only infinitely more complex, it might also have quietly changed before you even finished explaining it to me... "learn (or pay someone) to code, and then persuade every money-holder to accept your code" and "receive your ballot in the mail, cast your vote for the politician whose money policy you like". To me the former is a pull-request on github, with open discussion and a realistic chance to get merged. The latter a symbolic gesture, hoping to bring someone in power who might perhaps hopefully one day implement a change that is at least similar to what I had in mind.
- 12y ago
baby 12y ago
I see bitcoin as anarchy. It is just your opinion that a democratic solution would be better than bitcoin.
chaosfactor 12y ago
Vote with your feet. Using Bitcoin is a vote for that kind of system.
aminok 12y ago
>"That means that bitcoin is a .. system that, if it came into any widespread adoption, would play a role in suggesting or controlling people's behavior, just like any currency." It would absolutely not "control" people's behavior. Control is a very charged term, that implies coercion. Unless there is coercion, there is absolutely no justification for banning Bitcoin so that people are only left with the "democratic" alternative you favor. By all means, promote your democratic currency, but don't try to give it a competitive advantage by prohibiting people from using alternatives that don't meet your ideals.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Jautenim 12y ago
There is a core misconception at the root of your argument: that Bitcoin is a public affair (just as money has always been), and therefore it should be more 'democratic'. See, what Bitcoin really is about is moving money from the public to the private realm. In the same manner that nowadays you don't get to democratically vote the color of my living room's couch or what I'll have for supper tonight, tommorrow you won't either get to vote the monetary policy of the currency that I fancy using. And that's perfectly fine because my choice won't "govern your life" as you put it. If for whatever reason you don't like Bitcoin you can stick to fiat money or use any other cryptocurrency with a different policy baked in. If I ever have to pay you money I'll just exchange some of my coins for yours at current market price (there'll be convenient services for that, rest assured), and you could do the same for me. Hakuna matata.

by Frondo 12y ago

vijayboyapati 12y ago

It should be pointed out that US operated as a democratic republic for over a century on the gold standard - which bitcoins shares a lot of properties with, except that bitcoin can be transmitted at distance easily, whereas gold cannot.

bduerst 12y ago
The gold standard was dropped by all major currencies in the 20th century because it was deflationary, and now most major currencies can be transmitted at distance. Bitcoin on the other hand has a set supply and supply schedule, making it deflationary and inadequate as a currency.
- vijayboyapati 12y ago
  This is one of the great economics canards of the 20th century. The gold standard was dropped because western nations accumulated too much war debt during the Great War (world war I) and weren't able to inflate it away under a gold standard. That's not the fault of the gold standard but of the war and the governments that refused to acknowledge their insolvency. The 19th century saw perhaps the greatest rise of living standards in history and it was all achieved on a gold standard, which greatly facilitated world trade. As Keynes wrote, in The Economic Consequences of the Peace: "The various currencies, which were all maintained on a stable basis in relation to gold and to one another, facilitated the easy flow of capital and of trade to an extent the full value of which we only realize now, when we are deprived of its advantages. Over this great area there was an almost absolute security of property and of person."
  - parasubvert 12y ago
    That's a creative interpretation of history. Keynes was one of the great advocates for dropping the gold standard, calling it a barbarous relic - as his biographer Skidelsky says, "useful as a constitutional monarch but disastrous as a despot". The various central bankers clinging to gold - against all evidence - caused the great depression's deflationary spiral.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    Okay, sure, that's fine that you believe in a different interpretation on history for the global drop of the gold standard. I really don't care - but the point still stands that Bitcoin is still almost a century behind other currencies because it is deflationary.

joshu 12y ago

I don't disagree, but some thoughts occur to me: 1) the design of a currency might require paradoxical decisions - that is, popular choices for how they should work could lead to them being worse for people in the large 2) the democratic decision process might be satisfied by people choosing to adopt this currency or not

Frondo 12y ago
Yes, agreed, with a clarification-- If the people chose to adopt a digital currency, that choice should be something that's also revisited periodically. Either directly (i.e. a citizens' initiative to change its inflationary/deflationary policy) or by way of our elected officials (i.e. "Vote for me, my stand on digital currency is X!"), it should be possible for the people to decide a new course of action every so often. After a few years of living in a digital currency-enabled world, we'd have a sense of whether we wanted to keep the policy the same, change it, roll it back entirely, whatever. If it's something we could vote on, then great, democratic principles intact.
- joshu 12y ago
  Yes, excellent point.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jackpirate 12y ago

