Bitcoin is being invaded by Leftists

[franky1]

Democracy needs a central authority to enforce the vote system. Bitcoin is not a democracy, it's a voluntary voting system based on the individual's wish

the network is made up by the individuals. agreed and by connecting nodes together they form their own decentralized system without a corporate dictator or human leader.
emphasis distributed/diverse authority
however you and carlton want blockstream to be the central dictatorship removing the individual voting.

no one owns the network nor should own the network in the future.

stop flip flopping in the hope of gaining peoples favour into loving blockstream as a dictator

So an oligarchy of a few 100 people is preferable, where they have the right expertise, each one can correct the error of the others,and nobody can become a monarch

1 oligarchy is the same as a monarchy/authoritatian/dictatorship (EG royal FAMILY)(EG banking partnership)(EG UK conservative party)
we should atleast continue to have MANY GROUPS where they have the right expertise, each one can correct the error of the others,and nobody can become a monarch.

[DooMAD]

So an oligarchy of a few 100 people is preferable, where they have the right expertise, each one can correct the error of the others,and nobody can become a monarch

Really?  You want to impose an oligarchy?  Oligarchy is an authoritarian power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people.  That's what you're advocating right now.  One stop short of a full-blown dictatorship.

The majority of people would abandon this space in a heartbeat if that's what Bitcoin ever became.  Your oligarchy would have full control over a completely worthless coin.  Just like Ripple.

Seriously, fuck that.

[Carlton Banks]

So an oligarchy of a few 100 people is preferable, where they have the right expertise, each one can correct the error of the others,and nobody can become a monarch

Really?  You want to impose an oligarchy?  Oligarchy is an authoritarian power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people.  That's what you're advocating right now.  One stop short of a full-blown dictatorship.

The majority of people would abandon this space in a heartbeat if that's what Bitcoin ever became.  Your oligarchy would have full control over a completely worthless coin.  Just like Ripple.

Seriously, fuck that.

But your picture is not accurate either. You cannot seriously compare the hard-forking mechanism as equivalent to a democratic system. It's an emergency feature, i.e BREAK CONSENSUS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY type of device. By telling people it's a democracy, you're encouraging the entitlement that lay-people should be making design decisions. They should not.

If Bitcoin development got infiltrated by crazies wanting to introduce ID tracking or permanent inflation, sure, break the glass and sound the alarm. And isn't it obvious that people trolling Bitcoin are always going to be claiming that it's time for the emergency split? Be careful what you wish for when promoting Bitcoin hard-forks as a democratic mechanism, that is an abuse of the system.

[franky1]

But your picture is not accurate either. You cannot seriously compare the hard-forking mechanism as equivalent to a democratic system. It's an emergency feature, i.e BREAK CONSENSUS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY type of device. By telling people it's a democracy, you're encouraging the entitlement that lay-people should be making design decisions. They should not.

If Bitcoin development got infiltrated by crazies wanting to introduce ID tracking or permanent inflation, sure, break the glass and sound the alarm. And isn't it obvious that people trolling Bitcoin are always going to be claiming that it's time for the emergency split? Be careful what you wish for when promoting Bitcoin hard-forks as a democratic mechanism, that is an abuse of the system.

OMG (facepalm)
the "consensus mechanism" built into bitcoin since day one and your "hard-forking mechanism" are polar opposites.
bitcoin does not have a "hard-forking mechanism" to have a emergency break. people need to code in a node ban list. to break consensus.

no one has proposed a split (hard break). apart from blockstream who say if you dont want dictatorship split to an altcoin.
all other implementations want to USE the CONSENSUS to stick with one chain, with no corporate controlling dictatorship.

please learn consensus

bitcoin development is getting infiltrated by crazies wanting to introduce ID tracking or permanent inflation. its called blockstream.
even you want blockstream to increase the units of measure, then hide the inflation by rebranding how many units of measure constitute a btc.
even you want blockstream to have sidechains into the ID requiring hyperledger that blockstream are making with banks right now.
even you want blockstream to dictate terms of use of bitcoin and subverting anyones ability to vote in or out any blockstream feature.

your very hypocritical.

[RealBitcoin]

For instance, I think we all remember that video (recorded late 90's/early 2000's) where Friedman says "the internet will eventually produce a form of e-cash". He was right about that, and here we are.

Well not a big forecast, lemme tell you a few of my forecasts:

-Full Internet economy (eventually all jobs will be online)
-Internet based healthcare (whenever somebody has a seisure or a heart attack it will be shared online and the closes medical or first aid person  (or robot) will come to rescue)
-etc etc...

