Cryptocurrencies advertise themselves as democratic, but in reality they're only as democratic as a corporate shareholder vote. Only those with shares can vote, and more shares = more votes.

You may view state control on economic activity as authoritarian, but that's a pretty extreme view. I personally think that a democratically elected government should be able to control the economy when necessary, even if I don't always agree on how that control is applied. Otherwise, power will inevitably accumulate in increasingly large corporations, to the detriment of everyone else.

> Only those with shares can vote, and more shares = more votes.

Only in Proof of Stake. This is wby Proof of Work is still considered the most secure against centralization.

> Otherwise, power will inevitably accumulate in increasingly large corporations, to the detriment of everyone else.

Pot --- kettle.

How then, if democracy and state authority can check the concentration of power, did we end up here?

People think PoS is "the future" of crypto, but don't understand that you have to lock something of value in the network worth staking.

A PoS crypto only works if there is an initial pre-sale (many of the ICO cryptos), or starting with a PoW period (like Ethereum did, there was also an ICO) and then moving to PoS.

Without one (or both) of the above the tokens at stake are worth nothing

Propaganda, regulatory capture, government gridlock, corruption—we got here not because democracy and state authority are worthless and cannot do the job, but because they are imperfect and people found ways to undermine them for their own benefit.

If we can get back to democracy and genuine state authority, as opposed to increasingly-gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, and "state authority only when it suits the moneyed interests," which is more or less what we have now, then we'll be in much better shape overall.

>Cryptocurrencies advertise themselves as democratic

only in matters of that cryptocurrency.

>more shares = more votes

Yeah, people without shares have no business (and no interest) in decisions concerned with that cryptocurrency.

It's like saying a game community is not democratic because only players of that game can make decisions about the future of the game and the hardcore players (early adapters) get more votes than the newbies.

I think crypto tech is exploring ways to reinvent democracy/society, but cryptocurrencies are not meant to do it (as the name cryptoCURRENCY suggests).

Those "matters of cryptocurrency" matter a lot. A lot of advocates hate inflation. That's a policy position. And it may be reasonable to want democratic control over those policies rather than miner control.

The Bitcoin block size hard fork showed that full nodes and validating nodes have the power to censor miners who don't follow the consensus rules. And the amount of Bitcoin needed to run a node is zero.

> You may view state control on economic activity as authoritarian, but that's a pretty extreme view.

Is it really? Throughout history it seems to go hand-in-hand with massive human rights abuses. Case studies include the USSR, DPRK, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc.

"State control on economic activity" is extremely broad, and can encompass everything from a USSR style planned economy, to the US government breaking up Standard Oil, to even food safety regulations. Given the context of the post, and the general user makeup of HN, I assumed you were discussing economic control based on places like the US or EU. I'm not entirely sure how North Korea or Cambodia fit into the previous arguments.

Places like the DPRK, Cuba, and Venezuela are especially relevant when discussing cryptocurrency because it's a technology that allows people in those locations to escape economic totalitarianism. What confuses me is that people in democratic countries are calling a tool of democracy "anti-democratic". It's completely illogical.

It's possible that the same tool can be used either for, or against, democracy, depending on the environment. That's actually what most tools are like. Using cryptocurrency in an authoritarian state can help democratize the state, while using it in an already democratic state has a potential to do more harm than good. It's similar to violence: using it to kill off the ancien regime can (potentially) pave road towards democracy, while using it to put a non-elected person in charge in an already democratic state will shift the state away from democracy.

Disclaimer: I don't have any opinion on this, just reacting to the "completely illogical" comment.

I agree with this and it's a good line of reasoning to explore but unfortunately top-level discussions on this topic never contain this much nuance.

> What confuses me is that people in democratic countries are calling a tool of democracy "anti-democratic". It's completely illogical.

It depends on whether the word "democracy" has any meaning. In a democracy, we get to vote on how economic activity is regulated. Crypto is a tool to avoid democracy.

> In a democracy, we get to vote on how economic activity is regulated. Crypto is a tool to avoid democracy.

Do you consider the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to be a democracy? The people in that country vote overwhelmingly in favor of authoritarian policies there. I believe it's reasonable to argue that true democracy is incompatible with authoritarianism.

other case studies: Belgian Congo, British East India Company, US chattel slavery, etc.

Democracies can control the economy deliberately. Democracy without economic control is near anarchy and the democracy is debilitated, subject to the whims of the people that own production.

Governments exist to prevent/fix market failure. The only problem is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_failure

Governments have existed before capitalist markets and they will exist after them too.

The US currently has a high degree of economic control AND is still subject to the whims of the people that own production.

That's true, and why the real answer is to depose the owners and have common democratic ownership.

Democracies depends on transparency, accountability and the rule of law. Cyrptocurrencies are fundementally more anarchic than democratic.

Public blockchains have way more transparency than existing systems. Please provide an example of an existing democracy you consider to be more transparent, i.e. every single action that is made is public.

Transparency is a part of accountability, but accountability is not transparency.

Let's say, hypothetically, that voting for the president was done on a public blockchain, that anyone can audit, and there were cryptographic guarantees that the people voting are who they say they are. Does that not make that voting system more accountable? In this case I think transparency does lead to accountability.

You don't need a blockchain to do that, and there's a reason voting records for individuals are not made public. It's to protect against coercion, among other things.

Each individual can have a unique identifier that is not linked to their identity. It could be a public key that they generate from their private key. We'd have to figure out the details of how that would work exactly, i.e. making sure people cannot vote twice, but that's possible to figure out.

I don't think there's any way to do this without giving trust to some central entity without a public blockchain. The public blockchain does become the source of trust, but you need a resource (like energy), that is finite, to secure that network.

However, going back to your original comment, you said we are assuming a zero carbon footprint, so that would assume some future where this trust could be put on a network in a way that would be environmentally sustainable. All I'm saying is that there are more possibilities to this technology than I think you are acknowledging.

> Each individual can have a unique identifier that is not linked to their identity.

If that idenifier is unlinked to their identity, how do they cryptographically prove their identity when voting? How do you audit voter rolls?

This is a red herring anyway since I was specifically talking about cryptocurrency. In a purely decentralized cryptocurrency economy, taxation becomes impossible. You can't prevent pseudonymous economic transactions and the existence of privacy orriented cryptocurrenciesean that transactions can always route through that layer to turn that pseudonymity into anonymity.

The entire current use case for cryptocurrencies is literally evading the rule of law (and speculation.)

I have sympathies with anarchic ideals and issues with democratic processes, but please don't try to pass one off as the other.

> We'd have to figure out the details of how that would work exactly

Good luck with that.

Hmm... They are anarchic in theory but in practice there's a strong hierarchy - few rich guys control the majority of coins.

Democracy is primarily about representation and individual freedom. "Rule of law" is one of the main selling points of authoritarian ideologies. Are you sure you didn't drop a minus sign somewhere?

Authoritarian regimes don't have "rule of law".

The entire point is that all institutions in an Authoritarian country are under the control of the authoritarian leader/party.

If the judicial system has independent power and can hold the rulers accountable when the violate the law, it isn't an authoritarian regime.

This is precisely why the US has a system of checks and balances and why the judicial system is an important part of that.

I prefer laws over guns.

Laws are enforced with guns.

Except in crypto.

> Strict state controls on economic activity are more within the realm of authoritarian regimes,

This is a wildly extreme viewpoint, given that every single country has strict controls on economic activity, where almost every transaction of size needs to be reported.