DAOs (Decentralized Auotnomous Organizations) promise to make corporate companies run on a flat hierarchy using smart contracts with everyone holding one vote through a token, rather than having a centralized leadership take all decisions.

This completely new way to distribute labour among the workforce and take key corporate decisions seem to create new possibilities for a kind of "digital anarchism" - with flat management hardwired in the organization.

Even as Bitcoin and crypto in general keep tanking, we should not loose sight of some of the most interesting and promising usecases of blockchain and smart contracts.

Quick answer: No. Things things exist almost exclusively in high risk extremely speculative shit /alt coins, NFT farming, and other dubious enterprises. Any of the mature ones already have an established team at the top. The new ones where there is plenty of room to grow in theory -are almost all going to be garbage.

If this kind of structure existed for actual real businesses that would be cool, but unfortunately this is almost entirely linked to crypto

Flat organizations and self-managing teams do exist and have been working for a long time, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_organization

Same concept. Why wouldn't this work?

Not saying it doesn’t exist or can’t work…. Just saying that in practice the only real world use case is crypto related.

Ever heard of capitalism? The idea of profit sharing evenly amongst workers is diametrically opposite the stated goals of capitalism. This is the main choke point as to why this idea will not scale.

I’m not saying I don’t like it. I do. But capitalism is the rule of law for businesses. It’s going to be almost impossible to get wider adoption of this.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/berlinparisexpress:

DAOs (Decentralized Auotnomous Organizations) promise to make corporate companies run on a flat hierarchy using smart contracts with everyone holding one vote through a token, rather than having a centralized leadership take all decisions.

This completely new way to distribute labour among the workforce and take key corporate decisions seem to create new possibilities for a kind of "digital anarchism" - with flat management hardwired in the organization.

Even as Bitcoin and crypto in general keep tanking, we should not loose sight of some of the most interesting and promising usecases of blockchain and smart contracts.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/yvy33d/will_working_for_a_dao_be_better_than_a_corporate/iwgjnnd/

Is this not just because:

a) it's based on blockchain so of course it started in crypto orgs.

b) that industry is only a few years old, so of course it's still going to exist mainly in crypto orgs.

The concept has been interesting since it's inception a few years ago but only time can tell if people are ready for this kind of thing.

The biggest problem with most systems are not the systems themselves but the individual actors within them. While these systems seem fair from an external point of view, I'm sure once you dive into it there will be subdivisions and internal allegiances that are not well known. There's a reason why there are few "flat" organizations and they are rarely truly ever flat. Conflict is a natural human thing and people have proven time and time again that achieving a fair compromise is something people haven't figured out yet. All of which is to say, I'm not optimistic about this system in of itself because the biggest problem with it is simply the humans that will operate within it.

I mean it just seems like a new age way of setting up a co-op. I doubt you could set up a large corporation like this, but the type of people who support co-ops would likely be against creating such a large company to begin with.

I’m building a DAO now after 12 years in corporate and federal environments. The space is really, really immature.

I wouldn’t rush to jumping to conclusions about how DAO can conquer everything, but I will say that they have the potential for huge impact. There will always be a mix of centralization and decentralization in a DAO. It isn’t possible to create otherwise.

But the ones that figure out how to do real public (or private I guess) service in a transparent model will have the opportunity to eat their competition.

Would a DAO work well in an ESOP organization?

They are complementary models. There isn’t any definitive guidance of what a DAO acts or looks like. Just like standard organizations and corporations, they can be modeled to need.

I think it fits particularly well with anything communally owned or rewarded though. It incentivizes staying involved.

Is this really a new idea? Toeffler wrote about adhocracies in the 70s.

Then you can come to north korea. You will be happy there

almost every DAO gets hacked because it’s impossible to write provably correct code in a turing complete language. they all end up having exploitable bugs

Yes, the ONLY option to criticize the inner workings of capitalism is to ship oneself to the worse dictature in the world.

I don't think this is quite the own you think it is since you are the one acting like a literal thought police - for free.

So an entry level worker has the same decision power as someone with 20 years experience? Where's my popcorn.

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>the stated goals of capitalism.

🙄 and what might those be?

Don't confuse corporatism/feudalism with capitalism.

