Comment by anonporridge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonporridge | Hacker News Reader

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The fundamental problem with systems based on trust in humans, is that even if you completely trust the humans in control today those people will eventually be replaced, by death if nothing else.

So, you also need a system of determining succession of trusted individuals that not only selects humans who can be trusted, but humans who understand the challenge of defending the purity of succession procedure. All it takes is one corrupted transition. One person submitting to a little nepotism, to poison the entire system.

And of course, wherever you create a centralized repository of power, whether it's a hoard of wealth, a position of authority, the head of cult following, or admin access to a database, you immediately create a game for power hungry people to figure out a way to corrupt the systems in place that prevent abuse of that power.

This is why so many people are working towards decentralizing systems of power. Hell, even the US constitution is an instantiation of that, with the established separation of powers between the 3 branches of government. While we recognize that centralizing all governmental power in a single position can lead to incredible efficiencies if you get the right person in charge, it is also incredibly fragile and dangerous in the long run. We accept the inefficiencies of decentralized systems in exchange for long term stability and anti-fragility.

If I can't trust future humans to honor property rights, why can I trust them to honor property rights specified on the chain?

We have a winner. :)

You can't, at least not directly. You still need the local monopoly on violence to honor and respect your claim on the property. That's why I'm personally not super bullish on the use of NFTs for property rights at this point (unlike my confidence in the place of bitcoin as long term safe store of money).

However, I could see it might be useful to at least make it obvious to the world when a centralized authority takes someone's property without their consent, and will force them to actually prove to the world why the seizure was justified.

The important thing in this case, is that while they can seize the underlying property, they can't just transfer the ownership certificate (e.g. property title) arbitrarily. Any local authority that accumulates a lot of unjustified seizures will see investment into their realm dry up, as people with money realize the risk of seizure in their realm is too great to justify investing significant money. We already do that now to some degree, but mostly through social gossip because it can be hard to prove that it's happening unless the abuse is directly touching your social circles.

Came here to say this, more or less. Software, technology, science. It stands on the shoulders of giants. If I use, say Ethereum, there's a whole lot of developers I need to trust. Even if one would use Qubes, Tails, or Whonix.

Generally, the concept of trust in poor countries is corrupted by centralized institutions, mostly as a means to redirect wealth. Rule of law is meager but in my experience, land rights are one of the few that maintain (as long as someone with power does not want what you have. There are few with both power and stupid greed enough that this is a very rare occurrence).

Despite barely enforced laws, people are mostly good and largely follow rules. Human trafficking, armed robberies and kidnappings are a lot higher than in wealthier countries but it's still only a minority who succumb to that. It's mostly scams (including having a business but not paying employees) that a significant number participate in.

With property, those that have less respect each other and those that have much more also have gated compounds and private security (among which we can count having police on call). It sounds weird but in disputes, even absent an actual justice system, a verifiable paper trail or record still carries a great deal of weight.

Having suffered a lot from it, I think a lot about corruption. I've also read a fair few number of papers on the topic, from the sociological to the game theoretical.

Lack of accountability and lack of transparency are major enablers. Public blockchains are of interest because of their (pseudonymous) transparency and virtually tamper-proof nature. Not a solution but of interest. A fully transparent and neutral system or layer of payment of last resort, where the powerful cannot forge records, for use where trust is non-existent would be useful.

I don't see this problem of trust evidencing itself anywhere in my daily life. I do not commonly consider that my bank will become corrupt and take my money, or that the county land manager will take my property because of nepotism. 90% of the websites I have accounts with haven't abused my trust in any significant way, other than data breaches.

I understand that these things are possible. But it doesn't seem worth any level of effort to a resolve a problem that doesn't occur and doesn't seem likely

You're on this site, so you're probably an economically valuable human with social connections to other economically valuable humans. If that's the case, then you're not the ideal target for corrupt people abusing their power. You would create too much of a ruckus if people in power started unfairly abusing you.

Privilege creates a bubble that can easily blind you to the abuses that are actively happening all around you. You and I often don't hear about those abuses because we humans can only really keep track of a couple hundred other humans, and there are over 300 million in the US alone. There could absolutely be millions of people getting abused by people in power who don't have the education to understand that they're being abused or the social connections push their stories out to people who could do something about it.

As a simple example, white Americans see videos emerging of innocent black Americans getting violently abused by police in a way we can't even fathom in our privilege, and black Americans are completely unsurprised, saying "yeah, this is totally normal. We've been trying to tell you about it for decades but you never believed us." Trevor Noah has a good dialog on this, https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/877533496515989506

There's also an element of "everyone hates the violent young men in their community until the barbarians are pounding down the city gates". Or like Fauci said early in the pandemic, something to the effect of "if we do a good job, everyone will wonder why we overreacted about nothing." More often than not, bad things don't happen precisely because of the efforts of people assuming they're definitely going to happen, which then leads to the next generation that never experienced the bad things wondering why we're wasting effort on this thing that doesn't happen.

That is a fair point (but I'd point to the Australian Banking Royal Commission over and above Police racism if you're looking to show how financial institutions violate the trust of undereducated/underprivileged people).

I don't think crypto is the right solution, though.

If anything, it requires _more_ trust from vulnerable people than traditional finance, and without any central authority it's difficult to regulate.

I agree with what you're saying. But I think there is a certain level of risk where the "average person" can experience negative effects. Society, by definition, is comprised of average people. Until something is likely affect them, they don't care much about it.

In my personal experience this applies to politics, climate change, trust in institutions and many other "big" concepts. People I know tend to be fully focused on their families, their careers and their hobbies. Anything that won't materially impact one of those things is trivia.

This seems to be true of most humans, throughout history. I don't see mass adoption of any system that solves the problem of trust until regular violations of that trust impact the median citizen.

You don't see it because you are not looking for it. It is real, and you are, for example, being robbed of value in fiat currencies in your bank account every year due to inflation. How much you are aware and want to do something about it is the trick.

Ive had banks steal from me. Ive had companies steal from me. Ive had governments steal from me. Eventually you say, enough is enough, and find concrete solutions. Theft? of my property? Its more likely than you think.

I want to know how much kool-aid you need to drink before you get to inflation is theft.

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