It seems like the "right" way to solve this problem is to just design a currency with whatever monetary policy you like baked in. Then the people get to choose their monetary policy based on which currency they support. A government could endorse a particular currency as the official currency, thereby giving it the same capacity to regulate monetary policy governments currently enjoy.

todd_whitehead 12y ago

The democratic recourse is that you stop using it. You can opt-in and opt-out; there is no institution coercing you into using it. Why should we expect that 99/100 people have anything insightful to say about currency? Even the person who is college-educated and took maybe 1 or 2 economics classes is way out of depth talking about it. There are maybe a "handful" of people who could give a meaningful evaluation of bitcoin or some alternative currency... similarly the requirement that someone be code-literate and have algorithmic "chops" to change bitcoin is good -- you don't want a person who doesn't even know what a distributed system is trying to make changes to something they don't understand because they read an article on huffington post about it and decided it was "problematic" because it didn't fall quite in line with something they believed rather strongly but without good reason to be true.

Frondo 12y ago
Actually, I do want everyone to have a say in their government, even if it's as simple as voting for a politician who listens to those policy experts and makes decisions. I'm not saying, "everything must be direct democracy." I'm saying, "people have a right to access political power." I've never been ok with "you're too stupid to know how this works, I'll take away your ability to decide," even though there are lots of things where I'd consider myself better-informed about stuff than the typical dumb idiot on the street. (Yeah, even those typical dumb idiots, I want them to have a say in how society is structured too. That's how strongly I believe in democracy as a human right.) Right now, bitcoin is totally a choice, and one very, very few people are making. If bitcoin ever spread beyond this very fringe state, to where people would be compelled to use it for whatever reason, that's where it's important that those people have a say in how it's designed and how it operates.
- ende 12y ago
  I empathize with your concerns for civic engagement, and I encourage you to read some of the other comments responding to your original point as I believe you will find an idea there very much in tune with your democratic ideals: namely that bitcoin is not the only digital currency and that in a hypothetical future of widespread adoption these currencies would compete for a share of the total transactional manifestation of value. It doesn't necessarily make sense to alter an existing digital currency as democratic control takes place through popular selection of currencies based on their ruling mechanics. This offers much more democratic control of our currencies (emphasis on plurality) than any illusion that central banking falls under any shred of democratic influence.

ende 12y ago

Do you think the central banking based currencies offer any democratic control? You'd be kidding yourself if you thought so. Central banking centralizes control of a currency under the influence and in the interests of the economic elite. Distributed currencies like bitcoin deny that control to a centralized authority. That alone makes it more democratic. It is important to note that it is not bitcoin itself that is revolutionary, but all the distributed currencies that follow it. It is the evolutionary modification and adoption of those currencies that is democratic, through the emergence of a competetive market of currencies all based on different ideas.

Frondo 12y ago
Of course we can decide how the central bank works in the U.S.--we vote for new politicians whose views on money more closely align with our own. They install new administrators, who set policy that more closely aligns with our views. Do we vote on central banking policies directly? No, of course not. Does that mean nothing ever changes? No, of course not. I'm not sure who, if Mitt Romney had won, he'd have named as Fed chair, but I suspect it wouldn't have been Janet Yellen. (Just like, had McCain won in 2008, we sure wouldn't have anything like the Affordable Care Act--which, flawed as it is, is a big improvement over the old status quo.) That's how democratic access to money policy works; we vote, power realigns in accordance with our votes, and a few years down the road, we do it again.
- rjett 12y ago
  "That's how democratic access to money policy works; we vote, power realigns in accordance with our votes, and a few years down the road, we do it again." And therein lies a problem. Under a system like this, policy is geared towards affecting the short term in order to affect the next election cycle and no heed is given to how things play out in the long run.
  - Frondo 12y ago
    I think the economy is something we can revisit every couple of years, to see, do we still like the direction it's going? Should we keep the old people in, vote for new people? Maybe 4 years is too short a time to revisit the question. Maybe too long. I don't know if 4 years is the best length of time, but it doesn't make sense to make it too long a period of time; we've got to have a chance to change course every so often.

