• rysiek
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    3 years ago

    Also, let’s make two more things clear:

    1. Technology is neither good nor bad, but it is also not neutral.
    2. The purpose of a system is what it does.

    How a piece of technology is designed influences what it’s good for. A butter knife and a butcher’s knife are different for a reason, and one of them is really hard to use to kill someone.

    And if a system keeps doing a thing, even if we close our eyes and insist it’s not supposed to, if for long enough this is not getting fixed, clearly it’s part of the system’s purpose.

    The whole crypto sphere has been designed very clearly with libertarian-right ideas at the base. So it perpetuates libertarian-right power structures (“rich get richer”, etc). This is not going to lead to any more “freedom” in the world, because it never meant to. It meant to allow some select lucky few get stupid rich and powerful without going through the current structures of power.

    At best, it’s a shake-up on top, not a revolution of the people. It’s sad so many idealistic people got caught in it.

    • overflow@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      how can something can be neither good or bad but not neutral.All knives can be used to harm someone. Majority of the rich people in the world have gotten rich because of their closeness to the government whether the US or Cuba, it’s how close you are the government that has made majority of the world’s rich where they are today and not any true entrepreneurial skill/their own private property.

      • rysiek
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        3 years ago

        You really gotta read some Graeber.

        • overflow@lemmy.ml
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          3 years ago

          maybe one day I will, you should read about all anarchist societies that have ever existed/that still exist and all works published by authors who predicted the end of capitalism

          • rysiek
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            3 years ago

            Yeah, like Graeber. “Debt: First 5000 Years” is very much on-topic here. He goes deep into how pre-market societies worked and how capitalism came to be (and tears apart the founding myths of economy in the process). Fascinating read.

            Problem is, cryptocurrencies are intrinsically capitalist. They support and perpetuate capitalist power structures. Consider this:

            Our analysis reports that, despite the heavy emphasis on decentralization in cryptocurrencies, the wealth distribution remains in-line with the real-world economies, with the exception of Dash. We also report that 3 of the observed cryptocurrencies (Dogecoin, ZCash, and Ethereum Classic) violate the honest majority assumption with less than 100 participants controlling over 51% wealth in the ecosystem, potentially indicating a security threat. This suggests that the free-market fundamentalism doctrine may be inadequate in countering wealth inequality within a crypto-economic context: Algorithmically driven free-market implementation of these cryptocurrencies may eventually lead to wealth inequality similar to those observed in real-world economies.

            • overflow@lemmy.ml
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              3 years ago

              Yeah, like Graeber. “Debt: First 5000 Years” is very much on-topic here. He goes deep into how pre-market societies worked and how capitalism came to be (and tears apart the founding myths of economy in the process). Fascinating read.

              Yay another book written by some guy that complains about modern society makes broad generalizations about human nature and money, idealizes pre-industrial societies and complains about capitalism without offering any real alternative but basically just saying we can do better just what the world needed.

              Problem is, cryptocurrencies are intrinsically capitalist. They support and perpetuate capitalist power structures. Consider this:

              there are not intrinisically capitalist because they use subsidies and other things non existent in a perfectly free market nor is it surprising the wealth distribution of crypto is uneven since most people don’t use them as a replacement to fiat/even know of them at all never mind the fact that you can freely purchase them from a exchange and nothing stops one from doing so

              • rysiek
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                3 years ago

                Yay another book written by some guy…

                I vaguely remember how in some other thread someone insisted I read a whitepaper before I comment on a thing. You know them perhaps? 🤣

                there are not intrinisically capitalist because they use subsidies and other things non existent in a perfectly free market

                You might want to read up a bit about the difference between the terms “capitalism” and “free market”.

                Anyway, that was fun. Let’s do it again some time.

                • overflow@lemmy.ml
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                  3 years ago

                  I vaguely remember how in some other thread someone insisted I read a whitepaper before I comment on a thing. You know them perhaps? 🤣

                  Yes and you never did that so why should I act in good faith and do the same for you

                  You might want to read up a bit about the difference between the terms “capitalism” and “free market”.

                  My mistake I should’ve said a capitalist market economy