BCH finally hit the fan

Karl gmkarl at gmail.com
Tue Dec 11 14:17:42 PST 2018


Jim,

Thanks for your reply.

I think I'm beginning to understand some of where you come from.  It
sounds like you blame our problems on the presence of legal
government.  I believe government is mostly just expressing the wishes
of those with the power to influence votes and laws.

I see money as the biggest source of votes and laws, so I don't see
things changing too much with the introduction of AP.  I believe money
also provides greater anonymity and ability to surveil than e.g. Tor
provides for the masses.

More responses in-line.

On 12/11/18, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I searched, and found a number of messages about "Public Shielded Work
> Room", but that was all I found in 2018.  What was the date you sent the
> message?  Was it to the CP list, or to me directly?  You could send it to me
> again, at my email address.

Sorry, I tried to contact you before I began participating in this
list.  I submitted a comment to the AP website, but I'm not sure what
e-mail address I used, so it's nothing to worry about.  I'm happy you
got this e-mail here.

>>As it offers a market, doesn't AP give life-and-death power to those
> with the most money?
>
> Well, it kinda-sorta gives life-and-death power to just about everyone, in
> small parts.  And superficially, it looks like people who have more money
> will have more such influence.  People who are fixated on the issue of
> "inequality" will initially find this to be either a fatal flaw or at least
> a major drawback.

Inequality is relevant here, because in a free market, people try to
make the largest profit, and this will be provided by the highest
payout.  A relatively small price by many people on a leader will be
swamped by a price of $40 billion by one wealthy individual on their
opposition.  The people with exponentially inequal finances can then
directly control the political presence of the world.

> In the pre-AP world, achieving political change requires speaking out,
> identifying yourself.  That potentially makes such people targets.  In the
> post-AP world, nobody has to speak out publicly.  And what speech occurs can
> probably be made anonymous.  How would "the rich" target their "enemies" if
> they cannot identify them?

I agree that providing for more anonymous dissent is greatly helpful.
I worry that focusing on it so strongly here can be misleading,
though: "the rich" can hide and hunt exponentially better than the
masses can, who are surveilled daily by e.g. spyware controlled by
groups more powerful than them, and can't hire people or push legal
systems to do things for them.

"The rich" could target enemies by (A) targeting the systems that
facilitate their discourse, (B) outbidding them, and (C) using their
immense resources to hunt them down.  Additionally, there are likely
tricks to put a ton of pressure on something, like informing to the
FBI that an offer was made by a terrorist.

> Further, I think it can accurately be said that government is used to
> maintain inequality, although the means of doing so is normally hidden from
> public view and awareness.  Government provides favors to those who "play"
> the game.   Get rid of government, at least the massive bloated one America
> (for example) currently has, and how would anybody make money off of it?
> The current U.S. military budget of over $700 billion is an excellent
> example of this.   Using an AP-type system, why can't the region formerly
> known as "America" defend itself on a figure 100x smaller than this, or
> maybe $7 billion dollars?  After all, if it costs,say, $10 million to kill a
> threatening leader, you could kill 700 such threatening leaders with $7
> billion dollars.  No need to buy tanks, bombers, jet fighters, or any of
> that expensive military hardware.

What's to stop a major investor in a military weapons corporation
putting their profits into AP offers for assassinations of the
operators of servers allowing access, until nobody can access it?
This would be a profitable move for them, if AP would make their
military weapons obsolete.

>>Wouldn't this provide for the set of people with the most money to
> bend power more and more towards themselves, eventually producing a
> situation where a few select people control the many?
>
> If AP can be said to be "biased" in any way, that "bias" is in the direction
> of tearing down involuntary heirarchical power structures.  It isn't clear
> how AP can be used to build up such power structures, instead.  Anybody who
> exercises power openly will tend to make others his enemies, and they would
> be able to use AP to counter such a person.  That doesn't exclude the
> possibility of exercising power secretly, but it is a reasonable question
> how that trick might be accomplished.

AP itself provides a method to exercise power secretly.  People with
more money can put bigger prices on their opponents' heads.  If people
start putting a price on them in return, they can look at the media
sources resulting in those opinions, and assassinate those people to
sway opinion.

Additionally, a wealthy person can likely exercise a wide variety of
secret power, via e.g. bribes and black markets.

I see financial power as a major involuntary hierarchical power structure.

> You said,  "a few select people control the many?".   How would that come
> about?  Who would be "the select few"?   (We might suspect that at least
> initially, they would be "the rich", at least those people who are currently
> rich.)
> But how would they "control" the large masses?   They would no longer be
> able to use the structures of government to maintain their positions, I
> think.  They wouldn't be able to identify those in "the many", at least not
> the relative few that those "in control" would consider their enemies.
> Taxing them would be a problem.  Passing onerous and discriminatory laws
> shouldn't even be possible, since the governments that would do so, and
> enforce them, will be dismantled.

Laws are no longer needed.  The rich can assassinate not only anybody
who publicly disagrees with them, but also anybody facilitating
anonymous communication channels that could be used to privately
disagree.  This could facilitate violent dictatorships.

> There should be a free market, ideally a
> truly free market,, and not the 'crony-capitalism', and 'crony-socialism' we
> now have in America and Europe.  Am I being too optimistic?  I won't claim
> to be unbiased, as I am the person who thought up the AP concept initially.
> But large numbers of people have been exposed to the AP idea, and I
> continually do Google-searches for such appearances.   (Such as Google "jim
> bell" "assassination".)   Myself, I would greatly welcome further
> discussion.
> Yes, these issues ought to be debated.  Although, I think that relatively
> few people who are familiar with AP doubt that there is going to be an
> actual problem.  At least, I haven't seen that.

I found AP so incredibly inspiring when I read some of its marketing.
It is additionally so inspiring to see how the strength of blockchain
technology can provide for software solutions to make real change in
the world.

I AP provided a way for people to have logical discourse around
decisions, rather than voting with their dollar.  Additionally, I
worry that focusing on assassination could push away large groups of
possible supporters.

I imagine a blockchain app focused on permanent storage of 'proposals'
with 'reasons', with each reason providing for more reasons that
support why it is or is not valid, all accumulated in a decentralized
manner by people who have an opinion on a proposal.  If analysis of
such a graph of discourse could create economically-incentivized
change, it could move a lot of things forward in the world.

>  I believe that implementing an AP system, like I describe, will lead to a
> truly-free market and individual freedom.  It will do so, first, by
> eliminating governments as we currently know them.  I think that should
> eliminate the method by which many in current society maintain their
> positions of power, including inequality.

I'm hearing that you directly associate truly free markets with
individual freedom.  I see a free market as a hierarchical system,
where those who start with more money call the shots, as they provide
the jobs and can directly change demand with their dollars.

I feel governments are great for really rich people, because such
people can buy laws, and that governments are hence likely to only be
replaced by something more stringent as long as those with more money
have more power.

I agree with you on debate, though.  It sounds like we have really
different experience and assumptions.

Karl



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