staunch 12y ago

> Setting the barrier to democratic participation at "learn to code..." means that that isn't really a democratic system at all. As opposed to paying for 8 years of law school and getting elected using the money of special interests? Setting the bar at knowledge freely available to anyone is about as good as you can do. In practice, it only takes a handful of programmers to provide value for billions and stave off corruption. See: Linux

Frondo 12y ago
In which municipality do you need to attend 8 years of law school to vote? Where I live (Oregon, USA), they mail us ballots every year or two, and we vote on things. You don't need to own property or have a car, you still get to vote on stuff. For example, last year we decided to legalize cannabis in our state. I'm quite sure the millions of people who voted for that didn't spend 8 years in law school.
- jMyles 12y ago
  The case to be made isn't that the barrier to voting is sufficiently low, but that voting substantially matters at all. There are plenty of political scientists who think that, as a mechanism for changing power structures, voting is ineffective and poorly conceived.
  - Frondo 12y ago
    I have friends who are involved in Washington State's exploding cannabis industry. There is a lot of money flowing now, a lot of new jobs being created, an absolutely breathtaking number of new businesses forming and doing trade. Whole new organizations and power structures are forming, because people voted to make this OK. The same thing's going to happen in Oregon, when our legalization starts rolling along. Watching an industry move from mostly-black-market (excepting the medical marijuana scene) to exploding with life and all on the level--as one example--it makes it tough for me to accept that voting does not substantially matter. (The other example I bring up is the Affordable Care Act. I can now buy insurance out of pocket that caps my annual expenses at around $6000. Huge improvement over the old status quo for me and other independent professionals. I'm pretty sure that, had McCain won in 2008, that we wouldn't have anything like McCainCare. Another place where voting has lead to policy that has improved structures of power and trade.)

jMyles 12y ago

Your point is sound and your articulation of it quite thoughtful. However, you have glossed over a dramatic presumption: that everyone believes that voting is a desirable mechanism for effective democratic change. It happens that the matter before us - the process by which state-sanctioned currency is created and distributed - is a wonderful example of the failure of voting to create policy which is in line with the civic polity of the voters in question. Very, very few people believe that the current configuration of the federal reserve is just, yet over 40 million people voted for the current US President. Thus, there is obviously a chasm between the beliefs of the voters and the outcome of their democratic exercise. One of the most important (in fact to me, the most important) critiques made by the open source collaboration model is that, in some cases, a seemingly more chaotic system of decision-making can (but of course doesn't have to) result in a power dynamic more consistent with the underlying politics of the constituency. Bitcoin, while obviously flawed in many ways, and blockchain technology generally, are formulations of this critique. They say, "here's a different imperfect way of making decisions about the operations of power structures." In this way, it makes more sense to judge them on how they apply the desires of a constituency to the power structure, not merely the matter of whether or not they facilitate one particular mechanism for doing so (ie, voting). By my assessment, Bitcoin is actually somewhat less horrible than USD when judged this way. Future cryptocurrencies may emerge which are not at all horrible.

parasubvert 12y ago
"Very, very few people believe that the current configuration of the federal reserve is just..." (Critation needed). From my vantage point, very very few people - mostly cranks and charlatans - are against fractional reserve banking or the Federal reserve.
- jMyles 12y ago
  I surmise that you have defined "crank" and "charlatan" to mean anyone who, regardless of their study on the matter, is opposed either generally to fractional reserve (and central-) banking or specifically to the current federal reserve.

kang 12y ago

Exactly the opposite. Once you have a government you don't have the 'right to recall' and that govt sets the rate of inflation for the period it is in power. If you are against it, in a true democracy you'd influence people to vote it. Then you wait for the election day and hope you've succeeded in persuading enough people and then you hope the govt actually does what it promised. Whereas in cryptoeconomy, once you decide you don't like the terms of this currency, you get a new currency made for free(call me if no programmer would give you 10 minutes of their time) and then you go on persuading people. You don't wait for any day and people vote on the spot whether they'd use it or not and then you don't even care if the elected govt does what it promised. Pure democracy. Current America (and India where I live) is oligarchy with the power lying with the elite few. To get really extreme I'd go suicide in front of the Indian parliament tonight if it simply bans people with criminal backgrounds to participate in elections. Guess what, many people have and nothing changed. You can hold my this comment as a written promise.

