1. Avoiding Venezuelan hyper-inflation - it is a use-case, but doesn't really apply to the United States for example.

2. Store of value - volatility is way too high and there are much better alternatives (Treasury bonds)

3. Evading capital controls - it is a use-case, but not really applicable to most citizens in the US, and is unlikely to be applicable in the future.

4. Settlement layer for banks - banks already have a settlement layer that works for them.

The downsides of a decentralized system vs. a centralized system are an increased cost (in energy, computation, time, money, etc.) of transaction. So what justifies the cost?

To me, it's trustless money. I don't need to trust the US gov, I don't care about who they will elect or which wars they are gonna start or which banks they are gonna bailout.

You can verify everything through code and math. If that's not valuable to you, maybe there's some other use case you're interested. If you've done your research and there's really no use case that excites you, then you can just ignore it.

Bitcoin itself is inherently trustless, that's the whole point of it. You can trust that there will never be more than 21M Bitcoins, you can trust that there will never be a double-spend, you can trust that it will run 24/7, etc.

Whether it will gain worldwide acceptance is another matter (btw, adoption is increasing at very fast pace now), as long as there's a subset of the world that accepts it, that's good enough for me.

No it isn't. If the Bitcoin devs and miners agree on a change (for instance, to increase the cap), it'll happen, so you have to trust them.

And even if that change were to go through, there will still be people running the old chain (Ethereum Classic is still alive). So those parameters would only change if they improve the network for most stakeholders, otherwise, most people would stay on the old chain.

Sure, but the devs do have the "Bitcoin" name, which would leave them well-positioned to market their changes. Bitcoin Classic may stick around, but like Etherium Classic, it may not be very healthy: https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-classic-blockchain-subject...

People in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

For example, when the Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash split happened, you had people dumping one for the other to manipulate the price in their favor, you had miners that decided which one they wanted to mine, exchanges that decided which one they wanted to put under BTC ticker and some people that just stayed on the sidelines waiting to see which chain would prevail.

For a brief moment, Bitcoin Cash was actually close (in price, adoption, etc), but then eventually people chose the original chain as Bitcoin and we know the rest.

Just goes to show it’s not necessarily clear cut what’s considered “original” at every point in time.

Canonically, Bitcoin considers the longest chain in terms of accumulative difficulty (roughly translatable to hash power) the “real one

AFAIK adopting segwit is a soft-fork (existing clients will continue to work, only miners need to update), but raising the block limit is a hard-fork (all clients need to update).

Governments of course. Anything is better than trusting governments.

If there is nothing to spend your Bitcoin it's worthless. If there is no US economy that is begging to exchange "worthless" dollars to Bitcoin then your Bitcoin will not amount to much. Really, when people are betting on Bitcoin or gold they assume that in the future there will be a bigger pie and thanks to their ownership stake in Bitcoin or gold they receive the same percetage portion of the bigger pie. If the pie shrinks because of a war then guess what? Your Bitcoin will be just as worthless as the dollar.

In a similar way, BTC will evolve. It arguable already has. All the money flowing into cryptocurrencies and the crypto tech stack drives more and more competition (and yes - also corruption and bad behaviour) and some of it will be meaningful. Just like some tech startups were/are scams, some are kind of useless but harmless and a few changed the world. I personally don't know what problem(s) crypto will solve, but I can see that the technology summons a lot of creative energy. Creative energy that gets empowered through capital and channeled through competition will eventually produce breakthroughs somewhere. Let mankind's creativity run wild and let yourself surprise by the unexpected outcomes!

Because I expect that it will continue to significantly appreciate (it has gone up 10X or more in the last year!), I couldn't care less about its volatility. I expect that as its exponential rise slows down (like all exponential growth, it must come to an end, perhaps after a few more halving cycles), the volatility will decrease accordingly.

You're right that there are other systems to store value, but it doesn't follow that Bitcoin doesn't have value as one. It does for me, today. I've used it (together with some other systems to store value) in a very real sense to store portions of my salary and, months later, consume it, acquiring tangible assets. I couldn't care less about having to convert it to Euros first, that doesn't make it any less useful to me.

Then you don't use it as a store of value; you use it as a speculative investment.

But sure, you're free call it whatever you want and continue to push your world view, and miss the point that, for me, today, it is very useful.

Money is ultimately a reflection of power, and decentralization is merely a tool for when those power structures limit the market.

LN also requires a constant observation of the LN network or malicious actors can just take more from a channel than allowed. This eventually leads to entities specialized in monitoring the chain for the average Joe. You could call those payment providers.

Channel factories solve this issue by being able to create and close many channels at once.

> LN also requires a constant observation of the LN network or malicious actors can just take more from a channel than allowed.

These are called watchtowers, they never have control of your funds, they are simply watching the blockchain for counterparty actions, which if they tried to steal your money, they would end up losing all theirs, so just knowing that you might be using a watchtower is a very strong deterrent to not cheat you.

Watchtowers are what I meant with payment processors. You need to pay them to watch the chain in case the other party tries to literally steal from you. You can call them whatever you want, it's a third-party, just like Visa.

I love how all these cryptocurrency concepts have "traditional" counterparts, btw. Or it's rather the other way around.

It can be a third-party or you could also run one yourself, there's nothing stopping you.

I wouldn't be surprised to see counterparts, just like email is "mail on the internet", but there are also fairly novel concepts like flash loans which are just not possible in current financial system.

https://www.coindesk.com/the-defi-flash-loan-attack-that-cha...

Problem solved without Bitcoin. You won't get rich from just holding it, though, and we all know that this is really the only goal of cryptocurrency proponents.

How do you send cash over the internet though? That part is hard.

Not true. Cite a source.

Lightning Network Whitepaper, section 3.3.4 states very clearly:

"For this reason, one should periodically monitor the blockchain to see if one’s counterparty has broadcast an invalidated Commitment Transaction, or delegate a third party to do so. A third party can be delegated by only giving the Breach Remedy transaction to this third party. They can be incentivized to watch the blockchain broadcast such a transaction in the event of counterparty maliciousness by giving these third parties some fee in the output. Since the third party is only able to take action when the counterparty is acting maliciously, this third party does not have any power to force close of the channel."

