Why I Respect the DAO Hacker But Not The DollarVigilante
I realise that this post might get heavily flagged but I am writing it anyways.
Over the last few weeks, two things happened that made me contemplate further on the idea of Decentralisation. Whether these are good or bad, is irrelevant. While you read this, try to reflect towards your own ethics. Not mine.
The first instance, was the Black Hack attack towards Ethereum. The hacker managed to aquire millions due to a flaw in the Ethereum Blockchain. In Ethereum, code is law. As far as I am concerned, the hacker did nothing wrong.
The second, was the pimping up of celebrities like the DollarVigilante here in Steemit. This obviously happens for the sake of exposure and publicity of Steemit to the general public. The guy realised this opportunity and abused his fame in the anarchic scene. It was obvious he could exploit this advantage. After his initial post, he started posting the same things such as bogus advice in regards to how to make money with posts. He might as well posted selfies.
The content was nonesense clickbait. A regular folk could have written like Mark Twain and layout content like a pro and still earn pennies on the dollar. It didn't matter either way what he was posting. He was also playing by the rules.
The Dao Hacker, as he came to be known, took advantage of the parametres of the free market as much as the DollarVigilante did. Almost everybody inside and outside the Blockchain community recognise the anarchic values both worked upon. Both individuals adhere to the concept of decentralisation and cryptocurrencies. Nobody doubts this.
Lets examine things a bit more closely though. The value of the DAO project surely did not reflect the basic security measures that had to be taken in order to avoid such a sham to begin with. Imagine setting up a crowdfunded luxurious house in the middle of a town. You then fill it up with gold, leave a couple of windows open and say to the community: "Look, you can do whatever you want in the house as long as you follow its rules". How can anybody complain when most gold goes missing? Same thing happened with the Ethereum contract exploit.
Ethereum emerged through code. Code was both ethics and law. As far as I am concerned, the DAO Hacker earned his money with dignity and respect by following the rules.
The value of Steemit is based on the people who join it. The parametres are pretty clear. The more popular a post, the more rewards one gets. The more power one has, the more impact one makes. Famous people like the DollarVigilante obviously provide more value to the community. What happened in the specific case though, was very dishonest to the very idea of anarchy and decentralisation. Not the Steemit system itself. He went against his own anarcho-capitalistic principles tha made him famous, in order to make money. Personally, I never judge people based on my ethics, but based on their very own.
The guy became famous because he openly critisized the idea of centralised entities such as the State. On a daily basis, he is bashing politicians about their dishonest ways and how they manipulate the public in order to gain money and fame. In order to accomplish his goals, he relies on quote mining and cheap ridicule, recycling childish memes over and over again. Through this process, he gains both money and fame. You see, the sheep, can be both anarchic and statist. It makes no difference and he knows this very well. I know this first hand because I founded and maintain a freethinking organisation in my country that focuses on ideas of atheism and anarcho-capitalism.
How is the DollarVigilante better than any politician when he posts nonsense posts on Steemit in order to gain money and fame? How is Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump any different from him when they all openly say lies and admitely make money on the backs of sheeple that follow them? How can one make the same bogus posts about money making, fame and attitude when ome clearly has a whale push that is giving the reward? (plus thousands of tinfoiled followers that cannot tell the difference between you and any other politician?). How can one accuse the "establishment" and the "status-quo" of society when themselves act very much like the establishment, preserving openly the state of idiocy that claim to be trying to salvage the masses from?
I have no respect for people who go against their own ethical standards in order to become who they accuse. This is the lowest level a human can crawl. The idea of decentralisation is new to most people. It is still "blacklisted" in most people's minds because it goes hand in hand with revolutionary ideas such as anarchy and free association. We might be benefiting shorterm from celebrities like the DollarVigilante. No doubt about this. In the long term though it hits back like a boomerang because we give birth to the same degenerancy we are trying to get away from.
When it comes to greater acceptance of decentralised projects, these attitudes damage everyone. Values of honesty and liberty that we all uphold go kaput. One cannot defend anything new when themselves act very much like the establishment. It Is up to us to define who we want to be associated with. Otherwise, we are all wasting our time in here.
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@kyriacos
You wouldn't have sourly flagged me if that was true @dollarvigilante
As you can see your brains are not positevely correlated with your luck in life.
@enki @boy @mini @tralawar and the rest don't seem to be as bright either. makes sense. they are your followers.
Upvotes from "tuck-fheman" do not necessarily equal endorsements. Your article was well written and provides a valid counterpoint to an ongoing discussion. Thank you for your contribution to the discussion!
I dont understand the hate towards Jeff, regardless of what your opinion about him is, he is a good businessman and entartaining person. I have been watching his Anarchast podcast for long where he interviews many anarchists, and discusses good ideas with them.
I explain in detail where i dissagree with his ways. Have you read the post?
I don't know how can you compare a thief to a well respected freedom advocate?
The DAO hack was clearly a theft, the code doesn't matter, exploiting vulnerability to steal money is theft nontheless. I am anarchist, but this "code is the law" is nonsense, laws don't create morality, just as government laws are immoral, the same way exploiting private contract-code law is also immoral.
