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100 years of whatever this will be

apenwarr.ca

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Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#721

Post by pjkundert »

ggm wrote: post #660
pjkundert wrote: post #39

This article is profoundly insightful. I have been searching for patterns and insights in this field for 25 years. What apenwarr concludes is true: All we need is to build distributed systems that work. That means decentralized bulk activity, hierarchical regulation. The problem is, everyone wants distributed systems that require everyone else to agree (global consensus), which is literally impossible (see: CAP theor…

> This article is profoundly insightful. How about adding a "not" to that and trying it on for size? Is it really profound ? > There is also methods for building computational distributed systems that work "fine" in the face of CAP failure: https://holo.host -This is a serious breakthrough. And we really, really need this, NOW. Umm.. do we? Is this .. OK, forgive me, I've been penalty boxed for the first time in the…

Well, if "excited" and "shilling" are synonyms, then maybe! ;)

But seriously, I spent significant effort over 25 years trying to solve some of the cooperation and communications problems in distributed systems. I'd deployed a cryptocurrency before Bitcoin came out in 2009; foolishly, I downloaded the system and found it hadn't solved these problems, so didn't run it (:/)

So, when I ran into Holochain a few years back, and began to understand what they had accomplished (in theory, at the time), I dropped everything I was doing and went full time on the project. Built the first 2 prototypes of HoloFuel.

Building planetary-scale (or even inter-planetary) distributed systems that can maintain consistency in the face of partitioning or massive latency while maintaining aggregate transaction rates almost linear with node count is now possible.

So, ya -- I think these insights and their successful implementation is "profound". Like, never been done before, and everyone thought it was impossible "profound".

You may have a much higher level of expectation. To me, that would be a lot like watching Free Solo while sucking on a soda, and saying "ya, that's not that impressive".

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#722

Post by nfw2 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #688
nfw2 wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is a regression of wealth and income relative to the cost of living for most young people (ie pretty much anyone who doesn't work in tech or other STEM field). I don't mean relative to the most wealthy. Here is some data that compares the median income to the rising cost of living in the US. https://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-living-... I think the Bezos-Ferrari question is a good one. I…

this is where somethings get really tricky to measure, and i'm not trying to say i have the best answers.. But this article talks about housing being up and that's tricky because sq ft per person (and quality of each sq ft) is way up, I'm sure there is a similar story about health care costing more but also having better outcomes? I admit it's a difficult thing to measure and to discuss, but I also do think that the…

Yeah, I see the point. My only good argument against trying to optimize relative outcomes is that it isn't practical to try to do so.

To talk about the difficulties of implementing true socialism would be beating a dead horse, I think. But even if we could remove wealth inequality completely, people would still find ways to feel better or worse than others (sports, looks, social skills, intelligence, etc.). My high school in the suburbs was fairly homogenous from a socioeconomic standpoint, but that microcosm seemed more hierarchical than any other point in life.

I also would expect the good-or-bad feelings people get by making comparisons are more-or-less ordinal in nature, so I think people would manage to feel just as bad about small wealth differences (keeping up with the Jones's) if there were no more billionaires.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#723

Post by brankoB »

labratmatt wrote: post #692

You see what you want to see. These are not true in my daily life, 1 "Rich, powerful, greedy people and corporations just get richer, more powerful, and more greedy." 2 "Everyone seems to increasingly be in it for themselves, not for society." 3 "Or, people who are in it for society tend to lose or to get screwed until they give up." Dial back the doom and gloom mindset. It's an abundant world.

*Abundant for some

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#724

Post by StevePerkins »

This article is:

* 20% - Arguments that we've deregulated too much, and need more economic regulation.

* 80% - The "old man yells at cloud" meme. Getting a zillion upvotes, simply because it happens to tap a lot of HN's particular old man buttons.

