Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah except after the first repair man meets an untimely end you will too.

This whole "my math can save me from a tyrannical government" thing is so tired. If they don't play by the rules, and want to stop you, they will. They'll take your knee caps, your finger nails, your life, or the entire nation's internet service down. No amount of math will change that.

Here's a worked example. North Korea. Their leadership has amassed a few billion dollars of cryptocurrency they've used to finance their nuclear program. How much has crypto helped the average North Korean? Zero because it's super illegal, they'll get sent to the gulags, and their internal internet likely has it disabled seven ways to hell.

Think of this like blowing smoke in the face of a cop. Is it illegal? Probably? Hard to say. Will you immediately be arrested for something else you happen to be doing at that very moment that just so happens to be illegal? Oh yeah. Technically correct is not the best kind of correct in this situation.

Ah, articbull as usual!

Given our past interactions and your posting history, it's clear you have a strong dislike for crypto.

However, your opinion (or mine) will be irrelevant.

> They'll take your knee caps, your finger nails, your life, or the entire nation's internet service down

They totally can! The only problem is they eventually run out of people or things the country can sell. And in the meantime, even before reaching that ultimate point, they destroy the economy by destroying hope: forced labor is less productive that voluntary labor.

That's because it's hard to rule people who don't care anymore. Even the threat of death may not cut it: just look at the risks people took to flee the soviet block!

A good tyrant applies just a sprinkle of violence.

> Technically correct is not the best kind of correct in this situation.

Indeed. And you are correct the government monopoly of violence keeps people in-line.

But it's not without end: a tyrannical government survive only so long as the population is willing to tolerate it. As the person you replied to tried to explain, civil disobedience happens.

If you need current examples, look no further than people not wearing masks, or the riots that happened on the 2nd lockdown of Europe: the more force you apply, the more resistance you get.

I don't believe governments will find the "ideal" amount of violence to keep people in-line - not for something like money. The blue dollar in Argentina, the existence of a cash economy etc. - there are too many signs that show this can't be done. Same as for drug or alcohol: the prohibition failed. The war on drugs is currently failing.

Yet it's clear that crypto will not operate in a wild west forever: just like the internet, some rules will be added, to tax it.

But it won't go away, as governments prefer taxing to killing!

Sorry to break your dream of crypto becoming illegal and drying, but that ship has sailed.

I don’t think crypto should be illegal. I think it should be regulated like everything else in the space, and it’s horrifying externalities like energy consumption and criminality should be internalized via taxation. Once it has the same constraints as traditional finance it offers nothing of value, and will wilt away on its own. Or it won’t. Whatever. Makes no difference to me, once the harms are mitigated. JMHO.

My point as always is if you trust your government you don’t need crypto - as trust is a massive optimization - and if you don’t, you have much bigger problems. Just ask the North Koreans.

The rest is but a fictional dramatization of what life under authoritarianism might be like, just you, your MacBook Pro and your GPU cluster against the man, smashing TVs, killing TV repair men and scribbling down hashes. It just doesn’t reflect any reality I know of. I’d watch an HBO series based on it though! Maybe a modern reimagining of 1984 combined with Escape from Tarkov; we all know how 1984 ended yeah?

> horrifying externalities like energy consumption and criminality

Opinion varies. For many people, being able to access drugs outside of government control (cancer patient victims of the opioid crisis), or receiving donations (wikileaks) is worth a lot more that the small drawbacks.

Same as due process and the "fruit of a poisonous tree" legal doctrine - it lets bad people walk out of jail, but overall I think it does more good than harm to society.

> Once it has the same constraints as traditional finance it offers nothing of value, and will wilt away on its own

Actually, at the bare minimum, it removes political control of the monetary supply, leaving only fiscal policy, which may enable better long term control of public deficit by implementing a Milton Friedman like rule (whether it's constant inflation, deflation, or nothing, all is good as long as it remains constant and predictable)

Given the long term inefficiency of the Phillips curve, and a lot of economic similar concepts, most economists would think it's for the better.

See also the founder charter of the ECB, which enshrined similar policies until politicians made it dance to their tune.

This shows the problem isn't our lack of understanding, but our lack of self control and long term motivation- just like kids with a cookie jar: we can't help it!

> if you trust your government you don’t need crypto

Hackers often fall prey to black-and-white thinking. Trust isn't binary, because you can't fully trust an organization made of people, regardless of how "good" they are, or which legal constraints they have.

If anything, look at HIPAA laws: even without them, you should be able to trust your healthcare provider, but if there're things you don't want out ever, you better not share them with your health provider regardless of the laws protecting the confidentiality.

Because leaks happen, even for whole countries sometimes (look at Finland mental health leaks)

This doesn't mean you have "0 trust", just 0.7 or something non binary.

We both know the ideal medical file would be encrypted with the patient private key, or would have some other mechanism of plausible deniability - just like how DKIM was denounced recently. It wasn't possible or even imaginable before we had the technology. Now that we do, it may take a while to get there, and the world will be a slightly better place.

