A mental model for decentralization(jacobobryant.com)
jacobobryant.com
A mental model for decentralization
https://jacobobryant.com/p/mental-model-decentralization/
76 comments
Discussions about decentralization should start by defining the term decentralization in the specific context of the discussion, otherwise nobody knows what they're talking about. For example, nobody in the economics profession would refer to the financial system as being 'centralised'. It is not. There's no central planner. Financial institutions are autonomous and make their own decisions with regards to what products to sell, and how to make them. If you want to argue that it's centralised, you will have to be much more specific. And the same applies to everything else, from the internet, money, software or whatever.
The economy as a whole isn't centralized but the commercial banking system is centralized by each nation's respective "central bank" [1]. It would be kind of awkward to claim that economists are unaware that a central bank isn't a form of centralization, specifically of a nation's monetary system.
That said, most people can pick up the meaning of centralization based on the context without every discussion having to spend a paragraph defining it. A discussion about a centralized Internet isn't too hard to understand, nor are discussions about finance, media, markets, governments, etc etc... The idea that people can't figure out what decentralization means in the context of a discussion about the Internet or finance unless someone spells it out in precise detail is kind of obtuse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank
That said, most people can pick up the meaning of centralization based on the context without every discussion having to spend a paragraph defining it. A discussion about a centralized Internet isn't too hard to understand, nor are discussions about finance, media, markets, governments, etc etc... The idea that people can't figure out what decentralization means in the context of a discussion about the Internet or finance unless someone spells it out in precise detail is kind of obtuse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank
Economists are fully aware of central banks and the role they play in the monetary and the financial system. Still they won't use the term 'centralised' because it doesn't describe the current system well. In fact, it does a terrible job of describing it. For example, consider the fact that 90-95% of the currency in circulation is not issued by the central bank, but created by commercial banks via fractional reserve banking.
Then it's not clear in what way you expect economists to hypothetically use that term, even in principle. Your argument becomes unfalsifiable. If using the term central to describe the "central bank" isn't a prime instance of economists using the term centralized, then it's not clear that anything could ever possibly satisfy your standard. I could go on to show you how "centralized finance" returns over half a million scholarly publications on Google Scholar, many of which predate Bitcoin, to discuss centralized payment systems, centralized monetary systems, centralized exchanges, centralization of finance in China but as I said before, this is such an obtuse discussion at this point it's not clear that anything I ever produce could ever change your mind. It's not like "centralized psychology" returns half a million results, or "centralized math" returns half a million results (centralized math mostly refers to centralization in the education system)... but "centralized finance" does.
All I can say then is that empirically, if I talk about a centralized Internet (700,000 results), people are able to understand what it means... if I talk about a centralized monetary system or centralized banking system, people understand that too. These all appear to be commonly discussed and researched topics that people are aware of. Someone might need a precise definition of "centralized psychology" or "centralized chemistry" since those topics do not seem to produce much of any academic research, but centralized finance appears to be well understood.
If you don't believe it, you can see for yourself by doing a search and going over the abstract of several academic papers that use the term without having to spend paragraphs precisely defining it.
All I can say then is that empirically, if I talk about a centralized Internet (700,000 results), people are able to understand what it means... if I talk about a centralized monetary system or centralized banking system, people understand that too. These all appear to be commonly discussed and researched topics that people are aware of. Someone might need a precise definition of "centralized psychology" or "centralized chemistry" since those topics do not seem to produce much of any academic research, but centralized finance appears to be well understood.
If you don't believe it, you can see for yourself by doing a search and going over the abstract of several academic papers that use the term without having to spend paragraphs precisely defining it.
> I could go on to show you how "centralized finance" returns over half a million scholarly publications on Google Scholar
Do you not know how to use Google? "Centralized finance" returns 685 results, and if you go through the results you'll quickly see that most don't even talk about the financial system.
Do you not know how to use Google? "Centralized finance" returns 685 results, and if you go through the results you'll quickly see that most don't even talk about the financial system.
Thank you. It really grinds my gears when people/projects/companies make strong claims about “decentralization” without even specifying what they’re talking about. Many times it becomes nonsensical.
> There's no central planner
There may not be one central planner but there are definitely power centers that exert far more influence than rest of the participants combined.
There’s fed which walks a tight rope of managing inflation while keeping low unemployment rate. And then there’s federal government, by far the biggest spender in the market. You also have Fannie Mae etc selling mortgages which is huuuge.
There may not be one central planner but there are definitely power centers that exert far more influence than rest of the participants combined.
There’s fed which walks a tight rope of managing inflation while keeping low unemployment rate. And then there’s federal government, by far the biggest spender in the market. You also have Fannie Mae etc selling mortgages which is huuuge.
> For example, nobody in the economics profession would refer to the financial system as being 'centralised'. It is not. There's no central planner.
There is and it is called the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. By setting the EFF rate (or QE policy if EFFR ~= 0%) of the global reserve currency, they control many facets of the financial system and broader economy.
It's not very fine grained control ("bake X loaves of bread"), but it is centralized control and planning.
There is and it is called the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. By setting the EFF rate (or QE policy if EFFR ~= 0%) of the global reserve currency, they control many facets of the financial system and broader economy.
It's not very fine grained control ("bake X loaves of bread"), but it is centralized control and planning.
Good point. Control of the inflation rate (total money supply) in fiat currency is centralized.
Isn't the same thing true for bitcoin? As far as I know, it was set with the first implementation, and can only be changed when a majority of miners agree to change it.
Valid point. It's much more complicated but suffice to say it can be changed by a majority of full node operators, of which miners are only a subset. The meta checks and balances preventing such an occurrence have been proven for Bitcoin. We haven't seen miners succeed in reversing the halvenings, for instance.
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> there are the decentralization maximalists who think that blockchain will make tech platforms obsolete
I doubt blockchain is a silver bullet. I really liked Kleppmann's work on local-first software / CRDTs. It seems a lot closer to something practically usable at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qytg0Ibet2E
I doubt blockchain is a silver bullet. I really liked Kleppmann's work on local-first software / CRDTs. It seems a lot closer to something practically usable at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qytg0Ibet2E
Blockchain tech just offuscates centralization, it doesn't provide decentralization.
In terms used by the memo discussed by the article, blockchain are still susceptible to indirect and platform centralization.
While I agree that there should be more discussion about what should/shouldn't be decentralized and to what extent, the huge issue right now that's responsible for how heated of a debate this is right now, is in the implementation. It seems almost like it's already been decided by players in the decentralization space that the only solution is a blockchain with a token economy model that sits nicely alongside -- or in fact integrates with -- crypto trading, NFTs, etc. Now add to it the rat race everyone is in to transition to a DAO as soon possible, despite the existing insane complexity modification difficulty of blockchain platforms, or that the DAO concept has a short history but one filled with failures, and we're left with something that, frankly, frightens me.
I'm not anti-crypto, and in fact I work in the space and am primarily focused on some areas I feel are in need of being "decentralized" in the CDN and streaming video spaces. And while a ton of technical progress has been made, I can't shake the feeling that we are in many cases implementing this stuff wrong, or haven't even bothered to address the "how" or "why" in as much length as one should before going out and building it.
I'm not anti-crypto, and in fact I work in the space and am primarily focused on some areas I feel are in need of being "decentralized" in the CDN and streaming video spaces. And while a ton of technical progress has been made, I can't shake the feeling that we are in many cases implementing this stuff wrong, or haven't even bothered to address the "how" or "why" in as much length as one should before going out and building it.
> by players in the decentralization space
Keep in mind that this is a somewhat large space, and depending on what parts of the decentralization space you're looking at you might see players who are all-in on blockchain tech, or you might see people who view it as a giant waste of time or even actively campaign against it. In particular when I look at projects that are using federation (Mastodon, Matrix, etc), I see a lot of people who are fairly skeptical about cryptocurrency and outright hostile to NFTs.
