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What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

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Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#121

Post by yarg »

zelly wrote: post #59
humanrebar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud is probably a harder problem than discoverability. You can always exchange (maybe through an automated pairing) IPv6 addresses if nothing else. Supporting chargebacks, eliminating spam, blocking phishing, etc. if both harder and more important to a functioning culture.

Agreed. More broadly, decentralization is less equipped to counteract bad actors. You really are on your own, but isn't that what you asked for when you wanted to abandon Facebook/Google/government. A decentralized network cannot be trusted by nature. Anyone can join and lie. Successful decentralized networks need some cryptographically-secure checksum to verify its inputs: BitTorrent uses SHA-1; Bitcoin uses Merkle…

BitTorrent uses SHA1 only? That seems deeply flawed.

Edit: https://www.quora.com/Does-bittorrent-support-SHA-2-256-512-...

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#122

Post by perl4ever »

coldtea wrote: post #119
squirrelicus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... Like... Economies of scale are literally what gave the capitalist West it's unthinkably high standard of living.

Can't tell if sarcasm or not, but the US doesn't have some "unthinkably high standard of living". It's actually below most western European countries in most global metrics, including such basics as infant mortality. It trumps most in gun deaths and incarceration rates though, so there's that... E.g. http://premieroffshore.com/usa-is-best-country-in-the-world/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_t…

The World Bank[1] says in 2018, US GDP per capita was over $62K while the EU was under $37K. That seems like a huge difference to me and I don't think anybody really understands why it exists - American or not. It's salient not because it disproves your judgment (and that of many others) that the US is a dysfunctional hellhole, but because it is what people are compelled to rationalize away and obviously don't succeed on their own terms.

[1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#123

Post by perl4ever »

tpxl wrote: post #94
zelly wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. More broadly, decentralization is less equipped to counteract bad actors. You really are on your own, but isn't that what you asked for when you wanted to abandon Facebook/Google/government. A decentralized network cannot be trusted by nature. Anyone can join and lie. Successful decentralized networks need some cryptographically-secure checksum to verify its inputs: BitTorrent uses SHA-1; Bitcoin uses Merkle…

Decentralized networks lend themselves to far better moderation than centralized. Private forums have always had better moderation than something like reddit. Well, not all, but you can ignore those ;)

Usenet?

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#124

Post by perl4ever »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #24

The author of the article wrote a book ‘Everything for Everyone’ that looks interesting. It is about organizing coops as a push back against the gig economy or large corporations. My first job was at what was essentially a huge coop: the 100% employee owned defense contractor SAIC. SAIC spoiled me for all other jobs I had because there was a good vibe and efficiency that came with all employees having a strong motiva…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberated_company

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#125

Post by perl4ever »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #71
jodrellblank wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read anything by Pieter Hintjens, the creator of ZeroMQ? He wrote quite a lot on organising people, particularly software development, but instead of focusing on how to make people efficient, he focused on how to organise the group to protect from opportunistic outsiders / psychopaths coming in and taking personal advantage and destroying the group in the process. After having his early work ruined several t…

you guys are rediscovering the birth of "in-group socialism" just make sure that anyone who wants can join (by complying), otherwise if people are left out by definition from joining (can't change property X) you're just recreating "national socialism"

Matt Levine often says "the modern investment bank is a socialist paradise run for the benefit of its workers".

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#126

Post by perl4ever »

mcguire wrote: post #28
mark_l_watson wrote: post #24

The author of the article wrote a book ‘Everything for Everyone’ that looks interesting. It is about organizing coops as a push back against the gig economy or large corporations. My first job was at what was essentially a huge coop: the 100% employee owned defense contractor SAIC. SAIC spoiled me for all other jobs I had because there was a good vibe and efficiency that came with all employees having a strong motiva…

I worked for SAIC before and after the Leidos split. It may have been a 100% employee-owned "coop", but it was clear that some employees got more out of the success than others. And it was always a government contractor like all of the other contractors out there.

