Quote from: knight22 on September 23, 2015, 04:47:36 AM

Quote from: brg444 on September 23, 2015, 04:39:21 AM

Quote from: Peter R on September 23, 2015, 04:15:01 AM

Quote from: brg444 on September 23, 2015, 04:07:06 AM

Quote from: Peter R on September 23, 2015, 03:45:21 AM

I'm not asking what scaling solution is best. I'm asking the question: if the market wants to be at Q* but the production quota forces it to be at Qmax, who exactly will enforce the quota (especially over the long term as forking pressure builds)?

Normally, the answer is "the government" (or some powerful organization). But something like Bitcoin is governed by the market itself, is it not? How can the market enforce a quota that the market itself does not want? Well, I don't think it can.

There's a subtlety here: is the "thing" that will enforce the quota necessarily the same "thing" that wants to break the quota? The answer is not completely clear to me...

The code Peter, the code! Bitcoin is not governed by the market!...

Good; I sort of agree. Bitcoin is indeed governed by the code that people run. But is it not these same people who choose which code to run? And are not these the same people who, in aggregate, become "the market"?

I would argue then, that in the final analysis, it is the will of the market that controls the code and thus it is the will of the market that governs Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin market is a curious one full of very different actors whose incentives are not all particularly aligned. Assuming I play along with your characterization, then I shall specify that the demand you speak of does not currently comes from "the market" but mainly from consumers & merchants.

Consider that the Bitcoin market is also comprised of investors, nodes, miners & developers. You might suggest that miners also desire more transactions but this is again a tricky situation because miners are a group of individuals with very different expectations and resources.

Returning to our existing situation: consumers & merchants are clamouring for more space in blocks. Unfortunately for them they tend to have little power or leverage over Bitcoin's governance. The reason for that is a majority of them are not peers in the network (nodes) and they also tend to own only little amounts of Bitcoin (it makes sense right? they enjoy spending them!). So what we've observed in the recent months is that being fully aware of the little control they have over the system they've resorted to politics and all kinds of fallacious arguments to justify their demands.

Unfortunately for them, the rest of the market actors are not buying it. Hence, status quo prevails.

Of course, if this market of actors would be to consensually decide that more space in blocks is acceptable or desirable then it is indeed reasonable to expect them to modify the consensus rules, but only by making changes which everyone agrees on.

I think we can agree we are not quite there yet.

Except the market doesn't require consensus to fork the code and make a majority split. There is nothing to stop this to happen.

Be careful not to mischaracterize what I believe I defined well enough.

What you are proposing is that consumers, merchants and maybe a few odd miners fork into their own altcoin. Not "the market".

I would suggest this would be one hell of a gamble to take considering they will not have the support from the economic majority.

More explicitely: without the investors, they don't have the value, without the nodes they don't have decentralization and finally without value they have little to no miner support, hence no security.