Vitalik Buterin Talks Georgism, Crypto, Voting Systems | Hacker News Reader

Vitalik Buterin Talks Georgism, Crypto, Voting Systems

narrativespodcast.com

65 pointsgeocon85 comments

Narratives has had some really interesting people on to discuss Georgism recently. Vitalik is very much in favor of it, looks like he was convinced by Lars Doucet's series on the topic at ACX. He's probably right in arguing that the real issue is the fact that it's a pretty hard sell in the places that need it most, since that is where landownership and rent-seeking is most entrenched.

Can't say I agree about quadratic voting being superior to approval or range voting, though. Simplicity is a virtue in electoral systems, particularly in a relatively low-trust society like the US- and that's ignoring implementation.

As much as I’d be flattered if he was convinced by my piece, from what I can tell he’s been really into the idea for several years now; I think mostly what my series moved the needle for him on was countering the “land isn’t a big deal in the modern economy” objection.

Simplicity is not a virtue vitalik understands.

Vitalik does indeed value simplicity and it's one of Ethereum's core design principles

https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/147740277221558682...

It may be stated as a core design principle, but it is not actually acted on. Ethereum is waaaaaay more complex than it needs to be in almost every aspect, and is pretty much the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to blockchain design. Simple, it is not.

So the quadratic voting issue seems kinda curious to me. It seems like the best mechanism is through the use of tokens. But, I also assume that the tokens would have to be categorized to some degree right? i.e. you wouldn't use the same tokens for electing people that you use on issues themselves. But if you start breaking the voting topics down, don't the categories become somewhat arbitrary? i.e. do you have "Elections" "Constitutional" "Budgetary" categories each with their own voting tokens? If you have budgetary concerns, is it better to vote "for" your preference than "against" a different preference? Is every budgetary matter up for public approval?

I'm more interested in getting our revenue sources right (i.e. the public collection of land rent). Is the tyranny of the majority a major concern after that? It seems like the most viable projects should move forward by simply majority and the remainder can be returned as a citizen's dividend. Tyranny only exists when a decision creates a barrier to alternatives right? Perhaps someone can give an example where a spirited minority may want to use public funding for something that the majority does not want (or is less interested in) and that this spirited minority could not take their dividends to provide for themselves.

The point about Georgism is that the total number of Bitcoins is fixed, so we are all entitled to some, even if we're late to the game?

Maybe someone more familiar with Vitalik Buterin can fill me in here...

Vitalik mentions that he's interested in both approval voting and quadratic voting. He seems to say that quadratic voting is exciting because it's "more optimal" in a certain sense, compared with score voting. But Will Jarvis highlights the tension between optimal vs easy-to-understand:

Jarvis: "And is there [...] a trade off [...] between a system that’s more optimal, but it’s harder to explain and kind of illegible to people to one that’s easy to explain, and somewhat easier to implement."

Is the implication that Buterin likes quadratic voting more in principle, but he supports approval voting because it's easier to explain and implement? I wish they'd spent more time on this section!

How does one get in touch with @VitalikButerin? How does one invite him to a podcast?

I have interviewed Noam Chomsky and other political commentators, Sara Hanks from the SEC and other former regulators, Thomas Greco and other community currency economists (and by the way, we explicitly discussed Henry George and Progress and Poverty etc.)

But when I spoke to Vitalik’s dad he explicitly said Vitalik asked him not to share any links with him and make no introductions. Vitalik prefers to discover stuff on his own. So how does he get on these podcasts?

Everything Vitalik talks about, we have BUILT using his platform EVM (https://intercoin.org/applications) and are now moving past it and blockchains, eg to build the Intercloud. The other week I spoke with Dyne about anonymous group signatures because we need them for voting, UBI and other applications where each person has to have exactly one account.

I’ve spoken directly to the former and current CTOs of Ripple, the entire teams behind MaidSAFE, Cardano, and much more. Vitalik is the only one I was never able to get in touch with. He and his dad always talks about how the crypto space should build the kinds of things WE HAVE BUILT over the last 4 years.

I know on HN some people just downvote anything related to crypto. But look at the link above — everything is open sourced and documented and being audited and we have a show explaining how it works. What is wrong with that? What is bad? There needs to be more POSITIVITY and COLLABORATION helping each other, rather than all this competition and shitting on each other.

