Quote from: freedombit on September 03, 2015, 04:33:58 AM

Quote from: brg444 on September 03, 2015, 04:14:15 AM

Quote from: freedombit on September 03, 2015, 04:11:30 AM

Quote from: brg444 on September 03, 2015, 04:01:11 AM

Quote from: DannyHamilton on September 03, 2015, 03:54:49 AM

Quote from: johnyj on September 03, 2015, 03:37:23 AM

Good points. You can never totally get rid of bad actors that intentionally disturb the decisoin making process
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I'm not talking about "bad actors". The fact that someone has a different goal than you doesn't necessarily mean that your goal is "good" and theirs is "bad".

The point is that a "Consensus Building Process" can't work if participants goals don't align, especially if the participants are passionate about their goals.

If consensus isn't working toward realizing their goal maybe they need to double-check their priorities and either a. compromise or b. exit and create a group of like-minded people.

Free market still operates in consensus-style decision making and if someone is convinced that their goals is more valuable then others they should absolutely leave it to the market to decide. One should be careful though about the means by which they introduce their different proposal as it could cost them greatly if people start discerning hidden motives and intentions not properly disclaimed.

Consensus sounds like a great idea, but may not always work. Democracy may not work either. A dictatorship, benevolent or malevolent, can make things happen very quickly and win a game in the right circumstances. One of those circumstances might be if a democracy or consensus is stuck in minutia, missing a bigger picture, while a dictatorship conceives and idea and quickly executes it overtaking both consensus and democracy.

I hope that Bitcoin can find consensus, but will settle for democracy. I do not want dictatorship. Certainly more than one dictatorship with concepts already.

Democracy is dictatorship by the majority.

The rest of your concerns are absolutely valid and amount to what Hayek referred to as the "Road to Serfdom"

You may be right. This is the first I've seen the idea of consensus on a political/government scale, and need to consider it more, especially in light of the power of technology. However, my first gut reaction is that consensus is not possible. I see two immediate concerns:

1) No two people think 100% alike, and the minority in a consensus must concede to the majority anyhow. I think maybe a democracy is more honest in that an actual vote takes place. Vote can be traded, based on importance. Hence, politics come in to play. (Yuck, but reality).

2) If one person refuses to a consensus, either the rest of the consensus moves on without them (in which we are back to a dictatorship by democracy), or consensus never occurs and a decision is not made. This can work for a while, but evolution does not stop.

Ultimately, the beauty of Bitcoin is the open source nature and the ability for anyone to use it how they please. What I have realized is that the ability to freely pick and choose your money is more important than ever. Any impediment to currency exchange and transmission, no matter what form it takes, is an assault on human rights and dignity.

You are ignoring one aspect which is vital to consensus: reputation. The major difference between democracy and consensus is that not all votes are equal. Some vetos weight more than others.

An outlier willing to use his veto to stop progress needs to consider the strenght of his reputation and the validity of his arguments. If both are poor you are correct that consensus might move against him and that is perfectly normal. If that person is being intellectually honest she might realize the need to compromise on what might not have been the best idea in the first place or effectively exile himself from the decision process.

Now of course reputations are built and destroyed all the time. In that sense consensus has a very meritocratic aspect to it.