Freedom Advocate? just because he says he is it doesn't make him so. His page is full of propaganda. head to toe. No objective analysis. I am anarchist myself and I am appaled from his ways.
The DAO allowed tha vulrenability. code is law. free market in all its glory
So based on the same logic if somebody finds a vulnerability in your online bank account platform he can legally and morally empty your bank account?
The DAO investors have agreed to the code, but they haven't agreed to the vulnerability and the unforeseen thefts that could occur.
The same way if an armed robber would enter in their office, they would obviously file charges against him, and not say " well we agreed to the code, which implies that armed robbers can rob us anytime".
I agree and disagree with both of you. I don't really know much about @dollarvigilante and if so many people follow him, he must have some good content. However, @kyriacos is very right in pointing out the problems of centralization. This is also my criticism of anarcho-capitalism. I like many ideas from it and it's better than communism and statism, but it inevitable creates situations of centralization and inequality in the long run. I believe that idealizing any ideology is an illusion, including anarchism and atheism. Humanity will forever be in a struggle between various ideas, and any idea will always favor some form of centralization in some individuals. Life is a perpetual struggle; there will be no utopia or equality.
Don't be so butt-hurt @kyriacos. The TDV "guy" - his name is Jeff btw, spent years building his fame on social media. Every day . Hard work promoting himself. Now he is just cashing in, that's all there is to it. If you want to also make money being famous, why not start working on it ? Spend 10 years promoting yourself on social media, have something that people want to read, build trust. Then you can also make $15,000 on a single post . don't be so jealous of other people's success.
You ever stop to think that maybe the DAO Hacker is the @dollarvigilante? Just saying man, he is a nerd from way back!
@scifiwriter
if he was he wouldn't downvote this post. a little critical thinking helps before commenting.
I don't think he knows where the computer button is.
Interesting, thought-provoking perspective...
Great post. I don't know the guy and don't hate him personally, but I'm sick of this incentivization of previous fame over actual quality of content. I like to see the contents of people who were made famous by Steemit, not people who were already famous.
I am allergic to his post about how to make money though. It doesn't work. You're absolutely right that it's a feedback loop of fame and money, and contains no real substance.
I do understand that people like to capitalize on their fame and I might have done the same in his situation, but this does show problems with the underlying incentivization model of Steemit. This is why @nphacker @agm1984 and I are building up http://steemiq.me/ to provide gamification incentives for higher intelligence content.
Also, it may very well be that there's room for many different social media blockchain platforms. I also like https://www.yours.network/
Perhaps eventually different networks will be for different types of contents and discussions, much like the difference between Quora and Facebook.
I really cannot understand why you put the blame on him? What was he supposed to do - pretend it's not him? If anyone is at fault, it's the people who upvoted him, not the guy himself.
This whole notion of freedom and decentralization will never succeed, unless we learn to take responsibility for our actions. Please stop blaming others. It's the Steem community you should be upset about (and you are part of it), not @dollarvigilante.
He would not be able to capitalize on his fame if we did not let him do so. His success on Steem is the very outcome of this community's actions, so let's leave the guy alone - he has nothing to do with it.
Did you not read my whole post? I did not blame him. I see a problem with people simply amplifying their external networks to override the internal network effects of Steemit. His posts had no contribution towards explaining how to improve the existing networks within Steemit for new, fameless users. He's simply riding off his existing external fame. If he wants to make money this way, that perfectly fine, but he is wrong about the reason why he's made so much money from his posts. I'm not making any comments about him as a person, I'm simply someone who is interested in objective explanations of complex systems.
This^ quote suggests to me that you do blame him. I mean not him as a person but you are clearly upset about the way he acted.
Why didn't you say this instead: "I see a problem with people upvoting poor content by famous people".
He said he'd made money on Steem for two reasons:
Do you say the real reasons are different than that?
Reasons are true... and could be summed up in one post, no need to milk the system for 6 posts pretty much all saying the same thing. It is the metagame that I'm criticizing. Yeah, we all get that Steemit is great, that's why we are here, but we could stop with the circlejerking. A million people have posted the same thing while giving the same explanations. I don't want to see groupthink bubbles being encouraged on the platform. I understand that it's temporary and people have a right to profit off this phenomenom while they still could, but it's time to move past this to truly grow Steemit sustainably.
Viral != network effect. Steemit has already gone viral. Now it's time to focus more on the internal network effects for sustainable growth.
Let's assume he posts nonsense. Is it really his fault he gets upvoted?
Does @dollarvigilante lie? If so - prove it. Otherwise it's you who spreads misinformation, not him.
Please define what you mean by "acting like the establishment". I think you are confusing being popular with abusing power. As far as I know, @dollarvigilante has not abused any power, at least not here on Steem.
In network theory, for many networks including Steemit, if you are a node with lots of links, then it's easier to gain more links. As a new network, ideally people should all join with equal footing and get discovered through the efforts they put into this network. However, you have people who take their previous network to Steemit and immediately have a huge advantage.
