Beyond Bitcoin: Decentralising other public institutions

[Revalin]

This is a great idea. Instead of having to pay for expensive hosting at a data center (OK its not too expensive, I pay around $20 a month with Dreamhost).... Why can't we develop a protocol through which you could host your own website, from your home internet? Tech nerds, is this feasible? That would really open the web up IMO.

You already can, and many do.  I did for a long time, but these days a VPS is cheaper than the electricity to run a computer.

[bitconformist]

I thought of this too, but in reality it always ends in clusterfuck.

The only true democracy would be all people voting on every single issue ever, always. And it would be entirely possible too if you could see public verifiable votes on everything, and whatever you vote with (phone app, computer) can also recount and confirm your vote later on. 

BUT then you start to realize... the majority of people are fucking idiots. And the system would devolve into everyone voting however lady gaga does... and then we are all wearing government mandated meat suits by friday.

Sooo really, the true answer to politics would be actual engineers and professors voting on things, but thats never going to happen.



Bitcoins as well has "ended in clusterfuck" in my eyes. Its a hackers wet dream, and the theft and hacking will only get worse and worse until bitcoins are worthless and they stop trying.

i have pondered doing just that.

its kind of simple really. all you do is have a neighborhood issue themselves private keys, one per person that is eligible to vote. each neighborhood would have voting inspectors. then in each state, all the neighborhood voting inspectors report to the state voting office. then each state reports to the national voting office. to vote for something, all you do is sign a document that states your wishes or something.

to ensure there is only 1 vote per person, you test their dna, you do not keep any information other than the dna, no names or pictures or anything, because you don't need it. all you do is show up at the neighborhood voting office, they take your dna, and you give them your public key. they would not accept dna that they did not witness firsthand.

so heres the proces,
show up at the local voting office
give them your dna and a public key

in the case of twins, both must show up at the same time, they will have separate keys, but they will be able to have 2 keys per 1 dna.

I'm not giving my DNA to the feds. It took long enough to make them delete my SSN - why would I want them to be able to clone me?!

[ctoon6]

I'm not giving my DNA to the feds. It took long enough to make them delete my SSN - why would I want them to be able to clone me?!

dna is worthless if you have nothing else with it. for example, if they found dna at a crime scene, and you were a registered voter, they would see the dna in the database, but still have no idea whos it was, so it does not matter, because you never gave them  name or anything.

[Surawit]

I don't think you understand how medicine works. Doctors have to train hard to diagnose correctly and provide a solution to the diagnosis (You say misdiagnosis happens all the time but this is a fallacy. For every case of misdiagnosis that has a bad outcome such as death there are hundreds, if not not thousands, of correct diagnoses, the difference being that the incorrect diagnoses are the only ones you hear about). Your opinion that doctors have no accountability is also a complete load of bollocks. If people die, the health body will want to know why, assuming you're living in a country with even an ounce of regulation. Fuck, even if it doesn't have a regulatory body because you're living somewhere like somalia, the family of the deceased are gonna be pretty fucking pissed too.

You also don't seem to understand how the free market works. The market only works because experts in their field have the knowledge and foresight to put shit into practice and do it correctly, as well as at an effective cost or rate of return. Getting together a bunch of idiots with no information about how to do anything and then suggesting that they could somehow do the same thing is a load of bunk. It's like suggesting that you could replace one expert in rocket science with 200 farmers and expect them to be able to solve equations about throat diameter and stagnation points on rocket engines from first principles.

Your "fact" about Wikipedia is also pretty much a lie. Wikipedia at this point is considered terrible by most educational institutions, and infact several of my friends at universities have reported that even citing wikipedia as a reliable source of information is likely to get that paper failed (at my universitiy it doesn't count as a fail but they do discard the information you obtained from it). I mean fuck, this can be demonstrated quite neatly by the fact that discussion pages about anime and the colour of ball hair are more popular and longer than articles on serious subjects such as Lift, Drag and Gravity or Medical conditions (which I note, have only been discovered, named, diagnosed and figured out by experts in medicine. I mean fuck, the article on "human assholes" actually had one of the longest discussions of all times because so many people deemed it important to argue about which picture of a human butt should be used on the article.