That's an ... amazingly blanket ... statement, for the countless thousands of words people here have said on the topic.

It's somewhat pointless to argue with random strangers on the Internet who may or may not appreciate your effort at reasonable discussion. If you believe in your own arguments, put your money where your mouth is and be proven right economically and be the one who quietly owns the last laugh.

That's an opinion, not a fact.

BTC genuinely uses a stupid amount of energy and there isn’t a terribly good reason for it since we don’t need a completely trustless financial system outside of some libertarian ideal. It would be necessary if establishing trust was impossible but it isn’t.

BTC transaction fees and throughput are still an issue. Off-chain transactions that use the main network as a settlement layer is a non-solution that undermines the whole point of BTC. Might as well just use banks as a settlement later for the lighting network for all it matters at that point.

Volatility and the fact that BTC is more of an investment vehicle than anything else matters if you want to actually use it to buy stuff.

The fact that there is no form of monetary policy means that the available currency doesn’t expand and contract with growth in economic output which makes prices unstable and naturally deflationary.

BTC is fine as a nerdy digital cash and commodity market based on its value as such but a general purpose currency it isn’t.

Who's "we" ? I certainly do need it.

Before you say that drug dealers ceasing to use Bitcoin is a good thing..., it really says more about the ability to regulate Bitcoin and the ability to trace people than it says anything about the users of Bitcoin suddenly deciding they are law abiding. Secondly, drug dealers are forced, absolutely forced, to use your cryptocurrency, they are the few users that absolutely cannot do without cryptocurrency, at least not over the internet. Cash is still king, but only on the street. If the most "diehard" users of the cryptocurrency move on that is a signal that it will absolutely fail for all the "softcore" users who don't really need your cryptocurrency.

Why do I need a fully trustless system that is worse in every other category? Slow, more expensive, less consumer protection, etc.

At the very least its not obvious and the market has not spoken. Even people speculating use off chain exchanges, not the chain itself.

Have you ever had your entire bank account confiscated by the government? That's what happened in my country in the 90s:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Brazil#Col...

Inflation was out of control and the president decided to freeze everything in some kind of desperate attempt to control it. They took away everyone's money.

People who say they don't need cryptocurrencies are way too comfortable with their banks and governments holding all the power. I don't really care how much energy it uses, I still want it to continue existing just in case my government starts getting funny ideas again.

Bitcoin "people" hail second layer scaling solutions like lightning which is basically paypal but decentralized. So why on earth would you not expect the people/companies who would participate in lightning to not just build their own scaling layer? What we are seeing is just that Visa and other competitors build a central scaling solution outside Bitcoin. Thus Bitcoin failed to decentralize anything if the vast majority of people using Bitcoin don't even interact with the block chain.

The fees are incredibly high, so high that any Venezuelan that is using Bitcoin is already rich and just wants to flee the country with their wealth.

It's not private, anyone who knows your address can track your balance, your transactions and can even send tainted Bitcoin to you, to ruin the untainted Bitcoin in your wallet.

>lack of backing have all been responded to, to a sufficiently satisfactory degree.

They haven't. The only thing I see is that people consider Bitcoin as the perfect Cryptocurrency as it is and nothing has to be changed to make it better, yet they expect the market cap to grow forever without doing anything for it, but still assume that the changes they refuse to implement will be the driving force of that value.

[1]: https://lightning.network/

Edit: added link

I guess that's a little unfair as I suppose Bitcoin can help disrupt the central banks of places like Venezuela, giving the elite an easier means of fleeing a collapsing country without losing their wealth. Sort of defeats the purpose of economic collapse if it no longer even serves as a great leveler, but oh well, I guess. As long as the rich can never lose.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-11-11/zelle-has...

"I lived in Venezuela. Almost no one uses crypto or cares about crypto. The fees to send bitcoin alone represent a sizeable chunk of money to most Venezuelans."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/jsw96e/zelle_has...

10k transactions per second ETH2 layer 1 + zk roll-ups providing throughout multiplication threatens VISA.

The problem with Bitcoin is that it's not technically sophisticated enough to support proper L2s which results in poorly engineered solutions like Lightning and centralized solutions like Liquid.

With Bitcoin more work needs to be done on L1 for the ecosystem to support layers above it while Ethereum could freeze development forever and still support flexible, fast, and decentralized layers on top.

Roughly, e.g.: 1:Fiber, 2:Ethernet, 3:Routing, 4:TCP/IP, and 7:HTTP.

4 and 7 are ceasing to be real - HTTP2 is both a session protocol and an application protocol, and that's before we even get into things like DoH.

The model is still solid, even if the most common implementation has melted a bit.

I do think it is useful as an architectural device or a conceptual design goal -- i.e. a model to model your models on. :)

But I also concede that part of its teaching value is that it is a failure in practice.

It was a formalization of the ad hoc (successful!) design strategies of early networking. I see echoes of it everywhere, most obviously in the Linux kernel, and I think it's valuable for that.

The usual criticism of the OSI model is that there are grey areas and dependencies, where a lower layers bleed into higher layers (e.g. L2 switching which can work a lot like routing in modern hardware), and higher layers that are tightly bound to lower layers, making the distinctions unclear.

The purist in me wants to agree, but I think the model is too useful to disregard casually.

The value comes from the abstraction, and like Newtonian physics, it is a great model -- until it isn't.

Do you care to elaborate?

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html

What central bank has been disrupted by Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is not a disruption. But blockchain is a useful tech.

Bitcoin is just an implementation of blockchain.

(just saying that you can't really trust their numbers, growing "big" or growing "normal". Who knows :) )

He is talking about taxing unrealized gains, which is quite unfair. If the share price of a company doubles, it doesn't mean the company has extra cash to buy back shares for redistribution. Same with land. I feel property taxes today, as a percentage of market value, are insidious precisely for that reason. Increased demand for housing in my area doesn't mean I have more cash to pay taxes. Not until I sell the house and realize that gain.