Adam Smith made a model that says an economy of similar goods made and consumed by unburdened selfish people is most efficient when left in anarchy. Serving masters is antithetical to an anarchy and therefore capitalism. In capitalism you should never be working for anyone but yourself (management is a service). People who rig the economy to synonymize working for them and working for yourself aren't capitalist, they're feudalist's using their knowledge of how capitalism works to undermine it for themselves.

The crypto economy has a Gini coefficient over 90%. This means that whales and early adopters hold almost all the “stakes”, so they will be in control of any DAO that exists to generate profit.

DAOs will find their niche, but they won’t replace traditional corporations because they don’t solve more problems than they introduce.

All Web 3.0 projects are basically efforts to increase speculation in tokens that are already concentrated in the hands of the few. Unless you are at the top of the pyramid already, you should be rooting for Web 3.0 to fail.

Most tokens are owned by whales and early adopters. How could a for-profit DAO avoid becoming captured by a few dominant stakeholders, while still incentivizing buy-in?

Genuinely asking.

*lose (not “loose”)

For-profit DAOs would be dominated by the same early-adopters and whales as other crypto spaces.

I don’t see this as an improvement. The Gini coefficient of the crypto space is over .90.

How is an organization “flat” if those who hold more coins (stake) have more votes?

I don’t think a DAO will imply a cryptocurrency-related company in the near future (2-4 years?). They are intertwined now due to technology and culture, but that link is not necessary. Users need access to a programmatic token (public/private key) to vote, but this is functionally no different than holding other secret documents digitally (ID, certificates, etc). Once this becomes easier for the non-tech oriented, I think we’ll see a proliferation of DAO.

To answer your question, I think that’s left up to the design of the DAO and its stakeholders. It really isn’t any different than standard equity ownership and investing, where the cap table is skewed toward the biggest investors and founders.

The organization can be designed where votes (one person, one vote) control key functional areas and equity ownership equates to profit or revenue claim. Obviously an overly simplified model (which hasn’t necessarily worked out so well so far), but the point stands.

The organization needs to be architected from the start to be equitable and fair to users.

Ever heard of socialism? You described socialism. It works well, every day, in the US as well as many other countries. Ever shopped at a WinCo? Scheels? Hy-Vee? These companies are owned by and democratically managed by their employees. None of them need or use crypto to accomplish this.

There are lots of large employee-owned companies...

I think it’s essentially a digitized adhocracy.

Capitalism just means "private ownership of the means of production," meaning, I can go out and own a company and hire workers. Socialism, on the other hand, means "public ownership of the means of production," meaning, any given company is owned by the people that are working for the company; there's not some person at the top taking all the profits for themselves.

Except the people you described ARE capitalists."they aren't capitalists because they rig the economy to get you working only for them and only yourself". Yea dude, that's capitalism 🤣😂. Coining something with a different name just ignores the problems of the current system and is like fucking jamming earplugs in and screaming "NAH NAH NAH CAN'T HEAR YOU".

Whatever you want to call it. "Corporatism", "oligarchy","plutocracy" it's capitalism dude

>It really isn’t any different than standard equity ownership and investing,

This is what I am worried about. Crypto is already wildly unequal (over .90 Gini coefficient).

What does the technology add in this case? DAOs seem like they add unnecessary complication and even more inequality. I am sure there are some great niche applications (buying the Declaration of Independence), but I don't see any major killer applications on the horizon.

Seems like we would have some more examples of great use cases by now with all the money chasing this space.

​

>I don’t think a DAO will imply a cryptocurrency-related company in the near future

>
>The organization needs to be architected from the start to be equitable and fair to users.

A DAO that is not organized around blockchain or a speculative token sounds a lot like an employee-owned co-op.

If you are proposing a blockchain without a speculative token involved, how would you pay for the storage and compute time?

By market share? The prior commenter saying business believe in capitalist profit-is-law is correct; capitalist realism has cultural hegemony, for better or worse.

It’s gonna take time for things to shake out. The tech is still iffy, cultures are immature, practitioners are still learning the ropes, etc. “killer” apps will come in their own time.

You’re welcome to follow me on here if seeing a non-blockchain oriented DAO is of interest to you. I’ll be progressively writing and discussing more on the subject; beginning in a couple weeks. The landing page is available right now, but most information is still private.

I’m currently employed full time by a technology company and once my resignation takes effect I’ll be able to be much more open on the subject.