Firstly, many of the issues you identified are CAUSED by the lack of a free market: in EDUCATION. If there was a free market in education, you wouldn't have the problem of the select few monopolising everything (monopolies are impossible in a free market).
Medicine is particularly bad field for this, the AMA acts like  the most bullying strongarm union there is, competent medical professionals are NOT ALLOWED to call themselves 'Doctors' just because they haven't paid their union dues aka med 'school' fees. These college courses you insist upon are little more than madrassas for big pharma... Opening up the healthcare to the free market with my cryptohealthcare scheme  will:
1. Enhance CHOICE and quality of care. All your traditional doctors will still be around, plus there will be more alternative practictioners. Increasing choice can ONLY improve the quality of healthcare available.
2. Encourage INNOVATION. Significant medical advances made these days are often borrowed from tribal societies (e.g. ear candling, reiki). However these therapies are treated with disdain and slander by the doctors who see them only as a threat to their profit margins! People should be able to CHOOSE which practictioner to use without the government propagandising for one group.

[Wildy]

I'm surprised that no-one's mentioned Freenet yet - it is effectively the decentralized internet that people are mentioning. The client allocates a certain portion of your disk (you specify this, default is 10GB) and then web data is stored on your machine. If someone wants to browse the site then it retrieves this data from the nearest peers.

[ctoon6]

there is an issue with medicine, and that it deals directly with the lives of the people they deal with. i would agree that the system in the US is costly and inefficient.

now a specific issue, people work by motivation, they work good and hard if they get paid well, and doctors in the US are paid well, and i very much like it that way. because if they did not get paid well, what is the motivation. in my mind, the last thing you do is cut how much they make. instead you work on making medical equipment and medicine priced better through shortening the length of time a company can hold a patent.

a short simple example

diabetic test strips cost around $1 each. you need a brand new one every time you test your blood sugar. you need to check it around 3 times a day. thats $90 a month for 30 days and $1000 a year for 360 days. now the medicine, average 2 separate doses per day, that's 2 syringes  a day, about $25 per 200 or so. some figures show $8 a day on actual insulin.

so lets add all that up

8+
.25
3

$11.25 per day
337 per month
4000 per year

thats just medical supplies, not including bi yearly vistits, and these numbers can be much higher, depending on how severe your diabetes is. and this is why i argue for cheaper supplies, because we all know they cost a lot less than that to make.

[ctoon6]

I'm surprised that no-one's mentioned Freenet yet - it is effectively the decentralized internet that people are mentioning. The client allocates a certain portion of your disk (you specify this, default is 10GB) and then web data is stored on your machine. If someone wants to browse the site then it retrieves this data from the nearest peers.

there is no way id do that, you run huge risks of abuse and not to mention storing child porn. its another reason why id never run a tor node on my home connection. however i have considered getting an anonymous dedicated server somehow for tor.

[bitconformist]

I'm not giving my DNA to the feds. It took long enough to make them delete my SSN - why would I want them to be able to clone me?!

dna is worthless if you have nothing else with it. for example, if they found dna at a crime scene, and you were a registered voter, they would see the dna in the database, but still have no idea whos it was, so it does not matter, because you never gave them  name or anything.

So I walk into a facility with video cameras and donate a DNA sample and they have no way of knowing who I am?

[ctoon6]

I'm not giving my DNA to the feds. It took long enough to make them delete my SSN - why would I want them to be able to clone me?!

dna is worthless if you have nothing else with it. for example, if they found dna at a crime scene, and you were a registered voter, they would see the dna in the database, but still have no idea whos it was, so it does not matter, because you never gave them  name or anything.

