[rglullis]

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Find me one example of institution that managed to go for any significant amount of time (say, longer than a decade) without facing corruption. I double-dare you.

[dghlsakjg]

Decentralized organizations (institutions?) are not at all immune to corruption and malevolent inside actors.

One look at the world of decentralized crypto-currency more than proves that corruption is not limited to institutions.

Corruption seems inherent to humans, the difference is that institutions are well aware of this, and frequently set up controls and systems to balance power and fight the most obvious forms of corruption.

[rglullis]

No one (reasonable) ever said that decentralization makes us immune to corruption. The argument is that decentralization reduces concentration of power and the potential damage that inevitably will occur when anyone in a position of power fails or tries to abuse the power they have.

[dghlsakjg]

Again, look at crypto-currency, there have been more than ample examples that prove that a single person can aggregate power and wield it in self-interested ways.

[rglullis]

It's the opposite: despite all the scams that have occurred in cryptocurrency, the overall system still continues to work.

Rug-pulls are inevitable, what matters is whether people are left with power to move on or if they are trapped into the corrupt system. How many people managed to leave the banking system after the crash of 2008?

See also: Reddit. Despite all the protests, the absolute majority of people went back to it and accepted the conditions.

[dghlsakjg]

Despite all of the corruption/scams present in deeply centralized institutions, the overall system continues to work. What is your point?

>Rug-pulls are inevitable.

That sounds like a pretty undesirable system where illegal, immoral behavior is "inevitable", hardly a replacement for the existing institutions. Especially since crypto intentionally operates (or attempts to operate) outside the jurisdiction of anti corruption and law enforcement powers. I for one would much rather be the victim of a traditional institution since there are balancing institutions that exist to hold them accountable. The fact that the only organizations that have demonstrated the capability of reigning in crypto scammers are incredibly centralized is deeply ironic to me.

Plenty of people are unbanked, about 5% of adults in the US, and plenty of people left Reddit.

[rglullis]

> deeply centralized institutions, the overall system continues to work

Until they don't. You are comparing the worst of decentralized systems (rug-pulls) with the average-to-best-case of institutions that centralize power (western democracy governments) when we should be talking about the extreme cases: autocracies and dictatorships.

> hardly a replacement for the existing institutions.

Why do people can only think in binary terms? No one is calling for the "replacement" of the institutions. The idea is to build decentralized systems as a hedge against the centralized one.

You are repeatedly giving the "so you are saying..." line and it's starting to feel like you are purposefully misunderstanding the point.

> Plenty of people are unbanked

For their own choice or because they were excluded of the system? Wouldn't it be good to have an alternative that we could have as hedge against them?

> plenty of people left Reddit

Not enough to cause it to implode, and not enough to bring a critical mass to any alternative.

[hirako2000]

In any case the point made was that centralized systems always corrupt. Challenge it and dare finding one example that didn't get corrupted.

Also it is unjust to name crypto/Blockchain as an example of decentralized system that gets corrupted. All corruption story in fact are centralized , but labelled as crypto, or touch the field of crypto but nonetheless are very centralized. E.g mtgox, bitconnect, Celsius, FTX.

If not centralized, flawed in design. Unintentionally E.g Ethereum before the split that led to ETC. Euler more recently. Many others. And Many are intentionally flawed, e.g terra/Luna.

[dghlsakjg]

You’re asking for things that you plan to “no true Scotsman”. If I name an institution you will claim it doesn’t count because it isn’t big enough, or that it actually is corrupt by your measure.

You have already done this with crypto. I.e. The corruption that occurs in crypto doesn’t count because those weren’t true crypto projects.

So in the spirit of the challenge. Tell me how the Adventure Cycling Association is corrupt?

[hirako2000]

I don't see how your qualification is correct as I haven't said no true Scotsman yet. Prejudice already?

But your tactic won't prevent me from calling an Irish, what's truly not Scots. I will get to that.

No what I have said about crypto was clarify that those accused of corrupted decentralized entities in fact aren't decentralized. And the distinction is non obvious because many centralized entities mingle with decentralized technology. It doesn't make those decentralized, they have all the attributes of centralized systems, often trying to disguise as decentralized themselves. See we offer a spot btc exchange, non custodial. But still centralized. Yet they don't say it. And are happy to seed confusion. why the disguise? Because decentralized systems are getting known of being corrupt resistant, so it's always good to pretend having that stamp of merit. Especially when your trust is needed for doing business.