You can visit: https://combinedao.com

Because capitalism at its core is all about moving capital to places where more capital can be extracted, it relies on constant growth and finding new ways to extract value from labor. Capitalism used to be relegated to parts of Europe and the Americas but it is now in every corner of the world which means that with open trade you have to be able to be or compete with the most exploitive companies on earth. It will take a majority of people on earth being able to take control of their own labor to be able to escape the reaches of capitalist overlords. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGiXIytFn57NoAUYlzU1ByI83slXwvS5b

'Companies', 'hiring, 'workers' are shorthand for common practices that come after. Like how a 1-3-5 is a common structure for music notes that it has become its own thing.

Both your definitions are correct, but you have a misunderstanding that is resulting in you making the incorrect extension to the meaning of socialism:

>any given company is owned by the people that are working for the company

Companies are an invention given a name because of common practice. The definitions of socialism and capitalism don't allude to companies, only people. So a corrected version would be:

>any given tools are owned by the government of the people working with the tools

A company is shorthand for when a person hires 'private contractors', those contractors buy or borrow tools from the person, and the person borrows tools/worker time but only with as much leverage and assets are included in their work and not things they use to survive.

I'm still simplifying a bit, but it's a complex series of interactions that has been shorthanded for convenience to 'a company'.

So why is that distinction important?

Because a person hiring private contractors and paying them a proportion of total profit is still capitalism. If the private contractors buy the tools or are even given them to own upon starting their help... still capitalism. It's just different versions of how a person can buy help.

Why does that distinction get blurred?

Because we now have people who have unified so much of a particular production they practically have the control of a government. And viola you mistakenly swapped government for company in your definition of socialism. Capitalism assumes anarchy and greed (an imperfect assumption), so having huge companies is anti-capitalist because it's too ordered and collaborative (the feudalists argument is to justify their greed because of capitalism even though they are no longer operating in a good capitalist environment).

So there are 2 options. You take the more capitalist approach: break up large companies and force a greater degree of anarchy. Or you recognize that large companies are essentially a government and take the socialist approach: no one may own the company or its assets and it is instead run like a government (democracy being our default). In other words the capitalist profit sharing method of hiring would become the mandatory method of hiring, so companies will naturally inflate into democracies instead of monarchies. Both options have a laundry list of technical struggles that mostly stem from the same issues the capitalist model struggles with: people being coercable, and people being rational (knowing economics and transparency to use that knowledge so caveat emptor is also anti-capitalist)

Liking clarity and distinction between words isn't jamming in earplugs. Using words haphazardly until you can no longer even name the issue is.

You just declared that 3 words are all synonyms. How do you expect to change if you can't identify where you're starting from or where you're headed?

I responded to the other commentors point with clarifications of the definition, see if it means anything to you.

There's no rules in capitalism that say groups can't form and cooperate internally in whichever way makes the most profit for the group. If this model produces a good amount of value, it will be adopted. That's just how it works 🤷‍♂️

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My brother is one of the creators of a DAO... To me its a way for him not to have to report to anyone since he left his corporate job. I could ask him how he feels about it later and get back to you.

so if i want to take a day off, everyone need to vote on it?

I am a liberal Egalitarian capitalist, the belief in human equality.. the Nordic model economic and social system is close to my beliefs

Actually socialism is an authoritarian top down system. Go look at all the socialist economic structures, the government owns the people and labor. Mass murders occur because the took morals out, cull non conforming ideals and people. The lie in socialism is you can sacrifice the individual for the greater society. The people exchange individual rights * usually at government gun point * for a social contact. Ever research pol pot ?

https://www.britannica.com/topic/egalitarianism

From the old school threshing floors at harvest time ( they were capitalist)

Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status.[4] Egalitarianism is the doctrine that all citizens of a state should be accorded exactly equal rights.[5] Egalitarian doctrines have motivated many modern social movements and ideas, including the Enlightenment, feminism, civil rights, and international human rights.[6]

That's cronyism, real free, markets require heavy regulations to prevent fraud and monopolies .. this is why the Nordic countries are rated more capitalist than the USA.

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Totalitarian regimes in the 20th century called themselves "Socialist" to cover up the fact that they were totalitarian regimes. Democratic Socialism is something entirely different.

The "Gini coefficient" isn't really relevant. DAOs are not beholden to the person holding the most mining/staking power in the dao treasury's ecosystem. At most they would be affected by the underlying blockchain in a similar way to how companies react to fluctuations in the price of a dollar.