So I walk into a facility with video cameras and donate a DNA sample and they have no way of knowing who I am?

why would there need to be video cameras? you could wear a mask.

[bitconformist]

I'm not giving my DNA to the feds. It took long enough to make them delete my SSN - why would I want them to be able to clone me?!

dna is worthless if you have nothing else with it. for example, if they found dna at a crime scene, and you were a registered voter, they would see the dna in the database, but still have no idea whos it was, so it does not matter, because you never gave them  name or anything.

So I walk into a facility with video cameras and donate a DNA sample and they have no way of knowing who I am?

why would there need to be video cameras? you could wear a mask.

The federal government? They love video cameras. Every single federal building is festooned with cameras.

You cannot enter a federal building wearing a mask. Security will not let you in.

[onesalt]

I don't think you understand how medicine works. Doctors have to train hard to diagnose correctly and provide a solution to the diagnosis (You say misdiagnosis happens all the time but this is a fallacy. For every case of misdiagnosis that has a bad outcome such as death there are hundreds, if not not thousands, of correct diagnoses, the difference being that the incorrect diagnoses are the only ones you hear about). Your opinion that doctors have no accountability is also a complete load of bollocks. If people die, the health body will want to know why, assuming you're living in a country with even an ounce of regulation. Fuck, even if it doesn't have a regulatory body because you're living somewhere like somalia, the family of the deceased are gonna be pretty fucking pissed too.

You also don't seem to understand how the free market works. The market only works because experts in their field have the knowledge and foresight to put shit into practice and do it correctly, as well as at an effective cost or rate of return. Getting together a bunch of idiots with no information about how to do anything and then suggesting that they could somehow do the same thing is a load of bunk. It's like suggesting that you could replace one expert in rocket science with 200 farmers and expect them to be able to solve equations about throat diameter and stagnation points on rocket engines from first principles.

Your "fact" about Wikipedia is also pretty much a lie. Wikipedia at this point is considered terrible by most educational institutions, and infact several of my friends at universities have reported that even citing wikipedia as a reliable source of information is likely to get that paper failed (at my universitiy it doesn't count as a fail but they do discard the information you obtained from it). I mean fuck, this can be demonstrated quite neatly by the fact that discussion pages about anime and the colour of ball hair are more popular and longer than articles on serious subjects such as Lift, Drag and Gravity or Medical conditions (which I note, have only been discovered, named, diagnosed and figured out by experts in medicine. I mean fuck, the article on "human assholes" actually had one of the longest discussions of all times because so many people deemed it important to argue about which picture of a human butt should be used on the article.

Firstly, many of the issues you identified are CAUSED by the lack of a free market: in EDUCATION. If there was a free market in education, you wouldn't have the problem of the select few monopolising everything (monopolies are impossible in a free market).
Medicine is particularly bad field for this, the AMA acts like  the most bullying strongarm union there is, competent medical professionals are NOT ALLOWED to call themselves 'Doctors' just because they haven't paid their union dues aka med 'school' fees. These college courses you insist upon are little more than madrassas for big pharma... Opening up the healthcare to the free market with my cryptohealthcare scheme  will:
1. Enhance CHOICE and quality of care. All your traditional doctors will still be around, plus there will be more alternative practictioners. Increasing choice can ONLY improve the quality of healthcare available.
2. Encourage INNOVATION. Significant medical advances made these days are often borrowed from tribal societies (e.g. ear candling, reiki). However these therapies are treated with disdain and slander by the doctors who see them only as a threat to their profit margins! People should be able to CHOOSE which practictioner to use without the government propagandising for one group.

Oh I see, you're trolling. As soon as you mentioned "monopolies are impossible in a free market" and stating that ear candling is a valid medical procedure I realised this.

[ctoon6]

I'm not giving my DNA to the feds. It took long enough to make them delete my SSN - why would I want them to be able to clone me?!

dna is worthless if you have nothing else with it. for example, if they found dna at a crime scene, and you were a registered voter, they would see the dna in the database, but still have no idea whos it was, so it does not matter, because you never gave them  name or anything.

