There is some good substance buried here, but it's phrased in a voice thick with hype and slathered with emergent jargon/slang pidgin of folks mentally and emotionally invested in the loftier suppositions of the cryptocurrency movement. It's indistinguishable from a parody, but it's probably sincere.
By my reading -- and this is hard to glean -- the central thesis seems to be that cryptocurrencies shouldn't be used to one-to-one reimplement currently present systems of digital social interaction; instead, think about what can be accomplished from the ground-up when your individual, small-time holders are vested.
It's both cutely observant, and painfully oblivious to nearly all of human history, where individuals pooled together resources to build, invest, serve as a patron to the arts, etc -- a range of activities from basic survival to abstract societal good.
I stopped at 4th paragraph because I couldn't understand the author's ideas. Can anyone explain the following bit to me?
> Like the inevitability of collective micro-ownership of commodities like real estate, art, storage, even energy. These feel natural to the innate structure of the blockchain itself [...]
We already have this, though: cooperative businesses. The most common being credit unions. Some grocery stores operate on this principle.
It's a good model and has been scaled up to large multinational corporation size in the Mondragon Corporation, but we don't need blockchain or cryptocurrency to do it.
I've been incredibly well-served by both credit unions and cooperative grocery stores.
Corporations exist to serve the interests of their shareholders. If you are a customer or employee of a corporation that you are not a shareholder of, then that corporation is not necessarily trying to do business in my interest but quite possibly could be operating at the expense of my interests in order to serve the interest of the shareholders. We hope that these interests are aligned, but often we see that they aren't. Cooperative businesses naturally align these interests by making the workers or consumers (or both) shareholders. And they remain voluntary.
It addresses many of the drawbacks of unionization, of traditional capitalist corporations, and socialism. It really should be copied more widely. Given my positive experiences with the cooperative business model, I would gladly seek out such businesses if they were more widely available.
“Why do we need Facebook? Friendster already did social networks. Why do we need google? Alta Vista already did search.”
Crypto allows you to tokenize assets on a much more efficient, streamlined approach than structuring an entire business model in a formal co-op. The two are similar only in vague terms.
That'd be missing much of the benefit, though. If you don't restructure the business as a co-op, then the consumer or worker is not likely to see the same benefits. The structure of the co-op gives its small-time shareholders a similar level of acknowledgement/voice that big-time shareholders would have in a conventional business (and similar to what a union does for workers, except without the large amount of friction and unnecessary antipathy between management and the workers). Simply tokenizing ownership would not have this benefit.
Well that would depend on the token and its implementation details wouldn't it. If you own x% of the pool you get a voice at the table with x being adjustable. Or alternatively all the small token holders can choose a rep or series of reps to vote on decisions on their behalf.
Agreed! But now you're talking about changing the structure of the business somewhat. That is no longer "mere" tokenization. Something along these lines could work.
> "Democratic Governance. Although token holders will not have equity or voting rights in the Foundation itself, they will be allowed to vote on specific decisions affecting the Platform. The decisions subject to holder vote will be
limited at first, but will eventually expand to a point where the token holders and the Foundation share nearly
equal control of all aspects of the Platform’s functionality. Even in the Platform’s early stages, following the token sale, token holders will be able to rate the AI Services they use, affecting the success of those services and providing feedback that is necessary for
the service to improve. This role further contributes to the continued improvement of the Platform and its offerings, without any involvement of the Foundation."
The blockchain is nothing more than an analogous open-sourcing of persistent and [usually] immutable data I/O, similar to how code is open-sourced today. The early naysayers of the free software movement may have said "But how will programmers get paid?"
I agree that at the current point in time, blockchain-based projects are experimental and risky. Even Steemit, known to be one of the more successful late-gen blockchain projects, is not without its critics to this day. But there will emerge successful business models just as with the free software movement.
I think we need to be careful about integrating blockchain into the fabric of societies, especially the social and emotional aspects.
'Think not of how to replumb or rewire the world, but how to create the environment where interactions can be different, social, within a new economic order.'
