Nobody has yet solved the “who watches the watchers?” problem. Because of that, I believe every system of government is doomed to fall to corruption and capture given time.
I know that there are a lot of mechanisms that can be put in place to mitigate that problem, such as adversarial branches and divisions of authority, but I haven’t seen one yet that does anything more than prolong things and delay what seems to be the inevitable. Until something big changes, the pendulum seems destined to keep swinging back and forth.
In the meantime, I haven’t seen any way to prevent companies from unethically exerting their will over the public that works any better than involving multiple parties in it that are not necessarily aligned and do your best to prevent collusion, like making the government a party to the transaction by way of regulating the process, though that’s admittedly far from fool-proof, either.
I’m just trying to lay out the available options at our disposal now as I understand them.
In the meantime, I haven’t seen any way to prevent companies from unethically exerting their will over the public that works any better than involving multiple parties in it that are not necessarily aligned and do your best to prevent collusion
This is just decentralization. This is literally what I alluded to in my root comment. Crypto solves these problems
That’s just centralization with extra steps. Crypto is easily manipulated by whales and frequently is. At least with governments, I know the names and faces of the people robbing me.
manipulated by whales? are you talking about 51% attacks? censorship? Can you link some concrete examples of major crypto coins getting manipulated? I think there was a potential 51% attack on Monero but IIRC nothing actually happened.
I’m talking about making large transactions one way or the other to manipulate the psychology of normal investors en masse, causing them to move as a unit in a direction favorable to the whale.
Here are some links I found where they talk about it and largely admit it’s a problem:
I admittedly do not understand a lot of the nuances of how it is done, since I have only used it for anonymous purchases, but that is primarily because I do not find it a safe place to put money. Its fluctuations are based on the whims of people I have no way of knowing, rather than any real-world circumstances that can be studied and planned for with the proper experience and education.
Furthermore, an economy cannot function using such an unstable currency. Its valuation can change by several percent while I’m on my way to the store to spend it. It is more of a speculative “futures” asset than it is money. Even the ~8+% inflation over the past 5 years in the USA has had grievous global fallout. An 8% swing in crypto is just considered a Monday morning.
I’m not at all telling anyone not to use it. It’s fine; do what you want. Even I have. What I am saying is that it has certain intrinsic properties that make it not work well as the default regular money.
I would argue that your examples are about manipulation of people, not of the currency. Similar to the craziness of the GME (Gamestop) era, where it felt like everybody and their dog started buying GME stock. Or, say, a news outlet causing panic and a bank run. Though you’re right that since crypto still doesn’t have broad adoption, it’s easier to manipulate the smaller userbase.
Manipulation of the currency would be more like the government printing more money. This is not possible in crypto, where power is decentralized.
The instability is definitely unfortunate though. It’s a chicken and egg problem. If crypto had wider adoption, and was accepted in many stores, then it would become more stable. Just look at how much more stable the big crypto coins (bitcoin, eth) are compared to smaller altcoins. However, due to low adoption it’s still quite unstable, and that instability hurts adoption 🙃
Nobody has yet solved the “who watches the watchers?” problem. Because of that, I believe every system of government is doomed to fall to corruption and capture given time.
I know that there are a lot of mechanisms that can be put in place to mitigate that problem, such as adversarial branches and divisions of authority, but I haven’t seen one yet that does anything more than prolong things and delay what seems to be the inevitable. Until something big changes, the pendulum seems destined to keep swinging back and forth.
In the meantime, I haven’t seen any way to prevent companies from unethically exerting their will over the public that works any better than involving multiple parties in it that are not necessarily aligned and do your best to prevent collusion, like making the government a party to the transaction by way of regulating the process, though that’s admittedly far from fool-proof, either.
I’m just trying to lay out the available options at our disposal now as I understand them.
This is just decentralization. This is literally what I alluded to in my root comment. Crypto solves these problems
That’s just centralization with extra steps. Crypto is easily manipulated by whales and frequently is. At least with governments, I know the names and faces of the people robbing me.
manipulated by whales? are you talking about 51% attacks? censorship? Can you link some concrete examples of major crypto coins getting manipulated? I think there was a potential 51% attack on Monero but IIRC nothing actually happened.
I’m talking about making large transactions one way or the other to manipulate the psychology of normal investors en masse, causing them to move as a unit in a direction favorable to the whale.
Here are some links I found where they talk about it and largely admit it’s a problem:
I admittedly do not understand a lot of the nuances of how it is done, since I have only used it for anonymous purchases, but that is primarily because I do not find it a safe place to put money. Its fluctuations are based on the whims of people I have no way of knowing, rather than any real-world circumstances that can be studied and planned for with the proper experience and education.
Furthermore, an economy cannot function using such an unstable currency. Its valuation can change by several percent while I’m on my way to the store to spend it. It is more of a speculative “futures” asset than it is money. Even the ~8+% inflation over the past 5 years in the USA has had grievous global fallout. An 8% swing in crypto is just considered a Monday morning.
I’m not at all telling anyone not to use it. It’s fine; do what you want. Even I have. What I am saying is that it has certain intrinsic properties that make it not work well as the default regular money.
I would argue that your examples are about manipulation of people, not of the currency. Similar to the craziness of the GME (Gamestop) era, where it felt like everybody and their dog started buying GME stock. Or, say, a news outlet causing panic and a bank run. Though you’re right that since crypto still doesn’t have broad adoption, it’s easier to manipulate the smaller userbase.
Manipulation of the currency would be more like the government printing more money. This is not possible in crypto, where power is decentralized.
The instability is definitely unfortunate though. It’s a chicken and egg problem. If crypto had wider adoption, and was accepted in many stores, then it would become more stable. Just look at how much more stable the big crypto coins (bitcoin, eth) are compared to smaller altcoins. However, due to low adoption it’s still quite unstable, and that instability hurts adoption 🙃
So it’s all Political Entropy, huh?
So it would seem! Entropy always wins.