RE: Don't Blame, But Reclaim Government
I don't see how your position is much different from what the USA democratic system (middle class America) was back in the 1950's - 70's. If that state could have been preserved, I would never have arrived at this position where I am now. This back and forth for decades has convinced me that the problem itself is attempts at control (a superset definition of the word terrorism). When a group of people succeed at that control, the other groups are ultimately left out to the extent that they don't agree with that control. I don't see how you're creating a solution to the problem here.
...the lesson we learned is not that centralization is by definition a bad thing. The lesson we learned is not that it's bad by definition that leaders and followers exist; that lies at the heart of our biology and instincts. The lesson is not that freedom is always a good thing.
I wouldn't put it like that. The always "bad thing" or "good thing" is not an impression that I intend. There are always trade off's in technology. Centralized databases are superior in terms of speed and scaling, but they sacrifice security and trust. Vitalik Buterin has given this a special name (the scaling trilemma).
I prefer to rely on the old English Oxford dictionary definitions for the words that are being used and reading your mangling of the usages of the words like "freedom" and others makes communication nearly impossible. Others less kind here might even call it Orwellian doublespeak. I don't doubt your sincerity, but I get the impression that you still have lots of youth and haven't given up hope and are probably somewhat naive about political power.
A funny thing happened back then: we started overproducing but kept the scarcity mindset.
Very true, but do you know how this was accomplished by the political elite? I wrote about this on my blog back in early January this year. I wrote a lot of really good stuff late last year and early this year and decided to stop repeating myself (I'm in Ivan OnTech's Blockchain Coding Academy).
Freedom and capitalism, markets, trading, are ultimately incompatible. This starts with that alien concept of ownership. What does it mean to own something? Ownership is a legal construct, thought up by owners. But it's a legal construct and there freedom is lost immediately. When "worth" is measured by material ownership, there's no way on earth to have real equal opportunity without a totalitarian government. This is the phantom of that other -ism. Both are doomed to fail and none is preferable.
This may in fact be the case, especially if AI can claim sentience (self awareness). But I still don't see you trying a practical solution to the problem. When we reach the age of replicators then scarcity and the need for money will become a thing of the past. However, should everyone be able to replicate their own nukes?
The base reality is defined in nature itself as devoid of humans on this earth and unfortunately you are probably unprepared because of your mental outlook. I can't stop what's coming. This train wreck is upon us regardless of whether we agree or not. There will always be psychopaths waiting in the wings to take despotic control. The USA had a good run, and soon it's time will be up.
And lately we've learned that Dapps and smart contracts do not protect us from basic human behavior; "-isms" aren't programmable.
You can program social behavior (FB and other centralized IT are already currently doing it), but you have to be very careful not to violate the non-aggression principle. Protocols that do this would be a new form of force and violate voluntarist principles. That's why legitimate DApp's are opt-in for that very reason. If everyone had to participate, then we'd have that digital panopticon I was talking about.
The thing I don't see you quite getting is this... authority doesn't have control over the internet because it has lost jurisdiction through it's usage and love of the very same power it achieves from using it. Authority has to commit suicide to stop the internet of money from happening and when it does, encrypted fully anonymous private transactions (some currencies such as Monero already have achieved this) will make tax enforcement impossible. That's when taxes will be voluntary. That voluntary nature will make parasitism (the national debt) that has created the gross financial inequity in the world impossible to sustain. It will cause national fiat currencies throughout the world to collapse and bleed into cryptos and other secure stores of value.
I suggest you start being practical and prepare for this because this financial calamity is coming in the next decade. There is the possibility that we end up with a digital panopticon (fascism on steroids) for a generation or so with FedCoin, but that isn't technologically sustainable either for the reasons stated in this video.
