Isn't this just the difference between a geographically selected community where a central government is in control (the US population) and a non-territorial self-selected community where the economic-majority "decentralized governance" is in control (Bitcoin)?

In other words, isn't this in some sense just the question of statism vs. anarchy, or centralization vs. decentralization, restated? The whole idea of economic majority control only works because of the exit dynamic afforded by the decentralized nature of cryptoledgers.

It seems to me that insofar as you buy the argument that decentralization or non-territorialism, wherein this voice/exit dynamic gets maximum play, is superior to centralization and territorial monopolies of power wherein you cannot exit without physically emigrating, you would also buy my argument in the long post above that there is nothing to fear from forkability.

As an example, if when the gold standard was broken people could choose to fork off and keep the gold standard, regardless of being geographically located in the United States, the legislation could not have passed, or if it did it wouldn't have been effective - at least not for those in the population who care about sound money. The economic majority among US citizens may have supported going off the gold standard, but then there is still a minority who want to keep the gold standard. In a statist system, the minority is the minority and gets overridden; in an anarchic system, the economic minority simply becomes the economic majority of a smaller community and retains the system they prefer. (If they deem their differences sufficient to make it worth breaking away.)


Reiterating the above point for clarity, this tragedy happened because the gold holders weren't allowed to "exit in place," and I assume they weren't in fact allowed to exit US territory at all (with their gold). This is a problem of statism, but Bitcoin is not a statist system. In Bitcoin the economic majority, or perhaps we can refine the phrasing even further and say each economic community (defined by their similar beliefs about what is ideal money), can always choose their own fork.

My "economic majority" phrasing becomes a little confusing here because we must continually ask, "A majority among whom?" A large enough minority with enough difference of opinion from the majority will break away and become the economic majority of a community of people who agree with their values. There are still reasons why each little economic community with varying beliefs about ideal money will not necessarily fork off: size is an advantage, voice can still work if the minority makes convincing arguments, etc.

The main thing I want to point out is that there is a set of implications in this shift from mostly voice-only territorial democratic control to fully-enabled location-independent voice+exit control,* in other words there is a set of implications of the exit dynamic getting full play for the first time, and I think these implications haven't been fully understood or at least not fully internalized.

Note: Although I'm arguing in this vein, I don't even think I myself have fully internalized the implications of now having a real exit option available at all times. I feel like I can see some of them implicitly but I'm not sure I could articulate the full set of implications yet. I'd like the above arguments hinting at some of the counterintuitive implications to be fleshed out and made more explicit, perhaps through further debate. The semantic challenges this new idea poses are also pretty formidable: the term "majority" becomes fluid in a way we aren't used to, for instance, as mentioned above, and even the term "Bitcoin" develops a dynamic character that at first feels unsettling.

*I'll quit using the term "exit-democracy" for this, to avoid confusion, because I think the associations of the word democracy to voting (voice) are just too strong.