It's a bit like open source , see, one can't simply disqualify the qualities and properties of open source using the pretext that a growing list of projects fail the test, given how many projects we've seen pretending to build open source software that same fallacious argument could be made, but would it stand correct?

Ok I won't write for too much about blockchain, crypto entities and their relation (or contradiction) with decentralization, nor which qualifies as what, check for yourself, if you don't then no argument I could make in a post will convince you anyway.

About the Adventure Cycling Association, I don't know if it's corrupt. I had never heard of it. See, it's not that it's an Irishman, a Scotsman, or an English. Maybe it's bushman. I don't know exactly but it seems to me like it's part of a pretty decentralized domain. First it's not even an institution, I think, but Let's not get into the definitions as many wouldn't even agree as to what an institution is anyway. It's an organisation, that we would all agree with. and that charity organization looks closer to an entity, part of a decentralized cloud of cycling associations.

What would make the adventure Cycling Association centralized ? If it finds a way to have monopoly or quasi monopoly on Cycling activities. Or on Adventure Cycling activities. Or such activities in a certain locality that isn't limited to some irrelevant private park.

What makes centralized systems centralized? They require a level of monopoly or authority over a matter. Reasonably agreed to be extensive.

Examples.

Facebook. It qualifies as centralized because it reached such a massive network effect that it owns a certain monopoly in what it does. Sure there are other social media networks with some significant overlap in functionality but it has this sticky effect that makes jumping boat to alternatives, difficult. That's voluntarily exclusivity of sorts.

Reddit. That one is interesting, as it has some obvious decentralized properties, but some other and very strict properties that are totally centralized. Reddit made decisions on their own that applied to all. The backlash was worth of note, also that users for the most part stayed. Had Reddit been truly decentralized? A system that would have allowed some or all subs to "fork" off that decision? We would have seen a flocking of many subs onto the "classic" regulation. Anyhow not calling Reddit corrupt here but I hope you see what distinguishes decentralized from centralized structures. Here also Reddit has a very strong sticky network effect so users who didn't like it could hardly move out.

Governments. I can't skip this mention, those institutions despite being often democratic are generally pretty centralized, they have an executive administration exercising exclusive power over some of the matters of an entire nation. They don't have full control, but even for the rest, representatives form a tiny minority of the population, yet they legislate on their own, for so many. And the many don't have the choice but follow. That's not voluntary exclusivity.

The USB alliance. That's centralized corrupt institution. They have monopoly on questions regarding the USB spec and come up with all sort of financial impacting desires and mandates. Using law enforcement in attempts to get makers to oblige and pay the cartel. not voluntary exclusivity.

Power absolutely corrupts and most absolute power corrupts most absolutely.

As to the Adventure Cycling Association which I had never heard of, nor heard of any cycling associations having acquired some exclusive control over anything to do with cycling, they may or may not be corrupt, but they aren't centralized institution.

If you believe they are, then you and I are also a centralized institution discussing matters of corruption. Perhaps your see the ridicule. But hey, if you and I got control over hackernews we would truly have centralized powers over this community and it would be being corrupted to impose a certain view on the matter.

Hackernews and its moderation may have acquired certain influence and stickiness, they could get corrupted, it depends on how absolute their power is and over what. But they've so far showed decent attitude. Does it make it an example of institution that resisted corruption? Well no, not a Scotsman. Quite young and having been well guarded against abuse, sort of a niche.

My 36 cents, in the hope to have made you see something you had not distinguished from the rest, necessary to make sense of this non trivial issue. Not expecting you to entirely change your mind, it is a difficult thing to do given how much of a shaking certain sort of belief system would need to endure.

[throw4847285]

I don't think concentration of power is the root of corruption. Corruption is usually distributed across an entire system, and even if there is a boss at the top, they're reliant on a lot of other people to stay in power (see Tammany Hall). What corruption needs is mechanisms which can be exploited to ensure that a system designed for the public good can be used to enrich individuals.

[kmeisthax]

Even nominally decentralized systems tend to create unaccountable power structures. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

[patrickmcnamara]

What's the argument here? If it is possible for something to be corrupt it shouldn't exist and should be replaced?

[rglullis]

Not replaced, but we should develop alternatives to the centralized systems that concentrate too much power to have a backup in case they fail.