Right. As I understand it, that's part of the point (for economists, anyway): It incentivizes the allocation of scarce resources to those who value it more highly (and thus, presumably, to those who can make more productive use of it).

Now, I don't want to give the impression that I am on board with this argument, since it implicitly incentivizes the concentration of property ownership into the hands of those who will rent it out, rather than those who will use it. Landlords who are faced with a growing tax bill don't have to sell the property to realize their gains, they can just raise rents (not to mention using it as collateral for a loan to purchase more property).

In order to make the incentives align correctly for more participants, you would also have to establish a pretty robust system of rent control to keep spiraling property values from pricing existing homeowners out of the market, and incentivizing redevelopment: if you can't raise rents arbitrarily to cover your property taxes, you have to build more units to rent (but not so many that a glut of available units depresses rental income).

Fiat currencies and their forced entrenchment has a giant carbon footprint with its wasteful banking system, militaries and layered machinery to ensure its value is never challenged. The FX market trades about $6 trillion DAILY, with an infrastructure that doesn't produce any real goods and services. It'd be fair to compare the energy cost of bitcoin with the legacy fiat system, but how do you even begin to measure the latter. We live in an artificially over financialized world, where a big chunk of knowledge workers is not engaged productively. Bitcoin may in fact become the great definancialization that would boil the system down to essentials [2].

Nic Carter does a great job addressing the energy concerns of bitcoin [3]. Consider specially the idea of the non-fungibility of energy and how BTC miners absorb energy that'd otherwise be curtailed. I know it will sound crazy and totally non-intuitive but there is an argument that bitcoin might end up being the biggest incentivizer of clean, cheap energy, and in the end be a net positive for the environment.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/the-e... [2]: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-the-great-defi... [3]: https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-co...

[1]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/biden-to-visits-bay-ar...

People expect other people to just be basically honest because in most of our interactions -- at least in the developed world-- they are.

Its not monopolizing diligence, its setting a floor for diligence for investments by people outside of (expanded by this action) pool of investors.

> The absence of these regulations will create room for businesses who would vet investments for you at different risk levels.

Are you talking about a hypothetical scenario where the SEC removed accredited investor rules rather than expanding it to included basically people with licenses or currently-active professional roles related to investing rather than merely people with lots of money?

Also, such businesses exist already in the financial space.

The floor just happens to be very close to the ceiling excluding many people with varying risk tolerances.

Those already exist and are called managed funds. The problem is, there is often a conflict of interest and the fund managers profit off the ignorance of their own costumers.

This is actually a very big problem in the financial space: the incentives of the B2C entity and the costumer are almost never aligned. The costumer lacks information and the B2C is supposed to help them attain that information, but the B2C entity can also profit off the ignorance of their customer and this is often more profitable than getting paid a fixed fee for honest advice.

Which means managed funds are not what the GP is talking about. The GP is talking about a third party that does not have any conflict of interest.

Verb Of The Month award has been conferred.

YouTube is an internet advertising company like pretty much everything else Google. That they serve video content is ancillary.

Laws are just a consequence of an actual cultural change, and can only succeed (and not precede) the conversion of hearts and minds. Voting and democracy should not become a device to placate the dissatisfied masses into silence, make them lineup for ballot, to choose a lesser evil who, in most likelihood, will turn out to be a egotistical power-seeker. We shouldn't conflate voting with "will of the people."

https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm

See the bit starting with: "Now there's another notion that gets out, it's around everywhere. It's in the South, it's in the North, it's In California, and all over our nation. It's the notion that legislation can't solve the problem, it can't do anything in this area. And those who project this argument contend that you've got to change the heart and that you can't change the heart through legislation."

To summarize it, he disagrees with you.

Notice MLK is talking about specific legislature, and the poster above was talking about electing officials. They are correct that merely electing politicians is neither necessary nor sufficient--the laws must change.

"Even though it may be true that the law cannot change the heart, it can restrain the heartless"

I never read MLK much and just realized how awesome of an orater he was.

When there are sympathy protests outside the US, this is exactly what the sympathy protesters are attempting to remind you all. The US has nice ideals, eg "and justice for all"

(I haven't visited the States since his presidency, but although I found much to dislike about the man, this is an argument I could get behind)

There is this "damping" factor like a mechanical system, that takes the energy out of the people's hands and dampens it with lobbying, dishonesty, unaccountability and complete neglect for public interest. The response of the system is now steady state with little change. We need a public roster of each politician and their promises written in notarized documents, that can be used to strip them of relection and penalize them in some way so that future politicians cannot weasel their way out of promises.

I would also vote for public presentations with slides + data by each politician instead of these stupid debates and speeches. They should be documented and scrutinized for accuracy of data and their claims. We have startup decks, but yet politicians don't have to make presentations. Instead they trade blows on a debate stage with polished repertoire which has now become an entertainment show, at least at the presidential level.

I’m not sure what penalty would be appropriate that would be better than standing for re-election and having the people weigh in. Voters who were strict-Y or any-Z might choose to not vote to re-elect. Voters who care about and got more X than par and a little bit of Y would be inclined to re-elect.

In a republic it’s much much harder. People run on platforms but that doesn’t mean the rest of the legislators agree with them. Often people in HOAs can’t agree on things... and that’s the lowest form of government (well regulation).

If I owned a company and the people I hired to manage it were playing games like this, and if I asked them for insight into what, specifically, is happening behind the scenes, and they told me "it is literally not possible for us to provide you with that information" (and wouldn't say why it is not possible), I would be immediately launching a side project with the intent to replace the whole lot of them.

Yes, I realize "it's complex", but complexity is a continuum, not a binary.

