RE: The Goverment Is A Reputation System On Steroids
I think this is a great article, but would like to add something that your article missed: competition.
It is very expensive to set up jails, courts, etc. But anyone can start a new church, club, coop, company, or political party. Your reputation may be Trash with the Democrats, but you could be a god among the Republicans.
Since each individual could simultaneously be a member in dozens of communities with a combination of positive and negative reputations no one community has control over an individual.
Each community has a currency, size of the community controls its market value, and its market value impacts its influence. If I have a negative reputation with the Democrats then I may not be able to interact on their platform, but I also don't need to.
The free market will end up creating competition for the best community and the best currency. It would be like opening up a new virtual frontier. If you don't like the current systems, start a new one.
The only problem is when everyone wants to fight over control of an existing system rather than start their own. It is the entitlement feeling. The desire to steel the network effect created by those in power and desiring to have that power for yourself.
Stop thinking in terms of "one system to rule them all" and start thinking in terms of "competition among systems".
Dan hit it on the head. Competition.
When there's no competition and there's no choice to move from one particular governmental structure to another (and I don't buy any argument that says you have to physically change locations to participate in a different structure) then there's a monopoly on the de facto supreme group that is able to band together to form their own rules and regulations within a particular geographical location.
There is nothing wrong with people who want to choose to band together and WITHIN THAT GROUP coerce and take by force, etc. but those principles shouldn't be applied outside of that group or to people who don't want to belong to any group, if there are competing groups trying to vie for the some amount of tribute that they can extort from a smaller segment of the population.
But there is choice to move from one govermental structure to another. For example the Goverment of Argentina is entirely different from the one of Switzerland. In the same way the blockchain of Steemit is different from Ethereum's. I don't understand where you don't see competition in the current market. It is everywhere.
Geographical location is rather irrelevant to most goverments today. You can still be in one country and pay taxes for another. It happens in Europe for example and with every other legisaltion then globalisation becames more apparent.
What "should" or "not should be done" is rather irrelevant. Check the decentralised world. Should the DAO attacker exploit the network because he could? Groups set their own morals. They don't care how they reflect outside their group. This is why goverments fight each other and this is why many proponents of one blockchain might fight with another. We saw a lot of showdowns with Bitcoin vs Ethereum for example.
Again. I don't see how competition is not implemented today. Goverments will still compete with each other even when they implement blockchain protocols. Same applies to social media sites. The blockchain technology or the reputation system doesn't change anything. It merely appears novel for those who haven't examined it from a historical perpective.
It's not a choice if you have to move geographical locations to opt in to a different ruling structure. That choice is an illusion; I simply do not buy that argument.
So there is a difference moving georaphically vs moving digitally? Are we really going to stick on semantics that are as simple as "changing network" or "jumping on a plane?"
I would even argue that the cost/benefit analysis would be greater in a digital network since your reputation is not that transfarable.
If geography is the argument then it is not an argument. it is a preference.
I think all can be quite expensive to found and maintain. it all depends how they are marketed. Jails for example can be expensive but can generate massive profits, especially when the convincts work for free. As for reputation, so far it has been demonstrated throughout history that it is all about early adopters.
Communities though will have to compete and maintain a set of rules. Eventually all of them will come to follow some specific ones that will exclude the deviant ones. We see the same thing today with Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr all teaming up and agreeing with "hate speech rules". Even if they are in direct competition they inner networkings can handle sacrificing the outcasts that probably have accounts with all of them.
Which is exactly what most goverments offer right now. We have a planet with many different "markets". You can join any state you want if you follow some rules. The blockchain will only offer more solutions to the competition, it won't change the status-quo.
I think that is always the "problem"?For most is an inevitable path that has to be taken. This is how some things evolve and how some others die out.
I was never in favour of "one system to rule them all". If you check the comments below you will see that I answer this very specifically. All systems are good. Every single one. The question always is not of "what system is best" but "how a system is marketed".
All on-line communities seem to start out as, or degenerate into, a nomenklatura on the one side and most of the rest on the other, with a small rest group of oddballs being ostracised, so little competition there, for want of choice; if you vote with your feet, you'll never stop walking. Supposing that the "free market" will solve this is just as much magical thinking as assuming that a God will solve it. In countries, some nomenklatura may be more democratic, benevolent, open, honest, tolerant, etc. than others, but this is usually brought about by internal pressure, be it evolutionary or revolutionary, not by competition between countries. I expect more from criticism from within than from competition from without.
It requires a lot of skills and time to start a new system, though. Speaking plainly, I think people here simply have hope that you can adjust the system you created to make this more rewarding for the effort. Dependency on whale votes for decent rewards sucks. Integration of ads that pays authors long term seems to be the best solution I've read about so far.