1/ Blockchains will replace networks with markets.
This is not true. There is no such thing as “Blockchains”. The new database structure designed for the specific case of Bitcoin is not a utility that can be re-purposed for any need. You can use a database secured with GPG for all needs that do not require Bitcoin.
Markets are a by product of exchange of goods for money. It is a fundamental characteristic of exchange. Networks are groups of people who trade with each other, or computers that signal to each other. Software can facilitate exchange, but it cannot become exchange itself.
2/ Humans are the networked species. The first species to network across genetic boundaries and thus seize the world.
Man is an individual. He is not networked. He is not telepathic, or connected in any way to any other man once he is free from his mother’s womb. Saying man, “is the first species to network across genetic boundaries” is gibberish.
3/ Networks allow us to cooperate when we would otherwise go it alone. And networks allocate the fruits of our cooperation.
Networks are communication tools in one sense, or social connections in another. It’s pointless to conflate the meaning of these words. People cooperate for profit or some other gain, no matter what the nature of that gain is.
4/ Overlapping networks create and organize our society. Physical, digital, and mental roads connecting us all.
There is no such thing as “society”. There are no “mental roads” that “connect us all”, that are either physical or digital.
5/ Money is a network. Religion is a network. A corporation is a network. Roads are a network. Electricity is a network…
Money is not a network. This has been refuted many times, and anyone interested in finding out what money is should go to the Mises website. Religion is not a network, and never has been, and never will be. There is only one God and that is Jesus Christ. Roads are a network. Electricity is distributed by a network.
6/ Networks must be organized according to rules. They require Rulers to enforce these rules. Against cheaters.
This is a lie. Networks can form spontaneously without rules or rulers. Only Statists believe that there must always be a ruler to organize men, and only the most dismal thinker believes that man is more inclined to cheat than not. Also, Underwriter’s Laboratory is a perfect example of how people don’t need a ruler to exclude manufacturers (for example) from the market.
7/ Networks have “network effects.” Adding a new participant increases the value of the network for all existing participants.
TRUE!
8/ Network effects thus create a winner-take-all dynamic. The leading network tends towards becoming the only network.
FALSE. Networks display Power Law dynamics. There is a biggest player and many smaller players. The biggest player can always be unseated in a free market.
9/ And the Rulers of these networks become the most powerful people in society.
Not rulers, but owners. Words matter!
10/ Some are run by kings and priests who choose what is money and law, sacred and profane. Rule is closed to outsiders and based on power.
The rule of kings (sadly) is mostly over. For now. The State is still in charge of saying what money is by fiat. This is what Bitcoin is here to destroy; the power of the State to create and require a form of money.
Note too, how the source of this power is omitted, “Power comes from the people through democracy” is the sort of nonsense you’d expect in number 10.
11/ Many are run by corporations. The social network. The search network. The phone or cable network. Closed but initially meritocratic.
Corporations are not autonomous AI omniscient super beings. They are run by men and women. They provide tools that you can use or decline at your leisure. They are not “closed” either. Anyone can start a corporation and run a business or service through it.
12/ Some are run by elites. The university network. The medical network. The banking network. Somewhat open and somewhat meritocratic.
There is no such thing as “elites”. Only socialists use terms like this. In a free society, there are people who can do things and people who can not. The people who have extraordinary skills have the same rights as everyone else, and no, rights do not come from the State.
Banks have an unfair advantage thanks to the State, including (literally) a license to print money out of nothing. This is one of the problems Bitcoin was designed to solve, and Socialists should be FOR Bitcoin because it makes this power meaningless. You can print all the funny money you like; no one wants it in a Bitcoin world.
13/ A few are run by the mob. Democracy. The Internet. The commons. Open, but not meritocratic. And very inefficient.
Democracy is evil. The internet is not evil. There is no such thing as “The Commons”. Democracy is not “open”. It IS inefficient, and unethical.
14/ Dictatorships are more efficient in war than democracies. The Internet and physical commons are overloaded with abuse and spam.
