3 ms·

I'm curious, what do you mean by "distributed trust"? A big reason why I find a brand trustworthy is exactly because my trust is consolidated in one entity that

I'm curious, what do you mean by "distributed trust"? A big reason why I find a brand trustworthy is exactly because my trust is consolidated in one entity that produces repeatable, desired results. Taking Craigslist as an example, Craigslist isn't trustworthy to me precisely because its trust system is distributed. It doesn't police the interactions, moving trust into the realm of peer-to-peer, where definitions of trustworthiness tend to vary greatly. Craigslist in effect has built a well-known brand with overtones of "buyer beware!" because of this distribution of trust.

mreiland 11y ago
That's how I perceive Craigslist. And by no means do I avoid Craigslist. I've purchased plenty of things off of it ranging from coffee tables to what I lovingly call my "man couch" to the occasional video game. But whereas with Amazon I just purchase with the assumption of quality and SAFETY, with Craigslist I do due diligence first. There's a good reason why I buy things locally that I either go pick up or they deliver. It allows me to inspect the goods before completing the transaction. Now, I think in general people selling on Craigslist aren't out to specifically hurt you, but they're not out to do right by you either. It's just a completely different arena. I recently purchased a brand new PS4 off of Amazon. No way would I do that off of Craigslist. Do you know that PS4 died within 5 hours of me having it? Amazon replaced it no questions asked. There's a reason why I would never dream of purchasing something like that through Craigslist, even if many people do it successfully, the cost savings isn't worth the risk (for me personally).
zaroth 11y ago
So then you would have the same level of trust that the system works to produce repeatable desired results. E.g. With Bitcoin, if you do trust it, you are trusting that the system works to produce repeatable desired results. The fact that it works through (in theory) a resilient distributed consensus algorithm is an implementation detail. Amazon happens to achieve their consistent experience through top-down hegemony. I believe that in time a distributed software system will provide an even more reliable and consistent experience in many cases. For example, Amazon's warehouses and level of automation are often regarded as a key competitive advantage. But when you're buying a good or service from a neighbor who lives within a couple square miles, distribution doesn't get much more local (and scalable) than that! Craiglist pushes the problem under the rug, they wash their hands of it and say "buyer beware". That was the only possible solution in 1995. 20 years later we are starting to figure out, you can actually do a heck of a lot better, even without a central authority or billions of dollars of infrastructure. I think that's the hidden message in the nascent "sharing economy". Not only can individuals successfully monetize their assets or go to work for themselves, but once the tech catches up, they can do it directly and in fact way more efficiently than any centralized system could ever dream of. By the way, I'm not saying there's no place in the world for Amazon. But in particular making connections to qualified service providers are low-hanging fruit for a p2p distributed system, and longer term much, much more.
- jstandard 11y ago
  I don't understand enough about the details of how Bitcoin works to evaluate how apt that is of an analogy it is here. I've heard some very positive as well as a large enough number of surprisingly negative experiences with it making it hard for me to evaluate and thus hard to trust. I'm having a hard time following your argument about the sharing economy showing us that distributed trust systems work more efficiently. Many of the major players in the sharing economy I've seen (Uber [0], AirBnB[1]) have all moved from open-ended, less regulated distributed trust systems to tightening and more strongly imposing rules as a centralized authority to rebuild damage to their trust due to bad actors. To avoid thoughts that I'm cherry-picking companies with controversies, my broader point is that the sharing economy isn't really built differently than Amazon or any other marketplace model. Central authorities (TaskRabbit, Exec, AirBnB, Homejoy, etc) inject trust into p2p marketplaces because without their centralized authority, p2p marketplaces wind up like Craigslist or, even worse, Silk Road. [0] http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/technology/uber-background-checks/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/technology/uber-background-c... [1] http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Airbnb-hosts-must-appear-in-person-to-comply-with-6025767.php http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Airbnb-hosts-must-app... edit: minor wording correction

mreiland 11y ago

That's how I perceive Craigslist. And by no means do I avoid Craigslist. I've purchased plenty of things off of it ranging from coffee tables to what I lovingly call my "man couch" to the occasional video game. But whereas with Amazon I just purchase with the assumption of quality and SAFETY, with Craigslist I do due diligence first. There's a good reason why I buy things locally that I either go pick up or they deliver. It allows me to inspect the goods before completing the transaction. Now, I think in general people selling on Craigslist aren't out to specifically hurt you, but they're not out to do right by you either. It's just a completely different arena. I recently purchased a brand new PS4 off of Amazon. No way would I do that off of Craigslist. Do you know that PS4 died within 5 hours of me having it? Amazon replaced it no questions asked. There's a reason why I would never dream of purchasing something like that through Craigslist, even if many people do it successfully, the cost savings isn't worth the risk (for me personally).

zaroth 11y ago

So then you would have the same level of trust that the system works to produce repeatable desired results. E.g. With Bitcoin, if you do trust it, you are trusting that the system works to produce repeatable desired results. The fact that it works through (in theory) a resilient distributed consensus algorithm is an implementation detail. Amazon happens to achieve their consistent experience through top-down hegemony. I believe that in time a distributed software system will provide an even more reliable and consistent experience in many cases. For example, Amazon's warehouses and level of automation are often regarded as a key competitive advantage. But when you're buying a good or service from a neighbor who lives within a couple square miles, distribution doesn't get much more local (and scalable) than that! Craiglist pushes the problem under the rug, they wash their hands of it and say "buyer beware". That was the only possible solution in 1995. 20 years later we are starting to figure out, you can actually do a heck of a lot better, even without a central authority or billions of dollars of infrastructure. I think that's the hidden message in the nascent "sharing economy". Not only can individuals successfully monetize their assets or go to work for themselves, but once the tech catches up, they can do it directly and in fact way more efficiently than any centralized system could ever dream of. By the way, I'm not saying there's no place in the world for Amazon. But in particular making connections to qualified service providers are low-hanging fruit for a p2p distributed system, and longer term much, much more.

jstandard 11y ago
I don't understand enough about the details of how Bitcoin works to evaluate how apt that is of an analogy it is here. I've heard some very positive as well as a large enough number of surprisingly negative experiences with it making it hard for me to evaluate and thus hard to trust. I'm having a hard time following your argument about the sharing economy showing us that distributed trust systems work more efficiently. Many of the major players in the sharing economy I've seen (Uber [0], AirBnB[1]) have all moved from open-ended, less regulated distributed trust systems to tightening and more strongly imposing rules as a centralized authority to rebuild damage to their trust due to bad actors. To avoid thoughts that I'm cherry-picking companies with controversies, my broader point is that the sharing economy isn't really built differently than Amazon or any other marketplace model. Central authorities (TaskRabbit, Exec, AirBnB, Homejoy, etc) inject trust into p2p marketplaces because without their centralized authority, p2p marketplaces wind up like Craigslist or, even worse, Silk Road. [0] http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/technology/uber-background-checks/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/18/technology/uber-background-c... [1] http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Airbnb-hosts-must-appear-in-person-to-comply-with-6025767.php http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Airbnb-hosts-must-app... edit: minor wording correction