Dan maybe could be approached to see if he could consult or add talent to Safe.
He has extensive background in the blockchain and decentralization.
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I was just thinking the same thing!..lol
Maybe some tentative private initial approach by @dirvine would be an idea. We’d have to be careful about how this may be perceived and it could be a double edged sword - either a marketing coup or disaster for example.
Personally I totally agree that he could consult or add talent to the team…we’d need to feel him out first and discover what David’s thoughts on this might be.Here are some pros and cons as I see them.
Pros:
Dan appears to have integrity and sticks by his principles/vision.
He appears to be extremely talented and insightful.
He has some understanding of how Safe works
He has funds and may be interested in some form of partnership between projects
It could be a marketing coup
Cons
His principles/vision may cause conflict in some way (anarcho-Capitalism) Idealist
Could be a marketing disaster
His “recommended books” are crap…lol
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He has replied here on the forum (sorry, can’t find that topic now) after a piece he wrote about Maidsafe:
It’s not online anymore but link above is to the archive.org
I believe MaidSafe will be more successful than those who have gone before it, but will ultimately fall short of the hype surrounding the project. In a future article I will outline alternatives that will achieve most of what MaidSafe is attempting in a far simpler and more economical manner. If I have gotten anything wrong in this article I hope those more familiar with the inner workings of MaidSafe will visit bitsharestalk.org and help clarify things. I truly hope we can work together to build a viable system.
Here’s his alternative approach:
Thoughts on MaidSafe and an Alternative Approach?
Overall I think his views on Maidsafe were quite off from what they’re doing in Troon. Don’t know if that’s still the case though.
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Thanks for that, much appreciated. I read the first one and will read the alternative approach now.
I find this encouraging and would take him at his word on this I think.
Cheers
Edit:
OK, just read it…
Yes, very interesting and his principles/values do come through in his remarks. (I differ substantially in my own). I can’t comment too much on the tech details as its not my area at all, but I’ll do my best.
Leeching concern:
I grasp his economic concern of fetches being free from the example of the popular movie – I don’t know the answer to this, but if that’s how it works, then yes, I can see his point. What is the answer to this?
Pricing concern:
“Perhaps the most “telling” question would be “Who gets to set the price of putting data?” If the price is global (constant) and the goal is decentralization then the price will have to be relatively high so that as many people as possible can contribute to it profitably. If you set the price too low then only those with cheap/bulk bandwidth and storage will be able to contribute to it profitably and therefore the network will centralize. If you make the price variable based upon provider then you get into a complicated cost/benefit analysis for every put operation.”
OK, I think he is misguided here and his economic ideals are showing through. I find it totally ironic that he is cautioning about centralisation while just walking away from his own project that had massive centralisation of power/wealth due to his misguided economic model. The thing is that I argued with him quite vehemently and predicted everything that would happen with his model. All the talk was of high falootin’ Game Theory scenarios and how they had it covered. I advised that his thinking on game theory was muddled and had only considered game theory in action once the project was matured – what about the very start? It was like there was a group of anarcho-Capitalist idealists all talking to each other and talking down to others (me for one) kind of like “we’ve got it covered mate” –red rag to a bull and total intransigence. I argued that his model would be “Capitalism on Steroids” creating an ever increasing movement of wealth to the top 1%. I also said his system was totally reliant on the philanthropy of the rich whales etc etc blah blah blah….lol, you know what I’m like.
Anyway, the upshot is that on resigning, he stated that the one thing he took from it was that he wished he would have had benevolent whales in place from the start. (paraphrasing).
Loooool……so he basically just admitted that his entire project was reliant on the philanthropy of the rich elite….as I said and furthermore, it was predictable by Game Theory (the thing I was being lectured about) as I also said!
This should be a lesson to all to avoid cliques forming with whacko ideas taking over a project and to always listen to others and carefully consider what they are saying, think things through to their logical conclusion and always, always, ALWAYS……listen to me!..lol
I just ran out of time to comment further……
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I guess his concerns are based on old SAFE ideas. The current idea is quite simple:
- Run a Vault and store all chunks from your group. Let’s assume it’s 1 TB so around 1 million MB’s.
- Whenever you deliver a requested chunk to the network there’s a farming attempt, so hopefully after some time you farmed enough coins to pay for the costs and make a some profit.
- The Farming Rewards changes, so if too many people try to Farm Safecoin they won’t earn that much and a lot of Vaults will go offline. It works the other way around as well, when there aren’t enough Vaults the network will pay more to farmers.
So his view that a downloader needs to pay to something like 1000 Vaults isn’t correct. The network will pay the farmers, downloading data is free.
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Thanks for the explanation, I’ve just thought all this through and can see why Dan Larimer has his concerns and that they are legitimate from his POV and according to his own economic ideas. The good news is that this is because he can’t see the wood for the Anarcho-Capitalist trees……
In a nutshell his most basic error is that he thinks profitability = sustainability and that they are synonymous – they are not. You do not need a profit incentive to create a sustainable Network. Do you need a profit incentive to use Facebook or download an app - No, you just need it to be useful.