I have my own biases there, I don't think that NFTs are in practice particularly decentralized, and I've slowly come to believe that cryptocurrencies have both systemic problems that make them less valuable as a decentralization tool than they're often advertised as being, and community problems that make them difficult to use as a basis for any kind of political movement (and decentralization is inherently a political idea/movement).
But my biases aside (I'm not trying to make a pro/anti blockchain post here), just remember it's a big space without a single uniformity of views; from the circle of advocates I'm paying attention to and interacting with the most, I would have almost guessed the opposite, absent better stats I'd have guessed from my experiences that at least a plurality if not the majority of the decentralized "community" is against this stuff. Interesting to run into people who seem to be more in touch with parts of the community that are outside of my bubble.
Keep in mind that this is a somewhat large space, and depending on what parts of the decentralization space you're looking at you might see players who are all-in on blockchain tech, or you might see people who view it as a giant waste of time or even actively campaign against it. In particular when I look at projects that are using federation (Mastodon, Matrix, etc), I see a lot of people who are fairly skeptical about cryptocurrency and outright hostile to NFTs.
I have my own biases there, I don't think that NFTs are in practice particularly decentralized, and I've slowly come to believe that cryptocurrencies have both systemic problems that make them less valuable as a decentralization tool than they're often advertised as being, and community problems that make them difficult to use as a basis for any kind of political movement (and decentralization is inherently a political idea/movement).
But my biases aside (I'm not trying to make a pro/anti blockchain post here), just remember it's a big space without a single uniformity of views; from the circle of advocates I'm paying attention to and interacting with the most, I would have almost guessed the opposite, absent better stats I'd have guessed from my experiences that at least a plurality if not the majority of the decentralized "community" is against this stuff. Interesting to run into people who seem to be more in touch with parts of the community that are outside of my bubble.
> It seems almost like it's already been decided by players in the decentralization space that the only solution is a blockchain with a token economy model that sits nicely alongside -- or in fact integrates with -- crypto trading, NFTs, etc.
This isn't my experience. These types of solutions may be generating a lot of interest in some places (perhaps because the people talking about them hope to profit?), but they're not all that exist.
This isn't my experience. These types of solutions may be generating a lot of interest in some places (perhaps because the people talking about them hope to profit?), but they're not all that exist.
What are good alternatives that also have useful incentivization mechanisms built in?
Every system that is lacking this is doomed.
Every system that is lacking this is doomed.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by “useful incentivization mechanisms” and why they're necessary?
I use scuttlebutt because it's fun and nice. I'm not sure what more incentive is needed.
I use scuttlebutt because it's fun and nice. I'm not sure what more incentive is needed.
Scuttlebutt works on a small scale because all of its participants are willing to pay for the cost of hosting the data and they can afford the inefficiencies and redundancies of decentralization.
And I know that it works for you, but if we want something that can reach more than a few thousand people, there needs to be some kind of economic incentive for it to be viable.
And I know that it works for you, but if we want something that can reach more than a few thousand people, there needs to be some kind of economic incentive for it to be viable.
> if we want something that can reach more than a few thousand people, there needs to be some kind of economic incentive
The problem is that when you start measuring on "reaching more than a few thousand people" instead of "is creating a lot of economic incentive", cryptocurrency experiments around building communities also start to look pretty bad in practice.
I have yet to see any general-user social platform built on top of cryptocurrency amass the same amount of mainstream success as Mastodon. And Mastodon is comparatively tiny when stacked up against Twitter/Facebook, it should be the low-hanging fruit. But at least Mastodon is a platform that seems to have somewhat evolved past the initial "the only people using this are the people who built it or who are invested in it" phase. On the protocol level, look at stuff like Matrix; it's got very little incentive built in to get you to run your own platform, and yet... it still kinda looks like it's beating blockchain networks at being actually useful.
A lot of crypto spaces/experiments have a lot of money moving through them. But the ratio of money to users/disruption seems to be really low. So sure, crypto has an interesting approach to incentivizing economic investment, but at a certain point I start to question whether those incentives actually result in generalized, successful platforms that tons of everyday people are using. It unfortunately is starting to seem like the incentive structures attract a lot of capital and a lot of eyes that are either hostile to the overall goals of decentralization, or at least that the attention doesn't seem to be providing the kind of value/structure required to get non-invested, non-capital-focused general users to join in.
The problem is that when you start measuring on "reaching more than a few thousand people" instead of "is creating a lot of economic incentive", cryptocurrency experiments around building communities also start to look pretty bad in practice.
I have yet to see any general-user social platform built on top of cryptocurrency amass the same amount of mainstream success as Mastodon. And Mastodon is comparatively tiny when stacked up against Twitter/Facebook, it should be the low-hanging fruit. But at least Mastodon is a platform that seems to have somewhat evolved past the initial "the only people using this are the people who built it or who are invested in it" phase. On the protocol level, look at stuff like Matrix; it's got very little incentive built in to get you to run your own platform, and yet... it still kinda looks like it's beating blockchain networks at being actually useful.
A lot of crypto spaces/experiments have a lot of money moving through them. But the ratio of money to users/disruption seems to be really low. So sure, crypto has an interesting approach to incentivizing economic investment, but at a certain point I start to question whether those incentives actually result in generalized, successful platforms that tons of everyday people are using. It unfortunately is starting to seem like the incentive structures attract a lot of capital and a lot of eyes that are either hostile to the overall goals of decentralization, or at least that the attention doesn't seem to be providing the kind of value/structure required to get non-invested, non-capital-focused general users to join in.
Matrix wouldn't exist without Riot/Element and they are pretty much a startup running on Other People's Money (Amdocs/VCs/Automattic) and it already has someone with strong economic incentives to get it working.
Mastodon (ActivityPub in general) is growing, but I'd say they are still far from being mainstream. When we start having companies using their own instance instead of Twitter/FB to promote their content and when we start having youtubers leaving Google to broadcast their content from their own branded Peertube, then I'd say it has hit mainstream.
> A lot of crypto spaces/experiments have a lot of money moving through them. But the ratio of money to users/disruption seems to be really low.
That comes with the territory in any hot market, and crypto is no exception to Sturgeon's Law. The main point that I would argue though is that is not just about the "money", but rather if these new systems can be sustainable and if they can create new alternatives to the status quo. The best example that I can think of is Brave and BAT. The BAT "economy" is still ridiculously small, but on a bet about the longevity of Brave vs Mozilla, my money is (literally) on Brave. Mozilla can have all the wishy-washy nice words about how they are protecting the web, but it doesn't take much to realize that they can not bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile Brave is already growing the user base on the browser and its search system will be a way for them to fight Google at their core. You will have soon lots of people making coordinated efforts to get more people off Google and into an alternative where they can benefit.
Mastodon (ActivityPub in general) is growing, but I'd say they are still far from being mainstream. When we start having companies using their own instance instead of Twitter/FB to promote their content and when we start having youtubers leaving Google to broadcast their content from their own branded Peertube, then I'd say it has hit mainstream.
> A lot of crypto spaces/experiments have a lot of money moving through them. But the ratio of money to users/disruption seems to be really low.
That comes with the territory in any hot market, and crypto is no exception to Sturgeon's Law. The main point that I would argue though is that is not just about the "money", but rather if these new systems can be sustainable and if they can create new alternatives to the status quo. The best example that I can think of is Brave and BAT. The BAT "economy" is still ridiculously small, but on a bet about the longevity of Brave vs Mozilla, my money is (literally) on Brave. Mozilla can have all the wishy-washy nice words about how they are protecting the web, but it doesn't take much to realize that they can not bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile Brave is already growing the user base on the browser and its search system will be a way for them to fight Google at their core. You will have soon lots of people making coordinated efforts to get more people off Google and into an alternative where they can benefit.
> Matrix wouldn't exist without Riot/Element and they are pretty much a startup running on Other People's Money (Amdocs/VCs/Automattic) and it already has someone with strong economic incentives to get it working.