I'm not sure where your getting "90%". There are dozens of different blockchains and currencies...Are you suggesting most of every crypto is controlled by a single entity?

Even if that were true, the coefficient is not a reason to condemn crypto, as people can always create new blockchains and currencies to avoid being trapped by a chain thats grown too centralized. That freedom is a main reason why web3 is an upgrade to existing fiat systems.

Companies have an archaic, top-down, authoritarian structure modeled on the military. They are not fun to work for, do not care about their employees or customers, and can only focus on short term profits.

Daos are flexible, have no leadership costs, and are typically focused around an ideology. Its like freelancing, except you have guaranteed work. You have a say in how the companies profits are spent and invested.

>I'm not sure where your getting "90%". There are dozens of different blockchains and currencies...Are you suggesting most of every crypto is controlled by a single entity?

Not a single entity, but 90% of all crypto is controlled by fewer than 10% of all crypto holders. Some tokens are worse than this, some are better.

​

>DAOs are not beholden to the person holding the most mining/staking power in the dao treasury's ecosystem

Then how do hackers control DAO voting when they steal 90% of the underlying token? Why wouldn't more tokens = more votes unless you specifically created equality for all (which would render the token meaningless).

>Companies have an archaic, top-down, authoritarian structure modeled on the military. They are not fun to work for, do not care about their employees or customers, and can only focus on short term profits.

In many cases, but I was granted significant shares in my company, which makes me more invested. Would I rather be paid in shitcoins that might be stolen or fluctuate wildly in value, and cost me money to convert to USD? Not really.

>Daos are flexible, have no leadership costs, and are typically focused around an ideology. Its like freelancing, except you have guaranteed work. You have a say in how the companies profits are spent and invested.

What are some examples of large, successful for-profit DAOs?

>people can always create new blockchains and currencies to avoid being trapped by a chain

No network effects, difficulty in communication between chains. I see this as a major downside for most use cases.

There are a variety of ideologies in the Democrat party.. the socialist and Republicans thinking that social welfare programs are Communist is infuriating. I saw real Communist ideology from members of the party. During covid it was "forced relocation of rural areas to cities by xyz means". that is some dumb shit, and pol pot like. Talk of removing parents rights to educate children, " parents should have no say ".. also Asian structure in schools are the parents answers to the teachers not the other way around. I chased the money source and likely foreign money played a part ..

Democratic socialism is from Europe, not based on an equal rights society. The Democratic socialist in the USA advocated to trade some individual rights, give power to the government, for a social contract. The answer can be seen in NY, Colorado, Oregon, I think it was a big no.

Imo and it's fairy evidence based, one cannot protect a whole without the individual rights being protected. Without that, the majority will always cull the minority ( people or ideal) to gain their idealized society. The ends doesn't justify the means. The means, makes the end result.

I'm a bit skeptical of the 90% number still, but with the number of institutional investors these days it makes sense. In fiat currency I suspect the number is worse.

Daos are not getting "hacked" exactly as that would require the underlying blockchain to be compromised. In the cases I've studied, an outside agent has managed to obtain the private keys to the wallets of those with the most shares. Its a bit like getting the banking info for all the executives in a company. Its a big risk when the DAO only has a few members.

Newer daos are typically using "weighted shares" that lose value when you accrue too many. This helps prevent one dao member from gaining control. DAO shares are a type of smart contract, that can function however you code it to.

There are some DAOs with huge amounts of money. There are investment groups like the LAO and Diamond Bank. MetaCartel seems big, a collection of freelance coders and designers. There are hundreds more in all different fields, still figuring things out.

Its true blockchains don't communicate well with each other yet, but its possible to move value around between them. Its somewhat like exchanging currency through different banks, to do business in another country. A DAO could vote to move/trade the value of its treasury to another blockchain if it became advantageous to do so.

As for prefering to be paid in fiat. That makes sense. Dollars are easy to spend still. I see crypto as more of a stock at this point. An investment based on the belief that the tech will replace existing systems. If you believe that your companies management is good, and that it will survive and prosper, then those shares might be a better investment than a cryptocurrency you're skeptical of.

Well, I guess "large" is a subjective term, you're right. Definitely larger than "mom-and-pop"...

