Is the wisdom of the crowd (Bitcoin) better than a single monarch (Litecoin)?

[bct2702]

This is a branch off of my thread "Politics behind Bitcoin development?"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2560601.0;topicseen

In my mind the really salient difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin is not the underlying technology, but rather that Bitcoin is run/managed by a somewhat decentralized political system in which the mining nodes determine which current fork is supported, whereas Litecoin has a single person, Charles Lee, controls the development of Litecoin.

The wisdom of crowds is the best vehicle for aggregating distributed knowledge--market prices are a prime example of this--when incentives are correct.  However, when incentives are not correct or there are coordination problems or public choice issues rear their head, it might be better to have a single individual controlling the system.

Thoughts?

[bct2702]

No thoughts?

[Xavofat]

This is not true.  Both systems are governed by a decentralised Nash equilibrium between miners, mining pools, users, nodes and developers.

If you used the same logic for determining the centralisation of Bitcoin as you did for Litecoin, you would consider Bitcoin to be centralised because it is "controlled" by the small number of people in the Bitcoin Core team - in reality, anyone can run a client abiding by the same consensus rules.

It might be good to have an influential figure, but their power doesn't amount to much in the system itself.