Hey everyone, we ALL need to get together on this decentralized thing, okay?

Everyone who agrees, say "I"!

See what I did, there? 

So, this is one of what I think will be a series of articles that are fun thought pieces. This is about philosophy as it pertains to crypto, and I hope it entertains and makes you think.

In the early days of crypto, the whole idea of magical internet money was embraced by freedom-loving Libertarian types, or a least that is how they would define themselves. The thinking would be that anyone should do anything they want to do as long as it doesn't affect anyone else. If your actions harm someone else, then there should be some measured consequence. Otherwise, anything goes.

This sounds logical in theory, if a person wants as little regulation or government as possible, yes? Here's the problem; there's this thing that is called a hierarchy of morals. We tend to do things that are right, usually, because we are scared to get caught doing something wrong. If we don't worry about that so much, then it takes a more profound concept of right and wrong for a person to choose to be moral just because they think it is the right thing to do. Maslow wrote a lot about this, but I'm not interested in goin' there, k? K.

So, there are a few major issues with this. The first, is try getting a group of people to agree on what they think is right and wrong. If you are ever starved for entertainment and don't mind reading stuff, go searching for some old Libertarian discussion groups and laugh yourself into a frenzy. It doesn't take long for every single person in the group to try to force the others to take their position by force. 

So seriously, trying to rule by group consensus is one of the major flaws in democracy versus representative republic... for another day another topic. But, the whole idea of consensus is agreeing on what is okay so one can be free to do that thing. If no one agrees on what is an offense against another person, then trust me, decentralization is planned chaos, and that is not a friendly algorithm.

So, I'm going to make the end of this thought piece about this: how would you feel if you wanted to move 1 BTC of your own, hard-earned Bitcoin to your personal wallet, and you received $35 of BAT in trade for that. Hey, it's a free world, baby. Get your rules off my blockchain, already! See, the first rule of blockchain is that we want it to be fair, and at a very selfish level we only care if it is fair to everyone else if it is also fair to us. So, if you ask most people whether they think people's confidence in crypto relied on accuracy, we'd all probably agree it needs to do money right. Would you trust a banker who couldn't count? So, why would you truly want a decentralized process? Seriously, you really and truly cannot fundamentally have consensus about anything without centralization being built in. I know it stinks, but it is true.

So, my assertion for this first part of the topic, is that we want to be able to control what aspects of digital money can be centralized and for what purposes. From there, we want assurance that the things we agree with can never be changed. Well, technically all of it could be at any time. The control, then comes from there being greater negative response from doing wrong than doing right.

So everyone, your mindset, your reasoning, your opinion of crypto is largely going to ultimately affect whether coders stay true to each project's vision, and if you all get brainwashed and start thinking incredibly stupid things about money, trust me a lot of the top ranking coins would eventually change the origin code to something incredibly stupid, knowing that no one likes losing a few hundred billion dollars over stubborn ideology.

That's all for now. The next thought piece on the same topic is coming soon.

I hope you find this a benefit. If so, TIP! :-)

Gordon Freeman Out.

For the funny stuff, go here:

https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-satire-fake-news-ripped-from-the-headlines