It's not hard to do these forecasts, once you have the genie out of the box, we will probably see AI robots walking among us being our new "slaves". It's pretty easy to forecast where society is going.

What I am worried about is the lack of utilizing technology to the maximum. I mean we have the internet for 21 years, and it took 14 years to invent bitcoin? It is pretty lame.

I guess the conditions werent right in the 90's but still , even though all this advancements, we are very slow.

Humans exist for 1 million years, and it took 995,000 years to start building a civilization, and amongs the 5000 years of civilization, it took 4700 years to have the indistrial revolution. And so on.

So human efficiency is very very low <1%, if you think about it. This makes you wonder how advanced alien civilizations could be, if they had a head start, didnt got hit by  huge meteors, and were more efficient in evolution.

I worry that we wont live to see this great technology utilized to it's maximum capacity. I mean we still have a freaking debate over hardfork, while in 10 years we will all look back at it, as a silly fiasco as it was. Bitcoin is just now starting to really grow: sidechains, LN, and others.

We are just now stepping out of the cradle,and there is a aloooooooooooooooooot of work to do in bitcoin, it is still very early stages despide 7 years of existence.

[RealBitcoin]

the network is made up by the individuals. agreed and by connecting nodes together they form their own decentralized system without a corporate dictator or human leader.
emphasis distributed/diverse authority
however you and carlton want blockstream to be the central dictatorship removing the individual voting.

no one owns the network nor should own the network in the future.

stop flip flopping in the hope of gaining peoples favour into loving blockstream as a dictator

Nobody owns the network, but certainly an oligarchy will own the majority of bitcoins. There wont be an authoritarian control over bitcoin, but there will be some influence from big bitcoin owners.

1 oligarchy is the same as a monarchy/authoritatian/dictatorship (EG royal FAMILY)(EG banking partnership)(EG UK conservative party)
we should atleast continue to have MANY GROUPS where they have the right expertise, each one can correct the error of the others,and nobody can become a monarch.

So an oligarchy of a few 100 people is preferable, where they have the right expertise, each one can correct the error of the others,and nobody can become a monarch

Really?  You want to impose an oligarchy?  Oligarchy is an authoritarian power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people.  That's what you're advocating right now.  One stop short of a full-blown dictatorship.

The majority of people would abandon this space in a heartbeat if that's what Bitcoin ever became.  Your oligarchy would have full control over a completely worthless coin.  Just like Ripple.

Seriously, fuck that.

No, it's the same as a company, where a minority of shareholders own the company. To our knowledge this is very efficient, since most companies hit billions with this structure.

While your silly labour unions and democratic companies can hardly make it to the top 500 companies.

[franky1]

No, it's the same as a company, where a minority of shareholders own the company. To our knowledge this is very efficient, since most companies hit billions with this structure.

While your silly labour unions and democratic companies can hardly make it to the top 500 companies.

and there is the revelation.
you only care about the share price. not the morals or ethics of the economy/community/industry.
you and carlton want enron 2.0, you care about enrons share price. not the worlds electrical utility, safety, diverse distribution
vs
the world wants multiple independent electrical companies that come to a consensus of how much electricity is sent down power cables.

[Carlton Banks]

the world wants multiple independent electrical companies that come to a consensus of how much electricity is sent down power cables.

Surely you're not trying to pretend that's how the price of electricity is set! Dear, dear me...

[franky1]

the world wants multiple independent electrical companies that come to a consensus of how much electricity is sent down power cables.

Surely you're not trying to pretend that's how the price of electricity is set! Dear, dear me...

i never mentioned price of electric.

reminder from earlier:
please learn consensus.

[DooMAD]

But your picture is not accurate either. You cannot seriously compare the hard-forking mechanism as equivalent to a democratic system. It's an emergency feature, i.e BREAK CONSENSUS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY type of device. By telling people it's a democracy, you're encouraging the entitlement that lay-people should be making design decisions. They should not.

If Bitcoin development got infiltrated by crazies wanting to introduce ID tracking or permanent inflation, sure, break the glass and sound the alarm. And isn't it obvious that people trolling Bitcoin are always going to be claiming that it's time for the emergency split? Be careful what you wish for when promoting Bitcoin hard-forks as a democratic mechanism, that is an abuse of the system.

Your reply got me curious as to whether or not I had ever directly called Bitcoin a democracy or a democratic system.  I do genuinely think of it as an open market because of the inherent weaknesses of democracy, and oligarchy, for that matter.  Such centralised systems are entirely too prone to corruption.  I trust the open market:

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?   

