If you would prefer a propertyless analogy, "If somebody wants to waste a good amount of money to rape you, let 'em."
I try to avoid that one as some people are sensitive, but it really is a good fit.
OMG I'm so offended, how dare you!
No, just kidding.
That analogy works IF you are already open for business as a prostitute AND you have already stipulated that you will let anybody have sex with you as long as they pay
BTCXX amount AND that the "rapist" does not commit any act that is perceptibly different from all of your other clients, but he is an extra client to deal with that you did not previously anticipate having, and so he therefore constitutes an extra workload, although he did pay at least
BTCXX like your other clients.
The miners are the gatekeepers of Bitcoin and the people who are paid money to secure the blockchain.
Which is why their neglect of doing so is bad...
If somebody wants to use the blockchain for their own purposes, but they pay appropriate fees to the miners then I really can't complain.
Why not? They're bribing the miners to abuse their position to do the opposite of what their job is...
How are you in a better position to determine the "job" of the miners than the miners themselves? The code creates incentives and lays down rules. People act within the rules to maximize their share of the incentives. If it's not in the rules, it's not "abuse" or outside the scope of their "job".
Well, Bitcoin only works if it
is their job... otherwise the system has no counter-measures to spam and it is essentially guaranteed to cease functioning.
Well, it's up to them to define "spam", isn't it? And so far the transaction fee method of spam mitigation seems to be working out ok, right?
Look, what I'm trying to get down to here is this. This is a statement of belief, not of facts.
The code forms the entirety of the social contract. "Code" referring to officially sanctioned code that comes out of the official Bitcoin developer team. This code defines a set of rules, which enables trustless transfer of value. While I do agree with the goal (and indeed the necessity) of decentralization, I think that it can be taken too far. Everybody needs to play by the same set of rules. I don't think that some miners choosing to mine X transactions, while other miners reject them, is a good idea. There needs to be consistency between miners in order for the network to perform in a predictable manner, and performing in a predictable manner is the only way that Bitcoin will see greater adoption. (I seriously wanted to punch somebody when I sent like $500 worth of BTC in a straightforward transaction, and it wasn't confirmed for hour after hour due to the QT client not including a mining fee.... having that money out in unconfirmed limbo, when I could have included a 10¢ fee that would have gotten it included in the next block, was infuriating. But no, the fee wasn't even an option in the QT client. This is the kind of thing that makes end-users abandon a platform forever.)
The code is the Constitution, if you will. It defines the rules. There is no judicial branch to interpret the code. Just the code. There is no dicta, no Talmud, no human intervention, no wiggle room. Either a transaction fits the rules of the code, or it doesn't. Pure algorithmic consensus. This is the promise of Bitcoin, the great problem solved by Satoshi.