And it turns out that system (for all of its problems) is working better than blockchain for shipping actual decentralized software that ordinary people can use.
> Mastodon (ActivityPub in general) is growing, but I'd say they are still far from being mainstream.
And again, "far from being mainstream" is still miles ahead of any blockchain social network.
> When we start having companies using their own instance instead of Twitter/FB to promote their content
We do have this, Trump's recent venture into the social media space was built off of a Mastodon fork. It wasn't built off of blockchain.
> Mozilla can have all the wishy-washy nice words about how they are protecting the web, but it doesn't take much to realize that they can not bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile Brave is already growing the user base on the browser and its search system will be a way for them to fight Google at their core.
Brave is literally built on top of Chromium, it's literally Google's tech stack with some extra stuff pasted on top.
It makes sense why not needing to take money from Google would matter, but in practice, Firefox still ends up having better privacy controls and more power to oppose certain web standards purely because it has a different engine than Chrome. It turns out that in practice, architectural independence matters more.
This is another good example of the finances ending up mattering less than people think they do. Mozilla has money, that's how it's able to fund projects like Servo/WASM/Stylo, projects that Brave (for all its financial independence) doesn't have the developer resources or the architectural independence needed to helm. And the trajectory of those projects is worth its own conversation, but I don't think dependence on Google's money is the reason Mozilla had to eventually drop Servo, and I don't think that Brave is in a position to pick a project like that up.
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You don't really have to convince me about an idea, you don't have to argue theory to me. The theory of financial independence is fine, I don't have a problem with that, I just don't see the theory playing out in practice. The blockchain doesn't need a theory for why it matters, all the blockchain needs to do is to launch projects that are better than the alternatives. So far it hasn't, which is a really low bar to clear. You're attacking Mastodon, how embarrassing is it then that there isn't a blockchain-based Twitter alternative that's bigger than Mastodon?
If you're right, and if a blockchain social network springs up that out-competes the other projects on the metrics that actually matter (not just money), then I'll start taking the space more seriously. But so far it just hasn't happened; and a lot of the promising projects that are closest-related to blockchain (even the really promising projects like IPFS, or the poster-child for this stuff, Handshake) have ultimately ended up being a lot more disappointing than the projects that have taken root in other spaces.
And it turns out that system (for all of its problems) is working better than blockchain for shipping actual decentralized software that ordinary people can use.
> Mastodon (ActivityPub in general) is growing, but I'd say they are still far from being mainstream.
And again, "far from being mainstream" is still miles ahead of any blockchain social network.
> When we start having companies using their own instance instead of Twitter/FB to promote their content
We do have this, Trump's recent venture into the social media space was built off of a Mastodon fork. It wasn't built off of blockchain.
> Mozilla can have all the wishy-washy nice words about how they are protecting the web, but it doesn't take much to realize that they can not bite the hand that feeds them. Meanwhile Brave is already growing the user base on the browser and its search system will be a way for them to fight Google at their core.
Brave is literally built on top of Chromium, it's literally Google's tech stack with some extra stuff pasted on top.
It makes sense why not needing to take money from Google would matter, but in practice, Firefox still ends up having better privacy controls and more power to oppose certain web standards purely because it has a different engine than Chrome. It turns out that in practice, architectural independence matters more.
This is another good example of the finances ending up mattering less than people think they do. Mozilla has money, that's how it's able to fund projects like Servo/WASM/Stylo, projects that Brave (for all its financial independence) doesn't have the developer resources or the architectural independence needed to helm. And the trajectory of those projects is worth its own conversation, but I don't think dependence on Google's money is the reason Mozilla had to eventually drop Servo, and I don't think that Brave is in a position to pick a project like that up.
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You don't really have to convince me about an idea, you don't have to argue theory to me. The theory of financial independence is fine, I don't have a problem with that, I just don't see the theory playing out in practice. The blockchain doesn't need a theory for why it matters, all the blockchain needs to do is to launch projects that are better than the alternatives. So far it hasn't, which is a really low bar to clear. You're attacking Mastodon, how embarrassing is it then that there isn't a blockchain-based Twitter alternative that's bigger than Mastodon?
If you're right, and if a blockchain social network springs up that out-competes the other projects on the metrics that actually matter (not just money), then I'll start taking the space more seriously. But so far it just hasn't happened; and a lot of the promising projects that are closest-related to blockchain (even the really promising projects like IPFS, or the poster-child for this stuff, Handshake) have ultimately ended up being a lot more disappointing than the projects that have taken root in other spaces.
You seem to be more focused on blockchain-as-tech-implementation, when my point is that blockchain is important for coordination.
Sure, it makes zero sense to have a social network on a blockchain. No one really wants to have their social graph on an immutable public ledger that costs a lot of resources to keep around. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a project where crypto is used as a way to finance a Mastodon (or Pleroma, or whatever) powered constellation of servers.
Sure, it makes zero sense to have a social network on a blockchain. No one really wants to have their social graph on an immutable public ledger that costs a lot of resources to keep around. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a project where crypto is used as a way to finance a Mastodon (or Pleroma, or whatever) powered constellation of servers.
> if we want something that can reach more than a few thousand people
This is the premise I'm questioning — what does success look like?
I suppose for me it's that I don't have to create an account with any particular company to participate.
So for example: Matrix displaces Discord and Twitch; ActivityPub displaces Twitter, Facebook and GitHub; podcasts displace iTunes and Spotify; Flatpak displaces Google Play; something(?) displaces Amazon (as a shop front) and PayPal.
> there needs to be some kind of economic incentive for it to be viable
There's no economic incentive for people to publish blogs or run Gemini capsules, yet they do.
By “viable” I mean “useful for some real use cases”. (Fun is a use case.)
By “viable” do you mean “people can make money off it”? Profitable technology is a very different goal from useful technology.
And frankly, get rich quick schemes are the reason the net is full of so much garbage.
This is the premise I'm questioning — what does success look like?
I suppose for me it's that I don't have to create an account with any particular company to participate.
So for example: Matrix displaces Discord and Twitch; ActivityPub displaces Twitter, Facebook and GitHub; podcasts displace iTunes and Spotify; Flatpak displaces Google Play; something(?) displaces Amazon (as a shop front) and PayPal.
> there needs to be some kind of economic incentive for it to be viable
There's no economic incentive for people to publish blogs or run Gemini capsules, yet they do.
By “viable” I mean “useful for some real use cases”. (Fun is a use case.)
By “viable” do you mean “people can make money off it”? Profitable technology is a very different goal from useful technology.
And frankly, get rich quick schemes are the reason the net is full of so much garbage.
If you just want to interact with others in the same fringe groups as you, then sure, you can be satisfied with just these alternatives and their current audiences. But you can't run your PTA group on Matrix (believe me, I proposed!), there is no single influential person that is interested in leaving Twitter and joining the Fediverse. There is not a single business, news media channel or podcaster that cares about putting their presence on Mastodon, etc.
So, success is quite measurable and it is certainly not achieved yet. This is not to say that we should just give up and be assimilated by the Borg. It is just a reality check and a reminder that there is a huge world out there.
So, success is quite measurable and it is certainly not achieved yet. This is not to say that we should just give up and be assimilated by the Borg. It is just a reality check and a reminder that there is a huge world out there.
> But you can't run your PTA group on Matrix (believe me, I proposed!)
I'm curious: why not? Is it just name recognition of WhatsApp? Are people unwilling to create a new account? and if so, what made them willing to create a WhatsApp account?
I'm curious: why not? Is it just name recognition of WhatsApp? Are people unwilling to create a new account? and if so, what made them willing to create a WhatsApp account?
Yes, people have not heard of it before and are just used to WhatsApp. The few that were at least aware of the issues with WhatsApp were proposing Telegram and/or Signal, depending mostly on if they had one or the other already installed.
I know that the onboarding process from the Element client still is quite painful, and I didn't want to play tech support for a group of 30+ German parents and teachers.
> What made them willing to create a WhatsApp account.