And when some users said they wanted Bitcoin to work more like a democracy, I was pretty quick to point out the shortcomings of that:

Though i would wish that the bitcoin blockchain and wallet development would work more like democracy. The head developer should agree to what the users want and implement that.

Eew, really?  We can do so much better than democracy in its present guise.  The leader of a nation should in theory agree to do what the public want, but that's rarely the case.  Democracy at the moment is where a bunch of wealthy individuals and companies fund the election campaigns to effectively buy the policies they like best.  Everyone else gets to choose the bought puppet they detest the least.  It's just corruption by another name.  I'd personally hate to see Bitcoin work more like that.

I did, however, say the opposite, in that democracy in the real world would work better if it behaved more like crypto:

The real problem isn't XT.  The real problem is that there is no good means to break a serious impasse. 

XT is a tiny problem - many alternatives exist to get bitcoin to scale.  But XT taught us one thing, Bitcoin is extremely fragile when the core devs can't naturally reach agreement in conversation.

It's not Bitcoin that's fragile per se, just the current prevailing, yet warped, concept of open-source that makes it appear so.  The fact that Bitcoin is both open-source and a consensus mechanism means that anyone can not only read the code, but also alter it and make their own clients with their own custom rules to govern the network.  However, these rules only come into being if enough users securing the network agree with them.  This is more powerful than most people realise. 

Anyone perceiving an alternate client with a fork proposal as a threat, or worse still, calling it an attempt at a coup or dictatorship, or thinking that all the core devs have to agree all the time has fundamentally misunderstood the concept of open-source decentralisation.  Just because the majority of the users securing the network agree that Bitcoin Core is the correct rule set to govern the network at the moment, it does not mean that this will always be so.  Being a developer for Bitcoin Core does not grant you any special power or authority over the network, nor should it. 

The definition of "consensus" in Bitcoin is not a single group of developers agreeing on a rule and the network enforcing it without question.  The true meaning of consensus is that any developer can propose a rule and the network chooses whether to enforce it or not.  Ergo, Bitcoin is inherently resistant to authoritarianism.  It would be incredibly difficult for a single developer to seize control or enforce rules that the majority disagree with.  It's actually quite beautiful and I can't wait for the rest of the world to catch on.  If politics and governance works in a similar fashion at some point in the future, we might have something that actually resembles the democracy we are supposedly meant to live in.

So yeah, I'm definitely not "telling people it's a democracy".  If anything, I want what we still delude ourselves into calling "democracy" in the outside world to be more like Bitcoin. 

Perhaps I'm just reading it the wrong way because you're effectively calling consensus itself an oligarchy.  To me that just feels perverse.   

There are no benevolent oligarchies.  Sooner or later they'll be initiating transfer of wealth into their own pockets by fair means or foul.  Just more corrupt centralisation by another name.

[RealBitcoin]

So yeah, I'm definitely not "telling people it's a democracy".  If anything, I want what we still delude ourselves into calling "democracy" in the outside world to be more like Bitcoin. 

Perhaps I'm just reading it the wrong way because you're effectively calling consensus itself an oligarchy.  To me that just feels perverse.   

There are no benevolent oligarchies.  Sooner or later they'll be initiating transfer of wealth into their own pockets by fair means or foul.  Just more corrupt centralisation by another name.

We have power division well structured in bitcoin, that is unlikely to happen. Bitcoin is not like a private central bank.

It is administered publicly by nodes voting in a voluntary matter, while you also have the expertise of the oligarchs who hold the majority of bitcoins steering it in the right direction.

It's their money, they have invested in it, of course they want the best to succeed for bitcoin, it's not altruism, it's greed, but it works, and bitcoin is 10 billion thanks to that.

So there are 2 major forces, in fact even 3 (if there is separation between miners & oligarchs):   nodes, miners & oligarchs.

And you also have minor forces like :  bitcoin media & bitcoin developers who hold less power and only influence indirectly.


Hardly a centralized system 

[DooMAD]

Hardly a centralized system 

But you can see how it could become centralised if development is centralised and you start trying to tell people what code they can and can't run.  Telling people what code they can and can't run is authoritarian.  There is literally no denying that.  Either trust the open market, or stop pretending you're a libertarian.

while you also have the expertise of the oligarchs who hold the majority of bitcoins steering it in the right direction.

The number of coins someone holds does not correlate to the amount of "expertise" they can demonstrate.  I don't care if they hold 1 coin or 1 million.  If they can't demonstrate the simple understanding that anyone is free to modify and run the code they want, they have no expertise and invested poorly.  And again, they should stop pretending they're a libertarian.

[franky1]

We have power division well structured in bitcoin, that is unlikely to happen. Bitcoin is not like a private central bank.

