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100 years of whatever this will be

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Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#291

Post by teucris »

delusional wrote: post #102
notpachet wrote: post #49

All of the current histrionics that we hear from DeFi advocates regarding escaping the evil centralized Banks and Regulators and what not -- you know what they remind me of? They remind me of what I hear from junior developers when they're tasked with fixing an antiquated, broken software system. These developers typically lack the experience and the patience necessary to fix the system incrementally from within, so…

I don't think the argument is that transferrable. As a developer you don't really live within the legacy systems. At most you're a politician negotiating between the different component parts. Society is different. I don't like DeFi, but I get what they're feeling. It feels like society has left us behind. Like anything we could ever hope to try is already accounted for and defeated before the effort even begins. You…

I think there’s a nuance here in the sense that progress happens both inside the established system and outside it - grassroots campaigns, protests, local initiatives, etc. I think the key issue is that it seems like so many smart people are looking to solve things from the outside rather than involve themselves with the current system, and we need to move that pendulum back quite a bit.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#292

Post by fsflover »

dmitriid wrote: post #187
moistrobot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code doesn't actively resist your attempts to improve it. Our broken institutions are fighting to protect their kingdom

> Our broken institutions are fighting to protect their kingdom Three years ago I bought an apartment. I got a loan from a bank over internet and phone. The contract was three pages of clear Swedish that even I, with my rudimentary knowledge of i, could understand. The contract signing was intermediated by a person whose job is to make sure everything goes smoothly. In the end, all of the following was guaranteed : -…

Unfortunately very few people live in a democratic country with the rule of law like Sweden. For the rest, crypto can be a good place to keep their funds without the fear of losing.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#293

Post by soco »

whatshisface wrote: post #197
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I think your comment clearly explains some ideas I've had for a while but have been struggling to elucidate. I think it's also why you see so much "pendulum-ism" in the tech world. Something about the current paradigm is difficult ("monoliths make it hard for large teams to release software quickly and independently!"), so then a new paradigm comes along which perhaps addresses some of the shortcomings of the…

I don't believe the broader financial system ever tried out making transactions impossible to reverse. They might not have ever had the power to do it. Another thing to bear in mind is that none of the participants in the financial system have ever been interested in designing a financial system. They have been interested in making money.

When a store charged me twice for the same item last month I was very happy to be able to reverse the transaction.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#294

Post by nouveaux »

generalizations wrote: post #240
nouveaux wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's another word for "require everyone else to agree": Tyranny." I think this is often thrown out there to push back on liberals and socialism but this is the wrong point. We as a global society _need_ to agree to be productive. We need to work together to find the best solutions for as many people as possible. Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from s…

> Everyone needs to agree that starting a nuclear war is bad. You would likely want to stop China from shooting nuclear missiles at San Francisco. Yet I doubt that when you insist on this narrative, you would think of yourself as being tyrannical. Extreme examples work, because you can actually count on the people reading your comment to agree with you. But you can't extrapolate towards less universally held examples…

"someone who requires everyone to agree about what's done with trees on your own property could well be considered tyrranical."

100% agree with the example of someone's tree on their 200 acre farm. However, if I have a dying tree that's a risk to falling on my neighbor's house, it would far less tyrannical for the neighbor to force me to remove the tree through the government. Proximity to others plays a big role.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#295

Post by leafmeal »

wilkommen wrote: post #155
jq-r wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've answered your own question. It is going to be a war. War is a great mallet which destroys most of the power structures and shuffles the cards a bit. But the price to pay is atrociously high. After the war everyone will swear "Never again!", but their children's children have no idea what that means, and have no problem going to war all over again.

Yeah I guess. I hope not. I wonder throughout history, has there ever been a "ruling class" which starts to see that unless they cede a significant amount of power, there will be a war, and they will lose it, and thus they proactively decide to cede a sufficient amount of said power? I guess that's more or less the dream scenario. Cause then things get a lot better without a war. But they wouldn't even let Bernie San…

Britain's move to representative democracy from a monarchy is somewhat of an example, although one could argue that power is still concentrated.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#296

Post by IAmWorried »

jq-r wrote: post #111
wilkommen wrote: post #65

I agree with everything in the blog post. I just think it's really hard for societies to "unfuck" themselves. I think the reason things are going in this direction is because of an increasing concentration of power among a relatively small number of people. It's hard to walk back that kind of concentration of power without societal upheaval. The only reason the gilded age in the United States ended was because of WW2…

You've answered your own question. It is going to be a war. War is a great mallet which destroys most of the power structures and shuffles the cards a bit. But the price to pay is atrociously high. After the war everyone will swear "Never again!", but their children's children have no idea what that means, and have no problem going to war all over again.

I think that the elites of the various countries have too much in common at this point to allow a war to happen. They would sooner team up and move to Elysium and abandon all the rest of us on earth than allow for global destruction. I think this is the future TBH, the wealthy will more and more take things into their own hands a la superyachts, NZ properties, fortified compounds, etc. The middle classes and below will face the unwelcome prospect of gradually decaying social institutions and economies until society eventually just breaks, and the wealthy wait it out then come in to sweep up the ashes, ushering in a new, far less populated golden age of humanity.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#297

Post by micromacrofoot »

_yid9 wrote: post #251
micromacrofoot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this different than getting everyone to adhere to capitalism or democracy? Lots of people die under this system, doing things they do not want to do.

Good question! As with most choices, the level of force required to achieve compliance is more or less linearly related to the harshness of the choice. Pay a small amount of taxes? Little force required. Give full authority over your life to a faceless central planner? Great force required. Give full authority, with no chance of escape? Lethal force required. I'm not sure why this is a concept that seems to be a myst…

I'm not a strong proponent of socialism, but this seems like an outrageously loaded response to a genuine question.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#298

Post by stnikolauswagne »

thegrimmest wrote: post #224
pessimizer wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the only weak people that deserve protection are the wealthy? The idea that the only legitimate function of government is to protect the status quo is strange, and in a world where everything is assigned an owner is a maxarchism not a minarchism. In a real Darwinian world, rich people wouldn't be able to walk the streets without a huge amount of security, and eventually that security force would kill…

I'm saying that "society" is basically an agreement to peacefully coexist, using due process to resolve disputes. It's not an agreement to cooperate. Just because the processes by which some some succeed and some fail are non-violent doesn't mean that those successes and failures shouldn't be total. > people who own everything are the intellectual and physical champions They're not, and I never said they were. All I…

> What does it matter how the entrepreneur spends his money?

Lets take your scenario one step further. The entrepreneur now uses his newly gotten weatlh, buys up some neccessary infrastructure that everyone relies on (for sake of argument lets the food supply) and raises the price to 26ct, everyone in the society but him starves to death and no violence was used. At what point, if any, should a hypothetical state step in?

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