The easiest authentication/onboarding process ever. That was the 19 billion dollar problem they cracked.
I know that the onboarding process from the Element client still is quite painful, and I didn't want to play tech support for a group of 30+ German parents and teachers.
> What made them willing to create a WhatsApp account.
The easiest authentication/onboarding process ever. That was the 19 billion dollar problem they cracked.
Democratically elected government which implements policy mandating data mobility (etc) at penalty of exponentially increasing fines for non-compliance? You don't need to use a carrot for corporations, a "stick" will work just fine for making sure they follow what's determined to be ideal.
I had the impression, the money of companies is used for lobbying, effectively controlling the "stick".
Indeed that is another problem and why policy needs to shift to counter that - but don't forget that Bitcoin et al will be, are involved in the same regulatory capture game - holders are financially incentivized to try to be the ones to gain control.
I like Andrew Yang's core policy proposals including Ranked Choice Voting, and most notable I believe is his Democracy Dollars policy - wherein every eligible voter gets $100/year voucher they can allocate to the political candidate of their choice, which would wash out the corporate lobbyist money of roughly $4 billion with 8 times that by citizens (including giving those who can't afford $100/year for an additional layer of "voting with money" to fuel/funding the political system), meaning $4 billion to up to $32 billing from eligible voters; https://andrewyang.com - Andrew Yang, ran in last Presidential race as a Democrat - polled higher than Kamala Harris and raised half that of Bernie Sanders, starting as an unknown - then ran for Mayor of NYC, and author of The War on Normal People, and most recently Forward: Notes On The Future Of Our Democracy - which in part was to announce the new relatively centrist political party he started called the Forward Party.
I feel another noteworthy policy proposal of his is Journalism Dollars, similarly where you give every individual say $50/year voucher to fund/support the journalist of your choice - so then journalism and news media isn't adversely incentivized by the advertising dollars coming in from industrual complexes (including from the political establishment/duopoly of the arguably captured Democratic-Republican parties).
I like Andrew Yang's core policy proposals including Ranked Choice Voting, and most notable I believe is his Democracy Dollars policy - wherein every eligible voter gets $100/year voucher they can allocate to the political candidate of their choice, which would wash out the corporate lobbyist money of roughly $4 billion with 8 times that by citizens (including giving those who can't afford $100/year for an additional layer of "voting with money" to fuel/funding the political system), meaning $4 billion to up to $32 billing from eligible voters; https://andrewyang.com - Andrew Yang, ran in last Presidential race as a Democrat - polled higher than Kamala Harris and raised half that of Bernie Sanders, starting as an unknown - then ran for Mayor of NYC, and author of The War on Normal People, and most recently Forward: Notes On The Future Of Our Democracy - which in part was to announce the new relatively centrist political party he started called the Forward Party.
I feel another noteworthy policy proposal of his is Journalism Dollars, similarly where you give every individual say $50/year voucher to fund/support the journalist of your choice - so then journalism and news media isn't adversely incentivized by the advertising dollars coming in from industrual complexes (including from the political establishment/duopoly of the arguably captured Democratic-Republican parties).
Believing that governments can be effective on a global scale is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution. History has shown time and again that the best we can do is some local maxima that works only for a part of the population at the cost of everyone of the periphery of power, and even these on the top can get wiped out by a Black Swan.
There will not be one single standard of policies that will work for all people, no matter how "democratic" the process to establish the rules are and no matter how good the ideas you think they are. What we need is to reduce the scope and reach of governments, get their leaders to act on a localized level and to be directly accountable for the results of their policies. Anything else will take us to more centralization, more forced conformity, less diversity and more fragility facing global-scale events.
We need more Switzerlands and less USAs and even less European Unions.
There will not be one single standard of policies that will work for all people, no matter how "democratic" the process to establish the rules are and no matter how good the ideas you think they are. What we need is to reduce the scope and reach of governments, get their leaders to act on a localized level and to be directly accountable for the results of their policies. Anything else will take us to more centralization, more forced conformity, less diversity and more fragility facing global-scale events.
We need more Switzerlands and less USAs and even less European Unions.
> Believing that governments can be effective on a global scale is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution.
No, it's not.
> History has shown time and again that the best we can do is some local maxima that works only for a part of the population at the cost of everyone of the periphery of power.
To the the extent that’s defensible, the problem with your recommendation:
> What we need is to reduce the scope and reach of governments,
Is that the evidence does not show that that produces better results for more people than than alternatives. You've jumped from a defensible argument about the limitations of government to an indefensible response.
No, it's not.
> History has shown time and again that the best we can do is some local maxima that works only for a part of the population at the cost of everyone of the periphery of power.
To the the extent that’s defensible, the problem with your recommendation:
> What we need is to reduce the scope and reach of governments,
Is that the evidence does not show that that produces better results for more people than than alternatives. You've jumped from a defensible argument about the limitations of government to an indefensible response.
Let me rephrase: believing that governments can be effective on a global scale while keeping individual freedoms is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution.
> Is that the evidence does not show that that produces better results for more people than than alternatives
I am not defending localism as a way to "produce better results" for more people. I am defending it on the premise that it is a more robust idea and more likely to sustain long-lasting societies than any progressive "one size fits all" government.
> Is that the evidence does not show that that produces better results for more people than than alternatives
I am not defending localism as a way to "produce better results" for more people. I am defending it on the premise that it is a more robust idea and more likely to sustain long-lasting societies than any progressive "one size fits all" government.
Did I somehow propose "one size fits all" in any of my comments in this thread?
You seem to have come to your conclusions referencing history, and not leading from a conclusion starting at founding principles.
The United States of America has been an experiment, with the basis of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. It's done quite well in its first iteration. The next framework now needs to be laid out, but part of that is educating the population (local and globally, as each geography is going to be prone to the actions of bad actors) so then they can vote rationally, reasonably, and ideally not following or indoctrinated into ideology.
You seem to have a misconception or confusing what "government at a global scale" is, perhaps you're once again presuming the current status quo of generally captured and incompetence elected general officials (like the establishment/duopoly in the US) will forever be and so then yes, if you do the same thing over and over again (with incompetent and captured politicians in positions of power and others' captured leading our government institutions) then yes, that would be insane - but the status quo can change - and new ideas, the truth, is making its way to regular folks because of the reduction in capture of attention that the internet has allowed, and focusing on creating online platforms and systems to further strengthen education-learning, communications and reaching like-minded and like-hearted community is the key.
You seem to have come to your conclusions referencing history, and not leading from a conclusion starting at founding principles.
The United States of America has been an experiment, with the basis of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. It's done quite well in its first iteration. The next framework now needs to be laid out, but part of that is educating the population (local and globally, as each geography is going to be prone to the actions of bad actors) so then they can vote rationally, reasonably, and ideally not following or indoctrinated into ideology.
You seem to have a misconception or confusing what "government at a global scale" is, perhaps you're once again presuming the current status quo of generally captured and incompetence elected general officials (like the establishment/duopoly in the US) will forever be and so then yes, if you do the same thing over and over again (with incompetent and captured politicians in positions of power and others' captured leading our government institutions) then yes, that would be insane - but the status quo can change - and new ideas, the truth, is making its way to regular folks because of the reduction in capture of attention that the internet has allowed, and focusing on creating online platforms and systems to further strengthen education-learning, communications and reaching like-minded and like-hearted community is the key.
> Did I somehow propose "one size fits all" in any of my comments in this thread?
Yes, even if you don't realize it.
UBI, "Journalist Dollars", "Political vouchers" and pretty much every proposal from Andrew Yang are all starting to sound like variations of the old joke about the farmer getting in trouble with the inspector about the feed given to the pigs until he decides to just give each pig $10 so that they can eat at the local buffet.
They all involve blanket solutions without looking into any context or idiosyncrasy of any of the separate regions. It reeks of this coastal elite mentality that believes that people on the periphery want to live like those in the big economic centers.