Your clarification is, of course, much more precise than my summary. I appreciate your input here, it's very helpful!

> the government owns the people and labor

No, the government is the people and labor. If the government isn't the people, then you're dealing with a dictatorship.

From Wikipedia:

> Pol Pot[b] (born Saloth Sâr;[c] 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian revolutionary, dictator, and politician who ruled Cambodia

Well said.. I do believe in a government of the people, and by the people. Dictatorships claim they do it for their people but we know how that goes in ownership of their ( slaves) people.

Your Nordic model relies on the exploitation of the 3rd world.

It doesn't matter if you are theoretically allowed to do anything when the bottom 80% only have 7% of the capital. The real world doesn't care about theoretical possibilities but does about real disadvantages.

The real world also provides more goods and services to help you build and run a business. It's really just lack of effort in most cases..

>Daos are not getting "hacked" exactly as that would require the underlying blockchain to be compromised.

Fair enough. The incident I am referring to was actually the result of an exchange being hacked. The hacker then leveraged his control of the majority of tokens to vote himself out of trouble in a DAO that was associated with the exchange. I can't find that one (heard about it on a podcast), but I have linked an example of a DAO being hacked via smart contract and another where price manipulation was used (almost legally, it would seem).

https://decrypt.co/112627/hacker-300k-olympus-dao

https://thedefiant.io/mango-caves-to-hacker

​

>I'm a bit skeptical of the 90% number still, but with the number of institutional investors these days it makes sense. In fiat currency I suspect the number is worse.

It's obviously hard to compare exactly, but crypto is less equally distributed than fiat (at least when it comes to the largest currencies and tokens).

Countries aren't a perfect analog for currencies, but they can give you a rough idea of what I am talking about.

The Gini coefficient of the US is 0.49, and one of the most unequal countries is South Africa, at .63.

The Gini coefficient of Bitcoin is .88 and Ethereum is .92.

Sources:

https://blog.dshr.org/2018/10/gini-coefficients-of-cryptocurrencies.html

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI

>Its true blockchains don't communicate well with each other yet, but its possible to move value around between them.

Transfers between blockchains are choke points where security vulnerabilities and centralization can creep into the system (malicious smart contracts, etc). Even if these can be ironed out, you have to ask why so many people feel the need to create their own blockchain rather than leveraging the work of others.

It seems like part of the problem is that blockchains don't scale well. You usually have to build a layer on top of a blockchain to get decent transaction capacity, and these layers often introduce security holes and centralization.

The bigger problem seems to be the aforementioned inequality when it comes to tokens. If a token has already run up in value, it becomes prohibitively expensive for new entrants. Why wouldn't you want to own a huge chunk of a new token that might moon versus a fraction of an established coin that the whales already own?

These smaller/newer blockchains are more vulnerable to 50% attacks, which are not possible against the likes of Ethereum or Bitcoin.

The main problem with incentivizing new blockchain/token creation rather than building on a dominant chain is the lack of network effects. Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are popular because almost everyone you know or care about is on them. If there were 200 social media sites, and your friends and family were distributed across them at random, the user experience wouldn't be very compelling.

Some Web 3.0 proponents claim that blockchains are ideal for social media (metaverse or traditional). I can imagine some major advantages to a blockchain-based social media platform:

• No central ownership.
• Potential to reliably validate identity (if desired).
• Possibility for users to monetize their own data, rather than a company doing so
• Requiring buy-in (even a small amount), might make users feel more responsible and invested, and discourage bots and alt accounts.

I can also see some major downsides:

• No paid social-media platform aside from dating sites has ever succeeded at scale. Even a nominal fee might discourage the average user. A free site would presumably have to be funded by the same sketchy practices Web 3.0 is trying to avoid.
• It might be more difficult to remove content from an immutable blockchain (accidental nudes, drunken rants, hate speech, etc.)
• No existing blockchain can handle anywhere near the volume of traffic that a major social media site generates without an external layer (again, security and centralization risk).

So does socialism

Sorry but that simply isn't the case. Capital availability is what allows you to even attempt providing those things.

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And who brings the capital, really? The people first, then the investors. I'm no business prof. but creating a good product at a fair price is still the best way to get ahead. People just suck at scaling, but why cry about it..

Workers build capital, workers build the cnc machines, they build the mining drills, they build the computers, workers are the source of capital, capitalists are just parasites.