Andreas Antonopoulos lays out the sequence of events and what led up to what's coming here:
I do still like to think I have a lot of youth, yes, but was born in the 1960s... Thanks for the compliment though ;-) So, I'm not exactly naive about political power and although my real name is Winston, I can't claim to have a starring role in Orwell's masterpiece ;-)
The way I see it we still mostly agree on the analysis and goals, I love that you say this:
First it shows that you're concerned with my fate, which again shows me that your intentions are good. Also it shows that we agree about the nature of reality
Well, that's just it, isn't it? This is the crux: voluntarism will work if the inevitable winners in the trade-game will voluntarily take care of the ones that wil inevitably be left behind, that are not successful for whatever reason, in that same trade-game. If that works I will be genuinely and pleasantly surprised. But this voluntary mechanism, this appeal to the empathy of the winners in the trade-game, is exactly what Adam Smith meant when he conjured up the term "invisible hand". And that has never worked before, hence my hesitation.
Well, I'm here, aren't I? And learning from you too :-) But I'm afraid we already live in the digital panopticon, even without FedCoin.
I've had this exact same discussion many times through the decades and thought about these things a lot, as have you I suspect. But I can't help myself from being very skeptical about the voluntarists willingness to act selfless. I can't help myself... That's a basic truth in my sense of realism: I can't help myself, you can't help yourself, we can only help each other. I can't form myself, you can't form yourself, we can only form each other. And if there's a decision to be made from which we will both "suffer" the consequences, I can't decide by myself, you can't decide by yourself, we can only discuss and afterwards decide together.
I also can't help but find it weird that the fear of government power remains when you yourself should be that government. Like any institution there's a risk that the institution's continued survival takes precedence over its intended goals, but that's exactly why the democracy is guarded by the people themselves. Or so it should have been. Again: government as it is now is not a democracy, so I don't understand the fear of a real democracy. The fear of discussing and deciding our joined future together. I don't get it. And where people work together, organization is a must, thus some kind of management is a must, thus some kind of governance is a must. The problem is not the method of organizing and production, but the fact that in the organizations where production takes place, democracy is put on hold. And scaling down, as proposed by many voluntarists, is like giving up on technological and scientific progress.
We won't agree, but again, I find your input very valuable and it gives me hope. I we are able to discuss these things now, not all hope is lost for future discussions ;-)
We live in a light weight version compared to what's coming.
Bitcoin is called "trustless" precisely because trust shouldn't be used. Therefore appeal to authority or the "empathy of the winners in the trade game" is not what this is about. The whole point is to recreate natural law on the blockchain under voluntarist principles. That way you at least have a chance at survival when the system collapses. If you rely on any sort of authority, then they will leave you to rot when it does collapse. The only thing one can do is exercise personal responsibility.
They won't be selfless at all and that is the whole point of this technology; to disintermediate the tendency for centralization and parasitism of resources punishing selfishness using game theoretical algorithms.
For moral and ethical reasons all forms of government eventually become a form of violence perpetrated upon the people. To the extent that one is governed, one has relinquished control and created a parasite. If however, governance becomes voluntary (an oxymoron) then it becomes useless and you all can just engage in voluntary agreements.
The fear I perceive in you is that there will not be enough to go around and that resources will centralize even further leaving 99% of the population out in the cold. This is largely manufactured scarcity since WWII because of the depopulation agenda of the UN, but the reality is that the theft has been so massive that everyone in the USA would be millionaires had that QE in Keynesian policy not been used.
When crypto takes over from national fiat, the paupers will be the current establishment billionaires (to the extent that regulation prevented their ability to invest directly in bitcoin and other crypto's).
I have been receiving pension, but invest in crypto's because social security is unsustainable. Once that parasite is eliminated, it won't be the "benevolence" of voluntarists that save us, it will be the game theoretical incentives embedded in the bitcoin protocol (and others) that punish selfishness and parasitism.
The main reason why most of us are so poor isn't because others are rich, it's because the rest of us stupidly held a store of value that intentionally devalues by design which forces us to live paycheck to paycheck. Todays dollar is only worth about 5 cents compared to a 1960 dollar. Central bankers caused this to happen. It's time to stop the manipulation of money supply to the advantage of the few. This is done with protocols such as bitcoin that have a hard fixed limit.
