I can recognize this is a serious problem. I can push politicians to help regulate it. I can (and I have) work with NGOs and journalists to reveal corrupt banksters. I can then demand them being punished.
Or, I could call people names and try to change the subject to problems in some other kind of system.
One of these is ethical. The other is called “being an enabler”.
Technology is neither good nor bad, but it is also not neutral.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
How a piece of technology is designed influences what it’s good for. A butter knife and a butcher’s knife are different for a reason, and one of them is really hard to use to kill someone.
And if a system keeps doing a thing, even if we close our eyes and insist it’s not supposed to, if for long enough this is not getting fixed, clearly it’s part of the system’s purpose.
The whole crypto sphere has been designed very clearly with libertarian-right ideas at the base. So it perpetuates libertarian-right power structures (“rich get richer”, etc). This is not going to lead to any more “freedom” in the world, because it never meant to. It meant to allow some select lucky few get stupid rich and powerful without going through the current structures of power.
At best, it’s a shake-up on top, not a revolution of the people. It’s sad so many idealistic people got caught in it.
how can something can be neither good or bad but not neutral.All knives can be used to harm someone. Majority of the rich people in the world have gotten rich because of their closeness to the government whether the US or Cuba, it’s how close you are the government that has made majority of the world’s rich where they are today and not any true entrepreneurial skill/their own private property.
maybe one day I will, you should read about all anarchist societies that have ever existed/that still exist and all works published by authors who predicted the end of capitalism
Yeah, like Graeber. “Debt: First 5000 Years” is very much on-topic here. He goes deep into how pre-market societies worked and how capitalism came to be (and tears apart the founding myths of economy in the process). Fascinating read.
Problem is, cryptocurrencies are intrinsically capitalist. They support and perpetuate capitalist power structures. Consider this:
Our analysis reports that, despite the heavy emphasis on decentralization in cryptocurrencies, the wealth distribution remains in-line with the real-world economies, with the exception of Dash. We also report that 3 of the observed cryptocurrencies (Dogecoin, ZCash, and Ethereum Classic) violate the honest majority assumption with less than 100 participants controlling over 51% wealth in the ecosystem, potentially indicating a security threat. This suggests that the free-market fundamentalism doctrine may be inadequate in countering wealth inequality within a crypto-economic context: Algorithmically driven free-market implementation of these cryptocurrencies may eventually lead to wealth inequality similar to those observed in real-world economies.
Yeah, like Graeber. “Debt: First 5000 Years” is very much on-topic here. He goes deep into how pre-market societies worked and how capitalism came to be (and tears apart the founding myths of economy in the process). Fascinating read.
Yay another book written by some guy that complains about modern society makes broad generalizations about human nature and money, idealizes pre-industrial societies and complains about capitalism without offering any real alternative but basically just saying we can do better just what the world needed.
Problem is, cryptocurrencies are intrinsically capitalist. They support and perpetuate capitalist power structures. Consider this:
there are not intrinisically capitalist because they use subsidies and other things non existent in a perfectly free market nor is it surprising the wealth distribution of crypto is uneven since most people don’t use them as a replacement to fiat/even know of them at all never mind the fact that you can freely purchase them from a exchange and nothing stops one from doing so
The banking system is fully regulated as you’ve pointed out but it’s full to the brim with criminals many of them with the formal blessing of the state so regulation wouldn’t solve anything. No one can force people to do the right thing over and over we tell newcomers to run your node, do due diligence on development teams, read the terms and conditions of the dapps you use, don’t store your keys on exchanges/in the cloud etc and people don’t listen just like how governments have warned people for centuries about drugs and people have ruined themselves and their families.
You asked what can one do, I answered. I’ve been doing my part about the financial sector. Perhaps it’s time you do yours about the cryptoscams, instead of insisting nothing can be done.