Crypto is a similar small step for finance, and it may also enable most countries to use the same coin (because once monetary policy is out, there's little reason to use your own thing)

> we all know how 1984 ended yeah

It didn't end: we're right inside.

> Whatever. Makes no difference to me, once the harms are mitigated. JMHO.

You are so close to understanding, yet so far. I hope eventually you'll admit more complexity in your reasoning.

To be clear I think all narcotics should be legal. It is the narcos who create the harm. I'm 100% pro dugs and 100% against allowing narcos to thrive.

> Actually, at the bare minimum, it removes political control of the monetary supply, leaving only fiscal policy, which may enable better long term control of public deficit by implementing a Milton Friedman like rule (whether it's constant inflation, deflation, or nothing, all is good as long as it remains constant and predictable)

I don't agree with any of that. I don't want any of that.

> Hackers often fall prey to black-and-white thinking. Trust isn't binary, because you can't fully trust an organization made of people, regardless of how "good" they are, or which legal constraints they have.

Which is why we have legal recourse.

It sucks to have to re-explain this from first principals, but trust is infinitely more efficient, so long as you accept some small fraction of the time you'll get screwed. So, you create legal recourse.

However it's clear you're far more likely to get screwed over in a crypto economy with zero recourse than you are to get screwed over in a fiat economy -- separate from the fact you have recourse in a fiat economy.

I would argue it is you who are falling for black-and-white thinking that all trust is bad and that currency should be trustless.

> I would argue it is you who are falling for black-and-white thinking that all trust is bad and that currency should be trustless.

I think our differences boil down to one thing: I don't share the belief than trust is better than trustless. Actually, I believe the opposite is true in most situations, because trustless allows abstractions in a simple manner.

For handling exceptions (ex: ETH DAO), we can revert to trust mechanism, but most of the time, we're better off without.

> > Actually, at the bare minimum, it removes political control of the monetary supply, leaving only fiscal policy, which may enable better long term control of public deficit by implementing a Milton Friedman like rule (whether it's constant inflation, deflation, or nothing, all is good as long as it remains constant and predictable)

> I don't agree with any of that. I don't want any of that.

Yet I don't think you are an economist, so I'm afraid your wants are biased. Most people don't want to wait - they want to break open the cookie jar. They want to eat the seed corn.

It's a human bias, with an economic name: the time discount factor, which has been researched in how it leads to substandard outcomes (ex: not saving for your own retirement)

At the society level, 401k and the like is a way of removing trust in your saving ability: the decision is taken for you in advance.

Of course, there are exceptions (ex: you're out of work or sick and need the money now), but that's when the "exception" of trust comes in handy.

> > To be clear I think all narcotics should be legal. It is the narcos who create the harm. I'm 100% pro dugs and 100% against allowing narcos to thrive.

I 100% agree, but yet I think it's better for me not to have vodka and cocaine at home - because if I'm extremely tired but can't sleep, I could be tempted to take the former, then if I have to fly somewhere and it's important I'd be tempted to take the latter the morning after.

So I don't buy any - another way of favoring a trustless system. If I want booze, I go to a bar as needed.

Crypto can offers many features like that, and I believe a smart contract that would automatically save to your retirement account (while exactly equivalent to a 401k on paper) would be better, by sheer virtue of removing the needed trust in the government: I could see a government plundering retirement accounts in a grand announcement of a more redistributive retirement made available to everybody past some given age.

Most people pretend the DAO never happened because the DAO is a terrible example. All it shows is if the big powerful players get screwed they can just change the rules whenever they want. If grandma gets screwed out of her life savings it’s SFYL

It’s trustless for me and none for thee. Seriously. It destroyed the whole narrative.

If tustlessness was any better intrinsically vitalik would be on eth classic today. The smart contract worked as designed. Code is law is it not? How dare you tell me that vitaliks magic bean jar is more important thank my grandmas? :) is what’s good for the goose not good for the gander?

There’s a reason we moved past strict majority rule and added checks for the rights of the powerless or minority.

The difference between us is you’re ignoring the edge cases and I’m saying when livelihood is at stake basic function is table stakes edge cases are effectively the only thing that matters. I’m applying medical rigor and you’re applying My First JavaScript React Native app in the App Store - we can just patch it later whatever.

Or this now-poor bastard: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/k7cnrn/butter_los...

> I 100% agree, but yet I think it's better for me not to have vodka and cocaine at home - because if I'm extremely tired but can't sleep, I could be tempted to take the former, then if I have to fly somewhere and it's important I'd be tempted to take the latter the morning after.

Look up the Portuguese model that’s not what happens, evidence tells us. Anyone who wants drugs now can get them, and legalization doesn’t make people who don’t want drugs want them. We have laws that people tend to follow like not flying impaired.

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