You really do make it all sound plausible :-) I still don't see it. And still I agree 100% with your statements about manufactured scarcity. I can only say I hope you're right and that I'm wrong because your description of immediate future developments is far more realistic than mine. But that's also the problem I'm afraid. Still, I hope you're right my friend, I truly do.
You might want to check out this link as a window into a possible future. One of the keys of creating balance again is distributing authority back to the source (in the form of self ownership) so that it's localized. In programming, global variables are a bad idea. The same is true with globalization because it creates a parasite. The programming analog of this kind of parasite is a memory leak. Ideally no social centralization should be encouraged above what's known as the Dunbar number (I've written about this on my blog in the past).
Distribution of data back to the source will make entities like Equifax worthless and protect better against hacks (ID theft). Hash algorithms can be used just as effectively to declare identity without the need for creating data compromise. It's said that privacy is necessary for a free republic. It's now possible to create this on an encrypted blockchain which assures factual accuracy without compromising privacy.
I've also written on my blog about how terrorism is a byproduct of authority also here.
You also might want to check out @taskmaster4450 blog.
Again... 100% agreement here. Also, I know almost all Antonopoulos videos and this is one of his best. This is not where we disagree. Also this:
Absolutely agreed. Where we differ is what happens after the exit. You seem to trust that trustless peer to peer transactions is some kind of cure against centralization in the material world we all have to share, while keeping intact the system that's bound to centralize material wealth and thus power. The fiat money system is product of that exact same system. That's where we disagree. Still I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
No I don't trust it at all. Bitcoin's motto is "don't trust, verify". To state it more accurately, I hope that it will work to help balance out wealth, but it is by no means certain. Systems in the beginning start out decentralized, then gradually over time become more centralized. That's the nature of most systems. The problem with decentralized systems is lack of scale which makes them vulnerable in the race for a one world centrally controlled digital currency like FedCoin.
The reason I have any hope at all has to do with the fact that bitcoin and similar protocols are based upon sound principles of money (Austrian economic school). To the extent they become bastardized we will be faced with the digital panopticon on steroids.
To state it again, we are past regulation making a difference here. That ship has sailed. Of course the USA can brutalize hodlers within their borders. I'm expecting that. The bottom line is that no force can stop the billions of people outside the western banking system adopting these technologies. It is simply beyond their ability to regulate and when it comes, the USD as a reserve currency and the ability to prop up the US national debt on the backs of other nations will be history.
So glad to read this :-) We really do agree on so much... I to hope something better will come out of all of this and digital currencies surely are a huge step in the right direction. But like you said: all systems evolve to become more centralized over time and I still see democracy, discussion and a sense of interdependence as the best way to guide that process. And who knows; maybe the blockchain will eventually give us real information to incite real discussion and let us decide on our shared future in a trustless and functional democracy of well informed people. I think we both hope for something similar... Thanks for all the input and food for thought my friend; I really appreciate the way you communicate about this subject :-)
This CICADA thing sounds interesting at first sight.
That's what I'm talking about :-) Time we admit there's more than enough of everything for everyone!
I'll look into this; thanks so much for the tip :-)
Not the only one for UBI:
https://steemit.com/busy/@taskmaster4450/eos-providing-a-basic-income
EOS is a blockchain I intend to program on in the future.
I own a little EOS... And that article you linked is very interesting and reassuring; what I said before, about not being able to program -isms? If a trustless basic income system could be implemented, that would at least help reduce the power-imbalance caused by the economy. Very interesting indeed :-)
Should I wait for your EOS based currency?
I'm not creating any currencies. I'm hoping to create a DApp that will solve the time zone update issue through a distributed set of computer nodes running the DApp as a replacement for the Terran Atlas which I wrote years ago.
I have a very unusual background in the tech field, in case you weren't aware of it. My software disrupted an important internet protocol the day after Steve Jobs died. My work is very well known in that field.