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Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
as soon as you mention "introduce avenues for financially incentivizing more just practices," the tech stops being a neutral impersonal tool, I'm not sure what it becomes though
I don't think it should be considered a neutral impersonal tool, even prior (in the line of reasoning) to the suggestion that it would introduce avenues for financially incentivizing more just practices. I just think it will prove to be a step forward, as a system, from our current arrangement.
 

sufi

lala
I don't think it should be considered a neutral impersonal tool, even prior (in the line of reasoning) to the suggestion that it would introduce avenues for financially incentivizing more just practices. I just think it will prove to be a step forward, as a system, from our current arrangement.
again i think this is a vintage question, but either someone has to design the tech deliberately to "not be evil" or the tech is neutral
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I do believe many of the leading blockchain developers are genuine utopians, which doesn't mean they cannot be persuaded or tempted otherwise. That is, I do think much of this tech is deliberately designed to not be evil.

edit: typo fix from "design" to "designed"
 
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Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Just as I think the U.S. constitution could have been designed to be far more evil than it is. That is, considering the retrospectively hazy ethical climate of its founding, the U.S. as a nation was founded on relatively benevolent premises, in better (albeit largely ethically blind) faith than many seem to assume.

I just think blockchains are obviously more programmable than bureaucracies, and are even more intrinsically democratic seeing as they can be entirely open source.
 

sufi

lala
open source is an interesting facet of the issue as it's inherently anti-capitalistic to share your work, but yes i agree that transparency of open source makes it less likely to be dodgy or exploitable. it's still wide open to all sorts of misuse though
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
One way blockchain and smart contracts threaten to be worse than our current system, is just how complex the financial operations they enable are. I'm currently under the impression that financial regulators in the U.S. are already in a game of perennial catch-up with the private innovation of financial instruments, e.g. securitized sub-prime mortgages or whatever that fueled the 2008 crisis, stuff I have yet to wrap my mind around.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Anyway, DeFi will bust up the boys club in some ways by enabling unmediated cutting-edge fintech for retail investors [including the house-bound and to some degree the unbanked], but in other ways it will only put the shenanigans on steroids.

edit: bracketed text
 
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Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
How will the SEC regulate a globally active set of algorithms, without clearly defined central parties, that deal with things that blur in and out of the definition of a security? We'll just have to see.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Belfort's strategy as depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street can now be done more easily and by any kid with a reddit account and a basic blockchain literacy. And in a virtually unregulatable fashion, no less.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Really the onus is also on the developers of the blockchain, and the investors themselves, rather than just the regulators. Although I suppose the same thing can be said for pre-crypto investments.
 

sufi

lala
i fear that any worthy ngo that get those billions dumped upon them will end up as venal and corrupted as the donor anyway :ROFLMAO: :cry:
 

sufi

lala
The big argument, in my opinion so far, against a flat-out redistribution of wealth [qua cash] to a large number of people, is that the net impact will be transient and minimal. Perhaps a step forward would be a private distribution of funds into some kind of interest bearing accounts that cannot be emptied right away.

edit: bracketed text
why would you trust these fatcats to voluntarily donate, but not the peons to budget their meagre scraps?
 
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