Unrelated but I agree, just with a tweak: theyre beneficial parasites, when shit works. Basic labor isn't basic any more, the world needs smart people building smart shit.

The hell are you talking about? They are unsessary, managers who are workers do everything a capitalist would anyways.

Those exist, hence the classifier "when shit works". In a dysfunctional environment those types are attracted and benefit well, causing what really looks like a disease.

Managers who shield their team from team-based mandatories can be very useful, if the goals are clear and culture is good. If it's all shit already though, it'll be infighting anyway, manager and everyone else.

That makes sense, an exchange would be more vulnerable. I could even see a DAO getting tricked with a bad smart contract. Its not really possible to be "hacked" though as you have an opportunity to read the code before accepting a contract. Transactions can't happen without consent. Most of the time somebody gets hold of the keys to dao member wallets through "social engineering".

Transfers between chains are a point of vulnerability for sure. Something I think DAOs can eventually solve.

I would maybe disagree that token price dynamics are problematic. Ultimately a currency is meant to be an ubiquitous unit of value, enabling people to trade with each other in ways direct bartering doesn't.

Its actually advantageous to be able to create new currencies when there are issues with the existing one. In a perfect system the currency rarely pools for long in one place, instead circulating to facilitate the maximum number of transactions.

When one currency becomes too expensive, or its control too centralized, then we can just create a new currency and begin doing business in it instead. Your new network can grow to become more valuable than the old one, giving you first holder advantage.

Ultimately its all about decentralization. The entire movement is a reaction to the percived corruption and unfairness in the current system. The dollar and stock market are very centralized, and even the data they report comes from "trusted" central authorities. Theres ample evidence of fraud at the highest levels. Not to mention the Fed's ability to print more currency at their own discretion.

Blockchains (except privacy chains like Monero) make financial transactions fair and transparent. The rules are written in code (essentially pure logic)for everybody to see. Most chains cannot be changed without a vote.

The music industry is a good analog for what's happening in finance. Music was dominated by record companies, who used their size to force new artists into disadvantageous contracts, and forced people to pay an increasingly exorbitant price for something that had almost no cost to produce.

Some bold coders created programs that allowed people to share music directly with each other, cutting out the middleman.

The music industry attacked every way they could, but each company they sank caused an even more decentralized system to take its place, until irritated coders created programs that don't make them any money at all, rendering music a public service for anybody with enough knowhow.

I would argue peer to peer networks have an ability to spread without the aid of the "network effect". Word of mouth is sufficient. People are motivated to foster community online and share information.

There are even free online tools now that allow you to create your own social media platforms, with custom rules, backed by your choice of blockchain for security.

We might end up with a lot of small custom platforms full of people who share some ideal or interest. Many with opportunities for members to earn currency of some sort.

Org structure matters less than company size, and how economic benefit flow is to the participants.

Why? I’m a developer too so I’m curious what your goal is. Why are you building all that?

Cuz legacy social media sucks and co-opts our connections for advertising dollars and it makes for a shitty impact on humans and the rest of the world.

And I’m not a developer. We’re a team of 12. We’ve already raised ~$2M in VC funding.

Check out Metalabel for examples of who is doing this already.

>When one currency becomes too expensive, or its control too centralized, then we can just create a new currency and begin doing business in it instead.

This is a wild claim. Such a system would never scale to a global, or even national level. If a major currency was replaced without years of planning, the ensuing chaos would result in a global depression.

It's OK for crypto to be volatile, and for older tokens to be pushed aside, because it's early days, but much more stability will be required if a cryptocurrency is ever going to be used for anything but limited/illicit transactions.

>The rules are written in code (essentially pure logic)for everybody to see.

Ah yes. "Code is law". This cuts both ways. Say someone embedded a smart contract in a jpeg and gets it in your wallet somehow (social engineering often works on the average person). If you click on it, it drains your funds. Fuck you, code is law. Your tokens belong to the hacker now.

Also, if your currency is especially useful for money laundering, human trafficking, ransom and terrorism, that's not exactly benefitting society.

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>Its not really possible to be "hacked" though as you have an opportunity to read the code before accepting a contract.

Then why have so many hacks happened using this exact vector? I'm a software engineer and I miss things on code reviews sometimes (and this code isn't trying to hide things from me).

