Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by meheleventyone 1621 days ago
They are enormously different strengths of social contract though both in terms of number of participants and consequences for breaching it.

Five of my friends agreeing to share a dirt bike is a social contract after all.

1 comments

Yes, but the point of blockchain tech is to enable such social contracts to be formed, and over time, strengthened. Isn't that the point of decentralized anything? You can decentralized tech all you want, but without a social contract to use it...
You don't need decentralized tech to do that though as the dirt bike sharing example amply demonstrates...

We can also see that many blockchain projects actually rely on more mundane social contracts like our legal system and governments with actual terms and conditions, registered companies and the like.

If you think NFTs are going to radically alter social contracts around ownership on a wider scale I've got a lovely plot on the moon to sell you.

That kind of highlights the stupidity of it all. A "social contract" without a government to enforce it is worthless. "On your honor" in business is never going to work; way too many folks without a moral compass in society.
I believe the idea is that any community can form a social contract amongst itself regardless of the size.

In reality, at the moment a government had authority over those under it.

So perhaps this idea of social contracts reveal both the aim (destroying of society, hype and illusion to create communities) and the weakness (government, monopoly of violence, status quo)