> The USA has been an experiment (...) The next framework now needs to be laid out.
Read again and tell me how you are not implying that one framework is to be established and implemented. How are you not advocating a top-down solution?
> focusing on creating online platforms and systems to further strengthen education-learning, communications and reaching like-minded and like-hearted community is the key.
Yeah, that has been the technocrats wet-dream about the Internet. I've been hearing how the internet would help educate people all across the world since I got my first 14.4k modem. But instead of this utopia you are painting we got Donald Trump, Orban, the Chinese "social credit" system and a continuous detoriation of "Western democracies" that benefited only but the tech elite.
No, thank you. This is not the world that I want to my live in and my children to grow on.
Yes, even if you don't realize it.
UBI, "Journalist Dollars", "Political vouchers" and pretty much every proposal from Andrew Yang are all starting to sound like variations of the old joke about the farmer getting in trouble with the inspector about the feed given to the pigs until he decides to just give each pig $10 so that they can eat at the local buffet.
They all involve blanket solutions without looking into any context or idiosyncrasy of any of the separate regions. It reeks of this coastal elite mentality that believes that people on the periphery want to live like those in the big economic centers.
> The USA has been an experiment (...) The next framework now needs to be laid out.
Read again and tell me how you are not implying that one framework is to be established and implemented. How are you not advocating a top-down solution?
> focusing on creating online platforms and systems to further strengthen education-learning, communications and reaching like-minded and like-hearted community is the key.
Yeah, that has been the technocrats wet-dream about the Internet. I've been hearing how the internet would help educate people all across the world since I got my first 14.4k modem. But instead of this utopia you are painting we got Donald Trump, Orban, the Chinese "social credit" system and a continuous detoriation of "Western democracies" that benefited only but the tech elite.
No, thank you. This is not the world that I want to my live in and my children to grow on.
How is giving people $100 to give to a politician - who will have their own solutions - and say $50 to a journalist - who will have their own interests targeted based on the decision of the individual a blanket solution? Your argument makes zero sense. Giving those vouchers to everything helps even the playing field, it in by no way "reeks of this coastal elite mentality that believes that people on the periphery want to live like those in big economic centers."
Having a central government isn't inherently top down. You need an organization to do things like collect taxes. Are you trying to suggest that, for example, a central government collecting and redistributing tax funds say in the form of UBI is somehow top-down? In fact giving UBI is more consersative, less liberal, and more hands-off, as it isn't the government deciding what "you" do with that money.
I think you're missing some key understandings which is skewing your view, and you're certainly projecting hate based on your comments - "elite mentality", ". We got Donald Trump as a consequence to regulatory capture, MSM being captured, etc; for example, 10 mins. video of Noam Chomsky explaining how the Republican party was captured by corporations/bad actors - https://boingboing.net/2019/04/20/useful-idiots-r-us.html
Your argument too about "my utopia" I'm painting got "Donald Trump, Orban, [etc]" makes no sense either - I stated a new, evolved framework is needed, using what we've now experienced based off the Constitution, to avoid and counter the pitfalls that lead to a longer list than you presented. Maybe my responses could be more useful if you spoke specifically to why you dislike different policies of Yang, and how you understand them to work or not work? E.g. Don't you think washing out $4 billion of lobbyist money with $32 billion of eligible voter money would shift politics to getting more citizen-wants oriented politicians elected into power? If you say no, then why?
You've made/applied a lot of assumptions/inferences as to what to my comments suggest, your understanding seems completely off the mark.
Having a central government isn't inherently top down. You need an organization to do things like collect taxes. Are you trying to suggest that, for example, a central government collecting and redistributing tax funds say in the form of UBI is somehow top-down? In fact giving UBI is more consersative, less liberal, and more hands-off, as it isn't the government deciding what "you" do with that money.
I think you're missing some key understandings which is skewing your view, and you're certainly projecting hate based on your comments - "elite mentality", ". We got Donald Trump as a consequence to regulatory capture, MSM being captured, etc; for example, 10 mins. video of Noam Chomsky explaining how the Republican party was captured by corporations/bad actors - https://boingboing.net/2019/04/20/useful-idiots-r-us.html
Your argument too about "my utopia" I'm painting got "Donald Trump, Orban, [etc]" makes no sense either - I stated a new, evolved framework is needed, using what we've now experienced based off the Constitution, to avoid and counter the pitfalls that lead to a longer list than you presented. Maybe my responses could be more useful if you spoke specifically to why you dislike different policies of Yang, and how you understand them to work or not work? E.g. Don't you think washing out $4 billion of lobbyist money with $32 billion of eligible voter money would shift politics to getting more citizen-wants oriented politicians elected into power? If you say no, then why?
You've made/applied a lot of assumptions/inferences as to what to my comments suggest, your understanding seems completely off the mark.
> How is giving people $100 to give to a politician / $50 to a journalist a blanket solution?
Why would people even want to give this money to politicians? ANY of them? Could I simply get the money and pocket it? Why not?
More seriously though: why do you think is more likely to happen with such "journalist" money? Do you think people will suddenly promote rational discourse or they will just give this money to whoever confirms their biases? Imagine Alex Jones getting millions of dollars of government money to fund his lunacy. What will be the reaction on the liberal side? Will they just say "it's all fair" and try to compensate by over-funding NPR and PBS, or will they try to find ways to rig the game in their favor?
> You need an organization to do things like collect taxes.
That organization does not need to be centralized. As an example: You could have tax collection at the city/municipality level, and then have these municipalities paying to theirs state according to their pre-agreed budget and commitments, and having that bubbling up.
> Maybe my responses could be more useful if you spoke specifically to why you dislike different policies of Yang
It is not about the policy, it is about its scope and the idea that you can apply the same kind of thinking on a country as large, diverse and uneven as the US.
UBI in itself is not a bad idea. Thinking that the way to implement it is by pushing it at the federal level is a catastrophically bad idea.
I would give Yang a lot more credit if he went to run for mayor of a small town in the Rust Belt, tried his ideas there first and then went on to promote them. But when he goes on to think that he can run a country in the same way that people run a SV startup, big red lights should be flashing in our heads.
> Don't you think washing out $4 billion of lobbyist money with $32 billion of eligible voter money would shift politics to getting more citizen-wants oriented politicians elected into power? If you say no, then why?
"Because populism" is the short answer. The long answer is "if voters were rational, people would be able to filter out politicians who are not aligned with their interests and lobby groups wouldn't exist. Adding more money to the system will not solve the issue."
If we want to get politicians that do what the citizens want, we need to reduce the distance between the citizens and their representatives. How about we get rid of the $4 billion lobbyists AND the $32 billion "voter money"? How about we got rid of all forms of Federal taxes and started favoring again a state-centered union? How about people started to be more interested in discussing their own town budget plans (where they can actually SEE the results of their choices) instead of giving them money to only pretend they have any say in these multi-trillion sausage factories?
Why would people even want to give this money to politicians? ANY of them? Could I simply get the money and pocket it? Why not?
More seriously though: why do you think is more likely to happen with such "journalist" money? Do you think people will suddenly promote rational discourse or they will just give this money to whoever confirms their biases? Imagine Alex Jones getting millions of dollars of government money to fund his lunacy. What will be the reaction on the liberal side? Will they just say "it's all fair" and try to compensate by over-funding NPR and PBS, or will they try to find ways to rig the game in their favor?
> You need an organization to do things like collect taxes.
That organization does not need to be centralized. As an example: You could have tax collection at the city/municipality level, and then have these municipalities paying to theirs state according to their pre-agreed budget and commitments, and having that bubbling up.
> Maybe my responses could be more useful if you spoke specifically to why you dislike different policies of Yang
It is not about the policy, it is about its scope and the idea that you can apply the same kind of thinking on a country as large, diverse and uneven as the US.
UBI in itself is not a bad idea. Thinking that the way to implement it is by pushing it at the federal level is a catastrophically bad idea.