I’m not saying it won’t be profitable, but that is not the main incentive.
What is obvious to me is that it would be unlikely to be profitable to farm/mine using dedicated hardware. The system is deliberately optimised to use the spare capacity of the masses – this is why Dan can’t get his head around it – he’s still stuck in the old economic paradigm.
The way I look at it, people download Safe for its utility primarily with the added bonus of having a bunch of lottery tickets for the Safecoin lottery.
This also leads onto the PtP debate. I am currently about 90% certain that this should not be implemented at the Network level. I won’t go into the why here, but think I can make a good case.
Thinking a bit deeper into things, it is also apparent to me that if profit is one’s main incentive, then the optimum time to buy coins is (by magnitudes) prior to launch. It is unlikely that anybody is going to farm much and if the Network grows, then the price will automatically rise exponentially.(enter divisibility issue). Anybody wishing to profit massively through traditional methods will find that all the asics and mining farms in the world will not help them….again by design.
We are boldly going where no man (or woman) has gone before! Captain Irvine – Make it so!!!..lol
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I went through a period where I kept imagining a CC meant to incentivize myriad things… One of which was the idea of some % of rewards going into a pool used to acquire IP which would then be opened (shared on SAFE Network). I imagined something like the Spider/Starfish thing, or the way Dash is managed. I was wondering, though, could this somehow be made into an app on SAFE Network, rather than it being it’s on CC, or DAO, or whatever?
Could an app be made where people could contribute to it, and vote to see how the contributions would be invested into code (or I suppose anything) shared on the SAFE Network? I realize people can publish whatever to SAFE Network, and get rewarded for views, but I was thinking of an additional community effort in pursuing code the owners of which wouldn’t want to share without compensation. I could imagine it growing to the point where it would free up a lot of information, and be a real boon for humanity.
So, if anyone out there gets what I’m trying to describe, do you think this is potentially SAFE appable, or more likely a Borgcoin (friendly assimilation, of course)?
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Moved you post to this topic and moved this topic to #related-projects as I just noticed it’s in #off-topic.
I don’t understand what happened. Does this mean that it was moved to a discussion on Dan Larimer? If I remove mention of him, would that change anything? Is it visible to anyone?
I’m a Maidsafe holder just like you and I don’t agree anarcho-capitalist views and the books he recommended are “crap”. That’s only your personal point of view, not the point of view of the whole community.
Of course it’s only my point of view, I would never claim to be speaking for the whole community. The whole idea is to thrash these kind of ideas out and alternatives in order to reach some kind of community consensus. You will find that that is how this community works - the track forward shall be forged in the heat of debate. We do not follow a top down model where ideologies are imposed from the top down. It is likely that the way forward will include “a bit of this and a bit of that”, the consequences of which will be thought through to their logical conclusion (as best we can).
Would you care to explain why you think Anarcho- Capitalism is a good idea- particularly coming off the back of watching it all play out in the very predictable way it did - or are you just going to say “I disagree” without explaining why?
Nevermind the economic model itself, there were other areas that were not thought out properly to my mind.
Primarily the main issue I think is that however brilliant any economic model might be perceived to be, there seemed to be one glaring oversight.in this instance. The thinking was constrained, to how this might play out in a real country, with an established population. Steemit needed to concentrate more on how to attract immigrants to its almost uninhabited country first. What I mean is that the whole model was based on a “captive audience” that would become more equitable over time - they didn’t have a captive audience. Immigrants would soon find that the country was ruled by a rich elite, workers were on minimum wage and both the infra-structure needs and the needs of the vulnerable were reliant on the philanthropy of the rich; why stick around?
Secondly, Dan made the apparent mistake of using “magic numbers” for his monetary policy, this resulted in rampant and totally unnecessary “quantitive easing” to devastating effect on the “country’s” poor, the economy and value of the currency. People were piling their zillion steem denominated notes into their wheelbarrows and dumping them on Poloniex!.. 
Now, would you be kind enough to explain to me why you think Anarcho-Capitalism is a good idea please. Thanks
PS, no need to say why you think Mises or “The Power of Now” are good reads…I couldn’t bear it…
Edit:
And……furthermore!..(climbs onto the podium again)….lol
Just regarding the history of Bitshares/Steemit:
Dan’s earlier project was his initial experiment with Game Theory, however, the game didn’t play out as expected. Yes, Game theory has it’s place, but it is not a complete solution to everything. Why? – Because we are not rational creatures all the time, we do not always act in our own long-term interests. We will shoot all the buffalo, we will chop all the trees down, we will overfish, we will pollute and risk the destruction of our whole eco-system without which no economic policy can work.
This played out with Bitshares. Dan walked away, he took his ball in, the game didn’t play out how it should have according to theory. Then came Steemit.
