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The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

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Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #54
dragonwriter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People generslly want information they don't currently have but want to be free for then to acquire. People often also want information they do currently have to be expensive to other people to acquire.

> People often also want information they do currently have to be expensive to other people to acquire. I don't think that's necessarily true. For example, pirated copies of media are typically created when someone legally purchases a copy of the work and then publishes it for others to use entirely for free. I find it very hard to believe that the people posting these pirated works want those works to be expensive f…

> > People often also want information they do currently have to be expensive to other people to acquire.

> I don't think that's necessarily true.

You seem to have mistaken “often” for “always”.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#62

Post by duncan_bayne »

elif wrote: post #45
ue_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These concepts (especially Ethereum) are the digital manifestations of the theory of democracy - unhindered by loopholes, corruption, indecision, and private-interests. The kind of democracy where having more money means you get more votes, which is the kind of democracy almost nobody would want to live in lest someone has more money than them. I don't know the word for such a thing, but it sounds barbaric, yet I've…

If you concede that PACs, lobbyists, bribes, or simply paying to make yourself a politician are overwhelmingly more effective than form letters to congressmen, ethereum-distribution of power looks downright egalitarian. ether whales have nothing on USD whales. 8 people control 50% of wealth[0]. There is also income disparity and monetary controls making that dilution of individual power inescapable. And that's just p…

Why not just abolish voting altogether?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

One of the many advantages of selecting representatives randomly from the citizenry is that it eliminates the position of professional politician.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#63

Post by mempko »

The comments here mention crypto currencies. However, currency is anathema to anarchist societies and isn't mentioned in the manifesto. Anarchists recognize that currencies and markets are products of the state and using this tool in a stateless society makes no sense. A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state. What would a crypto currency without a state provision? Who does it serve? Bitcoin makes it clear it is the FPGA and ASIC operators consuming vasts amount of energy.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#64

Post by tomrod »

mempko wrote: post #63

The comments here mention crypto currencies. However, currency is anathema to anarchist societies and isn't mentioned in the manifesto. Anarchists recognize that currencies and markets are products of the state and using this tool in a stateless society makes no sense. A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state. What would a crypto currency without a state provision? Who does it serve? Bitcoin m…

Crypto currency was created to be decentralized, requiring no state to back it.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#66

Post by al_chemist »

vkou wrote: post #47
nannal wrote: post #8

> The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders... Bitcoin Silkroad The crypto wars The crypto wars 2: The empire strikes back and that's just one poignant sentence in the fairly small but very accurate manifesto.

Silkroad was indeed primarily used by drug dealers. Bitcoin was not shut down because of it. Bitcoin is, however, frequently used to launder stolen bitcoin.

> Bitcoin is, however, frequently used to launder stolen bitcoin.

Bikes are frequently used to launder stolen bikes.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#67

Post by mempko »

tomrod wrote: post #64
mempko wrote: post #63

The comments here mention crypto currencies. However, currency is anathema to anarchist societies and isn't mentioned in the manifesto. Anarchists recognize that currencies and markets are products of the state and using this tool in a stateless society makes no sense. A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state. What would a crypto currency without a state provision? Who does it serve? Bitcoin m…

Crypto currency was created to be decentralized, requiring no state to back it.

bitcoin is not decentralized because all transactions are on a single public ledger. How the ledger is computed and verified is distributed however the product is a single central source of truth. There is nothing centralized about having a single objective "reality". Decentralized systems do not have a single source of truth and by their very nature are inconsistent.

In other words, whether the blockchain was computed by one central bank or individual miners doesn't change the nature of bitcoin in it's use. Which is a centralized public ledger.

I wouldn't be surprised if bitcoin was an attempt to shine a light on the black market. Similar to how Tor was created to hide the activities of state spooks.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#68

Post by AYBABTME »

mempko wrote: post #63

The comments here mention crypto currencies. However, currency is anathema to anarchist societies and isn't mentioned in the manifesto. Anarchists recognize that currencies and markets are products of the state and using this tool in a stateless society makes no sense. A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state. What would a crypto currency without a state provision? Who does it serve? Bitcoin m…

> A currency and markets primary purpose is to provision the state.

Not at all. "State" is a political constructions while currencies are a value transport mechanism and markets are a network of those, both of which, as "pure" concepts, arises pretty quickly when one starts to ponder how to model "actors in need to exchange and use scarce resources which have alternative uses".

In that sense, saying that "currencies and markets" have any particular purpose (political at that) is like saying that someone invented the concept/idea of "hash functions" for the purpose of serving P2P piracy, which isn't the case: "hash functions" just are a thing that arises in the universe. Same with currencies and markets, they're just pretty arbitrary, easy to come up with, concepts.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#69

Post by ue_ »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #62
elif wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you concede that PACs, lobbyists, bribes, or simply paying to make yourself a politician are overwhelmingly more effective than form letters to congressmen, ethereum-distribution of power looks downright egalitarian. ether whales have nothing on USD whales. 8 people control 50% of wealth[0]. There is also income disparity and monetary controls making that dilution of individual power inescapable. And that's just p…

Why not just abolish voting altogether? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition One of the many advantages of selecting representatives randomly from the citizenry is that it eliminates the position of professional politician.

Can you explain to me how this works, please? If it's just selecting a random person, this seems as though it would be liable to all sorts of problems such as the person not even having to demonstrate to anyone that he is capable of holding such a position. If it's selecting a random person from a smaller group of people, how is it decided who gets to be in the group? You're pushing the problem of professional politician one step back, so the solution has no explanatory power.

Re: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)

#70

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tomrod wrote: post #65

Information isn't sapient. People want information, which gives information value.

People want information. But the people who want the information want it to be free, so that they can get it for free. The people who create that information usually want it to be expensive, and also to be controlled (so that they can get paid). But all it takes is one person who paid for the information to decide to redistribute it for free, and the game is over for that bit of information.

Thus "freeing" is a one-way function for information. It's easy for information to go from non-free to free, but it's almost impossible for information to go from free to non-free. In that sense, information, by its nature, "wants" (if we can anthropomorphize a bit) to be free, in the same sense that matter "wants" to move to a lower energy state.

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