Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
the question about how easy it is to hide wealth
I think I agree, if I understand correctly. The existence (and wild success) of centralized platforms I think reflects a combination of "natural" market/consumer preferences, and of "artificial" obstructions or modifications of the market (via stuff like lobbying, cartels, etc).
 

vimothy

yurp
but there are technical reasons to favour centralisation as well. to use an example from software development, a distributed architecture is not always superior to a monolithic one. often it's inferior.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
but there are technical reasons to favour centralisation as well. to use an example from software development, a distributed architecture is not always superior to a monolithic one. often it's inferior.
Totally agree here too. I really think it just depends on the given case.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Part of what excites me so much about web3 is the sheer depth of experimentation that's going on, which surely won't arrive at the conclusion that distributed databases are universally better than centralized one.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Maybe what's "neo" about it is that it is informed by and a reaction to embedded liberalism and the sort of welfare economics associated with Keynes? I would suspect this neo stage would be more dialectically advanced than classical liberal economics, but again I don't know enough to be sure, and I may be giving the neoliberals too much credit here.
Definitely a reaction to the popularity of Keynesian economics, as well as Marxism. But to answer your question, no, there's not really anything new in neoliberalism that wasn't in classic liberalism. Private property, free markets, lassez-faire, political equality (i.e. equality before the law, rather than social equality). Some of the application of the ideas is different bc the 2nd of the 20th C into the 21st was not/is not the same world as the 19th C heyday of classic liberalism, but the ideas themselves haven't changed.

You're definitely giving neoliberalism more credit than it deserves. It's actually, I think you can say, dialectically less advanced than classical liberalism, as it is purely reactionary. The truest inheritors of classic liberalism are almost certainly Anglo-American conservatives, as indeed Reagan + Thatcher are the two leaders most associated with neoliberal policies - privatization, deregulation, destruction of labor power, etc - though the Democrats/Labour under Clinton/Blair were, ofc, only too happy to continue and expand those kinds of policies in order to gain and retain power.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
There was essentially an unbroken string of neoliberal policy from Western policymakers both domestically, and imposed through the IMF etc, onto large swathes of the developing world (which is exactly what the big late 90s/early 00s anti-globalization movement was about) from 1980 until the financial crisis and Great Recession, and it was a fucking disaster. Yawning wealth gaps, social atomization, a huge global rise in right-wing populism drawing as its foot soldiers exactly the people that these policies had crushed, i.e. Rust Belt factory workers or people from the traditional "red wall" of middle and northern England.

In fact, you can say without exaggeration that neoliberalism is in no small part responsible for Putin. The IMF-style shock therapy adjustment of Russia to capitalism after the end of the USSR was such an apocalytic disaster - poverty doubled, GDP dropped by 30%, life expectancy fell off a cliff - that it created the conditions for his rise to power. Never forget that Putin was initially elected as an economic reformer in response to the disaster of late 90s Russia.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Tbf, neoliberals and their policies were not the only forces that drove all of that, but they were central and they were conscious policy choices and are among the many reasons that I despise neoliberalism and its proponents with the fire of 1000 suns. It's a belief system that is terrible for the Earth and everyone on it except very rich people and the people very rich people hire to explain to you why it's actually a societal good.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
None of this has anything to do directly w/crypto, DAOs, or etc tho, beyond I guess crypto tech bros stereotypically tending libertarian, which is a cousin of neoliberalism but with some important differences
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
None of this has anything to do directly w/crypto, DAOs, or etc tho, beyond I guess crypto tech bros stereotypically tending libertarian, which is a cousin of neoliberalism but with some important differences
Do you know of Glen Weyl and/or RadicalxChange? I'm still early in my exploration of this whole area, but it essentially seems like a financially and technologically savvy communitarianism.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Haha I'm glad communitarianism is a term because it passes without the historical baggage of communism, with more or less the same semantical impact. This is part of what excites me so much about web3, that its a strange chimerical blend of capitalism (insofar as excess stock can be utilized to generate further revenue) and communism (insofar as certain decision making processes can be facilitated without central authorities).

Although to me, communitarianism as a term also has connotations of valuing community, in ways that the term communism doesn't, but that could just be me - even though all these words are clearly cognate.
 

snav

Well-known member
Part of what excites me so much about web3 is the sheer depth of experimentation that's going on, which surely won't arrive at the conclusion that distributed databases are universally better than centralized one.
having played around with this... yeah.
 

snav

Well-known member
our current plan is to run a decentralized database which mirrors enough public info from our private database that anyone can make their own site front-end, but not enough to, yknow, cause trouble with user doxxing
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
our current plan is to run a decentralized database which mirrors enough public info from our private database that anyone can make their own site front-end, but not enough to, yknow, cause trouble with user doxxing
So you just keep the more sensitive data in the private database? You get into zero knowledge proofs at all?
 

wild greens

Well-known member
I know there is the concept/idea that this is a parallel economy and shouldn't be affected by market trends etc but the naivety of this idea is shocking to me

This is identical to the Spotify attempt to shore up their stock, weirdly, and Eks failed in that attempt as well

If UST tanks completely then surely the idea of Tether etc begins to struggle as well, despite the supposed "real money" backing it up.

Whats the point
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Yeah thats exactly why the purists denounce custodial wallets. They're just way more convenient, as far as most people are concerned.

And yeah re: coupled with the global financial market, its not like the crypto investor base is in a different world, watching different news, with different patterns of sentiment, so I agree that the belief they are independent is naive.

I'm down on everything but Ethereum now, but I plan on getting some more MATIC, to lower my average buy price. Even the major US stock exchanges are at a year low right now, which goes to the point about how correlated crypto is with the wider financial market.
 
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