I imagine my mom would miss even more, if she even bothered to check the code. If only software experts can use a product safely, that doesn't bode well for mass adoption.

​

>Ultimately its all about decentralization. The entire movement is a reaction to the percived corruption and unfairness in the current system.

Is Coinbase decentralized? How about Binance? Crypto is so hard for non-technical people to use that centralization will always be required.

Blockchains are orders of magnitude too slow for mainstream adoption as currencies (see article below). Therefore they require layers (Lightning, Layer2, etc.) to increase transaction throughput. These layers introduce centralization and negate many of the undeniable security benefits of the blockchain.

Replacing an unfair system with a system that is already far more unequal and can only be safely used by software engineers seems like trading one set of problems for another.

https://towardsdatascience.com/the-blockchain-scalability-problem-the-race-for-visa-like-transaction-speed-5cce48f9d44

>The music industry is a good analog for what's happening in finance.

The music industry analogy breaks down pretty quickly. Music is a product, not a currency. It doesn't underpin the entire economy. The nature and use cases of music didn't change, just the distribution method and which entities had centralized control.

Centralized record companies were largely replaced by centralized streaming companies. There are still a couple dozen acts that hoover up 90% of the revenue. The one big benefit is that artists can build a following by touring and posting on YouTube and SoundCloud (and others) and avoid being enslaved by a record company early on.

SOURCES:
Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies: Burn It With Fire (Nicholas Weaver)
The best takedown of crypto by a Berkeley CS professor.

Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs
A less technical, but equally interesting takedown, focused mostly on NFTs

How Crypto Disappeared Into Thin Air

The Bitcoin Dream Is Dead

This is just a worker cooperative you lot of jack offs

I don't see how a flat organization could scale effectively.

Interesting conversation, but it looks like you missed my point on that last one, given your response.

I can certainly understand your perspective, given the info and ideas you've mentioned. Only time will tell whose correct

Organisations work for their owners, which is to say, shareholders. Boards are elected with elaborate controls to ensure their responsibility to those owners. How is this supposed to work in this nonsense scheme? The closest to such a structure lies in cooperatives of artisans, who buy collectively an share work around, a bit. These are far from nicey-nicey structures, but hard edged, quarrelsome entities.

> Ever heard of capitalism? The idea of profit sharing evenly amongst workers is diametrically opposite the stated goals of capitalism. This is the main choke point as to why this idea will not scale.

Workers are capitalists willing to sell their time and effort valued by experience (college, real world experience, or both) for an agreed upon price. Employment is also a market. In many companies they can be partially compensated with a portion of the company (probably most common in Silicon Valley but exists elsewhere).

What you describe as "socialism" exists in capitalism. Employees can be compensated with a portion of the company that grants them voting rights (which is exactly what these companies do).

Sure... elements of one system can certainly exist in another system. I think it's probably save to say that there are no "pure" implementations of any economic system anywhere in the world...

For the most part only top executives at publicly traded companies get stock as part of their comp.

So your thesis is that: workers that simply participate in a system that they can neither opt out of nor had a hand in creating are “capitalists too”…. So this makes them even culprits with the corporate goal to slash worker pay, raise consumer prices and beat up suppliers and competitors up the supply chain to shave as much profit off and pass it all to shareholders?

This sounds an awful lot like blame the slaves for slavery. Not saying your average worker is a slave per se, but their ability to opt out is just as futile.

> So your thesis is that: workers that simply participate in a system that they can neither opt out of nor had a hand in creating are “capitalists too”…. So this makes them even culprits with the corporate goal to slash worker pay, raise consumer prices and beat up suppliers and competitors up the supply chain to shave as much profit off and pass it all to shareholders? > > > > This sounds an awful lot like blame the slaves for slavery. Not saying your average worker is a slave per se, but their ability to opt out is just as futile.

The leverage of business owners over their employees is exactly why strikes are legal in the US. They prevent the owner from operating the business (or at least make it substantially more expensive) until they come to the negotiating table.

Strikes may be legal technically, but damn near half our states are “Right to work” states where businesses can fire anyone anytime without cause for any reason and not be sued. So anyone even talking about striking will get fired immediately, and the movement is dead before it even started.

It is very rare for workers to have any leverage over here. That is why our federal minimum wage only covers 25% of one months rent in most places.

Yup, the US has a long way to go to repair workers' rights.