I would give Yang a lot more credit if he went to run for mayor of a small town in the Rust Belt, tried his ideas there first and then went on to promote them. But when he goes on to think that he can run a country in the same way that people run a SV startup, big red lights should be flashing in our heads.
> Don't you think washing out $4 billion of lobbyist money with $32 billion of eligible voter money would shift politics to getting more citizen-wants oriented politicians elected into power? If you say no, then why?
"Because populism" is the short answer. The long answer is "if voters were rational, people would be able to filter out politicians who are not aligned with their interests and lobby groups wouldn't exist. Adding more money to the system will not solve the issue."
If we want to get politicians that do what the citizens want, we need to reduce the distance between the citizens and their representatives. How about we get rid of the $4 billion lobbyists AND the $32 billion "voter money"? How about we got rid of all forms of Federal taxes and started favoring again a state-centered union? How about people started to be more interested in discussing their own town budget plans (where they can actually SEE the results of their choices) instead of giving them money to only pretend they have any say in these multi-trillion sausage factories?
> Let me rephrase: believing that governments can be effective on a global scale while keeping individual freedoms is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution.
Again, no, it's not.
Global scale, one-size-fits-all government is the right-to-center-right, neoconservative/neoliberal colonial capitalist project.
The far left these days (Leninism having lost ground with the fall of the Soviet Union and it's sponsorship or allied groups abroad) is dominated by anarchist and libertarian socialist groups; and left-to-center-left groups are often milder versions of the same or differ from the center-right in the priorities of government, not its scale or scope. The far right may favor slightly smaller scale (large nation rather than global) government coordination, but tends to favor fairly intrusive scope of government and doesn't tend toward localism.
Equating maximum support for scale and scope of government with the Left may have made some sense when Leninism (and, despite “Socialism in one State”, it's Stalinist descendant, given observed Cold War behavior) were the most visibly dominant, notionally Left philosophies (though it still required ignoring the integrated colonial globalist nature of global capitalist ideology), but it's just plain looney-tunes today.
Again, no, it's not.
Global scale, one-size-fits-all government is the right-to-center-right, neoconservative/neoliberal colonial capitalist project.
The far left these days (Leninism having lost ground with the fall of the Soviet Union and it's sponsorship or allied groups abroad) is dominated by anarchist and libertarian socialist groups; and left-to-center-left groups are often milder versions of the same or differ from the center-right in the priorities of government, not its scale or scope. The far right may favor slightly smaller scale (large nation rather than global) government coordination, but tends to favor fairly intrusive scope of government and doesn't tend toward localism.
Equating maximum support for scale and scope of government with the Left may have made some sense when Leninism (and, despite “Socialism in one State”, it's Stalinist descendant, given observed Cold War behavior) were the most visibly dominant, notionally Left philosophies (though it still required ignoring the integrated colonial globalist nature of global capitalist ideology), but it's just plain looney-tunes today.
It looks like we are going to get into a "if-by-whiskey" argument. By "left", I meant the American "liberal" left, the EU-loving social democrats and so on. If you don't want to consider them "real left", fine. But the overall point is that these groups are by and large supporters of increased centralization and keep defending their policies on the grounds that "all it takes is a government with good intentions and people will be nicely living in Kumbaya-land".
> If you don't want to consider them "real left", fine. But the overall point is that these groups are by and large supporters of increased centralization
They generally support a similar level of scale and scope of government as the parties the same distance on the opposite side of the local center, with different goals. There's nothing particularly left, even by your definition of “left” that excludes pretty much everything past the center-left, about it. On scale and scope, but not purpose, of government there’s a fairly broad centrist common position.
They generally support a similar level of scale and scope of government as the parties the same distance on the opposite side of the local center, with different goals. There's nothing particularly left, even by your definition of “left” that excludes pretty much everything past the center-left, about it. On scale and scope, but not purpose, of government there’s a fairly broad centrist common position.
Disagree. Surely you can find more republicans defending more power to the states and criticizing Federal encroachment than democrats. Brexit was mostly a "liberal/left" vs "conservative/right" affair than any other. EU-skepticism is not only a nationalistic/authoritarian talking point. In Latin America, all the left governments have softened on their speech, but their ideology is pretty much dictated by the Foro de São Paulo and there has been more than one occasion where Lula/Chavez/Kirschner/Morales put their own countries below the FSP's agenda.
> There will not be one single standard of policies that will work for all people, no matter how "democratic" the process to establish the rules are and no matter how good the ideas you think they are.
Are we defining "people" here racially, as a language group, or as the humans who live within the particular borders of an old colony or the territory of a long dead conquerer?
Why is Switzerland the ideal size? Does something about that size reduce the proportion of people at the "periphery of power"?
Are we defining "people" here racially, as a language group, or as the humans who live within the particular borders of an old colony or the territory of a long dead conquerer?
Why is Switzerland the ideal size? Does something about that size reduce the proportion of people at the "periphery of power"?
It's not about Switzerland's size. It's about its bottom-up political structure. The cantons hold more political and economical power than the federation. It's so local-first that there are stories of people who were denied Swiss citizenship basically because their neighbors considered the person to be not aligned with the community values. Policies are defined almost at a district level. Comparing with the other "big" countries in Europe, there is no distant bureaucracy enacting laws affecting subjects that are not on the same sphere.
The USA was built on the same idea, where states have a lot more direct power than the federal government, but that idea is basically lost because people on both sides of the political spectrum have been pushing for more centralization and federal control.
The USA was built on the same idea, where states have a lot more direct power than the federal government, but that idea is basically lost because people on both sides of the political spectrum have been pushing for more centralization and federal control.
Yes, fundamental to Yang's ideas are you can make capitalism work if people are given a voice, ie dollars (capital) to vote preferences with. Currently it's really hard to get money when you have none, there's a bootstrapping problem. We do a good job of rewarding innovation but not of creating opportunities for it.
> what's determined to be ideal.
"Determined" to be ideal? Found the totalitarian.
"Determined" to be ideal? Found the totalitarian.
"Found the totalitarian." Really?
Nowhere did I state who's determining what's ideal, but you seem to have a need to demonize or put down - so you assumed it must be what I believe is ideal. I suggest you stop making assumptions, and in part based on your comments in this thread, that means broadening your perspective.
Ideally who's determining what's ideal is a democratically elected nation of people who have elected politicians to create policy that will reflect the wants, desires, beliefs of their population - from the local level and all the way up.
I didn't downvote your comment by the way, that was others - I don't downvote anything as I think downvotes in this context are overall harmful and a useless and lazy signal at that.
Nowhere did I state who's determining what's ideal, but you seem to have a need to demonize or put down - so you assumed it must be what I believe is ideal. I suggest you stop making assumptions, and in part based on your comments in this thread, that means broadening your perspective.
Ideally who's determining what's ideal is a democratically elected nation of people who have elected politicians to create policy that will reflect the wants, desires, beliefs of their population - from the local level and all the way up.
I didn't downvote your comment by the way, that was others - I don't downvote anything as I think downvotes in this context are overall harmful and a useless and lazy signal at that.
Implementation is whatever two parties agree upon, otherwise it isn't decentralized.
This is akin asking 'Will we build our community around hammers or screwdrivers?'
Network architectures are means, not ends.
The question is what are we trying to do?
Based on that context, we can determine whether a hammer, screwdriver, centralized architecture, decentralized architecture, or federated architecture is most beneficial for us. They all have tradeoffs (e.g. easier to remove screws than nails, easier to secure centralized than decentralized systems, easier to power federated systems than decentralized systems, easier to trust decentralized and federated systems than centralized systems) which can make them more or less useful for us in any given context. The point is, they are tools to help us realize our desired outcomes -- not the outcomes themselves.
Network architectures are means, not ends.
The question is what are we trying to do?