The problem was (to me) that he still had not seen that “Money=Power” was a very bad idea. Rather than 1 person 1 vote, it was more like 1 steem power 1 vote. This again led to a society where the power resided with the rich. This time he didn’t set up the pieces of the game properly before starting it.
I can see some solutions to all this, but not all and I’m more concentrating on lessons to be learned at this point. Being first mover is not always an advantage, watching where others stumbled along the way can show us what to try to avoid.
Dan is a very talented engineer from what I can tell (I’m no expert) but of a different character to @dirvine – there’s a risk of a clash of personalities I think, which should also be factored in. Remember that it is also highly likely his idealist nature could be a problem, as could his tendency to walk away from things that don’t play out as he expected. He could knock the playing board over……
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Mises might not be your cup of tea. You should try Bastiat. His essay The Law might be more to your liking
http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
I don’t agree Dan is an idealist and David Irvine isn’t. They both are. I think Irvine is an idealist just like Dan, even if their views don’t overlap 100%.
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Yes, I agree, it’s the clash of ideals and personalities I would worry about.[quote=“CoinChatClub, post:12, topic:12870”]
Mises might not be your cup of tea. You should try Bastiat. His essay The Law might be more to your liking http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
[/quote]
That’s quite perceptive of you tbh. I’m not in all honesty well read in all the various economic theories, I just have a layman’s broad understanding.of them. I am of the opinion that there is now a new paradigm with these new crypto technologies and new possibilities. I’d agree with Bastiat to the extent that the logical end point of Socialism is Communism and you know I’m not a free market Capitalist type. Hence I said quite perceptive of you to rule me out as a Socialist - I’m a Liberal at heart.
Actually libertarians are liberals, in the true sense of the word. The word liberal was used in the past with this very meaning. It means freedom when it comes to both individual liberty and economic liberty. http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/496
I also suggest you watch this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM7rfU3jAfw
Yes, it was used in the past in this way, the “true sense” of words changes over time; being a “Gay Liberal” would have a completely different meaning in the past than today for example.
You would be referring to “Classical Liberalism” I believe.
This is the problem with putting labels on these kind of things I think. I am more concerned with how something works, what is actually being proposed, the processes involved etc, rather than what a thing is (currently) called.
The late, great Richard Feynman illustrates this point in this 2 min clip:
I also don’t generally engage in debate by way of posting long videos, or relying on another’s argument, I prefer to use my own words, I’m not having a go here and I understand it is a common thing people do. I’m jusst letting you know that I lose interest quickly in this type of video/book recommending argument.
My main reasons are that it demands a lot of attention from the person you are debating with and I’d agree with the quote that:
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” I’m sure you do, having watched all the videos and read all the books, so maybe just do this as it would be helpful.
Perhaps you could respond to my last post which questions Classical Liberalism, as it would appear to be right up your Street and I’d love for someone to simply explain why I shouldn’t have the concerns I do with Mises/Anarcho-Capitalism et al…
https://forum.autonomi.community/t/the-ethics-of-liberty/12833
Many thanks
Edit:
OK, as I’m off ill today, I decided to watch the video you posted. What I’m getting from it is that this Anarchist type of thought is mainly against centralised Govt. It is also anti far-right, anti-Facism as well as anti- far left anti-Communism. This is interesting, as I largely agree here, I’m in a similar position.
If you use the analogy of a see-saw with the far left on one side and the far right on the other, then I sit in the middle – this is one aspect of what I think of as being Liberal. (just my own simple interpretation).
To me, Anarcho-Capitalism appears to be sat between the middle and the far-right.
My concerns are two-fold really, the main one is that there is no “Safety net” to provide for infra-structure and the care of the weak and vulnerable. These things would have to be provided for by charity and the philanthropy of the rich.
My second concern is that it appears unfeasible to administrate for these and other things without some kind of central authority or community pot ie a tax system.
I believe there are many things we can do to address the common concerns with the tools provided by the new crypto- technologies, without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Central authority can be de-centralised in many areas and the community pot distributed more equitably with more consensus of the populace.
I further believe that Socio-Economic systems have been evolving over time and that that Liberal Democracy would be the most widely accepted form of governance today. There are many problems with it and it needs evolving further to address these issues.
Anarcho-Capitalism and the like seem to be more “niche” ideologies and wouldn’t be widely accepted, nor would they appear to work at scale when you think it through.
It would also to my mind be a retrograde step, a devolution, rather than a further evolution.
Another area that maybe you could clarify is the idea of Natural Law and the adherence to the principle of property rights, this again is something I have issues with. How would this be any different from what we have today?
I personally have issues with the fact that say the Duke of Westminster “owns” a large part of London. He just “inherited” all this and has not done anything of merit to own this and lives from rent-seeking behaviour. This seems entirely unjust. How would anarcho-capitalism address this iniquity? I for example would put a cap on what could be “inherited” and maybe set it at say £5 million for example, then anything above this would be taxed at 100 feckin’ percent! If the retort to this is that “Oh but that’s theft/force/violence etc, then I would say how the hell do you think his family got it in the first place!..lol nuff said…
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