With respect to the article, is it not true that the President has some substantial ability to float ideas into the public consciousness, that would put the heat on the state and municipal politicians to come up with some better systems to manage law enforcement and officer interactions with the public? And if the federal level truly has no power whatsoever in instituting reform or enforcing federal laws (what's the FBI do again?), I don't see why a comprehensive framework with recommendations for operational reform and greater transparency couldn't come from the top down. If there's nothing to be held accountable to, and no one to do the holding, I don't see why people are surprised when law enforcement restraint is largely left up to the goodwill of individual officers.

This whole situation and the way it is discussed seems rather absurd to me, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing.

They make deals with each other to get some of what they represent their constituents want in exchange for some of what the others' constituents want. This is necessary (and I believe by and large healthy) behavior when you're trying to govern ~350 million people.

Imagine that you get to hire 5 people to run the company on your behalf, and four other directors each also hire 5 people to further their interests. Some of those other four directors want things that are nearly enough exactly the opposite of what you want, and you can do nothing to expel them, and precious little to change their minds. Also, the best five people who are willing to fill the roles you control are not exactly the ones you would like to hire, but nevertheless, they're the best available and willing. Now what?

I am the owner of the company, and there's nothing I can do to expel them?

> Also, the best five people who are willing to fill the roles you control are not exactly the ones you would like to hire, but nevertheless, they're the best available and willing. Now what?

Well in the short term, you're screwed. But how plausible is this imaginary scenario? There is literally no one better available, in a country of 300 million people? Are the politicians we have now the best of the best?

Take the choices we have in the next presidential election for example: Donald Trump vs Joe Biden. Are these the best "available and willing" candidates out there? Not one single person in the country more qualified than either of these fellows?

Not if we're building a metaphor for representative democracy here. If we're doing autocracy / absolutism then expel away!

> Not one single person in the country more qualified than either of these fellows?

Well, it seems like nobody better is able and desires to endure the grueling, ridiculous, perverse eligibility and interview process the hiring committee demands.

> Not if we're building a metaphor for representative democracy here.

This statement seems incorrect to me. I could provide many examples, but one should do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_election

A recall election (also called a recall referendum, recall petition or representative recall) is a procedure by which, in certain polities, voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before that official's term has ended. Recalls, which are initiated when sufficient voters sign a petition, have a history dating back to the constitution in ancient Athenian democracy[1] and feature in several current constitutions. In indirect or representative democracy, people's representatives are elected and these representatives rule for a specific period of time. However, where the facility to recall exists, should any representative come to be perceived as not properly discharging their responsibilities, then they can be called back with the written request of specific number or proportion of voters.

If you think about it a bit, you may also realize (or at least consider the possibility) that the variety of democratic implementations that currently exist (and have existed over time) were man-made, as opposed to being an artifact of nature. We can do whatever we want, in this domain - we are literally the masters of our own destiny. Or, we could be at least, but there seems to be significant rhetorical resistance to these ideas, from the strangest sources.

> Well, it seems like nobody better is able and desires to endure the grueling, ridiculous, perverse eligibility and interview process the hiring committee demands.

It may seem that way, but is it actually that way?

Both the Republicans and Democrats fielded numerous candidates - are you suggesting that Trump and Biden are the very best candidates from within those two lots (which implies that the processes by which they were chosen are perfect)?

And the "hiring committee" itself - is this literally the only possible approach that could be taken? Not one single improvement could be made there, or at any other stage within the entire electoral system?

"I am the owner of this computer, yet I can't know whether it will run a certain problem in finite time?"

"We are the dominant species on this planet, yet we can't change its course towards Alpha Centauri?"

Ownership is more of a negative than positive good---that is, ownership means you own something more than other people, not that you're omnipotent regarding it.

A human can own a computer yet still be unable to get it to do something.

"Never attribute to scarcity what can be attributed to technical debt."

I notice that rather than answering my question, you seem to have chosen to instead reply with two other questions, both of which are rather absurd examples of things that are literally not possible, and have little relevance to the question I actually asked.

May I ask why you chose to respond in this way? My (speculative) intuition is that it is a form of rhetoric, that is often used in conversation to persuade third party observers of a certain thing. But to be explicit, this is only my intuition, I am not making a formal accusation of any kind...I am simply curious about what is going on in this conversation.

So, having said all that: is my intuition incorrect? And if so, I would very much appreciate if you could explain what is going on here, as it seems to have become a very common writing technique here and elsewhere, but I am personally unable to understand it at all - to me, it only makes already complex conversations even more confusing.

> Ownership is more of a negative than positive good---that is, ownership means you own something more than other people, not that you're omnipotent regarding it.

> A human can own a computer yet still be unable to get it to do something.

> "Never attribute to scarcity what can be attributed to technical debt."

This seems to suggest that it is not possible for an owner of a company to expel substandard management, at least sometimes, because it requires omnipotence. Is this what you are actually saying, or is my interpretation flawed? If it is flawed, would you be able to restate your beliefs in clear, unambiguous, non-rhetorical terms? And if it is not flawed, could you possibly post at least one example where omnipotence is clearly required to accomplish the task (or something reasonably close to demonstrating that)?

And I suppose I should also point out that the underlying issue of my analogy is whether the current political process in the Unites States of America could be improved, at all.

Do you think it is not possible to make any improvements at all, however small? If it isn't too much trouble, I think an initial discrete "Yes" or "No" answer would help in maximizing communication effectiveness, and after that you can include any rhetorical narrative that you believe adds to that initial answer.

Yes, I think it is possible to make improvements.*

>and have little relevance to the question I actually asked.

My point was that they are relevant, in the sense that inability doesn't necessarily imply malice.

My analogy is "off" in that it is not literal, hard barriers, as with Earth->Alpha Centauri---but then, so was yours, in the sense that the owner of a company is a single individual and doesn't have collective action problems, whereas an electorate has nothing but. But I'd contend that my analogy is more useful/relevant to the specific issue of "owner potency" than the company owner analogy--which was the point.

