Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The dangerous part imho when it comes to a geopolitical application is, while most of us can recognize the complexities and tradeoffs in a computer system, at least when they're pointed out to us, very few seem to be able to see similar complexities in geopolitics (a massively more complex system), even when it's pointed out. It's as if we've developed an intuition that passionately rejects the very suggestion, a b…
Absolutely! I think a huge part of the problem is that we're saddled with all sorts of baggage from the structures of the past that constrain the ways we think and approach problems. We have very rigid notions of the ways that laws should work, or property ownership.
The importance of decentralisation
111–120 of 137 posts
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#112It's sort of an ongoing hobby of mine to study the forces of decentralization vs centralization. This article about decentralization does what many other evangelism articles do: talk about the ideals and benefits . However, I believed what's rarely discussed but more important is the economic forces that prevent decentralization from fulfilling the idealists' vision. Yes, decentralization will be in effect for niche…
> Centralization is a natural outcome of millions of people not wanting to (1) spend money and (2) not wanting to spend extra time -- to fulfill ideals of decentralization. Ironically enough, people do not live year-round in centralized hotels with cleaning services provided. They live in their own decentralized homes, and make an economic decision whether to take care of their cleaning needs by themselves, or to out…
An assumption that should be challenged. You can run your own chat server, with end-to-end encryption, thanks to the work being done by Matrix. Check out https://modular.im (I use them and am quite happy with it.)
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#113Check out this post for more info:
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#114It's sort of an ongoing hobby of mine to study the forces of decentralization vs centralization. This article about decentralization does what many other evangelism articles do: talk about the ideals and benefits . However, I believed what's rarely discussed but more important is the economic forces that prevent decentralization from fulfilling the idealists' vision. Yes, decentralization will be in effect for niche…
With your GitHub example, I think the better question isn't why John doesn't want to run their own server - that much is obvious. It is, rather, why doesn't John want to go to hosted GitLab instead?
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that there's an incredibly powerful force that drives the consolidation and centralization of systems in modern society: the wholly artificial legal concept of property. We are given a legal right to accumulate control over as large a swathe of material goods and organizational structures as we can within the confines of the law, and this ownership is backed by the promise of state violence should it be…
>wholly artificial legal concept of property Property is an informational concept more than a legal one. The concept of "mine" is present at a very young age, and clearly present in various animal groups. The data-structure is a simple association of objects with an owner, and for the substrate animals use only their brains, but humans use paper and, increasingly, bits. Banks and local government agencies keep the mo…
Once you have abstract property as a concept, it's all about tracking the association in and of itself, separated from any physical manifestations of it (possession and use). Your house is yours not because you live in it, but because there's a title on it in your name, and a record in the registry. This makes it possible for one person to have ten houses, live in one, and rent the rest out to those who don't have any. If they accumulate the rent, they can eventually buy more houses, and it becomes a positive feedback loop.
But there's no particular reason why any given society has to adopt such a system of property, and not all societies did or do today - especially with respect to land and other immovables. This can often be seen in the colonial history, where the colonizers expected to be able to buy and sell things that the indigenous population didn't even consider property, or at least the kind of property that could be bought and sold. More often than not, the colonizing power would then declare that in the absence of a "proper" abstract property claim on e.g. the land, it's there for the taking of anybody who is willing to make one. And that is how we ended up in the present situation, where that system of abstract property rights is mostly enforced throughout the globe - but I don't see how it follows that it's a system that is inevitable for any human society.
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#116https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted/
If you want to selfhost many of those apps, we have built a tool (Cloudron) to take away most of the deployment hassle for many of those apps mentioned in the link. Also to work around the provider lock-in with ipv4 addresses while hosting from your home or on-premise we have a built-in dynamic DNS feature https://cloudron.io/documentation/networking/#dynamic-dns So in the end it doesn't matter if you change ISP or i…
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#117I point this out because unless you get everyone using your IPv6 address directly, your name is certainly NOT decentralized.
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The concept of property is highly important in terms of giving us a framework by which we can resolve conflicts over who has legitimate use or possession of things. Without the idea of property, you devolve into a might makes right scenario where the strong or sneaky can steal from anyone without recourse. That doesn't sounds like a society anyone would feel motivated or happy living in. Why try when someone can just…
> Where does my use or possession end? For example, I trade two sheep for a bicycle which I need for transportation to get to my job. Can someone come along and take my bicycle any time I'm not using it? If so, how is this theft justified? You either work out an agreement with the people who might take it that a bicycle be available for you after work or you just go and find another bicycle. It's funny you say this b…
Do you have a source for that? I'm pretty certain Norway (and other Scandinavian countries) are not socialist and more of a social democracy, where they simply provide a large social safety net through heavy taxation.
I believe they still very much are in favor of a free market economy.
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> See the trend? Centralization is a natural outcome of millions of people not wanting to (1) spend money and (2) not wanting to spend extra time -- to fulfill ideals of decentralization. Exactly. It's not a technological phenomenon, it's an economic one. It's actually present in all markets, but traditionally there is a "local" effect that allows variation to exist (if it's not free to ship goods to anywhere in the…
Regarding your point about spam and bad actors: even though it's not the solution we've ended up with (i.e. training spam models, creating rulesets, sharing blacklists etc), this problem space always makes me think of Microsoft's 'Penny Black': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black_(research_project) There are further economic problem there; people won't want to pay anything for email, for example, now that they'…
Hashcash has the features you described above, but no mechanism for "returning" PoW to a user.
Re: The importance of decentralisation
#120As someone who works in the domain name industry, I'd like to note that there is ever increasing pressure to police domain name use. When you buy and use a generic TLD such as "com" or "ninja", you are buying a US product and it is subject to sanction laws and other things you may not realize. CC TLDs (two characters long like "ch") are products of that country and have their own laws UNLESS the registry company is l…
Do you have any opinions on Namecoin and/or Ethereum Name Service? I'm not looking for an argument, just genuinely curious what somebody in the industry thinks.