Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is "pro-crypto" | Hacker News Reader

Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is "pro-crypto"

vitalik.eth.limo

78 pointsbpierre23 comments

> Another important conclusion of this is that if a politician is pro-crypto today, but they are the type of person that is either very power-seeking themselves, or willing to suck up to someone who is, then this is the direction that their crypto advocacy may look like ten years from now.

Vitalik strikes me as being very naive about the process of policy-making. All politicians are, by definition, power-seeking individuals. They're seeking the power afforded to them by a seat on city council, as governor, a member of congress, etc. This is simply the nature of the political process. They may even be seeking power in pursuit of a noble objective, but they are seeking power nonetheless.

Realpolitik as a non-politician means aligning yourself with whoever best represents your interests at that particular point in time. One election cycle that may be Party A, but in the future it could be Party B. It could differ at the federal, state, or local level. Frequent elections and term limits ensure that turnover will happen, so change will be the only constant. Flexibility is required.

Waiting for the perfectly ideologically-aligned candidate sounds nice, but in reality it means you'll be waiting forever. All politicians are flawed, and many will simply tell you what they think you want to hear. Their behaviour is amenable to incentives, however, which is why donations are such an important - if maligned - mechanism for accountability.

Marc & Ben are being practical. They've observed that the behaviour of one party has run directly counter to their interests over the last several years and they're aligning themselves with the party that is at least proposing a better set of policies.

That's just... how this stuff works and has always worked.

I agree that you sometimes have to pick you battles and have allegiances of convenience.

However, my opinion is that an excessive amount of “selling your soul to the devil” for short term gains is the root cause of much of what is wrong in business and politics.

I don't get what you're hinting at here. The org Vitalik actually links to here that rates politicians on being friendly to crypto, rates individual politicians, not parties, and it claims to have over 1,000 politicians in its database. When I filter for only the ones unfriendly, it lists 49 people. If this rating system is correct, it seems crypto is very likely to be safe based on simply keeping the current people in office in office. It certainly stands out that there are far more democrats than republicans in the against category, but it's a tiny minority of the overall party in both cases.

They've observed that the behaviour of one party has run directly counter to their interests

For an extremely narrow definition of "interests". And their perception of their interests. There are reasonable doubts whether they are correct, even on that domain.

If it were just a matter of their two votes, that wouldn't matter. They are entitled to their interests, and to their opinions about the best way to pursue those interests.

But we're not talking about two votes. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars, which they can use to influence other people's choices, perhaps to the detriment of their own interests.

I happen to disagree with them on crypto. That's debatable. But what's not debatable is that if they were gay, trans, female, black, Hispanic, poor, Ukrainian, or living without air conditioning, their opinions of their own self-interest might be very different.

If they really think that the absolute top priority is the promulgation of cryptocurrency... well, I hope they're happy with what they get, because they are going to risk a ton of suffering.

> Marc & Ben are being practical.

I assume you mean a16z but what are you referring to exactly? They're not mentioned in the article...

Vitalik didn't mention them by name, but given the timing it seems likely he was referring to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ

It's endlessly interesting to read how people narrow broad points.

"...counter to their interests..."

Very important words, there.

You made up your own definition of politician to prove your point. Thats fallacious reasoning. I was in politics for four years not for power but to help people organize and prevent corporate takeover of family farms. Get bent, dude.

You were endowed with power in order to pursue a noble goal. But it was the power you sought that allowed you to do that. I think he’s definition is correct.

> They may even be seeking power in pursuit of a noble objective, but they are seeking power nonetheless.

Think you might meet this definition, my guy.

Thank you for your service. I think it’s popular to be dismissive and say that all politicians are sociopaths, which sounds very similar to saying they’re all power seeking individuals. The reason they sound similar is because there’s this idea that seeking power is always bad, but your example proves otherwise. So again, thank you!

The politicians who are pro-crypto were paid to be so.[1] Well-paid.[2]

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/63ad2147-0aa7-4e28-9cf5-6ce3ce7a2...

[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/05/congress-blocked-se...

Just plugging in Molly White's great investigative work: https://www.followthecrypto.org/

"Cyptocurrency-focused political action committees have raised more than $187 million to influence 2024 elections. They have spent more than $39 million of it so far."

That's so crypto community. Where did the rest of the money go?

That just tells me crypto proponents aren't completely stupid.

You must pay if you want a seat in this 'democratic' process.

So their politics on freedom and privacy of blah blah blah non-cohesive ideology doesn't correlate with their actual stance on crypto. A politician being pro-crypto does, however, tell me that they are dumb enough to be duped/greedy enough to be paid into wasting time giving lip service to something that, regardless of ideology, is actually completely worthless.

Not just completely worthless, but net negative value on society.

I have (had?) a good friend who is in this group Vitalik is talking about. They've actually lived with Vitalik and co-authored posts with him. Cyrpto-culture changed him in ways I find troubling and I hope this might bring them back closer to the person they were prior to crypto corrupting their values.

Also keep in mind, wanting to crash america, democracy and fiat currency are 'pro crypto' motivatrd positions.

Vitalik is pretty based.

A great article which will go in one ear and out the other of the people who actually follow Vitalik. The other day he tweeted a pretty anodyne statement about how getting vaccinated against covid is good, and was mauled in the replies by his supposed fans. I imagine it's a special circle of hell to be an extremely intelligent person whose hordes of fanatical devotees are all some of the dumbest people alive.

They are just in it because he is supposed to make ETH go up, they care about TX costs because a lower one will make it go up, more privacy..up. It ain’t because it will convert the world into a better place

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