Based on that context, we can determine whether a hammer, screwdriver, centralized architecture, decentralized architecture, or federated architecture is most beneficial for us. They all have tradeoffs (e.g. easier to remove screws than nails, easier to secure centralized than decentralized systems, easier to power federated systems than decentralized systems, easier to trust decentralized and federated systems than centralized systems) which can make them more or less useful for us in any given context. The point is, they are tools to help us realize our desired outcomes -- not the outcomes themselves.
Finally, some common sense.
There's some weird psychology of tech circles that keeps us focused on decentralization. Often it just seems like bikeshedding rather than problem-solving. My guess is the Social Media generation has become wary of people controlling their lives, preferring autonomy. They hear about network decentralization, and then come to the conclusion that it must be better than the alternative, because the alternative is centralization, which is Google and Facebook (but never Apple apparently, which is pretty ironic).
There's some weird psychology of tech circles that keeps us focused on decentralization. Often it just seems like bikeshedding rather than problem-solving. My guess is the Social Media generation has become wary of people controlling their lives, preferring autonomy. They hear about network decentralization, and then come to the conclusion that it must be better than the alternative, because the alternative is centralization, which is Google and Facebook (but never Apple apparently, which is pretty ironic).
Yeah. This seems to be missing from the current conversation.
Here's a fantastic quote I heard this week:
"A successful utopian society would most likely be one made up of 1000s of smaller utopias."
This strikes me as the valid mega-target that we should be attempting to reach collectively - space for all.
It should also be the foundational principle for software solutions. And neutral software solutions should also be able to accommodate people who don't want to be in the proposed solution!
"A successful utopian society would most likely be one made up of 1000s of smaller utopias."
This strikes me as the valid mega-target that we should be attempting to reach collectively - space for all.
It should also be the foundational principle for software solutions. And neutral software solutions should also be able to accommodate people who don't want to be in the proposed solution!
Better would be 1000s of overlapping utopias. Reducing the geographic size of government seems like a lot less desirable a way to shrink it than reducing the scope of governments.
That was the original rhetoric behind "Defund" IIRC. Break up the central police force to a rump used to coordinate and regulate police functions that have been devolved to exist under other government departments. Basically a bid to put a domestically-operating military under more thoughtfully-organized civilian control instead of simply having city cops, state cops, and country cops whose only points of oversight come respectively from the mayor, the governor, and the president.
That was the original rhetoric behind "Defund" IIRC. Break up the central police force to a rump used to coordinate and regulate police functions that have been devolved to exist under other government departments. Basically a bid to put a domestically-operating military under more thoughtfully-organized civilian control instead of simply having city cops, state cops, and country cops whose only points of oversight come respectively from the mayor, the governor, and the president.
It's a good start but you still need a mechanism for preventing negative externalities between utopias.
I am writing a fully decentralized application and in doing so have learned a lot about the concept. There has been a lot of interest on the subject over the last few months so I likely need to write a document about the things I have learned. Some quick things:
* Security is wildly different in a decentralized model compared with a client/server model.
* Decentralization is about one thing only: maximum autonomy.
* Federated systems are semi-autonomous. They are a move towards decentralization but not completely so. With decentralization you only need an application that send/receive agreed upon instructions.
* Anonymity and privacy are opposing qualities. Decentralization is not about either but enables one or the other.
As I have been exploring this subject I have formed some criteria for decentralization:
* Address based (IP addresses or identifiers that resolve to an IP address without third party consultation, no DNS)
* Protocol agnostic (what ever two parties can agree upon)
* No third parties (no servers or message proxies unless you own them)
Think about it in terms of snail mail. The post office moves packages around without opening or inspecting the contents. The contents are never stored in a database and could be broken. It is address to address communication.
Decentralization allows for personal or organizational devices to be remotely connected as a large physically distributed computer:
* A single file system, cross OS.
* Remote application execution, such as Steam’s remote game play.
* Content on demand. Push media out to your friends or access their computer and pull it off yourself.
* Security is wildly different in a decentralized model compared with a client/server model.
* Decentralization is about one thing only: maximum autonomy.
* Federated systems are semi-autonomous. They are a move towards decentralization but not completely so. With decentralization you only need an application that send/receive agreed upon instructions.
* Anonymity and privacy are opposing qualities. Decentralization is not about either but enables one or the other.
As I have been exploring this subject I have formed some criteria for decentralization:
* Address based (IP addresses or identifiers that resolve to an IP address without third party consultation, no DNS)
* Protocol agnostic (what ever two parties can agree upon)
* No third parties (no servers or message proxies unless you own them)
Think about it in terms of snail mail. The post office moves packages around without opening or inspecting the contents. The contents are never stored in a database and could be broken. It is address to address communication.
Decentralization allows for personal or organizational devices to be remotely connected as a large physically distributed computer:
* A single file system, cross OS.
* Remote application execution, such as Steam’s remote game play.
* Content on demand. Push media out to your friends or access their computer and pull it off yourself.
"* Content on demand. Push media out to your friends or access their computer and pull it off yourself."
Reminds me of dialing into a BBS way back when, that early on was just someone with a non-dedicated or dedicated telephone line hooked up to their personal computer's modem; you could connect to fun, non-real-time multi-player text-based games (ASCII art FTW!) hosted on their PC, and some had file servers open for download and sometimes upload.
Reminds me of dialing into a BBS way back when, that early on was just someone with a non-dedicated or dedicated telephone line hooked up to their personal computer's modem; you could connect to fun, non-real-time multi-player text-based games (ASCII art FTW!) hosted on their PC, and some had file servers open for download and sometimes upload.
I'm writing an offline-first database and it typically uses a server for storage and coordination. The difference is that I don't think the server should be able to see what it stores and coordinates, for which searchable encryption is the solution.
However my database is address based, it reads and writes blocks of encrypted data, and it is protocol agnostic, it works over S3 and Google Drive, or could work over a pendrive sent in a letter back and forth, or IPFS. It just requires a single source of truth and optionally event notification.
So would this fit into an every peer-to-peer system is decentralized, but not every decentralized system is peer-to-peer picture, or is this not decentralized at all, because you would normally use it with Amazon S3, albeit in a maliciously-secure manner (the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of your data is secured via authenticated encryption, the client keeps the key, the access pattern is obfuscated).
However my database is address based, it reads and writes blocks of encrypted data, and it is protocol agnostic, it works over S3 and Google Drive, or could work over a pendrive sent in a letter back and forth, or IPFS. It just requires a single source of truth and optionally event notification.
So would this fit into an every peer-to-peer system is decentralized, but not every decentralized system is peer-to-peer picture, or is this not decentralized at all, because you would normally use it with Amazon S3, albeit in a maliciously-secure manner (the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of your data is secured via authenticated encryption, the client keeps the key, the access pattern is obfuscated).
Peer to peer systems are not necessarily decentralized. They are decentralized if their traffic does not require access by a third party. Its the difference between Napster and BitTorrent.
In the case of your scenario it could be considered decentralized as you are using cloud storage as merely a storage point, as in a dedicated redundancy, but I am hesitant to consider a dedicate server as a point of decentralization regardless of its intention or access limitations.
In the case of your scenario it could be considered decentralized as you are using cloud storage as merely a storage point, as in a dedicated redundancy, but I am hesitant to consider a dedicate server as a point of decentralization regardless of its intention or access limitations.
considered 9p yet?
I had no idea about this. I am looking at it now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protocol)
Here is the approach I am taking: https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protocol)
Here is the approach I am taking: https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems
also gnunet and its gnu name system might be worth a look
maybe instead of mp4 files no one bothers with, upload your demo on peertube or similar?
maybe instead of mp4 files no one bothers with, upload your demo on peertube or similar?
"how much decentralization do we need?"
I think, that hits the nail on its head.
Many people are happy with MANGA basically owning the Internet and many people aren't.
If we look at companies bending the knee for China or shutting down accounts, simply because they have different moral than the account owners, it's clear that we need much more decentralization than we have right now.
How much? I don't know.
I think, that hits the nail on its head.
Many people are happy with MANGA basically owning the Internet and many people aren't.