So no, this was not a display for third parties (not completely, anyway---who doesn't like upvotes?), but an honest attempt to communicate that yes, it is really hard, probably actually impossible, and certainly not easy or simple if approached naively, which the "company owner" analogy seems to do.

>This seems to suggest that it is not possible for an owner of a company to expel substandard management, at least sometimes, because it requires omnipotence.

No! A company owner can of course expel management any time they like. My point is that a country is not like a company, and more specifically, an electorate is not like an individual.

That last point is very important, and the crux of my argument. There are many many differences between working for a single owner, or even a board, vs an electorate:

- a company owner, as an individual, is less likely to make contradictory, impossible demands. For electorates impossible and contradictory demands are the rule rather than the exception.

- a company owner is concerned with a more responsive machine (the company) than an electorate (a country), and so is more likely to have a working feedback loop---which means if they do make impossible demands, they are more likely to connect the (bad) consequences to the demands.

- a company owner is able (at least in theory) to believably make commitments. If a company owner said, "What specifically is the problem stopping you from XYZ, I will fire you if you don't tell me, I will promote you if you do," there is a set of circumstances in which subordinates could believe and rely on that. Electorates, in contrast, are completely unreliable and cannot make believable promises. Individuals might---you might write your congressman and promise you'll vote for him if he does XYZ---but what does he care, you're one vote, he gets letters every week saying the equivalent, but for different things.

So I am perhaps not answering the question as written---is it possible for a company owner to expel bad management. Yes, it absolutely is. However, analogizing that to nation-state governance is a model with some very important flaws, the bulk of them relating to coordination/communication problems that electorates face. Just as adding more engineers to a project makes it later, adding more voters to a discussion of an issue (particularly complex issues) makes the electorate dumber and less reasonable.

There's also the issue that, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, what you're really talking about isn't "putting the right people in office." Because that begs the question: right for what? Say you replaced politicians with computers who would do exactly what they were told. Well, we can guess how that would turn out, because we have computers---having a perfect servant like that tends to spotlight the weaknesses in the programmer's thinking. How does one run a nation-state? Remember, we don't give the electorate power over this because we think they actually know how to do it. Rather we do it as a circuit breaker/safety measure to keep a functioning feedback loop in place---to put a lower bound on how bad things can get.

I have various suggestions on how things could be improved---they mostly don't matter because I am just one voice among 300 million, and there are lots of people with brains that function perfectly well. The shortage is not one of political philosophy! I tend to think the place where I can actually have impact is by building community with my neighbors, raising my family, and (I unironically believe this) writing good software.

* Though even the definition of "improvements" is up for grabs. Is a commit that improves runtime by 50% but also increases memory usage by the same amount an improvement? Governance is full of similar tradeoffs, and reasonable people can and do disagree on them.

Hey, if you don't have fun in life, what's the point? :)

> My point was that they are relevant, in the sense that inability doesn't necessarily imply malice.

Valid perspective that I overlooked.

> My analogy is "off" in that it is not literal, hard barriers, as with Earth->Alpha Centauri---but then, so was yours, in the sense that the owner of a company is a single individual and doesn't have collective action problems, whereas an electorate has nothing but. But I'd contend that my analogy is more useful/relevant to the specific issue of "owner potency" than the company owner analogy--which was the point.

Completely agree. I do indeed realize there is a collective action problem (I happen to think that this is the #2 problem), but my point or strategy in using this very simplified approach, however flawed my performance was, was to try to "counter" the perception (to the degree that it exists) that:

>> In a republic where deal-making has to happen, if you ran on W, X, Y, and Z, you might have to compromise on Z to get W, X, and a watered-down version of Y.

...is "just how it is", &/or "cannot be improved upon", or "is being done in mostly a well-intentioned manner", etc.

We have absolutely no idea how true any of these (and the hundreds of other plausible excuses) beliefs are. Which brings us to my supplementary point:

>> and if I asked them for insight into what, specifically, is happening behind the scenes, and they told me "it is literally not possible for us to provide you with that information" (and wouldn't say why it is not possible), I would be immediately launching a side project with the intent to replace the whole lot of them.

Is it not true that the American public, even if they were interested, has extremely little insight into what is really going on in the political system? Oh sure, there are plenty of "facts", reports, newspaper articles, and various other forms of messaging they can avail themselves of, but how accurate and comprehensive are these things with respect to what is actually going on? My intuition suggests: "not very".

> A company owner can of course expel management any time they like. My point is that a country is not like a company, and more specifically, an electorate is not like an individual. That last point is very important, and the crux of my argument. There are many many differences between working for a single owner, or even a board, vs an electorate....

All of the points and constraints you raise are completely valid, and very hard problems! But think of it this way: you came up with these (and could surely come up with many, many more) after perhaps a few minutes of back of the napkin systems analysis, something you can do because you presumably have many years of system-agnostic experience in doing so. My question is: has a serious and thorough analysis been performed on this system complex system, in recent history, by people who are deeply familiar with the wide spectrum of powerful new capabilities mankind has at its fingertips, in the form of software, AI, and the networked nature of the vast majority of the population (let's leave aside the current(!) intelligence level of this population, which is another system that deserves some analysis). Based on unbiased observations (say, an alien with no priors) of casual forum conversations, one might easily think so. But is it actually true? Exactly(!) how optimized is our current implementation of democracy? Has anyone even taken a proper look at it? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this task has been performed in an honest, substantial manner, by a bi-partisan group of unbiased, arms length, highly skilled people? My intuition suggests: "No, this has not been done."

> Just as adding more engineers to a project makes it later, adding more voters to a discussion of an issue (particularly complex issues) makes the electorate dumber and less reasonable.

Right! But this project is distinctly different than all others: it has no written in stone due date. Theoretically, we have infinite time! Although in practice, it's completely possible that we may even have less than a decade, considering the multiple legitimate "existential" crises we have on deck - but this is no reason to not do anything! On the contrary, we should be sorting out the completely ridiculous & petty arguments we have on this very site, and then proceed to put our collective minds to work on solving the actual fucking problem(s) that present themselves for this country, and the entire world...should we not?

