Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Is Bitcoin for “Fake Rich”?
by
oventu
on 27/12/2020, 18:42:49 UTC
I do believe that you are pessimistic and practical person, which can be observed from your tone and the level of details you provide to support your arguments, rather than simply "let's make the world a better place" Cheesy So I really appreciate that. And yes, I do hope for human prosperity as you correctly noted. But I don't know, - unfortunately I don't believe that it is possible until we are all humans. That never happened in history, and I don't see it happening with us, until we are all humans in a common meaning. The things you describe are ally good and would benefit people overall, but "people are people".

Addressing your points one by one: "code is law" - correct, but someone needs to create the code, right? Same was with the laws. They were created by humans for humans to limit the ones who are not creators of the code/law. And as long as it's created by a real person - that person almost certainly will leave some "back door" for himself or for others to reset/cheat/game the code and laws. There can be reasons as to why s/he would do that, but the most simple one (among others) would be that this will give god-like feeling to the creator. On the contrary, if the code/laws are created by machine for humans - humans might accept that idea temporarily, but very soon there will raise those "activists" who will be screaming for their own minorities' rights that they are being discriminated for whatsoever reason by the code (like now people complain they cannot mine BTC with their CPU anymore), and that we as humans should not be ruled by artificially created system. Therefore, if that code (self-improving and intelligent I assume) sees such danger to the system overall, which will emerge due to manipulative human nature, or due to simple personal craziness of someone, will start to take down the ones who threaten the overall system (sounds like China's CCP partially because they do care for the social wellbeing of society and country overall, but ready to sacrifice individuals for the general good - and you know how much they are hated now because the ones who are taken down, are screaming the most loud).

And yes, Bitcoin is certainly not the best creation for now, but definitely was the #1 when it was the number one. It has issues with game theory, and with tech side as well, thus I think we both agree completely on this aspect.

The parallel co-existing systems with increasing/decreasing decentralisation partially remind me of the early societies in human history, and now partially some states. While if we look into the future we might see similar thing with corporatocracy, where the state=corporation. They all experienced similar features at some stage, but the result is where we are now. Trying to create a new system within a system. And if/when the proposed by you system will exist, don't you foresee it repeating the history of early societies, when we were hunter-gatherers? They also were pretty well decentralized, didn't have a central body in a sense to govern them, they also could enter/exit the system nearly at any will, and were rewarded and punished for good & bad actions. But overtime the systems, due to their nature (and maybe we can say due to the definition of "system", irrespective of its decentralization?) started either growing or collapsing due to their efficiencies, and overtime started to limit the entry/exit barriers. And now we all got citizenship, passports, local taxes, etc., etc. From the description (please correct me if I misunderstood you), what is proposed might seam like we just repeat the old history but on a new scale with the use of new technologies.

But as you correctly noted, all those societies and earlier experiments were mostly in pre-internet era, and were very tight to local geography. So with internet I believe yes, it can be overcome, yes - it can be done on a bigger scale, yes - people could join/leave it even more easily (until the gov sees the thread and shuts down the internet?), but in the result, wouldn't it be same as now but on a bigger scale? Like we won't have USA, China, Russia, UK, etc., but would have one global country / community where bad systems failed, the good one remained; where still will be left governors / (code developers in our case?), with the police authorities to monitor and watch and punish bad actors (irrespective if they are humans, robots or just some code), and local sub-systems of the global system, which will also function as the local countries do so now?

And last, but not the least, if the designed system is really that good and powerful and is able to change the world and status quo of the current elites, politicians, etc., they definitely wouldn't want to give up all what they got and start from 0 by earning credits for good actions... and with the resources they already have now, in materialistic world, I think they would have pretty good chance to stop it fairly quickly if they need to. While trying to take them and benefit them too in the new system, would gain create inequality as it is now, but in a different form, as for example if I am multi-billionaire now, you offer me to join a new system, I would reasonably want to preserve my status and my resources and my wealth, which means I again will be significantly superior to the other people?

Thanks for your serious questions about the idea, I try to answer all of them, hope to convince you and the others may read these posts and are interested in.

"people are people". That’s the point. People supposed to be people, with all their greed, passion, bias, good wills, morals and taboo, and if a solution supposed to work, has to work with the “people” literally.