This is actually fine to a degree. You should be rewarded for bringing new people to the network. However, as it is, the reward for that is highly disproportionate. It greatly amplifies income inequality. If you're famous and you bring over a few hundred new users and gain a few hundred dollars for that, it's perfectly reasonable, but when you're earning $10,000 while the other new users are earning $0.01, the systematic income inequality is too great.
Now I'm not for communism or perfect equality of payouts at all, but I think the scaling needs to be toned down. There is no post that is literally worth 1,000,000 times as much as another post. Like if the best post pay out 100 times as much a typical post that gets unnoticed, that's much more reasonable. We can still have a free market; just change the scaling of the payouts, and give people without a previous networks more of a chance to get noticed.
I agree with that.
Indeed, this community has a tendency to overpay the initial posts by famous people. I'd prefer to see them produce good content first.
I'm not blaming the developers for the systematic problems either. The whole thing is a huge social experiment and nobody could have known the results ahead of time. This is why we try to continue to critique and refine the systems and incentives one step at a time to improve it across a plethora of metrics.
The content of the DollarVigilante is one of the poorest i have ever seen. Same goes about his ideas about freedom. he is just shilling himself with recycled ideas ..sprinkled up with lots of propaganda.
In general i agree with all his initial ancap principles but the way he executes them is slimy.
I've not looked at enough of his content to make a conclusion. Have you seen this yet? https://steemit.com/steem/@dantheman/people-rank-using-page-rank-algorithm-for-better-curation-and-rewards
It seems like we will be able to build crowdbased solutions to take care of this kind of issues in the future.
Ofcourse he does. Just check half his posts about making lies. Go to his facebook page and see how petty his popaganda is. Politicians make money by manipulating public perception?
he does he exact same thing.
And innocent people are falling for his propaganda. But fortunately you are smart and see all the deception. Right.
@dollarvigilante is a marketing guy. He sells ideas. And these ideas might be useless but they don't hurt anyone, nobody is doing any harm to anyone due to those ideas.
So why are you so upset about him? Even if he "manipulates public perception", why does it affect you? You are not the victim of this "manipulation", so what's the problem?
Are you on a mission to protect others? Those who enjoy @dollarvigilante 's "manipulations" are fine, they do not need to be protected.
Like I said before you cannot make a carreer by exposing people who deceive...and then cash ou by deceiving people yourself.
it is the lowest a human can crawl
Ahhhh... OK , Your true colors are starting to show..... Let's see if you'll honestly answer 2 questions.... What's your preferred political philosophy? and, if you are foolish enough to vote, who is your preferred candidate ? ....... Either of these questions, honestly answered, could have saved everyone a lot of time reading your veiled double-speak ..... Slandering others does not validate your "beliefs" ......
Just from your nickname I can tell you are still ancap fresh.
I am not only ancap and never voted. I run the largest freethinking tank central to the ideas of freethought, atheism and anarchocapitalism in my country.
I can smell phonies from a mile away
What ever happened to the golden rule ? What ever happened to do as you like as long as it doesn't damage others ? ..... Or, to be crass about it, who died and left you in charge ? ......... You went on and on and on writing without making a direct point, indicating to me that you didn't "like" the fact that anyone could bring his success with him to SteemIT and take some of the wind out of your sails after you worked so hard, (and I'm sure you have, even though I don't know You).....
My suggestion would be to see what you can learn from other peoples success, rather than saying everything other than "THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW !!!", or generally expressing distaste about someone's actions who has done nothing but good, and that you evidently don't know .......
And, there is absolutely nothing "fresh or "phony" about me, I've been studying a huge variety of subjects for over 40 years, probably before you were born, and I have a 153 I.Q.......
BTW, good for you on running your think-tank, but you make me wonder about what kind of fixed ideas you may be pushing after reading your comments here, or maybe I'm wrong, it could be you don't like anyone challenging your position, what ever that may be ......
There are many other more constructive things that we could be talking about .........
I don't agree with kyriacos on everything and some of his approaches are not so tactful, but I can tell that he has thought about these issues way deeper than you, I, or the dollar vigilante. He has a very valuable perspective.
At the same time, I conclude that overall dollarvigilante is still doing a net positive service by spreading the ideas in simple terms. He provides great, relatable content to novices willing to be open minded, but look else where if you want to seek a deeper understanding. The same applies to Molyneux or any other pop anarchists.
The difference between @dollarvigilante and any politician is that it doesn't matter what Jeff Berwick says or does. None of it still amounts to him being able to point a gun at me and ordering me to comply with his rhetorical conclusions, or else. He's just some guy on here pulling his weight within the Steem community, and I think the platform has already done a good job of telling him what people think has value while "punishing" him for content that people have a problem with. You and I can still choose whether to consume his content as well, so no coercive central authority present here.
In a way you can choose or not to a given country that moves a gun on your head. Just like Steemit and the DollarVigilante operate under a given free market so does the US. Congress under their own jurisdiction.
The ancap argument in regards to "my land/area/whatever i do whatever i want if you don't like it leave" can urn boomerang really fast. Or should we speak about his millions, recognised by countries all over the world because every single nation has made its own on violence? Isn't the same as "using drug money"?
The system today as it is, makes us all guilty in a way. Lets chill down on the ancap philosophy. it is not an answer to everything.