So I walk into a facility with video cameras and donate a DNA sample and they have no way of knowing who I am?

why would there need to be video cameras? you could wear a mask.

The federal government? They love video cameras. Every single federal building is festooned with cameras.

You cannot enter a federal building wearing a mask. Security will not let you in.

i dont know where you live, but here in st louis, almost every government building i have ever been in lacked security guards. also, my idea was not for the current situation, but one where current ideas we think of now as sound, are being debated and floating around in limbo. for example, cameras.

[bitconformist]

I'm not giving my DNA to the feds. It took long enough to make them delete my SSN - why would I want them to be able to clone me?!

dna is worthless if you have nothing else with it. for example, if they found dna at a crime scene, and you were a registered voter, they would see the dna in the database, but still have no idea whos it was, so it does not matter, because you never gave them  name or anything.

So I walk into a facility with video cameras and donate a DNA sample and they have no way of knowing who I am?

why would there need to be video cameras? you could wear a mask.

The federal government? They love video cameras. Every single federal building is festooned with cameras.

You cannot enter a federal building wearing a mask. Security will not let you in.

i dont know where you live, but here in st louis, almost every government building i have ever been in lacked security guards. also, my idea was not for the current situation, but one where current ideas we think of now as sound, are being debated and floating around in limbo. for example, cameras.

Identity isn't the only problem. In a few decades they may be able to clone me from that sample. I won't even be able to own my own self!

[ctoon6]

I'm not giving my DNA to the feds. It took long enough to make them delete my SSN - why would I want them to be able to clone me?!

dna is worthless if you have nothing else with it. for example, if they found dna at a crime scene, and you were a registered voter, they would see the dna in the database, but still have no idea whos it was, so it does not matter, because you never gave them  name or anything.

So I walk into a facility with video cameras and donate a DNA sample and they have no way of knowing who I am?

why would there need to be video cameras? you could wear a mask.

The federal government? They love video cameras. Every single federal building is festooned with cameras.

You cannot enter a federal building wearing a mask. Security will not let you in.

i dont know where you live, but here in st louis, almost every government building i have ever been in lacked security guards. also, my idea was not for the current situation, but one where current ideas we think of now as sound, are being debated and floating around in limbo. for example, cameras.

Identity isn't the only problem. In a few decades they may be able to clone me from that sample. I won't even be able to own my own self!

may be able to, current technology for cloning is nothing like people think. clones are made today to my knowledge by fertilizing eggs with the same "seed" over and over. so a clone is nothing more than a duplicate with very similar dna or identical dna. so you could probably classify twins as clones if you tried hard enough. also, it would be very difficult and likely impossible to make a duplicate from data from dna. we can clone things because we have direct access to the person or animal.

your right though, we may be able to make a person from scratch with nothing other than their dna.

[oneforall]

sorry if it has been mentioned, but decentralized, open-source voting seems like it would be a jolly good time.

[ctoon6]

sorry if it has been mentioned, but decentralized, open-source voting seems like it would be a jolly good time.

in the thread i said some stuff on it, and you can also read how its a bad idea to some people as well.

[Dinoking]

What we need is a true internet based world wide democracy. Plus a free unlimited internet with free automaticaly created moon made drone/computers.

You take this: http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

Upgrade it to self create itself and send one to the moon.

The Moon machines make a drone that is also a computer for personal use.

Shoot that back to earth with a rail gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun

Boom everyone has a computer/internet/phone and the ability to learn and vote at the same level as the most well off nations for everyone on the planet.

[Dinoking]

Also the bitcoin technology modified would be good for making a internet voting system that cant be easily hacker.

Just make a fork where everyone gets 1 coin and sends that to their candidate/issue choice's address.

Then votes will all be comfirmed with no hanging chads