If we look at companies bending the knee for China or shutting down accounts, simply because they have different moral than the account owners, it's clear that we need much more decentralization than we have right now.
How much? I don't know.
I think part of the solution is to make sure there is a functional and tested decentralized system that's available as a fallback or failsafe, say in case the system(s) get captured by tyranny or authoritarians; and these fallback systems must be enshrined in policy/constitution, so that if they're ever attacked or targeted then that becomes a canary signal.
Data mobility could also perhaps be considered the other side of the decentralized coin.
Data mobility could also perhaps be considered the other side of the decentralized coin.
Honestly how decentralized is the Internet? AFAIK there are groups like W3C and ICAAN which basically control domains, and a few IPs which control routing. Most of the internet is also behind Cloudflare, AWS, etc.
The key is that these companies are very conservative when blocking users and giving others special privileges. Your service won't be blocked by Cloudflare and IPs unless it's particularly bad or your government requests it. Whereas e.g. YouTube has very strict rules and often bans people incorrectly or for debatable reasons.
Idk if the issue is actually decentralized vs. centralized. I think it's "do I decide the rules or do I just enforce them?"
The key is that these companies are very conservative when blocking users and giving others special privileges. Your service won't be blocked by Cloudflare and IPs unless it's particularly bad or your government requests it. Whereas e.g. YouTube has very strict rules and often bans people incorrectly or for debatable reasons.
Idk if the issue is actually decentralized vs. centralized. I think it's "do I decide the rules or do I just enforce them?"
> Given my mental model of centralization vs. decentralization, I think it's more productive to think about the boundary: how much decentralization do we need? If there's too little, then software will stagnate from lack of competition; if there's too much, then it'll stagnate from lack of coordination. So we want to figure out where the sweet spot is.
This is a static view. A dynamic view would recognize that systems have a lifetime and tend to go through centralize and then disintegrate. Decentralization often exists prior to centralization. Catch systems on the rise.
This is a static view. A dynamic view would recognize that systems have a lifetime and tend to go through centralize and then disintegrate. Decentralization often exists prior to centralization. Catch systems on the rise.
From the linked article Avoiding Internet Centralization:
5.2. Encrypt, Always
All systems that scale HTTP-based applications require a lack of encryption on the backend. The encryption is terminated at the load balancer and the entire connection is then inspected in plaintext. Sure, the "best practice" is to encrypt between endpoints, but they must be decrypted at each hop so that load balancers, API gateways, and applications can inject or parse headers, perform rewrites, forward traffic, inspect requests (WAF), create sticky sessions, and cache media. If all HTTP connections were end to end encrypted, the web could not scale.
Another example is DNS over HTTPS. The encryption centralizes control of the protocol at the server. The encryption removes the ability of intermediate LAN/WAN DNS resolvers to cache records for a large local network, or to serve their own custom zones transparently, or do things like ad-blocking. As there are valid and necessary use cases, it means that now new "hacks" will have to be developed to accommodate the old use cases, that the protocol design intentionally ignored. The result is more centralization.
Distributed decentralized applications also suffer when PKI is used for encryption. It is very common for backend applications to stop working because they were using a private CA to encrypt backend connections and the certs expired without warning, killing all the connections. Refreshing the certs then involves re-deploying not just the servers, but all the clients that were reliant on an old client cert, and possibly an expired CA cert. This use of a private CA also breaks decentralization compared to the public CA model.
5.2. Encrypt, Always
When deployed at scale, encryption can be an effective technique to reduce many inherited
centralization risks. By reducing the number of parties who have access to content of
communication, the ability of lower-layer protocols and intermediaries at those layers
to interfere with or observe is precluded. Even when they can still prevent communication,
the use of encryption makes it more difficult to discriminate the target from other
traffic.
Note that the benefits are most pronounced when the majority (if not all) traffic is
encrypted. As a result, protocols SHOULD be encrypted by default.
All systems that scale HTTP-based applications require a lack of encryption on the backend. The encryption is terminated at the load balancer and the entire connection is then inspected in plaintext. Sure, the "best practice" is to encrypt between endpoints, but they must be decrypted at each hop so that load balancers, API gateways, and applications can inject or parse headers, perform rewrites, forward traffic, inspect requests (WAF), create sticky sessions, and cache media. If all HTTP connections were end to end encrypted, the web could not scale.
Another example is DNS over HTTPS. The encryption centralizes control of the protocol at the server. The encryption removes the ability of intermediate LAN/WAN DNS resolvers to cache records for a large local network, or to serve their own custom zones transparently, or do things like ad-blocking. As there are valid and necessary use cases, it means that now new "hacks" will have to be developed to accommodate the old use cases, that the protocol design intentionally ignored. The result is more centralization.
Distributed decentralized applications also suffer when PKI is used for encryption. It is very common for backend applications to stop working because they were using a private CA to encrypt backend connections and the certs expired without warning, killing all the connections. Refreshing the certs then involves re-deploying not just the servers, but all the clients that were reliant on an old client cert, and possibly an expired CA cert. This use of a private CA also breaks decentralization compared to the public CA model.
Centralization is a human nature. Internet is already decentralized but we still tend to congregate in common space. Even with web3, organizations like polkadot are creating a centralized space around them. So I doubt we will ever achieve true decentralization there will always be a hierarchy and a central body that will have more control over it.
I don't think what we're running into here is "human nature" so much as it is investor nature. I'm not particularly familiar with them, but Polkadot has raised $300M. There has to be some return for that investment (i.e. they need to be able to lock users into their ecosystem and prove to investors that a competitor can't come along and provide an equally valuable service without starting from scratch). How can a truly decentralized service / protocol compete with the companies that are getting that kind of investment?
First, thinking of decentralization/centralization as having a boundary between them can be useful, but is wrong. They are a continuum upon which things oscillate.
Decentralization fundamentally trades inefficiency for long-term robustness. Centralization trades long term robustness for short term efficiencies.
Under our implementation of capitalism, most people don't value robustness on a timescale longer than 20 years unless there was recently a crisis to remind them of it.
So every aspect of human infrastructure oscillates on the centralized-decentralized axis over time. Thinking of "decentralized" as something that will stay that way is wrong, over time people will ever centralize the system in pursuit of short term returns until the perceived "decentralized" system might as well be centralized in practice (see internet infrastructure), once a crisis happens due to over-centralization we build a new system (or re-brand an old system) that is more decentralized in response. That system eventually decays into centralization the same way.
I value changing society to think in the long term, so I think it is a lot more valuable to change the cycle versus attempt to participate in just one swing of it.
Decentralization fundamentally trades inefficiency for long-term robustness. Centralization trades long term robustness for short term efficiencies.
Under our implementation of capitalism, most people don't value robustness on a timescale longer than 20 years unless there was recently a crisis to remind them of it.
So every aspect of human infrastructure oscillates on the centralized-decentralized axis over time. Thinking of "decentralized" as something that will stay that way is wrong, over time people will ever centralize the system in pursuit of short term returns until the perceived "decentralized" system might as well be centralized in practice (see internet infrastructure), once a crisis happens due to over-centralization we build a new system (or re-brand an old system) that is more decentralized in response. That system eventually decays into centralization the same way.
I value changing society to think in the long term, so I think it is a lot more valuable to change the cycle versus attempt to participate in just one swing of it.
Hello, I have a similar thread going here. I think we need to "shard the centralized monolith".
https://www.unturf.com/let-us-define-a-permacomputer/
I avoid writing prescriptively to avoid setting a bias on the talent.
I AM growing my own "YouTube". Not open source yet but I'm planning big things.
https://media.unturf.com
https://www.unturf.com/let-us-define-a-permacomputer/
I avoid writing prescriptively to avoid setting a bias on the talent.
I AM growing my own "YouTube". Not open source yet but I'm planning big things.
https://media.unturf.com
In other words, it’s ok for some things to be “decentralized enough”, as opposed to fully decentralized (whatever that means).