It is administered publicly by nodes voting in a voluntary matter, while you also have the expertise of the oligarchs who hold the majority of bitcoins steering it in the right direction.

It's their money, they have invested in it, of course they want the best to succeed for bitcoin, it's not altruism, it's greed, but it works, and bitcoin is 10 billion thanks to that.

So there are 2 major forces, in fact even 3 (if there is separation between miners & oligarchs):   nodes, miners & oligarchs.

And you also have minor forces like :  bitcoin media & bitcoin developers who hold less power and only influence indirectly.


Hardly a centralized system 

atleast you are now using words like
majority
public
and when talking about oligarchs you are using plural rather then singular.

lets see how long this lasts before you flip flop like carlton does.
also the devs dont hold the majority of coins. most devs have proven to be paid in fiat.

however, the general mindset of everyone: miners, pools, users and devs.
is that they should not want to screw with the network and lose their funds, big or small.
thus all should compromise to get to a majority agreement of the rules to all get the features they all want.

now if carlton drivels on about 2mb is bad. then he needs to read his blockstreams own desire of 4mb. which they deem safe

so while realbitcoin has had a realization:

2mb was the compromise and general agreement as of last year.(no need to bring up 8mb, 32mb, 100mb.. that debate died last year)
then this year blockstream vetoed and instead wanted 1mb base 4mb weight. refusing 2mb
so the logical compromise to get a consensus again is 2mb base 4mb weight. thus everyone gets what they want
and the bloat is within acceptable boundaries everyone agrees with.

then all the groups can simply concentrate on getting to this consensus where everyone is happy.
and then let the consensus activate when:
1) devs have coded, reviewed, tested and implemented a node with such.
2) nodes to then flag and attain a 95% acceptance of the nodes network wanting it. safe risk of orphans(under 5%)
3) followed by a grace period to reduce risk of orphans.
4) mining pools then review and implement theirs,
5) mining pools flag their blocks to show their acceptance after seeing the nodes acceptance, upto 95%
-- while (3)-(5) user nodes will be over 95% to even further reduce orphan risk).
6) mining pools still give themselves a grace period to reduce the minority orphans..
-- while (3)-(6) user nodes will be WELL over 95%, while (6) mining pools will be WELL over 95%to even further reduce orphan risk).
7) to eventually activate the rules.

-- and even then with the rules active. miners are not forced to only make blocks over 1mb

so the question is.
do you agree that if there is actual consensus. the network should grow? (with no --oppose-rule banning trick(intentional split))
or
do you prefer corporate dictatorship to avoid bitcoins main security feature(consensus), and cause every rule change to be a intentional split

[RealBitcoin]

But you can see how it could become centralised if development is centralised and you start trying to tell people what code they can and can't run.  Telling people what code they can and can't run is authoritarian.  There is literally no denying that.  Either trust the open market, or stop pretending you're a libertarian.

Nobody puts a gun to their head and forces them to use 1 version of bitcoin.

The number of coins someone holds does not correlate to the amount of "expertise" they can demonstrate.  I don't care if they hold 1 coin or 1 million.  If they can't demonstrate the simple understanding that anyone is free to modify and run the code they want, they have no expertise and invested poorly.  And again, they should stop pretending they're a libertarian.

But at least they have steak in it, and demonstrate long term loyalty since they are invested. Contrast that with the millions of other BTC users who hold barely coins and could flip-flop between ETH and other currencies, while preaching gospel to bitcoin users.

They should hardly have authority, only loyal bitcoin users should.

[RealBitcoin]

so the question is.
do you agree that if there is actual consensus. the network should grow? (with no --oppose-rule banning trick(intentional split))
or
do you prefer corporate dictatorship to avoid bitcoins main security feature(consensus), and cause every rule change to be a intentional split

Yes I agree, but hardly anyone wants a 2mb block, everyone agrees that Segwit is the safe and sound way to grow with lightning network and sidechains. Bitcoin can hardly scale otherwise, the blockchain will be too big and nobody will have enough bandwidth to host it and becomes centralized.

I hope people are not so stupid to fall for a 2mb block, as the easy temporary fix, that will bring a catastrophy later on.


I like how bitcoin's powers are separated so that neither authoritarians get in power, nor socialists, but I fear the left could still do more damage than authoritarians.

[Carlton Banks]

So yeah, I'm definitely not "telling people it's a democracy".  If anything, I want what we still delude ourselves into calling "democracy" in the outside world to be more like Bitcoin.  

Perhaps I'm just reading it the wrong way because you're effectively calling consensus itself an oligarchy.  To me that just feels perverse.    

