Quote from: hdbuck on February 23, 2016, 07:29:34 PM

Quote from: VeritasSapere on February 23, 2016, 07:11:17 PM

Quote from: hdbuck on February 23, 2016, 07:01:04 PM

Quote from: VeritasSapere on February 23, 2016, 06:56:54 PM

Quote from: hdbuck on February 23, 2016, 06:48:27 PM

Yea yea here we go again with the political philosophy..

In the end you expressed yourselves switching to Classic xt or whatever... such freedom.

We all agree not to agree, sounds lika consensus to me. Grin

If that is your conception of consensus then I can agree with that. What consensus means as a governance model in the literal sense of the word is that essentially any changes become impossible. If changes require true consensus then change becomes completely impossible since there will always be a few people that disagree, regardless. Not how I perceive the governance of Bitcoin but if that is how you perceive it then I can at least respect the consistence of your believes.

Dont worry, shifting consensus will likely be reached if bitcoin's very existence would directly be threaten, as in security wise for example.

But coinbase or other mainstream matters are not vital for bitcoin. Sorry (for their loss).

You are right, that is the one exception, if lets say the cryptography was broken for instance, to switch the cryptography if that happened would be the type of change that could gain consensus. Any other changes though would be impossible to implement with true consensus. Segwit is a good example of this, it only takes a few people to disagree for "true" consensus to be lost.

I personally do think that transaction cost and reliability on the first layer are critical for Bitcoin to remain the dominant cryptocurrency, this can only be preserved with a blocksize increase. I suppose this is the type of "mainstream" change that you do not think is vital I presume.

I appreciate your more reflexive attitude, but what we all think is of no importance consensus wise as I've demonstrated.

If anything, it will only harden the state of Bitcoin's status quo.

So we do what we do as politicized simpletons and turn in circles, argue and throw shit at each other whilst meanwhile Bitcoin does its thing.

And that's the beauty of it. That is what brings bitcoin its value. That is the apolitical and robust new monetary system we all bought into.

I suppose we bought into different monetary systems then, since my understanding going into it was different. I think that Bitcoin relies on the economic self-interest of the masses to govern consensus. I actually perceive Bitcoin as being the evolution of governance. Voluntary and decentralized non geographically bound governance, the evolution of the modern democracy if you will into something better and superior.

Bitcoin's governance mechanism is a form of democracy, not a democracy in the way that we know today. It is very different, I think better. However there are very democratic aspects to it, like reflecting the will of the economic majority. Which is not that dissimilar to reflecting the will of the people, which is what democracies are supposed to do in theory at least.

Bitcoin is interesting as a form of democracy, because it is different to modern state democracies in that it places positive incentives on a select group of people who essentially vote in the interests of the economic majority, almost the opposite of how modern state democracies work, since our representatives in modern state democracies often have perverse incentives acting upon them. Which is what makes decentralized proof of work blockchains arguably a superior form of governance.

Quote from: VeritasSapere

Consensus is an emergent property which flows from the will of the economic majority. Proof of work is the best way to measure this consensus. The pools act as proxy for the miners, pools behave in a similar way to representatives within a representative democracy. Then in turn the miners act as a proxy for the economic majority. Since the miners are incentivized to follow the economic majority. In effect the economic majority rules Bitcoin, in other words the market rules Bitcoin. Bitcoin relies on the economic self-interest of the masses to govern consensus.