I understand why this is at the top of the page. It's just a little disappointing.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#726

Post by goodpoint »

pitaj wrote: post #283
goodpoint wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People constantly forget that large multinationals like Amazon are bigger that many countries, are purely authoritarian structures and work as 100% centralized economies. > Central panning doesn't scale On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the two cases of the fastest economical growth on the planet. The problem is not scalability. The problem is that dictatorships (both co…

> large multinationals like Amazon I don't know about the internal workings of Amazon specifically, but many corporations are set up as hierarchical "business units" that each operate as separate companies within: selling their products and services within the company. There's still a market, not everything is determined centrally. > On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the…

> but many corporations are set up as hierarchical "business units" that each operate as separate companies within

The overwhelming majority of companies, including Amazon, does not allow different units, departments or teams to compete with each other by providing the same service.

Essentially each BU or even team is a little monopolist.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#727

Post by carapace »

mempko wrote: post #131
JanisL wrote: post #4

I strongly believe that money itself has been corrupted lately, this then causes all number of bad flow on effects to happen. A massive shift happened when central banks started getting involved in direct purchases of various asset types and we started to see a major distortion happen in monetary policy that which has distorted the functioning of money itself. For example who would care if their business is completel…

> As a whole I think people need to ask what money is again and have some serious conversations about what money and the monetary system should be. Yes! This is an incredibly important conversation and this conversation is already happening. You see MMT becoming mainstream. Because MMT is a description of how money works today. That it's a technology (and always has been) for governments to provision themselves. In f…

> a vision for society without money.

There are glints, Rainbow Gatherings, for example, are small transitory communities that function entirely without money. There are "intentional communities" that operate (in various ways) without money (althoug usually not without some formal accounting?) And things like Ithaca Hours, a "local currency".

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#728

Post by kizer »

handrous wrote: post #521
moffkalast wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure anything running on the mainnet these days will be 10x more expensive than a classic centralized option just with gas fees and is as such completely useless.

Also: - Economy of scale means this won't be "AirBnB for hosting". I can't negotiate power costs or get as much efficiency out of my operations as someone with a real datacenter. Not even close. [EDIT: see also, Bitcoin mining, which started out "anyone can do it!" but wasn't anymore as soon as real money got involved. Just buy an expensive rack of ASICs that aren't good for anything else, and find some place to arbi…

Just to make a point, it's fine if something's audience is entirely composed of computer nerds or academics at first. After refinement it can gradually make its way into consumer world; e.g., the internet, the most successful distributed system.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#729

Post by goodpoint »

sradu wrote: post #606
goodpoint wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People constantly forget that large multinationals like Amazon are bigger that many countries, are purely authoritarian structures and work as 100% centralized economies. > Central panning doesn't scale On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the two cases of the fastest economical growth on the planet. The problem is not scalability. The problem is that dictatorships (both co…

You must not be from a former communist country. The system worked for two-three decades during the initial industrialization phase. When that phase ended growth was hard to find (the whole system was based around factories and moving villagers to cities). That's when the numbers started going down and the system started faking numbers to give the appearance that all is well and nobody could disagree with them. At a…

> The system worked for two-three decades

Yes, that's my whole point.

> Re: Amazon - you can't compare countries with private corporations.

...and why? The similarity is more than evident.

Re: 100 years of whatever this will be

#730

Post by scoofy »

arcticbull wrote: post #718
fragmede wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where defi is coming from, and the regulations are onerous, but also those regulations were hard-fought for, and came about on the backs of real problems for real people, often by being exploited by people most accurately described as conmen. Caveat emptor, sure, but on the way from "investing your play money" to someone close to retirement's 401k, there's a much bigger pitfall. The "battles" are shaping up to…

Folks very quickly forget that regulations are written in blood. You know what other kinds of regulations are onerous? Everything aviation related. Every corner of aviation. And yet we're not clamoring to deregulate aviation because the consequences are so clear and self-evident. Regulations are generally there for a reason. If they aren't, they need to be amended, we don't need to make our own money, except for blac…

These people likely do not know of the lives destroyed by the wildcat banking era of the mid-1800's in the United States, which is what DeFi seems to become.

People don't think of the failing power of international sanctions.

The consequences of a fully de-regulated financial system will likely lead to more armed conflicts. That said, I agree that the political system is broken, but that's a problem of democracy.

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

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