There are no benevolent oligarchies.  Sooner or later they'll be initiating transfer of wealth into their own pockets by fair means or foul.  Just more corrupt centralisation by another name.

Okay, but calling the consensus mechanism a "free market of ideas" is also wrong! The clue's in the name... the Bitcoin protocol rules are designed to make eveyrone on the network participate in the same way. If the consensus mechanism was a genuine free market, there would be constant jockeying for position about which ruleset dominates. This is supposed to be a currency; how do you think the BTC exchange rate would respond if we changed dev teams every time someone starts shouting "FIRE!"?

Here's how I see it:

• Bitcoin development is a free market: submit a pull request and see how it is received
• The cryptocurrency development world is a free market: create a new coin, see how well it is received
• The consensus mechanism is not a free market. It is an emergency escape hatch, to be used against an infiltrated dev team, NOT for disrupting Bitcoin's direction with competing coin designs

You seem to subscribe to that last part: that there should be real conflict going on within the development of Bitcoin itself. Promoting that is dangerous, and it makes me wonder how invested you are in Bitcoin.

[DooMAD]

So yeah, I'm definitely not "telling people it's a democracy".  If anything, I want what we still delude ourselves into calling "democracy" in the outside world to be more like Bitcoin.  

Perhaps I'm just reading it the wrong way because you're effectively calling consensus itself an oligarchy.  To me that just feels perverse.    

There are no benevolent oligarchies.  Sooner or later they'll be initiating transfer of wealth into their own pockets by fair means or foul.  Just more corrupt centralisation by another name.

Okay, but calling the consensus mechanism a "free market of ideas" is also wrong! The clue's in the name... the Bitcoin protocol rules are designed to make eveyrone on the network participate in the same way. If the consensus mechanism was a genuine free market, there would be constant jockeying for position about which ruleset dominates. This is supposed to be a currency; how do you think the BTC exchange rate would respond if we changed dev teams every time someone starts shouting "FIRE!"?

Here's how I see it:

• Bitcoin development is a free market: submit a pull request and see how it is received
• The cryptocurrency development world is a free market: create a new coin, see how well it is received
• The consensus mechanism is not a free market. It is an emergency escape hatch, to be used against an infiltrated dev team, NOT for disrupting Bitcoin's direction with competing coin designs

You seem to subscribe to that last part: that there should be real conflict going on within the development of Bitcoin itself. Promoting that is dangerous, and it makes me wonder how invested you are in Bitcoin.

Well, all I can say is we're close to agreement, but I don't think we'll ever be quite fully there.  I respect your view as you've outlined it, though.

Incidentally, I'm not saying there should be conflict within development, just that it doesn't matter when developers don't agree, because it's ultimately not their decision.

In contrast, here's how I see it:

• Bitcoin Core development is a free market: submit a pull request and see how it is received
• Bitcoin development as a whole is a free market: anyone is free to code their own proposals if other developers disagree, see how well it is received
• The cryptocurrency development world is a free market: if your believe your idea is incompatible with Bitcoin, create a new coin, see how well it is received
• The consensus mechanism is not absolutely a free market. It is an emergency escape hatch, to be used if those securing the network no longer agree with the function of the code

But fair enough if you disagree.

[franky1]

I hope people are not so stupid to fall for a 2mb block, as the easy temporary fix, that will bring a catastrophy later on.

catastrophy??
how..

how is 2mb more of a catastrophy that blockstreams 4mb.
how is consensus agreement more of a catastrophy that intentional split.

please explain how over 95% of nodes and pools agreeing is a catastrophy
again dont run down the blockstream rabbit hole of dictator or split.
and stick with a reality of consensual agreement

explain why something like 2mb base 4mb weight is bad

[RealBitcoin]

I hope people are not so stupid to fall for a 2mb block, as the easy temporary fix, that will bring a catastrophy later on.

catastrophy??
how..

how is 2mb more of a catastrophy that blockstreams 4mb.
how is consensus agreement more of a catastrophy that intentional split.

please explain how over 95% of nodes and pools agreeing is a catastrophy
again dont run down the blockstream rabbit hole of dictator or split.
and stick with a reality of consensual agreement

explain why something like 2mb base 4mb weight is bad

I already did like 100x in other threads, I am tired of repeating myself and you seem like you enjoy asking the same questions over and over again that were already refuted many times.

[franky1]

I already did like 100x in other threads, I am tired of repeating myself and you seem like you enjoy asking the same questions over and over again that were already refuted many times.

your rhetoric as well as carltons for months now is of controversial and intentional splits and doomsdays. i asked you to stay with reality of consensus, something you have not done because each time people try asking. you divert it back to the other doomsdays