Bitcoin is not democratic

[hdbuck]

"There is no universe where Bitcoin is democratic."

Bitcoin, by design, is not democratic. No matter how many times you try and assert that it is, it is not, and it never will be. And it is also not socialist.
Removing all of the fascinating, revolutionary technical details, the core of Bitcoin is that it is voluntary and the transactions and ledger entries made with it are mediated by a computer programme. You choose, as a free human being, to download the required software, use Bitcoin and be bound by the nework’s fixed rules.
There is no voting involved, no coercion, no obligation, social or otherwise to use it. You are not even required to donate your CPU and bandwidth to the Bitcoin network in exchange for using it. When you use Bitcoin, you volunteer to use it. It is as simple as that.

Whole read here: https://medium.com/@beautyon_/bitcoin-is-not-democratic-81f87158250a#.jijcvs56h



That is all.

[Daniel91]

Bitcoin idea is not about democratic but financial freedom.
If I want democracy I will vote for political party at election.
If I want financial freedom I will invest in Bitcoin

[Mickeyb]

I'm sure about 60% of the people know about this, and the other half don't care about this at all. Old information FFS

[bambou]

I'm sure about 60% of the people know about this, and the other half don't care about this at all. Old information FFS

Old news it is, yet redditards, forkers and coffee tippers keep on eluding this simple fact.

This should be pined imo.

[tyz]

Who has ever claimed that Bitcoin is a democratic system? Definitely, no serious person. A democratic system gives everybody the same weight. Bitcoin remembers me more on an oligarchy.

[tyz]

This would mean that each person on earth would get exactly 0.003 BTC. But this works only for the currently existing people. What is about the additional millions and millions of people in the future which will live on this planet.

Bitcoin would be a democracy if 21 million coins will be distributed equally to all people on earth.

[RealBitcoin]

Bitcoin is NOT democratic and it should NOT be .

Or would you like garbage collectors, sweatshop workers and street cleaners to vote on programming and engineering issues? I don't think so.

Bitcoin is an ideal capitalist consensus system, you vote with your money and value, not with your ignorance and emotions

[RodeoX]

Bitcoin was not created to make the poor rich and bring voting rights to the disenfranchised. It's fair money and fair means you get the same shot as all other users. It does not mean you get something for nothing.

Math is amoral. Not evil or good, amoral.

[Blawpaw]

Bitcoin was never intended to be democratic. IMO, Satoshi's own vision of democracy was that it is an imperfect form of social organization and that decentralization and financial freedom should follow.

[Paracelsus]

Bitcoin is just anti NWO and that is enough..
This is people money!

[Lituation]

We don't expect Bitcoin to be democratic!? Democracy is overrated, get over it. Some people decide what happens in the world. It's like that since first man on earth. You can't change human nature.

Bitcoin was not created to make the poor rich and bring voting rights to the disenfranchised. It's fair money and fair means you get the same shot as all other users. It does not mean you get something for nothing.

Math is amoral. Not evil or good, amoral.

That's exactly what I think. Some people try to change the definition of Bitcoin based on their political beliefs. Bitcoin is over your biased opinions.

[RealBitcoin]

We don't expect Bitcoin to be democratic!? Democracy is overrated, get over it. Some people decide what happens in the world. It's like that since first man on earth. You can't change human nature.

Bitcoin was not created to make the poor rich and bring voting rights to the disenfranchised. It's fair money and fair means you get the same shot as all other users. It does not mean you get something for nothing.

Math is amoral. Not evil or good, amoral.

That's exactly what I think. Some people try to change the definition of Bitcoin based on their political beliefs. Bitcoin is over your biased opinions.

Democracy is a nonsense that is dreamed by leftists who are bored and have nothing to do but fantasize.

What we need is capitalism, a system based on merit and value, that can be measured by capital => How much money you have.

That is a simple ranking system, that show's your value.

We have to abandon a system where a drunken drug addict fool has the same right's as a brilliant genius inventor. It's not fair.

[catch.me.if.you.can]

The money itself is not democratic. Democracy means: Everyone must have the same amount of property.

[DooMAD]

At the risk of interrupting the crony-capitalist-circle-jerk here, it's not exactly a truly capitalist system if you resort to protectionism the moment a competitor threatens your bottom line.  If you're so certain it's not a democracy and is, in fact, a free market, what are you so afraid of?   

[unamis76]

Pretty interesting article. I think most of the confusion comes from the fact that democracy is voluntary, and not so much from not knowing the concept of democracy/democratic. More exactly, the willingness to participate in it is voluntary: just like Bitcoin.

[lottery248]

explicitly, china monopolized majority of the hashing power, thus bitcoin isn't democractic at all. we would really need more people to be expected to be with bitcoin in order to get the bitcoin to be democratic again. y u self-moderated your thread?

[franky1]

the bitcoin code itself has no political weight. it has no mind or soul. it just communicates to whatever else is out there set to the same settings as itself.

but the devs who do have minds and souls are hinting that its voluntary to use bitcoin, this equally is the same as saying it is voluntary to not use bitcoin.
which some devs teams who are hell bent on power grab will twist that notion of voluntary use to say if you dont like the dictator decisions of our plan your free to "F*ck off"
.. not free to F*ck off to a different implementation.. they want you to just give up ever using bitcoin if you dont choose their code.

so it seems the devs are trying to be dictators. by suggesting that people shouldnt be free to choose differing implementations and instead thir mindset is the devs one-way street or "go away"(dictatorship). under the pretense that its a voluntary decision to use the software or not be part of bitcoin.

if they want total freedom.. then the devs should allow total freedom. and not be on the power grab of their way or no way..
the good thing about code is that code doesnt care. so if users chose a different route and the majority has all slightly different implementations, yet all happy talk to each other on the same chain. then whichever dev team loses whom doesnt fit the same rules becomes incompatible. and if that incompatible implementation group of devs wants to remain part of the chain, they have to adapt to the consensus of the users.

and it doesnt take much for devs to adapt by changing their code to get back in sync with the rules the consensus has chosen.

so remember its not a "choose us or F*ck off" dictatorship..
its a choose what you like and let the consensus make the decision. then the losing dev team can adapt or F*ck off

[johnyj]

The purpose of democracy is still for centralized management, but bitcoin is the first time we had a decentralized management to its root. (Github is centrally controlled by the core commiter thus it is also a centrally managed system, but in bitcoin the core commiter can not push in a change without the consent of the other users of the system)

So I think the decision making process in bitcoin will be very lengthy and slow, any major change is almost impossible to carry out without super majority support. In most of the time, it will just stay at its current status and no change will be accepted by its users (as long as the current version works). But this is a good thing because it prevented its economy from being affected by change, change is bad for financial systems since it brings risk

[YoonYeonghwa]

The people that made Bitcoin decide on everything. We have no say.

[JosNekoKopa]

Bitcoin have nothing in common with social system..
This is just coin and can be successfully used in communism as well in capitalism.