But what do we actually do with our minds? Have the same old arguments year after year, mostly in the same form as prior years, and of a quality not all that dissimilar to that which you would find on /r/politics. Which then raises an even more important question, perhaps the most important question: why do we behave like this?

Is our behaviour part of the problem? And to be clear, I'm not talking only about "those people" (you know the ones), I'm talking about everyone.

> There's also the issue that, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, what you're really talking about isn't "putting the right people in office." Because that begs the question: right for what? Say you replaced politicians with computers who would do exactly what they were told. Well, we can guess how that would turn out, because we have computers---having a perfect servant like that tends to spotlight the weaknesses in the programmer's thinking. How does one run a nation-state? Remember, we don't give the electorate power over this because we think they actually know how to do it. Rather we do it as a circuit breaker/safety measure to keep a functioning feedback loop in place---to put a lower bound on how bad things can get.

This is all just proper systems analysis - problems and constraints that must be accommodated. We do the analysis, and then we decide upon an initial approach, and then we adjust as needed, like literally every other competently executed project on the planet. And you never stop, because you are working within a dynamic, infinitely complex system.

> I have various suggestions on how things could be improved---they mostly don't matter because I am just one voice among 300 million

That yours is but one voice among 300 million is only one problem. Let's say you stumbled upon a genuinely brilliant idea - what would you do then? Write a letter to your political representative, sending that idea into the very system we're currently discussing?

I think the problem that mother nature has dealt us may fall under this category:

> “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” - Carl Sagan, Cosmos

For the sake of argument, let's assume that's the case. What then shall we do about it? It seems to me our ancestors found themselves in a rather similar predicament...what did they do?

You can’t remove officials for not fulfilling their promises. They can also delay until it’s too late by saying, “I’m working on it.” Then once out of office, they are accountable for nothing.

Job safety is built into the position for good reason. However, it’s been perverted to allow officials to do whatever they want. Fixing this balance is not simple, but I believe would be a crucial step towards realizing a functional democratic system.

I am thinking that a "promise" is not a quantitative term. It needs to be ratified into specific data oriented actions that can go through a litmus test whether it was fulfilled or betrayed.

After that, one idea is to have an accountability score tracked by bureaucracy and have that printed on the ballot along with their principle accomplishments in the supplement. Another idea is to have a penalty score of not meeting prior promises as a dilution factor to the number of votes. If a politician only met 90% of the promises, they will lose 10% of the voting power of the public (like a 0.X multiplier to the votes). Just thinking out loud, there may be major issues with these ideas.

But now you'll get an unstable system where candidates get kicked out all the time and are too populist because they don't expect to live long.

So add a low-pass filter. When the moving average of the candidate's support falls below the threshold and a definite other candidate's support is high enough, replace the incumbent with that challenger.

You might even increase the duration of the moving average with time, like the doubling trick in multi-armed bandits. The logic is that a candidate who has shown that he can weather the initial period without getting voted out can be trusted with more long-term decisions, i.e. actions speak louder than words.

Unrelated side note: when you are talking about a hypothetical politician, be aware of your choice of pronoun.

You might be the type of person who picks between he/she with a precise 50/50 split but I'm going to assume you are not that type of person. Similar to the way you seem to have assumed that if a person is a politician they are also a man.

I guess some of that bleeds through: that I use "he" without reflecting on it because it wouldn't carry an implication of actual gender in my first language. I am definitely not assuming that politics is a men's only club.

Next ammendment: direct election of cabinet members.

Also, all changes to policies to be parameterized and adiabatic.

"No heat, only work". I like that proposal :-)

Switzerland, people can always overrule politicians decisions there, no need to wait until next election. This means that the opinions of politicians is no longer as important so this issue doesn't even come up. So you place more value on finding the politician best fit for running the country, not the politician with values most aligned to your own.

What about this: for most decisions, people elect their representative, and don't directly participate. The representative votes on decisions in gov't, but their vote is weighted by the number of people they represent (let's call this V).

However, if there is an issue that a person deems important to participate in, then that person gets to directly vote for said issue. Then, the elected representative's vote _for that issue_ drops by 1, and thus their vote only weights V-1.

Hence, by this method, most people who don't give a shit can continue not to, and allow their electoral representative to make decisions on their behalf. But direct democracy is available for those who care enough.

Popular vote is a tool for demagogues and populists and will quickly lead to tyranny of the majority type situations.

Whenever I vote in local elections there are some ballot initiatives, and it's ALWAYS feelgood shit like "give elderly widows whos' husbands worked as a teacher a 25% property tax cut". I vote no for everything out of principle.

Now it is easy to spend lots of money to mislead many people right before the big and expensive referendum, but if a new referendum can happen any day, spending lots of money on campaigns would become unviable.

One solution to this is more direct democracy. When people can propose initiatives and vote on them in referendums, it is harder for politicians to ignore that agenda. This works pretty well in Switzerland.

The place where women couldn't vote in federal elections until 1971, and in local elections as late as 1990?

(It's a known fact, yes, in general, people do vote more socially conservatively in referendums, often backing up status quo. But that doesn't prevent progressive politicians to come up with better proposals.)

In any case, if we use your logic, US would be perfect country for this, being one of the last countries on Earth that doesn't have universal health care system.

Interestingly, many U.S. states do have some direct democracy provisions, courtesy of the progressive movement at the beginning of the 20th century. But what I heard it was sabotaged at federal level by the administration at the time, because U.S. wanted to get a bit involved in WW1 and it could potentially prevent that.

Democracy that works in a country of 8.6 million does not scale up to work for a country of 330 million.

What else should you expect when people are limited to only two political parties? It could be worse with only one political party.

We don't need more political parties, we need solutions to manage the incompatibility.

Six months from now, is the average white American small business owner going to be more or less likely to hire a black person? That's the fucked up shit that is going to last another decade. That's the stuff that maintains generational poverty. And there's a thousand other subtle, unspoken things like that which are going to broaden our divide.

