Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Increasing the block size is a good idea; 50%/year is probably too aggressive
by
NewLiberty
on 20/10/2014, 08:23:37 UTC
Consider the existence of a central authority, employed by a member organization with the charter of interfacing with governments.  The Chiefs then take the role of arbitrarily deciding on the supply and adjusting as the organization's economic advisers suggest, we then have progressed towards replicating the Federal Reserve Bank.

I completely disagree with this. Believe it or not it's actually not that easy for the Fed to adjust monetary policy. I mean all things considered, it's exceptionally easy, but they still have to get their board to go along and sell the public on what they're doing. That's a task made harder as they try more extraordinary things (like now) and the public becomes more astute to the way money works and its importance (like now), and that's a center driven design.

Bitcoin is designed from the ground up to be the opposite. It's extraordinarily hard to implement changes affecting the whole without consent from the whole. I sincerely believe after a certain point of adoption it will be impossible to make changes to Bitcoin, even ones not so controversial; if there isn't a do or die mandate behind the action (like a break in SHA256) I don't see consensus from millions and millions of independent thinkers coming easily. Somebody's going to think differently for some reason, even if it appears irrational. People call this ossifying of the protocol.

Think how hard this 1MB issue is. There was a time when Satoshi simply told everyone to start running a protocol change without question. He knew there was a severe bug allowing excess coins, but people simply upgraded and now the fork ignoring that block is locked in.

Bitcoin isn't the first to come up with decentralization. That was actually the idea behind America. Instead of power reigning down from monarchs it would be vested within all the individuals. However, the founders even then recognized authority by committee wasn't always ideal. It would be a clear disadvantage if attacked since the battle might be lost before it was decided what to do. That's why the president has full authority to respond militarily in case of attack.

It sounds like you're objecting for reasons more ideological than practical. While that's admirable and understandable I hope you also recognize that's not automatically best given the circumstances.

I understand you believe that Bitcoin is doomed to fail because of insufficient central authority.
We disagree.

In any case, even if you were right and such a thing were needed, that should not stop people from offering better ideas to those who are claiming to have authority.
So you are about as wrong as anyone can possibly be, to suggest that just because someone claims authority, that they should make decisions and everyone blindly follow when they see clearly better solutions available. 
Why?
Just for the sake of establishing authorities?