This gets me thinking of the episode Fifteen Million Merits (S1, Ep2) of Black Mirror.
I can’t really find any substance here to latch onto. But the idea of distributed crypto remaking society is nothing new. I first ran into it in the early nineties via Bruce Schneier’s “Applied Cryptography”. All these algorithms could provably make voting, anonymous cash, messaging, and more totally secure and unbreakable! We were on the cusp of a technolibertarian utopia! The internet was going to make it happen and this new “world wide web” would make it accessible to the masses.
Turns out, as Schneier himself long ago realized, it’s more complicated than that, and the combination of malicious actors and human nature render every technological solution ultimately fallible.
The blockchain is not going to solve the basic issues of human fallibility and gaps in trust. Further attempts to quantify human experience, this time into cryptographic tokens, will not change the goals or capabilities of governments, criminals, corporations, or individuals.
We won’t code our way out of our problems. We need to stop fooling ourselves and start looking for real solutions.
I'm speaking broadly to decentralized "blockchains". If any or all were to crash a new one will replace it. In that sense the cat is out of the bag and "the game has changed". It doesn't matter if any websites from the 90's still operates, the internet was a game changing invention regardless of when mass adoption took place.
Well no, bitcoins current value is clearly primarily based on speculation, and distinctly divorced from its value in usage. If it vanished tomorrow, and was replaced, the new coin will likely not reach the same height as bitcoin; its speculative valuation would vanish, and it would reach merely bitcoins true value (based on its utility). And its true value is likely quite low; at least nowhere near where its at today.
That is, bitcoin doesn't yet justify its own existence. A new one will replace it, but hardly out of necessity, rather simply because it is trivial to do so. If its existence was suddenly erased, few systems would be affected (mostly layer 1 actors, those directly associated with bitcoin: miners, coin devs, a few startups, etc) and most corrected quite quickly. there's not yet a true dependency on cryptocoins or blockchaind; the game is the almost exactly the same as it was with or without the bitcoin paper.
But it won’t vanish. I’m still waiting. If you can make bitcoin vanish I’d give you some credibility. Until then you’re amongst a sea of journalists declaring the death of crypto. I’m waiting for it and I mean that sincerely. Yet here we are.
What in the hell are you going on about? Im just talking about whether or not you should call it "game changing". Vanishing bitcoin is just a hypothetical.
> Like the inevitability of collective micro-ownership of commodities like real estate, art, storage, even energy
Unnecessary, unworkable, absurd. The fact that the author thinks we should accept this premise as a given without providing any justification is laughable. The rest of the article is just an exercise in mental-masturbation, most of it doesn't even mean anything.
> There is a grounded naturalness inherent in behavioral socialization that simply couldn’t be stimulated no matter how well programmed or marketed.
...
Whenever a crypto-token enthusiast openly laments "why is HN so hostile cryptos?", point them to this blog post - having that kind of nonsense littered into the comment section of every blockchain related post is the explanation.
30 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 78.4 ms ] threadBy my reading -- and this is hard to glean -- the central thesis seems to be that cryptocurrencies shouldn't be used to one-to-one reimplement currently present systems of digital social interaction; instead, think about what can be accomplished from the ground-up when your individual, small-time holders are vested.
It's both cutely observant, and painfully oblivious to nearly all of human history, where individuals pooled together resources to build, invest, serve as a patron to the arts, etc -- a range of activities from basic survival to abstract societal good.
Here is a shorter piece of the interview that focuses a bit more on the specific idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4j-jRDTlJg
If anyone has links to more discussion about this subject, I would love to hear about it.
> Like the inevitability of collective micro-ownership of commodities like real estate, art, storage, even energy. These feel natural to the innate structure of the blockchain itself [...]
It's a good model and has been scaled up to large multinational corporation size in the Mondragon Corporation, but we don't need blockchain or cryptocurrency to do it.
I've been incredibly well-served by both credit unions and cooperative grocery stores.