Dictatorships are more efficient in everything, not just war. Rome is a good example of this. The internet is not “overloaded with spam and abuse”. Only men hypnotized by Political Correctness culture think the internet is full of abuse. The internet is very controllable, filterable and manageable. Email spam has been eliminated. Anyone with a Gmail account knows this. The market can solve all problems; that’s why Socialists hate it.
15/ The 20th century created a new kind of network — market networks. Open AND meritocratic.
Nonsense. Even by the Socialist thinking, a market network can’t be meritocratic, because the “rich” have privileged access.
16/ Merit in markets is determined by a commitment of resources. The resource is money, a form of frozen and trade-able time.
Yet another definition of what money is. Money is energy, money is time, money is Bitcoin, money is dollars, money is a shared illusion, money is this, money is that.
Merit in markets is determined by the market participants. That is how people choose one good over another. It has nothing to do with “commitment of resources”. Pet Rocks are a good example of this. Taking no resources other than a cardboard box and stones from a beach, Pet Rocks had market merit, despite being totally useless…apart from fun and novelty.
17/ The market networks are titans. The credit markets. The stock markets. The commodities markets. The money markets. They break nations.
Credit markets are not true markets, neither is the Stock Exchange or Commodities and Money Markets. All of these are highly regulated and distorted by the State. This is why gold is languishing at $1,000 when it should be $50,000 minimum given the level of inflation.
These markets do not “break nations” it is the State that does this, and the State is not the same as the nation. The financial crisis (each one) is a side effect of the State and its market distortion and fiat money.
18/ Market networks work where there is a commitment of money. Otherwise they are just mob networks. The applications are limited.
Nonsense. There are markets of many types, that do not have anything to do with money. What on earth is a “Mob Network”? Sounds like a swarm of BitTorrent users Pir8'n the latest warez…or DEMOCRACY.
19/ Until now.
DERP.
20/ Blockchains are a new invention that allows meritorious participants in an open network to govern without a ruler and without money.
Nonsense. There are no “Blockchains”. Software can’t determine the merit of any exchange of data. When these people talk about “Blockchain” do they mean “Open Blockchain” or “Public Blockchain”? They've come up with so many permutations; all of them are nonsense, of course.
The idea of removing money from society is an old one, and not a very smart one either. Google “Society without money” for some lulz.
21/ They are merit-based, tamper-proof, open, voting systems.
Nonsense. Computers cannot determine merit. Even if they could, only the “rich” could participate, because you need a computer to join in this debacle. Blockchains are not “tamper proof”. Only Bitcoin is tamper evident and of course, we know that Etherium is very “not tamper proof”, as long as you are a friend of the controller of it.
Buying something in the market is not a “vote” in the sense of how democracy works. This is a commonly held idea, that somehow, choosing one flavour of ice cream over another is a “vote for chocolate ice cream”. This thinking is the result of decades of pro-democracy brainwashing in government schools.
22/ The meritorious are those who work to advance the network.
The USSR, all over again, with a lick of Blockhain coloured paint.
23/ As society gives you money for giving society what it wants, blockchains give you coins for giving the network what it wants.
Which coins? Bitcoin? Or a coin from one of the millions of other “Blockchains” that have ICO’d and sprayed coins into the market? These coins, in order to be valuable, have to be scarce. This is basic economics, of the kind these hand waving types are totally ignorant of.
Everyone can’t release their own coin. You can’t have a world with a million different currencies, one for every operating business. On the one hand, this person says, “8/ Network effects thus create a winner-take-all dynamic.” but on the other hand, says that there will be many coins in the market. Why are power laws applicable to network effects, but not money? Money has the biggest network effect of all, an is something were winner takes all is actually true. Why is it not true in this case?
Tough questions for ICO pumpers!
24/ It’s important to note that blockchains pay in their own coin, not the common (dollar) money of financial markets.