I'd be curious to hear what Sun Hydraulics or King Arthur Flour were like from someone who worked there.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#127

Post by viraptor »

jasonhansel wrote: post #116
viraptor wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Messaging systems (like emails) and social networks are not the same thing. Maybe mailing lists would be closer, but those are actually centralised.

They're not centralized in the way Facebook is, since your mailing lists may come from a wide variety of sources running separate servers & software. Also: messaging is actually a very important part of social media companies' strategy (e.g. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.).

Messaging is an important part and most social networks contain messaging. But messaging on its own is not a social network. (no contact discovery, subscription to events, persistent connection with other users)

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#128

Post by dredmorbius »

nanomonkey wrote: post #85

The author seems to be too focused on cryptocurrency and perhaps unaware of a lot of successfully decentralized protocols such as DAT, Scuttlebutt, GUN and IPFS.

Cryptocurrencies are interesting (in the context of this essay/discussion) because they're a well-known instance of a technology aimed at decentralisation, for a specific reason (to eliminate reliance on trust in the monetary system), which has to some extent succeeded, and in numerous others, failed.

The points made generally (not limited to cryptocurrencies) are very well made. They parallel thinking I and others have been arriving at independently in recent years, after long swallowing the decentralised, crowdsourced, open source, distributed, mantra.

I won't say that that's failed entirely. But it's definitely failed to deliver what it promised.

DAT, Scuttlebutt, GUN, and IPFS have negligible take-up so far as I'm aware, and I keep reasonable tabs on the space.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#129

Post by tinsx »

edoo wrote: post #113
CyanBird wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Friedman-like thinking and cute propaganda sound bytes just doesn't work tho Chile during the Pinochet Regime is an excellent example of the Neoliberal system not delivering on the promises, as hn_throwaway_99 mentioned, economies of scale simply take over any benefit of low gov friction "free markets", and any small advantage over time becomes an overwhelming one. At which point it simply becomes a mathematical…

In a just society the only possible way to get rich is through helping people. We want rich people. The more rich people the better off everyone is. Capitalism is beautiful. If a company is able to sustain market share through healthy competition then wonderful, that is great. Every law in the US right now is to ensure those corporations don't lose market share, edging everyone else out. It is basic economics. It is…

The issue with the current set of laws regulating corporations is that those laws were made with intervention from lobbyist groups, which changed legislation to benefit those lobbying groups. In reality, the way to do this fairly is to repeal these laws, remove power from corporations giving it back to the state (possibly through actually taxing corporations and the rich properly, along the lines of what Huey Long proposed a long time ago) and removing the capacity for corporations to lobby at all. The problem is not regulation, it is that corporations have the power to change that regulation. An unregulated market would be just as unfair as regulation enforced monopolies and monosonies.

If such changes were brought about, the increased taxes could go towards things like infrastructure and social welfare, which would actually help people, unlike what billionaires pretend is fair compensation to their harms upon society, when in reality they give back very little. Bezos and Musk for example, both got into the space industry instead of putting a lot of their wealth back into philanthropy. The seeming odd one out is those who are like Bill Gates, who do actually give back a massive portion of their wealth.

Re: What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)

#130

Post by squirrelicus »

coldtea wrote: post #119
squirrelicus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... Like... Economies of scale are literally what gave the capitalist West it's unthinkably high standard of living.

Can't tell if sarcasm or not, but the US doesn't have some "unthinkably high standard of living". It's actually below most western European countries in most global metrics, including such basics as infant mortality. It trumps most in gun deaths and incarceration rates though, so there's that... E.g. http://premieroffshore.com/usa-is-best-country-in-the-world/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_t…

I'm certain we're talking about two different things. I'm talking about the West's distance from the depravation of the state of nature (capitalism certainly causes), and you're talking about some cherry picked metrics that make some countries in the West look better than others.
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