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RE: Who Should Control A Blockchain?
"Democracy is the worst form of government ... except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
- Winston Churchill
I think the same goes for blockchain as well. People who hold tokens should be able to vote. Not everybody who holds token will want to vote. But they will have a few they trust and they can serve as proxies for them. I think this is the best approach until we find one that is better ;)
Democracy is fake and is currently enforced by those with power. Elections are fake, electronic voting systems are corruptable by design. If you propose a decentralized, publicy auditable, immutable, tampering proof voting system like those on blockchain it will be immediately veted ! If you propose to ban politics, and any other third party to vote on your behalf and turn the congress as crowded they will call you terrorist trying to take over power from YOU!!
Except that the average holder of bitcoin for example should have no vote over technical issues such as scaling because they do not have an educated opinion on the technical aspects that should be left to the engineers/miners. Pure democracy probably is not a good answer... We will see more of this in action in tokens like Tezos in the future.
Except, much of the discussion over a community is a political or social question. And engineers/miners imagine that because only important things are technical and only technical things are important, then hard questions have to be technical and important...
An engineering elite is much the same as a benevolent dictator - fine when it works but it only works briefly before benevolence is replaced by survival.
@iang, Agree with part of your argument but then you make a generalization about engineers: believe only technically things are important - false --- and hard questions have to be technical and important -- also false. You've worded it in a classic false premise syllogism... However, I will agree that the decisions should not be solely made by engineers for the social, community, and political reasons you refer to. I agree there should be a level of democracy but technical decisions should not solely be made by democratic vote. Conversely community and social issues should not be controlled by technocrats and hence the need for voting by all stakeholders.
Using bitcoin as an example, letting the miners decide on scaling is akin to going to all the shoe stores in your city and letting them vote on if a new business license should be issued to a new shoe store wanting to start up. It's inherently against their best interest (sharing market cap with a new competitor) to allow more competition, so they will default to voting no.
Competition is good for customers, not sellers.
At the same time tho, your point is valid in that it shouldn't necessarily be decided just by the consumers because most would most likely not be up to speed on the nuts and bolts of the operation and their votes could in turn push the system to unprofitability. To the point of collapsing the system since it would ultimately cost businesses money to continue to provide the service, and we know that businesses exist to make money, not give it away
I said engineers/miners making the decision - I should have typed that engineers and miners- those working on the network and involved in the software of the blockchain are the engineers I'm referring to -- not just the miners. Agree with the gist of what your saying but as many any bitcoin buying it as a store of value in addition to its purchasing value I don't think we view ourselves as typical "consumers" where the network is supported by corporation - it is distributed and more democratic than the corporate - consumer relationship. The analogy has some value agreed.
And competition can be good for sellers too but that is a whole different discussion. Competition can cause a seller to introduce a better product that is even more beneficial than the first. Not everything from econ 101 applies in a black & white way in the real world. Supply / demand curves aren't straight lines, competition isn't always bad, consumers do not always seek and pay the lowest price - luxuries are bought, etc.