gmax, why did you delete this portion of what you said in this part of our github exchange?
Hm? I don't have a specific recollection of it, whenever it was it was a long time ago since that string doesn't show up elsewhere in any google result. Are you sure it was even a quote from that pull (check your email, github doesn't send-to-sender so I can't see it).
it's right here and it was you for sure:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/162#issuecomment-17148851come on Greg. you're a smart guy with a good enough memory to pull out all those quotes of me in that same thread. furthermore, this isn't the first time i've referenced that quote of yours to your face. it's the second time; the first being in another thread here on the forum a month or so later. if you insist i'm sure i can dig it out with some effort. you deleted it for a reason.
In any case, I've said the similar things
many times, in fact there is a quote of mine (paraphrasing Satoshi) in the forums standard rotation on that subject matter. If it was deleted it may have been because
I'd already said basically the same thing:
Bitcoin is absolutely not a voting system. There is some computational-voting in Bitcoin where there was no other choice, but everywhere else the system operates by autonomously imposed rules— so that every participant consents to the operation of the system and can't be victimized by a majority who chooses to harm them. If you want a currency operated by votes— go use the official money of any democratic nation.
And perhaps I removed it because I was just repeating myself non-productively (You may note that I made no further comments in that thread after that point). (Uh, This has veered way off-topic. Perhaps we should move to PM?)
Edit:I didn't see theymos' response except in your quote, but I assume he removed it because it was offtopic. What you're quoting from him there is exactly my view, and I think both Satoshi and the design of the Bitcoin system is abundantly clear on this point. You could easily build a majority of miner's system, but it would not be a valuable one because the 'wolves could vote to have the sheep for supper', just like the resource-weighed-majority of today's democracies do not reliably rule with the consent of the governed. It would, however, be a lot simpler and easier to work on that Bitcoin is... Bitcoin is based not on trust, but on mathematical proof. Not perfectly, since we are not yet skilled enough to design systems so perfect that they can operate completely without intervention but to the extent that we can make a reality of that vision Bitcoin can be immune to the folly of man. (A point you can see, e.g. the winklevossen making in their PR and SEC filings, for example). ... Even if all the miners agree they can't just steal your Bitcoin and assign it to themselves.
If a minority ruling over people is a tyranny, a majority ruling over other people is only a difference in magnitude. Freedom comes from autonomy, from not being ruled over by any master, not even the most popular one. Perfect autonomy is not possible, but we can certainly maximize it by adopting systems with clear rules at their outset which are not subject to and are designed to resist coercive change, like Bitcoin.
(Of course, on matters of preference where people's freedom isn't at stake, majorities can be useful modes to pick between options... though diversity is often even better: To each his own.)
Matonis subsequently was elected BF Chairman [...] and Ver retains a seat on the Board
Huh? This is, I think it to be totally irrelevant— but since we're already in recursive offtopic land—, neither of these things are true as far as I know.
my problem with that situation is that you were willing to hold a vote amongst yourselves in a non-representative situation over in github when the vast majority of non-devs had no idea a vote was in progress. when we found out about it and asked for a re-vote, we were dismissed. i understand that the devs need to make decisions based on their best judgment in situations reliant on coding. but when it came down to a simple situation like Ver and Matonis, the rest of the community has every right to have a say in who and who was not to be allowed into the press center.