The real pain - at least on the inter-generational poverty and deprivation side - is that in six months, the average American small business isn't going to exist in heavily-black neighbourhoods, and that probably won't change much in six years, and other businesses are probably going to be pretty thin on the ground there too. Apparently some places never recovered what they lost in the sixties race riots.

Though I expect that the consequences of the police actions to stop this will also be anything but temporary. It seems to take years of careful work to rebuild trust between police and the community they serve, and to restructure policing to be less hostile and dangerous.

I'd really like to see some. I've been having some cognitive dissonance lately. Some portions of the media are telling me that the looters are white supremacists, but unless there are substantial amount of black/brown white supremacists in this country, the video evidence says otherwise...

And the only place you're going to have a chance to see the truth on this is in conspiracy forums and on Twitter. How trustworthy is it? Well, it is typically video footage, and it is highly unlikely to be coordinated reporting, so judge for yourself how seriously you want to trust it. But I have watched and read lots on this, and anything I have seen is that the people stirring up shit and instigating violence or destruction, are white, and the people trying to stop them verbally or physically, are black or white.

Here is a good livestream that typically shows 5 to 9 streams simultaneously, depending on where the action is. This is as close to knowing reality as you are going to get. If you watch the "trustworthy" news media, you are maybe going to get some very small amount of truth, but you also run a very big chance of getting a framed version of reality that is often the opposite of what is true.

Look for yourself, think for yourself. Do not outsource these things to authorities who have well demonstrated that they are untrustworthy.

Right here on HN posts about the protests were being flagged left and right because people are more concerned about the freedom to side load apps on iOS than minorities getting harassed.

2. the strong majority of these 656 contracts have a similar disciplinary appeals process. Around 73% provide for appeal to an arbitrator or comparable procedure and nearly 70% provide that an arbitrator or comparable third party makes a final binding decision. About 54% of the contracts give officers or unions the power to select that arbitrator. About 70% of the jurisdictions give these arbitrators extensive review power, including the ability to revisit disciplinary matters with little or no deference to the decisions made by supervisors, civilian review boards or politically accountable officials. [2]

3. We look at the roll-out of collective bargaining rights for police officers at the state level from the 1950s to the 1980s. The introduction of access to collective bargaining drives a modest decline in policy employment and increase in compensation with no meaningful impacts on total crime, violent crime, property crime or officers killed in the line of duty. What does change? We find a substantial increase in police killings of civilians over the medium to long run (likely after unions are established) with an additional 0.026 to 0.029 civilians killed in a county each year of whom the overwhelming majority are non-white. [3]

4. Recent academic research further demonstrates that police disciplinary procedures established through union contracts obstruct accountability and (as I noted in this post) collective bargaining for police officers appears to increase police misconduct. This is not surprising. Through collective bargaining, police unions demand protections from disciplinary procedures that would not otherwise be approved, oppose consent decrees and other measures to increase police accountability, and (given the power of police unions in state and local politics) they receive relatively little pushback. [4]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...

[2] https://crim.jotwell.com/the-power-of-police-unions/

[3] https://twitter.com/robgillezeau/status/1266834185055956997

[4] https://reason.com/2020/05/30/police-unions-and-the-problem-...

I could provide more as well, that was just a real quick look up of my bookmarks

Edit: 1 more source for good measure

[5] https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

  This  Article  empirically  demonstrates  that  police  departments’  internal   disciplinary   procedures,   often   established   through   the   collective   bargaining   process,   can   serve   as   barriers   to   officer   accountability.

1) The people with the power over the police have almost no contact with the people being policed. Neighborhood schooling reinforces that problem. It ensures that ability to afford housing segregates black people from white people. (Note: it’s not a question of funding. Here in DC, most of the shiny new LEED Gold schools are 99% black. Therefore, white parents won’t send their kids there, notwithstanding the gleaming facilities and lower housing prices in the surrounding area.) School choice gives black people the power to create integrated schools, instead of waiting for statistically wealthier whites/Asians to get woke enough to want to do it. I think people would be much more sensitive to policing issues if they didn’t just hear about these things a couple of times a year on the news, but were faced with people in their PTA suffering the consequences of police brutality. I would add that, unsurprisingly, a decisive majority of black people support school choice.

2) With notion of black people being “the other” rooted since childhood, qualified immunity and police unions eliminate the near term, immediate consequences of acting on those instincts.

The two things that make people think before they act are empathy and self preservation. The libertarian approach is a double-barreled solution that could hit both.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/nyregion/a-manhattan-dist...

It touches on two NYC schools that share a building (The Earth School & PS64) but have remarkably different racial and socioeconomic makeups. I found it fascinating after touring Earth School earlier this year.

If your police department sucks, but the one neighboring one is good, you could choose to move your funding to the other police department who would expand their operations to cover more territory.

History shows that if a society is racist the absolute WORST thing you can do is have a strong government, as that government will likely be filled with racists who will pass racist laws. (See The War on Drugs and/or Jim Crow Laws)

The idea that more government is the solution to racism denies the entire history of this nation. Government is not now, nor has it ever been the solution to the problem of racism (nor any other problem), Government is like it always has been and always will be the problem...

the Classic Libertarian saying "Government: If you think you have problems, wait until you see our [government] solutions"

Have we? the current riots / protest seem to indicate not.

>Further much of that progress was driven by government mandate: The Civil Rights acts, anti-discrimination laws for employment, affirmative action, etc.

There is / was a double edge sword to many of those issues. For example more than 50% of the civil rights act was rolling back and repealing racist government laws and regulations. People seem to have this perception that the population was racist and the government saved the day when in reality the government was racist and then rolled back some (not all) of their racist policies.