someone needs to create the code, right? Same was with the laws. They were created by humans for humans to limit the ones who are not creators of the code/law.
This methodology follows old model of civilization where the elite (or who has power, or religious authority) makes the rules and the normal people had to obey. We have internet and useful tools (mainly cryptography and blockchain and many other handy tools).
What about if we change the social order and make a system in which middle class people makes the rule and put it in practice and follow their own rules. They do not need the elite decide for them. Let alone the fact that nowadays even an average Joe can analyze and decide as good as a president if he has the enough unbiased sources. I mentioned this off-topic average Joe discourses by purpose, and later we probably will come back to him!
Going back to our discussion about the “code  is law” and “who” and “how” decides about that “law”? The answer is the “system population”. The middle class people, the average Joe, the worker and the professors as well are decider about rules.
Lets re-explain the system. We prepare a “template” software. The software which is working and has too many parameters to configure it arbitrarily. Everyone (preferably non technical people) can download the software, tweak it, shape it, re-define some parts or cut the other parts or add new parts to it, and finally run it. Now s/he established a new realm which governs by her/his customized rules. s/he is the first population of this new territory. Obviously s/he starts to inviting others to her/his territory -As we know from our civilization history the more population means more powerful community-. Here are big differences between our new societies and the “early societies in human history”.
In early societies the “cost of disobedience” was too high, indeed it is still too high in our current real world. Meanwhile in our new territory it is almost zero cost.
Our hunter ancestors had to be a part of society to be survived. They had no choice. The alone man would die because of outside dangers or because of not having food to eat, or both. The necessity for being a part of a society was underlying on lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, whereas in our new societies people will join to a society because of their “believes”. Please do not misunderstood the word “believer” for its religious common usage.
I will join to community in which they respect my opinions (whatever they are), and you will do the same. So everybody join to community or society which has much respect for her/his opinion. The people with same mindset forming a society in which there is no discrimination for sex, race, nationality or Geo-location – unless the community rules was being racist rules -.
And what is the outcome of these different systems (aka communities, societies, networks, friends cycles depends on the population number and the rules they set)?
I sent another short essay and explained more details about idea from another perspective. You can find it here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5303276.0

overtime the systems, due to their nature…
Absolutely true. That’s why we have to have many different systems (like many different version or distribution of Linux) with slightly difference in rules, monetary, etc. As long as we follow our principles we join some groups or leave the other ones. For example for me the maximum decentralization is important, so I support the community with high level of decentralization and as a member of a community, I strive for more and more decentralization. Each system supports (or tolerates) a level of decentralization due to its rules, and I always select the societies with better rules. Once our human natures be freed from old fears and refreshed by new mindset, we will not the slave of our old fears and stresses, that day we already established the best society on top of this software infrastructure. It takes time and too many systems will be born and be destroyed before that day (like too many civilization we have had before, but too accelerated in sense of time). Finally there will be systems which are good for human prosperity and will survive for ever. We may or may not see that days but we have to move on. What I am pretty sure is “we are making the world a little better place and it worth to fight”.

Until the gov sees the thread and shuts down the internet?
That day will be too late to shoutdown the internet. As I told before no one take us serious, and actually it is good. We will have time to prove our ideologies and governing models and…
IMHO the government is nothing but a group of frightened people. Some of them are corrupted person as well. But the main point is the “fear”. One of our mission -in different societies and by different strategies- is “wipe out the fear”. It is a long story and I’ll explain it in another post. But for now let imagine there is no fear. If governments do not afraid about these networks why they should stop them? Obviously in short term there are “conflict of interest” and our mission is “resist the networks against all kind of adversaries”. It is about technical issues rather than philosophical matter. Every step of development (either the software itself or the societies around the software) has proper threats and solutions too, and As a technical I guarantee we can resist against all potential threats. Until the day no adversary exist “And the world will live as one”.

wouldn't it be same as now but on a bigger scale? Like we won't have USA, China, Russia, UK, etc., but would have one global country / community where bad systems failed, the good one remained; where still will be left governors / (code developers in our case?)
I think I already answered these, at the end of the day there will be “just some rules”. No government and no governors. Only people and their rules. Maybe only one society remains or a few societies, but I predict ALL of them will have same rules slightly different. BTW the rule maker will not same as what we have now. They are literally all. There will no monopoly for “Ruling class”. The “police authorities” most probably will exist just for immediate intervention in emergency cases for defense citizen rights and not for people suppression.

The “ local sub-systems of the global system” and this kind of hierarchical structures will be substituted by a kind of flat distribution of power. It will be like different two dimensional shapes that have something in common or some are totally separated islands. BTW non of these communities has superiority on the others. Of course some of them are more excellence than the other one, and since it has no cost for people to join or leave one community in favor of the other community (unlike current national borders, political regimes, communities or even ideologies), people will immigrate to most excellent community ASAP.

If the designed system is really that good and powerful and is able to change the world and status quo of the current elites, politicians, etc., they definitely wouldn't want to give up all what they got and start from 0 by earning credits for good actions... and with the resources they already have now, in materialistic world, I think they would have pretty good chance to stop it fairly quickly if they need to.  While trying to take them and benefit them too in the new system, would gain create inequality as it is now, but in a different form.
True, so we need a thought-out schedule. They definitely wouldn't want to give up all unless they "have to" or "convinced to". We just need to keep alive the system till the point the adversaries be convince to join or give up (depends on their wisdom). We can maintain the system without compromising our ideals. We do not need billionaires at all. We are establishing communities that have their monies which worth absolutely nothing and represents only the owner will of making world better place. Over time -if the community survive – they can get some materialistic benefits of those coins too. We will run our nodes on cheap laptops. We do not need funds, super servers, advertisements, etc, etc. No, all we need is minded people and their will for making a better world.

Let me know if I missed some parts or some answers are insufficient. Meanwhile I'll prepare more stuff to share.