[wizeman]

> Something that could potentially govern people's lives (i.e. a new kind of currency) that they have no say at all in operating?

Aren't you talking about the USD here? How do you have any say at all in what the Federal Reserve decides?

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is open source. If it doesn't work for you, at least you can fork it and change it, or use another cryptocurrency just as easily (and many people have).

Do you think Venezuelans like that their currency inflation will be more than 200% this year? But hey, their currency is democratic so by definition it must be good and everybody should use it, right?

And yes, it is indeed possible to directly vote on Bitcoin policy changes (not that it's necessarily a good idea). Just take a look at some of the proposals about the on-going block size increase discussion.

[Frondo]

Of course you say in how it's run. The people who run the fed get swapped out every so often, and we get to vote on the person who decides on their replacements.

Do you, personally, get to say who's in and who's out? No, of course not, your vote gets weighed up against all the millions of other voters in picking these people.

People often say "oh you have no power" and then, I guess, abstain from voting in order to make it absolutely true. But that's not it at all--we have lots of power, we have the power to persuade, talk amongst our friends and relations, convert others to our ideas, and voting's just the final test of how successful we were.

Politics doesn't start at the voting booth--nor does it end there. That's just one milestone along the democratic highway.

But compared to bitcoin? Where the average person could never plausibly voice an opinion at all? That's not democracy, and the only reason you like it at all, I'm guessing, is because you fancy yourself one of the people that could submit patches.

As for your last remark, let me know when bitcoin policy decisions show up in the voter's pamphlet. Then we'll have a democratic currency with it.

[wizeman]

No, you're right. Democracy IS the best way to run a currency. Let's run our companies as democracies too, that's certainly a good idea! This way everybody has a say in what Microsoft and Oracle do. Oh wait, that's a terrible idea. You see, if you don't like bitcoin you don't have to use it. You can use any alternative currency or cryptocurrency. The same way that if you don't like your Internet provider you can use a different one. But if I don't like my government or my government's currency, I'm stuck with it whether I like it or not (unless I emigrate, which can be a huge barrier). How is that better? Democracy is NOT the be-all end-all way of making decisions, it is an extremely mediocre way of doing it, in fact. Do I really have to enumerate all the ways in which free competition is a much better system than corruptible, manipulable, easily persuadable majority voting?

[Frondo]

So you're opposed to the people's ability to self-govern. That's fine. That's a position that puts you on the wrong side of history, but ok.

As for changing out your government's currency, of course you're not stuck with it--propose something better and do the leg-work to persuade everyone that Wizemanbucks are the right way to go. In time, with enough of a national coalition supporting you, you'll be able to build the political organizations to encourage people to vote for Wizemanbucks. Keep at it, and if people really do like your ideas, you'll have a new currency, just to your liking.

Trying to sneak it in, or tell people they're not fit for self-rule? Man, that fell out of style a long, long time ago.

[wizeman]

I'm perfectly fine with self-governing and self-ruling, I'm just not fine with a group of people governing and imposing their rules on the others. If you or a group of people want their own currency with their own rules that's fine with me, just don't force me to use it if I don't want it (in the same way that I'm not forcing anyone to use bitcoin).

I could be on the wrong side of history, but I don't care that much about it anyway, I'd rather think about the future than the past :)

Maybe I'm not understanding your thought process, but are you saying that if you were born several centuries ago, you'd never even want to have democracy because it went out of style after ancient Greece and the tendency was for rulers to be Kings (i.e. you'd be on the wrong side of history if you wanted democracy instead of a monarchy)? How is being on the wrong side of history a good argument?

If you want to convince me, give me a good argument about why the majority of people in my city/state/country knows what's best for me, better than me... :)

(By analogy, if we were living a few centuries ago, I'd be asking you why you think a King or their blood family would know what's best for me, better than me).

[Frondo]

What? "A group of people governing and imposing their rules on others" is pretty much the working definition of "a society".

You want everyone to self-govern, and not impose rules on anyone else? Does that go all the way down to, which side of the road do you drive on? Do you have to obey stop signs?

What I'm saying is, since we do live together in communities, the whole "let everyone vote periodically as a decision-making process" is the best we've come up with, and Bitcoin is a step away from that--a currency that does have economic decisions built into it, but changing those is never subject to a vote by the citizenry.

You know what's interesting? Whenever I bring up this whole "Bitcoin is undemocratic" idea, no bitcoin defender ever says, yeah, we should work to include more people in how it's run. Not one.

You'd think, if it were money for the people (i.e. not controlled by a government), that they'd want it to be responsive to the people, too.

Also, by "on the wrong side of history," I mean to say that you're pushing for ideas that have already been discarded as not as good as their successors--when future generations look back on those who oppose things like "society" (which I gather from your declaration that you don't want anyone governing or imposing rules on anyone else), they'll say, "yes, that was wrong, too."

[wizeman]

It doesn't go all the way down. Obviously, you can't have a society where some people are free to murder other people.

But other than ensuring freedom and basic human rights (and perhaps some other minimal rules), why should you have the right to decide how other people live? Do you really think you (or rather, the majority of people) are really that wise? Isn't that being pretentious?

I will give you a challenge if you want. Give me one law or rule that exists now (in this society that you like so much) but wouldn't exist in my view of society that I explained above, and I will tell you how that law is ethically wrong in at least one (admittedly, possibly slightly contrived) situation.

> You know what's interesting? Whenever I bring up this whole "Bitcoin is undemocratic" idea, no bitcoin defender ever says, yeah, we should work to include more people in how it's run. Not one.

Well, the point of my comments in this whole thread was to explain to you why a democratic vote is not a particularly good decision-making process at all (by the way, I find it amazing how when people see the word "democratic" they automatically shutdown their brains and assume it's good... it must sound like "bacon" in some accents or something :-).

So do you also want decisions at companies to be done by a democratic vote? Should all the people in the country (or in the world) decide how Microsoft or Apple is run?

The point of Bitcoin being open source is that if you don't like it, YOU can create your own Bitcoin alternative literally with the click of a button! (And again, many people have!).

So why are you imposing your economic policy on Bitcoin when you can have your own economic policy along with all the people that agree with you, call it Frondocoin, click on a button and have it created 5 minutes later?

Now compare with your way of doing things, that you said yourself:

> propose something better and do the leg-work to persuade everyone that Wizemanbucks are the right way to go. In time, with enough of a national coalition supporting you, you'll be able to build the political organizations to encourage people to vote for Wizemanbucks. Keep at it, and if people really do like your ideas, you'll have a new currency, just to your liking.

Does this really sound easier, cheaper, or better in any way than what I described? Do you even think that what you said is even possible or realistic in any way?

You think that if I don't agree with the way the USD is managed, then with some effort I would be able to do what you proposed and change the national currency of the USA?

I think you are being deluded if you think that's even remotely possible. It doesn't even matter which economic policy I wanted (not even if I think that the interest rates should be only 0.05% higher than what they are now).

People don't vote Republicans or Democrats because they think some interest rate should be 0.05% higher. They vote because charismatic politicians go on television and say what people want to hear...