And if those “coins” (I thought your’re calling them “tokens” now?) are not directly interoperable, you will have hundreds of thousands of different coins that cannot be exchanged for each other. Please Google “Fungible”.
If everyone used one coin, Bitcoin, then the money (Token or Coin, take your pick) would be fungible, universal, have massive network effect and would act like money. The “many coins” thesis is totally absurd, and it’s incredible that people are promoting it as a sound idea. Nuts!
25/ Blockchains pay in coin, but the coin just tracks the work done. And different blockchains demand different work.
But your grocer demands one sort of money. He doesn't want your bicycle courier coin. He wants grocery coin. This is called “Coincidence of wants”. Google it.
26/ Bitcoin pays for securing the ledger. Ethereum pays for (executing and verifying) computation.
No one wants Etherium, and no one will want it. Etherium can’t beat Bitcoin to be the money of the internet. If you want to pay for executing computation, you need electricity and hardware, and you pay for them with fiat or Bitcoin.
27/ Blockchains combine the openness of democracy and the Internet with the merit of markets.
Democracy is evil, and it is not “open”. The internet is great precisely because it is a free market, where people can post “abuse” and “spam” which are actually speech. Americans understand this. Of course, if you are an owner of a service, you have an absolute right to reject any message you do not want to carry. But there are evil men who want “Net Neutrality” which would force property owners to carry traffic in ways and content that they would rather not.
You can’t be for the market and for Net Neutrality. You can’t be for Democracy and meritocracy.
28/ To a blockchain, merit can mean security, computation, prediction, attention, bandwidth, power, storage, distribution, content…
Yes indeed. Anything can mean anything to a Blockchainer. Nothing has a discreet meaning. You can wave away objections and facts with your hands, as you gesticulate away all questions. Sadly, hand waving will not produce products and services, or conjure up business models and software.
29/ Blockchains port the market model into places where it couldn’t go before.
Nonsense. More magical thinking.
30/ Blockchains’ open and merit based markets can replace networks previously run by kings, corporations, aristocracies, and mobs.
More nonsense. There are no “Blockchains”.
31/ It’s nonsensical to have a blockchain without a coin just like it’s nonsensical to have a market without money.
ORLY?! LOL!!!!
32/ It’s nonsensical to have a blockchain controlled by a sovereign, a corporation, an elite, or a mob.
But this is EXACTLY what these ICO coins like Bancor are, where the owner can delete coins at will. Also, is this man now arguing against the control of the US Dollar by the Federal Reserve? The dollar is mostly electronic, and could be run on a private database (blockchain) is he really saying that the State should not be in charge of the form of money society uses?
33/ Blockchains give us new ways to govern networks. For banking. For voting. For search. For social media. For phone and energy grids.
More nonsense. Gives WHO new ways to govern? And govern HOW exactly? Someone must own the hardware and manage the software; those men are the owners of the network as we are about to see with UASF.
This is “Turtles all the way down” level absurdity.
34/ Networks governed without kings, priests, elites, corporations and mobs. Networks governed by anyone with merit to the network.
That actually is the definition of the mob. Everyone will have access to it, everyone will have their say, everyone will be voting on everything. That is the definition of mob rule.
35/ Blockchain-based market networks will replace existing networks. Slowly, then suddenly. In one thing, then in many things.
Nope. The Blockchain hype is already dying and everyone is waking up to the fact that it was all about Bitcoin all along. There is going to be a massive crash in the Blockchain industry. Popcorn at the ready.
36/ Ultimately, the nation-state is just a network (of networks). FIN
Nonsense, yet again.
37/ Thank you, Satoshi Nakomoto. And to all the shoulders that Satoshi stands upon.
Thank you Satoshi for Bitcoin. Bitcoin will make nightmare scenarios like the one outlined in these 36 points completely impossible, even if they were technically possible or economically feasible. You have freed us from these tin pot tinkerers, economic illiterates, violent Statists, wreckers and lunatics.
And that is worth money.