[sethrin]

While the 2008 crash can be described as an informational failure, my understanding was that this information was deliberately omitted, not just unread; it was fraud, not just a systemic failure. Also, you seem to be describing blockchain costs as being minimal in some sense. My suspicion is that this is less true than you think. Currently, blockchains have very high energy usage. If you are saying we need to structure society around this, then you are asking us to absorb whatever externalities go with it. The people who live around the Colombia River, where the cheap hydro power is, are getting a bit tired of BitCoin mining. I'm sure there are things which can ameliorate this issue. I'm willing to be convinced that the problems of blockchains are surmountable, but your argument seems more enthusiastic than credible.

[Alex3917]

> my understanding was that this information was deliberately omitted, not just unread; it was fraud

Debt was fraudulently misrated, so you'd have junk bonds rated as AAA or whatever. But the primary data was all there, so you could actually go visit all of the properties and talk to the owners like they did in The Big Short, it's just that no one did. The people who approved the mortgages also weren't verifying people's incomes, and in some cases were even encouraging them to lie about their incomes. But the primary data was all there, the reason no one audited the primary data was that it was too expensive relative to the payoff. Blockchains can fix this. (The residential real estate market is pretty fragmented so it's unlikely to be one of the first industries to get transformed, it's just an easy to understand example.)

> Currently, blockchains have very high energy usage.

This is really only true for Bitcoin and things modeled after it, where the integrity of the chain is secured by wasting an amount of electricity that's directly proportional to the expected future price. This clearly isn't sustainable so BTC will have to change their POW if they want to be successful. But it's also not an inherent property of blockchains, there are many other blockchains that are already secured differently or are working on novel security mechanisms, but as I said they just need to be proven out over the next few years.

[sethrin]

I did indicate that the power issues are not inherent, even in the quoted sentence. I am disappointed in your response to the degree that it does not address other externalities. In some ways the general lack of exactitude in human affairs is a feature. There are also two sides to the issue of privacy, which is not impossible to achieve for an immutable distributed ledger, but not necessarily the natural tendency. Further issues may occur to you.