So the 60's you have the Civil Rights acts, then what do we see in the 70's and 80's? The War on Drugs, and "Tough on Crime" laws that were disproportionately enforced and impacted poor and minority communities. This trend continues to today with continues sentencing disparity, mandatory minimums, and various other things that at a minimum are Class based enforcement if not outright racist enforcement of law

So I can easily reconcile my position that government is the problem because that is a factually accurate analysis of the history of law in this nation

Perhaps if we had some serious, organized, factual discussions on some of these matters (as opposed to the all propaganda all the time approach we've become so accustomed to), people wouldn't continue to hold the same opinions they (supposedly) hold at the moment.

But you end up in a situation of further tragedy where people start destroying property and assaulting others, and they screwed up by doing so. The message has been diluted, lost in all the noise. Expanding it nationwide hasn't broadcast the message positively.

It's juvenile and short sighted, the people are on their side, saying yes this was wrong, yes this has to stop, murder is unacceptable, etc. They are now looking at the situation with a different viewpoint, asking themselves if the police violence may be justified with this group, look at what they did to our community when WE AGREED with them and were willing to help.

That isn't a political thought, that is a rational thought. Destroying communities, rioting, looting, killing people, it never brings more people into your corner. America is a civil society that respects law and order. Much of America now is just happy they don't have to live around anywhere where this is happening, that is going to be the only takeaway from this tragedy now. The chorus on social media doesn't reflect that. The riots turned average Americans against this event.

A barrier, metaphorically, was quickly slammed up between people, and now it's just noise and chaos.

He throws a tantrum, screams, yell, slams his hand against the counter. Throws his toys, tells me he hates me.

It's noise and chaos. It doesn't go ignored, but it also isn't allowed. It isn't a compelling way to get me to give them what they want, unless I'm a bad parent with no direction and structure. Civility, good behavior, that gets noticed positively.

You don't understand the problem, you are emotionally invested in this, which is why you think harming innocent people is an avenue to positive change. You couldn't be more wrong if you tried.

In our system, you protest to raise awareness, to gain positive traction in the public awareness, you then vote and work within the system to enact the real mechanisms of change. When done with compassion, it brings everyone on board to your cause, even if a few bitch and moan about it.

Martin Luther King Jr. knew this. If you think physically harming others and their property, street mob justice, if you think this is an avenue to positive change, you don't understand our system.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

First deployment (Dec 2003-Dec 2004, E6) I ran the operations floor during night shift in 335th Theater Signal Command, which put me in charge of up time and status for all voice and digital communications in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Second (Jul 2009-Jul 2010, E6) I travel across Afghanistan performing information security audits of major and minor US Army bases. I was able to pick up my CISSP at the end of this.

Third (Dec 2012-Jan 2013, E7) I was NCOIC of Knowledge Management for 311th Sustainment Command in Afghanistan where I trained and coordinated with 24 staff sections to increase their information transparency and produce common/integrated products.

Fourth (Oct 2018-July 2019, CW2) I was chief of network operations for the 300th Sustainment Brigade in Kuwait.

Fifth, I will be there soon.

I realize that's a terrible idea, but not sure of any way of changing people's attitudes towards each other when they'd rather stick to their little groups and believe the worst about everyone else.

The most diverse places I've ever been are also the most visibly segregated and racially aware (but not in a good way). Meanwhile, I see the most tolerance for others in homogeneous places.

I wonder if this is borne out in any studies.

The more institutions gravitate towards factionalism, populism, or consolidation the less I trust them. I don’t need political parties to represent me. I am fully capable of forming my own opinions. I only need political parties to represent a diverse candidate pool and put pressure on other political parties.

Well I hate to break it to you, most of the protests, and police abuse seem to originate in major cities that have largely been controlled by a single political party for longer than most people have been alive...

So I partially agree with you - there must be a certain culture change happening, but it can and it should be supported by law in order to happen faster.

Because the people who were on the "no" side of things weren't really affected by it (because the were never going to do those things anyway) and the sky didn't fall when other people did. You see this same thing happen every time a state loosens its abortion, gun, alcohol, drug, etc, laws. People say the sky is gonna fall and then it doesn't.

According to Pew, gay marriage was supported by more people than opposed it in 2010, a full five years before legalization.

Not even leaders for the liberal party, like Obama and Hillary Clinton supported it until a few years later.

https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...

mandatory body cams rolling at all times unless they are in a bathroom.

turning off or a malfunctioning camera during the act of a police brutality event immediately pierces the qualified immunity defense and they are tried as citizens.

have an outside investigative body that has zero ties to the police department investigate any reports of abuse.

have another outside investigative body that has zero ties to the police department randomly sampling police stop footage to see if there are any instances of impropriety.

I am sure this list is non-exhaustive but it's a start. also, while we are here, fix the issue of civil asset forfeiture. the clear "we get to take your money because it looks suspicious and then keep it for the police department" is a huge conflict of interest.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...

For what it is worth, I have not been questioned by a police officer for something I did or did not do. I do think that me having the mindset that I am always being watched in public helps me better police myself, so I think the more obvious and ever-present version might instill a similar feeling in others.

At the same time, I can see that having this footage available has a slippery-slope effect when it comes to privacy and authoritarian control. However, this issue of groups of people using technology to control or manipulate others is fundamentally a non-technical issue to me because these people exist irrespective of that technology's existence.

(paraphrased from Michael Malice)

Sadly, no they didn't.

It took until the pictures of uninvolved white women bleeding from rubber bullets for a whole lot of people to say "Holy shit. That could happen to ME!"

In addition, you had videos of cops with their badge numbers covered and press getting arrested.

These protests threw the fact that the police do this all the time and expect to get away with it into the faces of people who don't normally see it.

It also showed that certain police departments can handle this and really do function better thus undermining the arguments of police departments who refuse to change.

Most laws making moderately dangerous things illegal or hard to get fall into that category.

Especially when races can be so close and you have to wait up to 6 years to vote someone out. 6 years is a much different time frame politically today than it was in the 18th century. A term that long doesn't shield senators from political pressure, but it allows lobbyists to get more bang for their buck and further the power imbalance between rich and the rest of us.

Do you agree with Barack Obama on everything?