The end game should be open source software that helps communities of people self organize and get things done. We won’t achieve it if we keep being so divided and bickering, we’ll just live in an increasingly centrally planned world, with CBDCs and Big Tech mediating and controlling ALL OUR INTERACTIONS AND TRANSACTIONS.

I am surprised that “Hacker News” is often so much in favor of the Web2 status quo of VC-funded Wall st-funded Big Tech, with their centralized server farms. Shouldn’t we be supporting hacking on new things? To the perennial silent downvoters: use your words, say something.

Because as we get chat bot AI and Apple Glass and then Neuralink, everything is going to be more immersive and you’ll spend more time in these metaverses, the question of corporate control of the metaverses vs open source software will become ever more important. Do we want to be the Borg or do we want to be free?

Vitalik has been selling the same dream for a decade now, and even though crypto is booming it still feels like we're no closer to realizing the goals of Ethereum or the virtues of a digital currency. Having listened to this guy rant about the Next Big Thing since high school, I'm pretty jaded by his opinion.

Tbh, cryptocurrencies are anything but booming.

The primary market, amongst crypto and other markets, are actually doing pretty well.

Newly launched cryptos, newly launched NFTs*, teams that merely plan to do those things are getting funded, even bonds in the sovereign and corporate markets are being issued okay and bought up completely.

Its just secondary market that's puking and plastered all over the charts everywhere. Doesn't tell you as much you think it does.

Primary markets will eat pig slop if you feed it to them, Y Combinator is living proof of that. If the demand for your product tanks in the secondary market, there's a very good chance that the product you're selling isn't very attractive to the layman.

When I say crypto is doing "well", I mean so relatively. The markets are in agony right now, and many of the people who I know who have their life savings in crypto are getting wiped out. The primary market says nothing about how successful cryptocurrency is, just how lucrative it is. Getting someone to buy a worthless thing has a 100% markup, so it's unsurprising the market is still luring investors in with the promise of Yet Another Useless Token.

My larger point is that cryptocurrency had it's chance, and people like Vitalik are the coffin bearers. This brand of economic accelerationism consistently ends in disaster, and crypto is just the same story told through a different lens. It's the Juicero of the 2020s, a concept so useless that it can only move units by fooling customers with insane marketing. Look around at NFT and cryptocurrency ads, you'll get the picture.

> My larger point is that cryptocurrency had it's chance, and people like Vitalik are the coffin bearers. This brand of economic accelerationism consistently ends in disaster, and crypto is just the same story told through a different lens. It's the Juicero of the 2020s, a concept so useless that it can only move units by fooling customers with insane marketing. Look around at NFT and cryptocurrency ads, you'll get the picture.

100% this. They've had their time to produce something useful. It's time to pack it in and admit that the emperor has no clothes.

> The primary market says nothing about how successful cryptocurrency is, just how lucrative it is.

So, booming one might say? Like in a boom town? Where nobody actually cares what product is being exported just that they can get paid a lot for it?

> It's the Juicero of the 2020s

Ethereum alone (let alone cryptocurrency in general) predates and postdates Juicero's existence by a wide margin.

The concept of juicers isn't new either, but applying stupidity to them was the novel concept.

Secondary markets are where the rubber meets the road. That $3M NFT selling for $10 is reality telling you that maybe you needed more utility and serve people rather than shuffle tokens around in zero-sum speculative trading echo chambers.

I have to be honest

I have met so many great people in the space of what I work on (crypto, social networks, open source, sociopolitical and economic applications). Everyone from Andrew Yang to Noam Chomsky and Leslie Lamport.

You have never heard of me and that’s fine, I like that. What I can tell you is, the people who collaborate and appear and are willing to work together in the space, they will get things done and there are a ton of great projects coming out. Like Dyne with their Relay group signing and zeneoom that I spoke with last week.

I don’t need Vitalik. And yes, Ethereum is very limited. It’s just frustrating to hear the guy for years call for the things that we are building to be actually built — while he has a billion dollars in ETH and the ideas but doesn’t fund it himself. Same as EOS that raised 4 bil. We have funded all the stuff for half a mil that we raised — some of the commenters on this thread are surprised we are able to do all that. Yes we are. The code is there and free to use.

ReadyPlayerMe, Dyne, Hypercore and others were funded by governments and foundations and did a tremendous job. We have been also. The code is released and people are building on it. We are about to release some major things this summer. I somewhat enjoy collecting the knee-jerk downvotes from HN people who barely look at it. Because it won’t age well, in a few years, and it’s a bit entertaining to be underestimated.