I can’t force developers to stop working on bad projects I can only withhold funding from them and encourage others to do the same it’s not my responsibility to ensure that no scams exist because that would be impossible I can only guide people to the information and the decision to use/not to use is up to them
fuck off it with your claims about whataboutism i just said I don’t use/nor provide support to any of the applications/blockchains mentioned just like the traditional finance world there are risks are involved and it is your responsibility to avoid scams and the best sources of information on scams what a joke there are so many well written blogs, academic papers and podcasts etc that go into detail all about what’s wrong in the space from people who are actually knowledgeable about distributed systems and economics some of what is even there aren’t scams but just news about people not/accepting crypto, bug releases and user stupidity
i just said I don’t use/nor provide support to any of the applications/blockchains mentioned just like the traditional finance world there are risks are involved and it is your responsibility to avoid scams and the best sources of information on scams
Sorry, whataboutism and No True Scotsman. Right, you do use both.
I have not seen you say which chains/solutions you do support. Every time I provided sources on how screwed up a particular popular one (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc) is, you just move the goalposts (“I don’t support that particular one”), while hand-waving about “traditional finance”.
Fact of the matter is: one has way less chance of getting screwed out of their money in traditional finance than in crypto. And, if that does happens, one has way more chance of getting their money back, and of getting the scammers brought to justice. It’s far from perfect, and far too many people still get scammed. But it’s orders of magnitude safer than crypto.
Now, if you’d like to perhaps be explicit for once (other than dropping f-bombs) and commit to saying what exactly do you support, instead of constantly moving the goalposts, that would be great.
You pointed out that btc mining is dominated by a few groups that is irrelevant as they cannot mint more than 21 million btc into existence unless all miners voted to undo this which they aren’t very likely to do because their votes have to take into consideration all constituents of the chain since they derive their income from them even if they decided to do that I could still just choose to use a version of the chain that does enforce the rule/use another existing chain/even create another currency myself in the traditional finance world if my country’s central bank decides to raise their inflation rate to 50% I cannot remain on a version of the currency that maintains the 7% inflation rate in a lot of developing countries around the world central banks do exactly this and citizens have zero means of recourse yes they could the usd, euro etc but the government could expropriate this as well and this has happened in argentina and other states.
I support btc, cardano, ergo, oxen monero and nym none of which are listed in the op. Decentralised finance because of the decentralised nature obviously doesn’t have the same legal protections and other advantages of traditional finance and this is known from the getgo just like with traditional finance you’re told the benefits and drawbacks and it’s up you the user to make your choice no one in either sphere is holding a gun to your head saying you must use my particular bank/blockchain/defi application for defi you can have the option of being able to view/modify the source code of the blockchain/smart contracts ( the only notable exception to this being legal tender where states compel you to use a particular currency/ies whether fiat/crypto to pay debts, fees and taxes in)
I can recognize this is a serious problem. I can push politicians to help regulate it. I can (and I have) work with NGOs and journalists to reveal corrupt banksters. I can then demand them being punished.
Or, I could call people names and try to change the subject to problems in some other kind of system.
One of these is ethical. The other is called “being an enabler”.
Also, let’s make two more things clear:
How a piece of technology is designed influences what it’s good for. A butter knife and a butcher’s knife are different for a reason, and one of them is really hard to use to kill someone.
And if a system keeps doing a thing, even if we close our eyes and insist it’s not supposed to, if for long enough this is not getting fixed, clearly it’s part of the system’s purpose.
The whole crypto sphere has been designed very clearly with libertarian-right ideas at the base. So it perpetuates libertarian-right power structures (“rich get richer”, etc). This is not going to lead to any more “freedom” in the world, because it never meant to. It meant to allow some select lucky few get stupid rich and powerful without going through the current structures of power.
At best, it’s a shake-up on top, not a revolution of the people. It’s sad so many idealistic people got caught in it.
how can something can be neither good or bad but not neutral.All knives can be used to harm someone. Majority of the rich people in the world have gotten rich because of their closeness to the government whether the US or Cuba, it’s how close you are the government that has made majority of the world’s rich where they are today and not any true entrepreneurial skill/their own private property.
You really gotta read some Graeber.
maybe one day I will, you should read about all anarchist societies that have ever existed/that still exist and all works published by authors who predicted the end of capitalism
Yeah, like Graeber. “Debt: First 5000 Years” is very much on-topic here. He goes deep into how pre-market societies worked and how capitalism came to be (and tears apart the founding myths of economy in the process). Fascinating read.
