I broadly agree, though I think there is a distinction between an entity enjoying a monopoly (supposedly guarded against by the monopolies commission in the UK - though look at energy market etc) and an entity enjoying primacy in the market due to general customer satisfaction and providing a good service. Maybe it’s not so much replacing the business entities, but replacing the rule book. The exploiting and squeezing are inevitable consequences of the broken Capitalist system really I think. The bottom line is that you cannot have infinite growth when we only have finite resources. Unfortunately this is graphically illustrated by the constant raping of our eco-system.
Anyway, I think I’m going off at a tangent and veering wildly off topic.
Sorry but I have to completely disagree with everything the video states. Everything it says can’t happen, happens. Unless the guy is talking about some theoretical Shangri-La Capitalist market economy rather than the real world, then it sounds more like an over-simplified defence of our current system by vested interests - just my opinion.
That’s because we don’t have free markets.
Ok, I can accept that.
Cold war? Right now its more like a luke warm war.
Why should we be concerned if the NSA flags us as extremists. I would say if you’re smart enough to know what Tor is and how encryption works you’re already flagged.
You bought a book on cryptography from Amazon? Flagged. You bought a book on C++? Flagged.
This would mean all of us are flagged and not just by the NSA but probably by anyone capable of buying the information from private companies.
I think being flagged should be seen as a badge of honor. Most people interested in Tor, cryptography, privacy, are very smart highly educated people. You probably wont find many computer programmers or technical people who have no interest in some subject which can be flagged.
This is a very very good point. The Internet was created by the US government and so was Tor.
Bitcoin on the other hand was not created by the US government, nor is SAFE Network.
Nationalism seems to be part of the problem. Technology should not have borders and something as important as the Internet should not be about nationalist mindsets, national thinking, or nation states. The Internet is supposed to enable communications even during world war and Bitcoin is supposed to enable a monetary system to exist even during a world war.
The Internet at this point (may not all agree) is heavily controlled by the United States. In fact too controlled by the United States and you can look at the domain naming system or the backbones to see what I’m talking about.
That is why I hope we can build decentralized mesh nets and over time reduce our dependency on United States for Internet access and I say that as a person within the United States. It’s not in the best interest in my opinion of humanity to have any nation have control over all of the information flow. Nation states are very limited ideas which made sense in their time but which should not be trying to govern things like the Internet which transcends the old mindset.
Small point, but we really don’t know this. We have no idea who was really behind bitcoin and its pretty clear that whoever it was, does not want us to know.
Seems fine to build into the basic system elements to filter noise. There will always be plenty of rating systems for business and services. But when its ‘reputation’ the implied point is to start trying to pin a persistent sunk cost identity on end users and get a community to act accordingly. This is an attempt to measure people. Are they productive? Are they accurate? Are they inferior? We need to measure their nose. Its about pitting people against each other to get them to fight and divide themselves. Its is not about whether they are ethical or even moral. Its about labeling to define and control. Its likely not just a bad idea but a malevolent one and also not intelligent. The unwanted and definitely unneeded measurement fetish when applied to people is a kind of violence.
Let try to outright kill this idea. The reputation system does something to an end user that they may well not want done. Its coercing an end user. I hate to be subtle about this but to me you build in ads, you build in a credit system (like the current US system) and the system becomes less the worthless it becomes pure and utter bullshit. And again what was people’s motivation for this? Its not face book, its not XBL its meant to address life and death issues. Not a popularity contest or beauty contest. To me any app that used this stuff too should fall under the expanded definition of spam and get de-listed. We have to be much more intelligent about the use of attention if we want peace and a better world. The abuse of people with databases and networks needs to be reversed.
Most of the Satoshi Nakamoto code has been rewritten or replaced. If it somehow was created by the US government which I highly doubt, it wouldn’t matter anyway. The US government doesn’t control Bitcoin.
If anything China controls Bitcoin. The price ramp up of Bitcoin came from China and the majority of the hashing power seems to be coming from China. If I recall the chips are made in China too.
Not good:
Tor, the network used specifically for privacy and anonymity, just warned
users of an attack meant to deanonymize people on the service. Anyone
who used Tor from February 2014 through this July 4 can assume they were
impacted.
Gizmodo: Attack on Tor Has Likely Stripped Users of Anonymity 30th July 2014
Ruh roh.
Also on BBC Tor attack may have unmasked dark net users - BBC News and its hard to keep listening to people tell us you are not secure like TOR etc. this is a classic example as if the recent Snowden revelations did not also make this clear. (who made these apps and why and who were responsible for the algorithms and security test vectors etc. its eye opening and this is why the cryptographers mailing lists trust nothing right now, they are taken sideways)
To me we need
1: Secure design
2: Very clear code (can never be clear enough)
3: Highly tested code (unit, behavioural and functional tests)
4: Community engagement (arguably the most important)
Longevity of being out there as a reason or certification of secure apps is coming to an end. The countless we are hosted in Switzerland email services is also going to come back and bite us I predict. To me its clear, if there are servers then its broke (tor hidden services rely on servers and directory servers).
So its clear no servers, clear code, community engagement and stop listening to the armchair experts who say its hard, of course it is. Its very hard and that is why we do it. Maybe at least some of these things will stop people saying we are just tor or freenet or i2c etc. who knows though. I am amazed the the intellectual laziness of pigeon holing people.
If I had time I would try my best to help tor etc, but I think right now a completely serverless trustless solution is what is needed. I wish some Tor engineers etc. would help out as I am sure they could.
No.
Free market.
freedom.
deal?
The free market is a con. Classic use of a label, associating with an idea, and then doing something else.
Stick “free” in the label, associate it with “no cost”, “freedom” etc but really it is something else, suddenly we are slaves to it - to an imaginary and false idea - but stuck in the idea of “free” we don’t even realise it.
So no, no deal.
I tend to believe this. This is a major problem when we marry our ideologies to a society’s detriment. There was a good bit on Jon Oliver the other night that made that point.
It is sad. Every poignant phrase gets twisted until it is completely out of shape.
Being free means having the ability to choose.
Maybe we need non-aggressive or non-coercive markets as a phrase instead? No doubt that would get co-opted too though.
This is the key being freely able to choose and not coerced or conned into choosing what you have been trained to think is the correct way. It means we need to be free of ego and self interest and that is inordinately difficult. None of us are saints and the more we realise how far from that we are the closer we are to being free.
I know that sounds mad, but it is a quandary, It’s not self sacrifice or do-goody stuff but real contemplation and thought for the species above yourself and we are programmed in a different way I think, so it is a struggle, but one worth having. (sorry for sounding wishy washy there, but I do believe this)