adrianmacneil 12y ago

I absolutely agree with your point when considering bitcoin as a currency / store of value. It's important to realize that bitcoin is two things: - A decentralized payment network - A store of value Whether it has merit as a store of value has yet to be seen, but bitcoin has already proven itself as an innovative payment network. For this purpose I believe your argument is less important - the underlying invention of the blockchain can now be duplicated in other competing networks (altcoins, sidechains) if bitcoin itself does not prove satisfactory. In future I believe bitcoin governance will look more similar to how the internet is governed today. For now, I think we have established that an unaccountable foundation is not the best structure.

nickodell 12y ago

I agree. A system that requires a 100% approval rate is unworkable. However: Here in Colorado, we have legal(ish) marijuana. However, there is a federal law that says that banks can't deal with these businesses. The result of this is lots of armed robbery. This doesn't seem very responsive to the needs of people in Colorado.

clamprecht 12y ago

The laws of physics and mathematics aren't democratic, and that is a strength.

panic 12y ago

In some way this reflects a general trend in modern society where we give up human agency to the arbitrary rules of computer systems. See e.g. http://www.oualline.com/practical.programmer/bully.html http://www.oualline.com/practical.programmer/bully.html

moe 12y ago

The difference is, the people whose behavior would be controlled have no say in changing those economic assumptions. Isn't it exactly the other way round? For Bitcoin I can at least inspect and understand the economic assumptions, by looking at the source-code or having someone I trust explain it to me. What are the economic assumptions for the USD? Who can I ask and how do I know they won't lie to me? Also in terms of democratic recourse I find "learn to code or pay someone" a much lower barrier than "get rich enough to bribe influential politicians".

Frondo 12y ago
Well, if you can find someone you trust to explain Bitcoin to you, I'd imagine you can find someone you trust to explain US fiscal policy to you. As for democratic resource, I don't see how there is any comparison possible between "learn (or pay someone) to code, and then persuade every money-holder to accept your code" and "receive your ballot in the mail, cast your vote for the politician whose money policy you like". One looks like a frictionless spherical cow, the other looks like an imperfect but still workable democratic process.
- moe 12y ago
  if you can find someone you trust to explain Bitcoin to you, I'd imagine you can find someone you trust to explain US fiscal policy to you That seems very optimistic to me. The fiscal policy in Bitcoin boils down to a few small chunks of logic; block rewards, difficulty settings, transaction fees. Those are relatively easy to explain even to a non-techie. And the resulting policy is definitive. It doesn't quietly change. All changes are broadcasted to everybody, and anyone who cares can stay up-to-date. The US fiscal policy is not only infinitely more complex, it might also have quietly changed before you even finished explaining it to me... "learn (or pay someone) to code, and then persuade every money-holder to accept your code" and "receive your ballot in the mail, cast your vote for the politician whose money policy you like". To me the former is a pull-request on github, with open discussion and a realistic chance to get merged. The latter a symbolic gesture, hoping to bring someone in power who might perhaps hopefully one day implement a change that is at least similar to what I had in mind.
12y ago

baby 12y ago

I see bitcoin as anarchy. It is just your opinion that a democratic solution would be better than bitcoin.

chaosfactor 12y ago

Vote with your feet. Using Bitcoin is a vote for that kind of system.

aminok 12y ago

>"That means that bitcoin is a .. system that, if it came into any widespread adoption, would play a role in suggesting or controlling people's behavior, just like any currency." It would absolutely not "control" people's behavior. Control is a very charged term, that implies coercion. Unless there is coercion, there is absolutely no justification for banning Bitcoin so that people are only left with the "democratic" alternative you favor. By all means, promote your democratic currency, but don't try to give it a competitive advantage by prohibiting people from using alternatives that don't meet your ideals.

deleted 12y ago

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Jautenim 12y ago

There is a core misconception at the root of your argument: that Bitcoin is a public affair (just as money has always been), and therefore it should be more 'democratic'. See, what Bitcoin really is about is moving money from the public to the private realm. In the same manner that nowadays you don't get to democratically vote the color of my living room's couch or what I'll have for supper tonight, tommorrow you won't either get to vote the monetary policy of the currency that I fancy using. And that's perfectly fine because my choice won't "govern your life" as you put it. If for whatever reason you don't like Bitcoin you can stick to fiat money or use any other cryptocurrency with a different policy baked in. If I ever have to pay you money I'll just exchange some of my coins for yours at current market price (there'll be convenient services for that, rest assured), and you could do the same for me. Hakuna matata.