Problem is, cryptocurrencies are intrinsically capitalist. They support and perpetuate capitalist power structures. Consider this:
Yay another book written by some guy that complains about modern society makes broad generalizations about human nature and money, idealizes pre-industrial societies and complains about capitalism without offering any real alternative but basically just saying we can do better just what the world needed.
there are not intrinisically capitalist because they use subsidies and other things non existent in a perfectly free market nor is it surprising the wealth distribution of crypto is uneven since most people don’t use them as a replacement to fiat/even know of them at all never mind the fact that you can freely purchase them from a exchange and nothing stops one from doing so
I vaguely remember how in some other thread someone insisted I read a whitepaper before I comment on a thing. You know them perhaps? 🤣
You might want to read up a bit about the difference between the terms “capitalism” and “free market”.
Anyway, that was fun. Let’s do it again some time.
Yes and you never did that so why should I act in good faith and do the same for you
My mistake I should’ve said a capitalist market economy
The banking system is fully regulated as you’ve pointed out but it’s full to the brim with criminals many of them with the formal blessing of the state so regulation wouldn’t solve anything. No one can force people to do the right thing over and over we tell newcomers to run your node, do due diligence on development teams, read the terms and conditions of the dapps you use, don’t store your keys on exchanges/in the cloud etc and people don’t listen just like how governments have warned people for centuries about drugs and people have ruined themselves and their families.
You asked what can one do, I answered. I’ve been doing my part about the financial sector. Perhaps it’s time you do yours about the cryptoscams, instead of insisting nothing can be done.
I can’t force developers to stop working on bad projects I can only withhold funding from them and encourage others to do the same it’s not my responsibility to ensure that no scams exist because that would be impossible I can only guide people to the information and the decision to use/not to use is up to them
And yet you focus on whataboutism after somebody posts one of the best sources of information about recent cryptoscams.
fuck off it with your claims about whataboutism i just said I don’t use/nor provide support to any of the applications/blockchains mentioned just like the traditional finance world there are risks are involved and it is your responsibility to avoid scams and the best sources of information on scams what a joke there are so many well written blogs, academic papers and podcasts etc that go into detail all about what’s wrong in the space from people who are actually knowledgeable about distributed systems and economics some of what is even there aren’t scams but just news about people not/accepting crypto, bug releases and user stupidity
Bad form, really.
Sorry, whataboutism and No True Scotsman. Right, you do use both.
I have not seen you say which chains/solutions you do support. Every time I provided sources on how screwed up a particular popular one (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc) is, you just move the goalposts (“I don’t support that particular one”), while hand-waving about “traditional finance”.
Fact of the matter is: one has way less chance of getting screwed out of their money in traditional finance than in crypto. And, if that does happens, one has way more chance of getting their money back, and of getting the scammers brought to justice. It’s far from perfect, and far too many people still get scammed. But it’s orders of magnitude safer than crypto.
Now, if you’d like to perhaps be explicit for once (other than dropping f-bombs) and commit to saying what exactly do you support, instead of constantly moving the goalposts, that would be great.
You pointed out that btc mining is dominated by a few groups that is irrelevant as they cannot mint more than 21 million btc into existence unless all miners voted to undo this which they aren’t very likely to do because their votes have to take into consideration all constituents of the chain since they derive their income from them even if they decided to do that I could still just choose to use a version of the chain that does enforce the rule/use another existing chain/even create another currency myself in the traditional finance world if my country’s central bank decides to raise their inflation rate to 50% I cannot remain on a version of the currency that maintains the 7% inflation rate in a lot of developing countries around the world central banks do exactly this and citizens have zero means of recourse yes they could the usd, euro etc but the government could expropriate this as well and this has happened in argentina and other states. I support btc, cardano, ergo, oxen monero and nym none of which are listed in the op. Decentralised finance because of the decentralised nature obviously doesn’t have the same legal protections and other advantages of traditional finance and this is known from the getgo just like with traditional finance you’re told the benefits and drawbacks and it’s up you the user to make your choice no one in either sphere is holding a gun to your head saying you must use my particular bank/blockchain/defi application for defi you can have the option of being able to view/modify the source code of the blockchain/smart contracts ( the only notable exception to this being legal tender where states compel you to use a particular currency/ies whether fiat/crypto to pay debts, fees and taxes in)