I admit that my desire to speak to Vitalik is just out of a desire to network to smart people who have arrived at similar conclusions and share ideas. Honestly, I don’t need it at all. We can execute without it. It’s just about indulging myself.

Wait, you have invented Web4? Tell us more.

In 2017 there were a lot of projects that tried to latch onto Buterin's star in some way to raise money for their ICO or pump the price of their token.

How many podcasts also have their own cryptocurrency? It speaks to promotion vs. dialogue and discussion.

> There needs to be more POSITIVITY and COLLABORATION helping each other, rather than all this competition and shitting on each other.

Not when there are fundamental disagreements.

He's a public figure in a space full of attention seeking people. So, I can appreciate him just filtering out all the noise. Chances are he actually saw your message(s) and simply did not dignify it with a response. That's how I treat recruiter spam too.

The way through would be convincing a mutual acquaintance that you are actually worth his time. Probably he gets bombarded with requests to be on this or that podcasts, interviews, etc. So, your chance of success is pretty low. Basically, you are asking him to take time out of his schedule for you without any good reason beyond that that would please you.

He made some time for Lex Fridman at least. But that's someone that he might know and respect and someone with a huge audience.

Your sales pitch is horrible btw. That kind of messaging would turn me off as well. A little more humility might help you.

Brazen lies. 5 years and you have nothing but an ERC-20 scam token.

LOL. That’s like a mad libs cookie cutter response. What is the scam? What are the lies? Be specific.

You describe it as the native settlement and computing layer of a utopian federation. Sounds good, but even your intro video has your founder selling your ERC20 specifically as an investment, running on Eth as the settlement and compute layer, and with near-infinite minting power. I’ll give you marginal credit for sticking to it after the ICO bust.

I’m as close to your core audience for those ideas as you’ll get, but your idealistic appeal sets you up for a vigorous test of your integrity. You claim functionality and adoption that doesn’t exist, you make a specific appeal to speculation in your actual fundraising operations, your pitch is based on implied personal endorsements that are clearly unintended, and you spam this board asking for help co-opting VB’s endorsement after stalking his family didn’t work. Most importantly to this forum, you have contributed nothing of value to the conversation. Red flags abound.

I’m only replying because it seems you may not realize the difference between what you are doing and what people would expect from a legitimate project.

Not to be harsh, but as you are asking for feedback I will be critical for you in the hope it is helpful and honest.

You come off a too strong. its off putting. This is general advice for selling a project, not just for crypto.

Your link clicks through to a post describing web4.0 - i get that you want to be seen as different but again its off putting and egotistical. I know what web3.0 is, now i need to know about something else? It sounds like "we've done it, we are better than the rest, we deserve to talk to people and they should care" and before we even know who you are or what youve done im already tired and feel like im being talked down to. Then i go to your home page and its talking about web5? I feel like im being trolled.

I guess thats probably out of frustration from your perspective of feeling like you have a product but want more momentum, but think of it as UI/UX problem and rethink how you are promoting your work. The language makes me feel sceptical and it isn't attracting me to come work with you and talk to you.

This is a problem many organisations (and individuals) have, and this is why companies hire people for PR and outreach and comms and excellent designers.

Make us care, not by telling us we should care, but by demonstrating how good your solution is. Not by listing all your repositories (and i simply dont believe one organisation is working on NFTs/Community-currencies/Voting/their own chain?... its too much. Tell me the one thing you do better than everyone else, focus your energy).

Dont add a link to a forum post with two responses. Link me to a well designed product that is working (think about the uniswap website which was a massive step up for crypto design and lots of crypto places should learn from it. simple and effective). On a team of 12 on your homepage you have 5 managers and 1 designer? for all these projects, really?

edit: and then think of Vitalik getting a thousand requests a day, hes probably thinking "why do they need to talk to me so bad". and is that really where your energy and focus needs to go?

Thank you, you’re right. I went back and changed Web 4.0 to Web 5.0 — I forgot we had to update it on that page ever since Jack Dorsey came out with his Web2 + Web3 formula.

Much better!

You entirely missed his point. Most people think 'Web 3.0' is a marketing farce. Web 3+... sounds even more scam-bally.

> Vitalik prefers to discover stuff on his own. So how does he get on these podcasts?

Maybe he listens to the podcasts, or is familiar with the hosts, and thinks they are good? That seems like the most parsimonious explanation.

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