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So I did a lot of reading into IPFS (Inter Planetary File System) and find it a non-starter.
It seems like a good idea, almost like Bittorrent for the entire Internet. You run the program, host files, people needing those files can retrieve them from those closest to them, etc.
But the key comes with the motivation to host files. I kept looking for the motivation and kept hitting the wall of "community" and "for the good of all" type of talk. Is this what's being taught to the millenials? Create a project. Tell people it's good for the community....
....success!
Bitcoin has an embedded motivator. Those that get involved early, get some bitcoins. The reward structure is built to encourage early adopters and then through that early adoption they are then incentivised to build and promote Bitcoin to make money. The miners who mine bitcoins are incentivised to run their miners in exchange for receiving money. There is motivation rewarded by money at every level.
If Bitcoin were started by Satoshi and there was no reward, just "hey gang, let's do it for the community because the Federal Reserve is bad" then it would just be a white paper with a github account of code.
It seems like a good idea, almost like Bittorrent for the entire Internet. You run the program, host files, people needing those files can retrieve them from those closest to them, etc.
But the key comes with the motivation to host files. I kept looking for the motivation and kept hitting the wall of "community" and "for the good of all" type of talk. Is this what's being taught to the millenials? Create a project. Tell people it's good for the community....
....success!Bitcoin has an embedded motivator. Those that get involved early, get some bitcoins. The reward structure is built to encourage early adopters and then through that early adoption they are then incentivised to build and promote Bitcoin to make money. The miners who mine bitcoins are incentivised to run their miners in exchange for receiving money. There is motivation rewarded by money at every level.
If Bitcoin were started by Satoshi and there was no reward, just "hey gang, let's do it for the community because the Federal Reserve is bad" then it would just be a white paper with a github account of code.
I have been thinking quite a bit about these exact issues the last couple days, catalyzed by the excellent George Gilder interview that jbreher linked.
It seems to me that, ironically, the geek altruism of the early internet doomed us to the mess we have today. The early internet was awesome, don't get me wrong, tons of geeks creating tools and content, hosting their own shit, and giving it away for free. It fostered a huge explosion of creativity and was a lot of fun. The problem is; these sorts of hippie utopias, as pleasant as they are to inhabit, do not scale. At some point the bills need to get paid. It is one thing when you are hosting a few videos "for the community" and getting a few hits a day, when the thing blows up into youtube the Covad bill gets a little large.
But since it all started with content, services and tools being "free" (in the beginning they really were, the ads came later) we got it in our heads that we were never going to pay for shit...because stuff on the internet is free. So now here we are, the FAANGs have gobbled up every creative initiative and found "other ways" to pay the bills...ways that it turns out are even more distasteful than just paying for what you consume.
I agree Elwar, you can never go wrong betting on greed, and Satoshi understood this. The greed based game theory built into Bitcoin is what makes it anti-fragile. As for the rest of the internet...it's real utility diminishes daily. We really need to tear it down to the studs and start over.
