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Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy

sovereign.software

31–40 of 59 posts

Re: Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live. Unfortunately, our/their bodies are made of matter, and are subject to laws and government enforcement. That kind of ruins much of the logic of the manifesto. > We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. That seems…

>To be fair, the manifesto was written in 1996. Too soon to judge as we are in a moment of backlash against these trends, lets see how 2196 views the manifesto.

> we are in a moment of backlash against these trends

What makes you think so? As far as I can tell, it's over and the idealists lost.

Re: Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy

#32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people get excited and interested in blockchains because they want to radically alter the existing social order and they see blockchains as the most effective path to bring this about. Thus, when these people make progress they cast it in those terms (radical social change). This becomes a feedback loop which attracts more radicals to the blockchain space and also amplifies the current radicals belief that they…

Irrational optimism is a positive effect?

From the perspective of those who aren't irrationally optimistic, I think sometimes.

Self-defeating example: betting on red in roulette is a bad idea. Having your friend bet on red is a better but still bad idea. Having a stranger bet on red, and buy you a drink if he wins... It's free money.

Applied example: starting an electric car company (at least looked like) a bad idea.... trying 1,000 different approaches to a light bulb, especially after 500 failures (at least looked like) a bad idea... etc.

Re: Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy

#34
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT is pretty much giving the project away. What are you talking about?

If they truly believed, then they wouldn't bother with a license. Someone who truly doesn't care about copyright wouldn't consider they need a license. The irony would be even more should someone break this license and these believers take them to court. I'm reminded of when the Church of Scientology hadn't bothered with registering the copyrights for many texts, only to rush to court once they leaked. They lost, mos…

In the US if you don't put copyright on it, it will default to being the author's copyright and be legally unusable.

Re: Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy

#35
post #32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrational optimism is a positive effect?

From the perspective of those who aren't irrationally optimistic, I think sometimes. Self-defeating example: betting on red in roulette is a bad idea. Having your friend bet on red is a better but still bad idea. Having a stranger bet on red, and buy you a drink if he wins... It's free money. Applied example: starting an electric car company (at least looked like) a bad idea.... trying 1,000 different approaches to a…

People chasing long shots under a delusion can sometimes be profitable for someone else, but if a movement is built on irrational exuberance surely there's a cost to be paid sooner or later.

Re: Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll describe democracy, and you tell me how comical it sounds: "A group of people, within a geographic region marked by invisible lines drawn by human aggression, all gather once every 2nd rotation of the Earth around the Sun to put papers in a magic box. The people believe once an arbitrarily large number of papers are put into the box, it grants the owners of those papers the right to force their will and ideas on…

Your definition of democracy is ridiculous and none of it is relevant. Whoever wrote this manifesto is both naive and arrogant: he doesn't speak for anyone but himself, ergo, it's just a 'youtube comment rant'. It's funny unless you take it seriously, in which case it's maddening. Most people in the world actually work for 'governments and semi-large to large corporations' and are fine with it. In the real world thos…

[deleted]

Re: Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"starts spouting hyperbolic, overblown rhetoric about overthrowing the social order" Because bitcoin is attractive to antagonists. Just take it all with a grain of salt. The 'Articles' of the statement I think are also objective - they're making what they think is a 'politically neutral, all inclusive' statement, when really they're not - their pushing a specific kind of ideal. I think that technology can enable demo…

The articles are from the UN declaration of human rights. I don't know whether they only selected a few for brevity or because they didn't agree with all of them.

The missing right to life felt like a fairly glaring omission to me, but as you say it might just have been left out for brevity.

Re: Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy

#38
post #21

At many levels, we would benefit from better decision-making tools. This includes voting tools with various ballot options and good accountability. Better tooling and awareness around collective decision making is valuable for groups at many levels. Such tooling and awareness does not have to be linked with large changes to country- or world-level governance. It can start with replacing an unstructured Slack discussi…

Political change is hard because our leaders aren't interested in our well-being, which is blindingly obvious if you look at the kind of legislation they're passing.

A recent example is the so-called "Snooper's Charter": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016

You could discuss the technicalities or nuances involved, but what is that, really, besides a big "fuck you" to the peasant population, and yet another step towards a full-blown police state?

When "We the People" want "political change", it's not that kind of change. But that's what we're getting, despite the fact that our dear leaders know full well we don't want it.

So what are we to do? Wait for the next election to vote the bums out, to replace them with the umpteenth set of new bums?

You know something is fundamentally wrong with "the system" when we have roughly two choices in practical terms:

  1) Wait for a (global) police state to engulf us all.
  2) Forcefully resist somehow.
#1 will not be avoided through writing to your congress-critters.
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