Corporations exist to serve the interests of their shareholders. If you are a customer or employee of a corporation that you are not a shareholder of, then that corporation is not necessarily trying to do business in my interest but quite possibly could be operating at the expense of my interests in order to serve the interest of the shareholders. We hope that these interests are aligned, but often we see that they aren't. Cooperative businesses naturally align these interests by making the workers or consumers (or both) shareholders. And they remain voluntary.
It addresses many of the drawbacks of unionization, of traditional capitalist corporations, and socialism. It really should be copied more widely. Given my positive experiences with the cooperative business model, I would gladly seek out such businesses if they were more widely available.
Crypto allows you to tokenize assets on a much more efficient, streamlined approach than structuring an entire business model in a formal co-op. The two are similar only in vague terms.
> "Democratic Governance. Although token holders will not have equity or voting rights in the Foundation itself, they will be allowed to vote on specific decisions affecting the Platform. The decisions subject to holder vote will be limited at first, but will eventually expand to a point where the token holders and the Foundation share nearly equal control of all aspects of the Platform’s functionality. Even in the Platform’s early stages, following the token sale, token holders will be able to rate the AI Services they use, affecting the success of those services and providing feedback that is necessary for the service to improve. This role further contributes to the continued improvement of the Platform and its offerings, without any involvement of the Foundation."
Well, we have plenty of successful business models for open source software now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models_for_open-sourc....
I agree that at the current point in time, blockchain-based projects are experimental and risky. Even Steemit, known to be one of the more successful late-gen blockchain projects, is not without its critics to this day. But there will emerge successful business models just as with the free software movement.
Using "inevitable" and "feel natural" is meant to convey that no argument will be forthcoming.
'Think not of how to replumb or rewire the world, but how to create the environment where interactions can be different, social, within a new economic order.'
This gets me thinking of the episode Fifteen Million Merits (S1, Ep2) of Black Mirror.
Turns out, as Schneier himself long ago realized, it’s more complicated than that, and the combination of malicious actors and human nature render every technological solution ultimately fallible.
The blockchain is not going to solve the basic issues of human fallibility and gaps in trust. Further attempts to quantify human experience, this time into cryptographic tokens, will not change the goals or capabilities of governments, criminals, corporations, or individuals.
We won’t code our way out of our problems. We need to stop fooling ourselves and start looking for real solutions.
Yet here we are. With a globally traded decentralized token. What more evidence do you need that “the game has changed”?
It's difficult to claim "Something has changed the game", if it can't even accomplish being noticable in its absence.
It exists, and it can sometimes be used, and some people think it will be used. Thats about all you can say about it.
That is, bitcoin doesn't yet justify its own existence. A new one will replace it, but hardly out of necessity, rather simply because it is trivial to do so. If its existence was suddenly erased, few systems would be affected (mostly layer 1 actors, those directly associated with bitcoin: miners, coin devs, a few startups, etc) and most corrected quite quickly. there's not yet a true dependency on cryptocoins or blockchaind; the game is the almost exactly the same as it was with or without the bitcoin paper.
Its not yet changed.
But it won’t vanish. I’m still waiting. If you can make bitcoin vanish I’d give you some credibility. Until then you’re amongst a sea of journalists declaring the death of crypto. I’m waiting for it and I mean that sincerely. Yet here we are.
The phrase "paradigm shift" seems to be thrown around quite a bit ;)
Unnecessary, unworkable, absurd. The fact that the author thinks we should accept this premise as a given without providing any justification is laughable. The rest of the article is just an exercise in mental-masturbation, most of it doesn't even mean anything.
> There is a grounded naturalness inherent in behavioral socialization that simply couldn’t be stimulated no matter how well programmed or marketed.
...
Whenever a crypto-token enthusiast openly laments "why is HN so hostile cryptos?", point them to this blog post - having that kind of nonsense littered into the comment section of every blockchain related post is the explanation.
Ultimately, "too cheap to meter" was the problem they encountered, so they stripped out the tit-for-tat portion and Bittorrent was released.
https://elaineou.com/2017/10/14/the-transaction-costs-of-tok...